ATV trail fans avoid NRB to ’save gas’
Curiously, no one at Tuesday’s meeting of the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board (NRB) spoke out in favor of the particular ATV trails proposed for the Northern Highland-American Legion (NH-AL) State Forest.
Of the 27 people who testified, only Jane Severt and Mike Peterson, representing the Wisconsin County Forests Association, questioned the DNR’s recommendation against ATV trails in the NH-AL.
Peterson said the state agency’s NHAL ATV Trail Feasibility/Suitability Study “infers there are ATV riding opportunities elsewhere. That’s a transparent statement that the county forests must provide the trails.”
While there are nearly 8,000 miles of legal ATV trails and routes through 32 mostly northern Wisconsin counties, many of the trails cross state land. The DNR is also “committed” to recreational ATV riding through its ATV registration and trail maintenance grant programs, according to Paul DeLong, administrator of the DNR’s Forestry Division.
The DNR’s recommendation not to build ATVs in the NH-AL “should not be viewed as a lack of support for ATVs,” DeLong said.
Yet no one from the Wisconsin ATV Association (WATVA) addressed the NRB on Tuesday. Nevertheless, WATVA tried at the 11th hour to get the DNR to change course. (In fact, it was the only outside group thanked for its late input by DNR Secretary Matt Frank in his April 11 memo to the NRB.)
This morning in a phone interview, WATVA President Randy Harden told Silent Sports he didn’t go because the NRB’s decision “was a foregone conclusion.”
While WATVA Vice President Rob McConnell attended the NRB meeting, Harden did not. “Why waste gas driving there like you people?” he cynically asked of this writer and the many other nonmotorized recreation advocates who did go to the meeting.
Harden said his organization decided to rest its case on written comments submitted earlier to the DNR. In an April 10 letter addressed to DeYoung, Harden and McConnell argued against the need for a 30-foot-wide trail corridor for ATVs. They suggested that the ATV trails in the NH-AL be half as wide and include paved and hilly “technical” sections.
While the WATVA officials said “long, straight trails are found to be boring” by ATVers, they conceded the DNR’s plan to have ATV riders follow existing fireroads “does minimize further fragmentation of forestland.”
NH-AL Superintendent Steve Peterson suggested Harden is feigning surprise when he claims he didn’t expect the DNR to map ATV trails wide enough for two-way motor vehicle traffic.
“I remember walking the possible routes with them and talking about the need to ditch and crown the trails, which would have to be shared with trucks,” Peterson said. “Most of the ATV trails would have followed forest roads that are already 30 feet wide.”
Harden and McConnell also expressed doubt the ATV trails would cost $4.8 million to $14.9 million to build, as estimated by the DNR.
In their letter, they suggested eliminating from the plan a 11.6-mile section of trail through what the DNR described as an “ecologically sensitive” peatlands area. Because that trail alone would have required 3,250 feet of boardwalk and cost as much as $5.1 million, it was the least likely alternative to be constructed anyway.
The NRB decision to accept the DNR’s recommendation will likely keep the NH-AL closed to ATVs until at least 2020 when a new master plan for the forest will be due. The master planning process will start in 2018. Only a change in state statute could keep ATVs out of the NH-AL permanently.
– Joel Patenaude