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Sounding (the silent sports) Alarm [01.08] NONMOTORIZED STUDY COMMITTEE NEEDED The Wisconsin Joint Legislative Committee (JLC) will be meeting in the next few weeks to decide on a State Trails Council proposal to develop a special study committee for non-motorized trails. On April 11, 2007, the Governor's State Trails Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for the JLC to create a study committee to propose ways to provide a reliable funding stream for non-motorized trails in Wisconsin. This would be the first step in creating legislation that will provide the means for the creation, protection and maintenance of the trails which Wisconsin hikers, bicyclists, paddlers, equestrians, skiers and nature lovers depend. If the JLC approves this proposal, non-motorized trails will be a key focus of our legislators & user groups resulting in public meetings, hearings & legislation which will elevate the status of non-motorized trail users. While over 3 million WI residents use trails, we struggle for funding, representation & political inclusion as compared to motorized trail users. One focus will be non-motorized trail funding. As the special committee decision unfolds, motorized trail activists are pushing to raise the DNR ATV fund from $5M to $11M annually, even though the fund was undersubscribed last year. Non-motorized trails will be funded less aggressively at $1.5M; even though 80% of Wisconsin's population walk & bike, and less than 20% use ATVs. This is an historic opportunity to play an influential role in the future of silent sports in Wisconsin and derive the economic benefit that parks & trails bring to our state (estimated to be $650M annually). Ask your legislator to contact JLC members to request a Non-motorized Trail Study Committee. Time is of the essence, as Study committee decisions will be made in the next couple weeks. For more information visit the JLC webpage http://www.legis.state.wi.us/lc/committees/jointcouncil/index.htm Current JLC Membership:
Keep more motorheads off wis. state trails council Assembly Bill 600 has been introduced in the Wisconsin Legislature. If it becomes law, it will make significant changes in the composition of the Governor's State Trails Council which represents all types of trail recreation in Wisconsin. Currently the law does not provide for specific designations for members. The law designates nine members but leaves it up to the Council to represent specific user groups. The user groups or currently represented on the council are Ice Age Trail builders and hikers, off-highway motor vehicle users, equestrians, the Department of Transportation, trail users with disabilities, Nordic skiers, water trail users, snowmobilers and bicyclists. AB 600 seeks to increase the number of representatives from nine to eleven and specifies that four of them will be the following motorized user groups: ATV'ers, snowmobilers, users of four-wheel-drive motor vehicles for off-highway use, and off road motorcycle/dirt bike riders. The 2005-2010 Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) assesses the supply, demand and participation rates of outdoor recreation in Wisconsin. According to the latest SCORP report, motorized outdoor recreation participants represent a much smaller percentage of users than non-motorized users. Consider the percent of participants for the following activities: Walk for Pleasure: 85.8% Using these statistics, it is clear that if a separate representative is designated for off-road motorcycling, all other activities that have a higher percentage of participants should be represented, too. This push by motorized recreation groups is part of a greater effort to increase their access to public land and trails, whichy would further displace the vast majority of nonmotorized users and create environmental damage. What can you do: Call, email and write your legislators. Ask them not to support AB 600. Get involved with groups representing non-motorized trail users. Show up at public forums when your interests are in jeopardy. And send letters to your local newspapers. MN DNR BUCKS ADVISORS TO OK ATVS BY MISS. RIVER The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is likely to permit use of ATVs in the Mississippi Headwaters State Forest despite two DNR scientists recommending the forest be closed to off-road riding. A draft plan by the DNR would allow ATVs to stay on 84 miles of roads and trails near the headwaters of the Mississippi River, according to The Associated Press. But three members of a five-person DNR study team wanted to close the forest to ATVs earlier this year. Two of them, DNR wildlife experts Michael North and Rob Naplin, argued last March the headwaters area is "sensitive natural resource of national significance" and a designated canoe route. "Remote and isolated canoeing opportunities are rare when compared to motorized riding opportunities in this part of the state," wrote North and Naplin, noting the hundreds