Jerry Woolpy's letter to Dennis Leith about the Boulder Junction meeting

May 6, 2005

Dear Dennis Leith, Editors, Friends, and Neighbors,

To summarize the open meeting at Boulder Junction on the master plan for the Northern Highland American Legion State Forest last night:

Well over one-hundred people assembled to comment on the plan. Over thirty spoke with comments coming to a clear consensus as follows:

We are appreciative the good and thorough work that has gone into the plan especially as it has delineated the vast inventory of species, land, and water in the forest. We would like to see more emphasis placed on restoring the pine forest that was here before the intensive logging of the early twentieth century with pines as opposed to aspen. We would like to expand the protected forest making it contiguous with forests in the Upper Peninsula completing essential corridors for the movement and distribution of indigenous flora and fauna. We oppose clear cutting and support selective logging done in accordance with conservative principles. We want to preserve and protect the unique opportunities for world class scientific investigation that the forest ecosystem provides. We strongly favor reserving the forest for the enthusiasms of aesthetic, contemplative, and silent sports persons. Above all we favor a quiet freshness characterized by tall pine trees with a rich under story of seedlings, wildflowers, indigenous ground cover, clear lakes and streams.

We find the proposed experimental ATV trail to be incompatible with any reasonable expectations of achieving our objectives. This is because ATVs are noisy, dangerous, smelly, dusty, muddy, distribute the seeds of plants that displace more fragile native ones, cause erosion, cause eutrophication, poison and disruption of our waters. On this point, despite the influence of a small minority supported for the most part by people who do not live here, we speak for a clear majority of two or three to one--proven by referendum. We argue that there are already ATV trails throughout the state, that they are not containable by any means so far demonstrated, that they may contribute to the economy of our hospitals and to a limited number of businesses but that their net effect is economically negative and that it could take generations to restore the habitat in the wake of their destruction.

Approximately thirty persons spoke to these points. Only one person argued for the experimental trail saying that ATVs were inevitable and that they would help keep intercity punks out of trouble. Another spoke to how diligently ATV clubs were trying to train ambassadors to keep ATVs on the trails.

Jerry Woolpy
Minocqua, Wisconsin