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Benzie Fishery Coalition

National Park Service

BFC Responds to Newsletter # 3 (PDF file)

Sleeping Bear Staff Raises Wilderness Issues Again

Once again, the National Park Service is addressing its need for a new General Management Plan (GMP) for the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL).

A few years ago, their attempt to push for wilderness designation for about half the 74 thousand acres ran into serious public opposition. The Benzie Fishery Coalition was first to blow the whistle because the “preferred” alternative virtually closed nearly all of Benzie County’s portion of the national park by designating it as wilderness. Among other things, staff indicated the Platte River would be sanitized to eliminate all “exotics” including salmon, and all County roads inside the park leading to Lake Michigan would be closed, dug up, and replaced with forestation. A severe public outcry ensued, and the plan was ordered halted.

A lot has happened since those days. We have got to know the staff at the park’s headquarters in Empire, including Park Superintendent Dusty Shultz and her assistant Tom Ulrich. We have traded a lot of information over recent years and believe any new General Management Plan development will be preceded by a more careful collection of public input. Of course, we have yet to see whether the collected public input will impact their proposals.

Now the SBDNL has issued a series of newsletters, including a recent issue #3 in which the staff has proposed a package of defined “regions” as a precursor to producing a new General Management Plan (GMP) proposal. Over the past years, the park management has conceded that the salmon (and the river) while running through the park aren’t the property of the National Park Service, and that any roads owned by the County cannot be closed unless the County Road Commission gives them up. That is also quite unlikely.
The BFC has also proposed the park install a new portable small boat launch directly on Platte Bay to replace the dangerous and inadequate ramp at the end of Lake Michigan Road just above the mouth of the lower Platte. The park management has not rejected this idea per se, but we expect a long uphill job to obtain concurrences from all related government agencies.

A key benefit to such a plan is the elimination of the need to dredge the mouth of the river to make way for launch and reentry of fishing boats during the fall Coho salmon run. The elimination of dredging will be an environmental plus, as currently each September the area around the mouth of the river is torn up. A separate launch for boats will separate swimmers and tubing enthusiasts from dangerous encounters with fishermen trying to combat shallow water and quick cross currents at the present launch site. We are hopeful that the possibility of this boat launch (and related parking) can be included in the GMP as it is addressed.

Finally, now that the NPS has begun their series of steps to obtain wilderness approval for the Sleeping Bear from congress and a GMP that provides a foundation for operations for the next several years, we hope their promises of a more collaborative relationship with the general public and the many interested associations in the area, will come to pass. Future issues of the BFC newsletters will continue to address the future of the park, especially the impact on the volume of visitors to the Benzie area of the Sleeping Bear.

In the meantime, we recommend our readers visit our website regularly for updates on this issue.
BFC Response to Newsletter # 3 (PDF file)

BFC Responds to New Sleeping Bear Initiatives
New Management Plan Expected

The staff at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL) have been busy working on a new draft of a General Management Plan, as directed by the National Park Service offices in Omaha Nebraska, and Washington D.C.

Readers might recall that the first attempt to update their GMP back in 2002 met with extremely negative public reaction, with the eventual result that the Secretary of the Interior’s office ordered them to stand down on future planning of their “Preferred Alternative 4”.

The public did not accept the plan to designate some 34 thousand acres of the park as “wilderness”, meaning the public would be virtually banned from entry in these areas. The wilderness designation would have applied to all of park’s acreage in Benzie County, except for a narrow corridor west of M22, down Lake Michigan Road, along the banks and to the mouth of the lower Platte River. This article is intended to summarize recent actions by the National Park Service and local groups. The matter is somewhat complicated but we believe a number of public organizations have the details well understood, and are acting on what we believe the public would want to see happen for the park.

In January 2006 Sleeping Bear Superintendent Dusty Shultz authored a newsletter (identified as #1) asking for public reaction by March 17th, to a new process to create a plan the public would accept.

In the newsletter she outlined some basic planning which would lead toward adoption of another attempt to develop a GNP, this time with more public involvement, and hopefully support. The BFC heartily endorsed a change in the process that would lead to a plan that the public, who uses the park, would accept.

For the past several months both Shultz and her Deputy Superintendent Tom Ulrich have been making the rounds of local organizations, including the BFC, outlining the plan that would lead towards a new GMP.

BFC President Ed McIntosh witnessed this presentation three times, once at the BFC meeting, then again as a member of Citizen’s For Access to the Lakeshore, chaired by Jeannette Feheeley of Frankfort, and finally as a member of the Board of Director’s of the Citizens Council of the Sleeping Bear, chaired by Jim Dutmers of Glen Lake.

In each of Tom Ulrich’s presentations he alluded to a “minor” change in the development process, from what had been agreed. All parties had hitherto conceded that the basic issue was “wilderness”, and that subject needed to be threshed out first, so that once consensus was reached; development of the actual GMP would be less controversial.

Mr. Ulrich responded by saying that owing to tight budgetary control the park would not be able to proceed along agreed lines, and that the definition of wilderness areas and its impact on the park’s use would have would be developed in concert with preparation of the new GMP.

To our knowledge, none of the organizations we know of agreed to this change. Our objection to this “one package” was ignored, again based on insufficient funds. Our position was if there is only enough money to do one program, let it be wilderness that is tackled, with the new GMP coming once additional funds are provided. We regard that issue as still unresolved.

Despite the intent for more public involvement, we can see that we will all be back where we were before on the wilderness issue, unless the Sleeping Bear staff substantially modifies the scope and definition of wilderness as they want to apply it to this park. At this point the park has no congressional directive that approves any wilderness in our National Lakeshore; they only have instructions to manage the park as if wilderness had been designated, until such time as it might be officially adopted. The NPS failed to respond to a congressional request to make their recommendations known within a specific time frame back in the 70s. The matter is still unresolved.

Those wishing to read Newsletter #1, as published by the Sleeping Bear staff, can read it, or download it at the park’s website which is www.nps.gov/slbe or you can request a hard copy at the park’s office in Empire (phone 231-326-5134).

The BFC responded to the newsletter in our letter to Dusty Shultz dated March 16th. This response, and the NPS Newsletter #1 can be found in the NPS section of BFC’s own website www.benziefish.org

BFC’s response to Newsletter #1 centered on two basic concerns:

1. The newsletter’s stated objective and purpose of the park greatly exceeded the terms used in the law creating the Sleeping Bear in 1972. The current “purpose” of the park, as newly defined, clearly places the need for wilderness and conservation in the forefront, leaving the public’s enjoyment and recreational use of the park as important, but a secondary concern.
2. There is no guarantee in the plan that insures that the NPS will heed ANY of the public’s opposition to issues raised during the participative development of the new plan, likely resulting in another major confrontation between the NPS and the public; i.e., a repeat of 2002’s public outcry. This despite past oral promises to the contrary. That point, and the lack of resolving the wilderness question first, poses a serious threat to the success of the venture, at least the hope for a more orderly one.

Superintendent Shultz has stated she wants public input. We suggest you write to her and state whether you agree to these first steps as positive progress, or not. We believe she tripped on the first step, and now the second one.