Contained within a 300-page document that will outline how the National Park Service proposes to govern Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for the next 20 or so years will be a compromise.

Lakeshore assistant superintendent Tom Ulrich is hopeful the proposed General Management Plan (GMP) strikes a balance between preservationists and recreation users, between visitors and residents — basically somewhere in a middle ground of management that all who love the Lakeshore can embrace, or at least accept.

It’s a tough task, he admits.

“I’m sure there are going to be some details left out that people wanted to be included,” he said.

While the process to rewrite the Lakeshore’s GMP is in a lull when viewed from the outside, National Park Service keyboards are working feverishly from the inside. Beginning with the release of a newsletter two years ago, the Park Service started accepting public input that is now being written into a lengthy “draft plan” that will be released at the end of April.

Ulrich said the Park Service has listened intently to the suggestions of those who use the Lakeshore. He believes the end result will be a plan to manage much closer to the desires of park users than a failed GMP process that began in 1999 and was terminated amid a storm of protests in the summer of 2004.

The “preferred option” proposed by the Park Service called for tightening up access to the park and a general reversion of lands managed under the federal Wilderness Act to pre-settlement times. Among sore points within the plan were designs to slow or end coho salmon runs in the Platte River, elimination of the deer herd from North Manitou Island and closure of rights-of-way owned by county road commissions.

None of those components will be included within the new plan, which will emphasize the status quo, Ulrich said.

“(Some patrons) still wanted to drive where they have been able to drive, and have access to where they wanted to go. And for those members of the public who said we value the Lakeshore for being able to get away from engines and roads, that experience will be preserved,” he added.

In fact, the Park Service is making plans to sidestep the rights-of-way conflict, which it says was largely the result of the presence of county roads within areas designated as “Wilderness.”

The first attempt at a GMP accepted present wilderness designations, which the Park Service maintained could only be changed by an act of Congress. That led to conflicts along some rural roads in Wilderness districts that were targeted to be closed to motorized traffic.

Included was the popular Esch Road access to Lake Michigan just south of Empire, and Baker Road in the Port Oneida area.

In a glimpse of one detail in the new GMP, Ulrich said the Park Service avoided such conflicts by stopping Wilderness designations at county road rights-of-way, then returning them on the other side. The result will be roads that, at least on paper, pose no conflict with Wilderness rules. 

“That was our goal in going to the road commissions and asking them, ‘How do you want your roads portrayed in our General Management Plan,” said Ulrich.

Lakeshore officials have already received a preliminary plan from a team of designers and graphic artists based in Denver, marked it up with changes, and sent it back for revamping. Ulrich expects several more “tweaking” sessions prior to a final GMP document that includes proposed changes to Wilderness designations. The Wilderness proposal, when finalized, will be sent to Congress for approval.

Ulrich said release of the GMP will begin a flurry of activity including public meetings in early June. The goal is to have a new GMP published in the Federal Register and on the books by Dec. 31.

Ulrich and superintendent Dusty Shultz are largely overseeing the GMP process, which was budgeted to cost $500,000 over three years. Bruce Huffman was hired by the Lakeshore to handle public relations for the project, but has accepted a position as public affairs officer for the Army and is now in Afghanistan. Shultz and Ulrich opted to assume his duties rather than trying to “get someone new up to speed,” Ulrich said.

“I think people are going to be pleased,” said Ulrich. “I think they are going to see a preferred alternative that preserves the parts of the park they know and love.€