of miles of existing ATV trails on nearby county and state forestland. Besides drafting a plan allowing ATVing in the forest, the DNR has proposed "scores of ATV trail miles within the 1,000-foot 'wild corridor' along either side of the Mississippi River for its first 47 miles", according to Matt Norton, a staff attorney for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. The public, Norton wrote, needs to inform the DNR that ATVs in the headwaters area only "destroys or diminishes unique and highly valued silent and traditional recreational opportunities that are of massive state, regional and national importance." The draft plan, which is detailed at www.dnr.state.mn.us (click on the "OHV riding" link), will be the subject of a public meeting at Bemidji State University on January 16. CHIPPEWA NAT'L FOREST OHV ACCESS REDRAWN The U.S. Forest Service will allow off-highway motor vehicle (OHV) use of 1,486 miles of existing roads in the Chippewa National Forest in Minnesota, according to The Bemidji Pioneer. The decision, made in early December by Chippewa National Forest Supervisor Robert Harper, adds 272 miles of new OHV user access to higher standard roads and reduces, by 316 miles, the amount of low standard roads previously open to OHVs, the newspaper reported. Harper did close some roads close to the Suomi and Trout Lake semi-primitive nonmotorized areas, the North Country National Scenic Trail and some designated hunter walking trails. The decision means 59 percent of the roads within the Chippewa National Forests are now open to OHVs compared to 61 percent before the decision. SNOWMOBILE TRAIL NEAR BWCA BACKED BY COUNTY Lake County, Minnesota, commissioners voted November 29 to support the U.S. Forest Service’s legal defense of its plan to build a snowmobile trail near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), according to the Lake County News-Chronicle. Several conservation groups, including Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, are suing the Forest Service in an effort to stop the project. The proposed trail through the Superior National Forest in Cook County near South Fowl Lake would replace an illegal trail that crossed into the BWCAW. In 2006, the Forest Service solicited public input as to whether a new trail should be built or an existing trail widened. Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness argued for widening an existing trail one mile south of the proposed new trail. The Forest Service, however, decided to build a new snowmobile trail running along a high ridge between two lakes and within a few hundred feet of the wilderness boundary.  Due to the lawsuit, no trail is being built. "It will likely be decided by a judge, as it should be when two sides are not otherwise able to find a solution to their differences," according to the Friends website, www.friends-bwca.org. DNR OFFICIAL OPPOSES ATVS ON FOX VALLEY TRAIL A still undeveloped 23-mile rail-trail in east-central Wisconsin should not be opened to ATVs, DNR Regional Trails Coordinator Gary Hanson told a committee of the Outagamie County Board in late November. The Seymour-New London rail corridor would provide a vital link between the nonmotorized Wiouwash, Friendship Mountain Bay and Fox River state trails. It is not connected to any existing ATV trails and therefore would give ATVers "nowhere else to go," Hanson said, according to the Appleton Post-Crescent. Nevertheless, the Trax Trail Riders Club of Black Creek, which lies along the abandoned Seymour-New London rail corridor, is pressuring the county to allow both motorized and nonmotorized users on the trail. Club members want the county to green-light ATVs on the trail which would then allow the club to seek from the DNR up to $450 per mile in maintenance funding annually. Hanson, who has helped other counties develop ATV trails and motorized recreation parks, said $450 per mile won't be enough to maintain a trail surface suitable for ATV'ers, bicyclists and hikers, the newspaper reported. Besides, he said, "the bottom line is motorized and nonmotorized uses do not commingle, for many of the same reasons we separate vehicles from pedestrians." Vicki Milde, president of Fox Cities Greenways Inc., said her organization's position is that "access (to the Seymour-New London Trail) must be reserved for activities which promote healthy lifestyles and which preserve the environmental integrity along the trail for succeeding generations." If the trail is designated nonmotorized, the Oneida Nation is willing to extend the trail from Seymour across tribal land to Howard, just outside Green Bay, according to county parks and recreation officials. The Outagamie County Snowmobile Alliance opposes ATV access to the trail as well. The snowmobile clubs are concerned ATV'ers will leave the trail and drive illegally on snowmobile trails that cross private property. Area landowners may then wish to prohibit access to all motorized users.
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