Now that the Stakeholders group is moving quickly and stealthily to bring ATV's to the NHAL forest, I can see the strategy that had been in place all along. We have been "punked".
The overwhelming opposition to ATV trails registered by the public during the NHAL Master Plan process set the ATV interests and the DNR on its heels. The DNR already had its marching orders-bring an ATV trail to the NHAL forest. So what kind of cover needed to be created to get a trail made? The DNR was told to come up with somethinng-so creatively, the Stakeholder's group was born. Under the patina of "inquiry", the committee became an ATV trail planning process. If the DNR had just went ahead and planned a trail, opposition would already have been ready to go publlc. Instead, we sat around and assumed that a neutral process was in place, and that a neutral process would probably decide that a trail could not be built in a sensitive area that had a history of opposition to ATV trails. In short, we went to sleep. It is probably too late, but certainly worth fighting. Write to the Stakeholders group, write letters to the editor, and make the public aware of what is going on.
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