National Park Service staffers put together four alternative plans to guide the future of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Park patrons put together their own.

You won’t find the “preferred alternative” for future park management released last week solely within one proposal that was discussed at a series of meetings hosted by the Park Service a year ago as part of the process for writing a new “20-year”General Management Plan (GMP) for the Lakeshore, according to superintendent Dusty Shultz.

The Park Service came up with an entirely new plan after taking input — again —on its suggestions, and came up with a hybrid version that has just been released to the public.

The process has been much more open — and much less controversial —than a failed attempt to rewrite the GMP that was aborted in 2002 amid complaints that it would reduce access to the park and stifle some of its most popular activities. That preferred alternative was anything but preferred by the public, which criticized its attempts at cutting off access on county roads, eliminating the deer herd on North Manitou and coho salmon runs from the Platte River, and tightening Wilderness restrictions throughout the park.

In fact, the new version of the GMP goes so far as to encourage day use visits to Wilderness-dominated North Manitou Island and to create a “recreation”area south of Glen Lake that would allow mountain biking.

Day trips to North Manitou, essentially requiring two ferry visits in one day to the island, had been tried before but were not popular enough to fill ferry boats, said Megan Munoz, a co-owner in the family owned Manitou Island Transit Service that operates out of the Leland Harbor. But one change called for could prove to be very popular — providing motorized tours from a historic village on South Manitou to one of the last virgin stands of white cedars in Michigan. Nicknamed the “valley of the giants,”the world-record cedar was once among the woody goliaths before high winds took down her top.

As in other parts of the park, access can be a problem for visitors to South Manitou. Although a motorized tour is offered by Manitou Transit through a historic farming area near the village, the remainder of the island is classified as “Wilderness.”The designation at times put the National Park Service in conflict with the county Road Commission, which owns the rights-of-way to unused roads on the island and claimed authority to periodically clear them.

Prohibiting vehicles from transporting island visitors along the 6- to 7-mile round trip to the cedars eliminated any chance for elderly island visitors to view them. That could change.

“We’ve asked for (the authority to drive visitors to the giant cedars) before, and would be very excited about offering it,”said Munoz.

The National Park Service appears to have avoided many of the most controversial aspects of the previous proposal, listening intently during the most recent public comment period, Shultz said. In fact, the entire concept of limiting motorized use of county-owned roadways was sidestepped by placing the rights-of-way outside of Wilderness boundaries.

Use of “Wilderness”lands as designated by the federal government are off limits to campfires, vehicles, bikes, and even heavy pedestrian traffic.

Park officials said their hands were tied in the previous GMP procedure because changes to Wilderness designations had not been been contemplated, and would require approval by Congress. They took a different tact this time, suggesting a two-step procedure that would result in a revised GMP and a recommendation for the U.S. Department of the Interior and Congress to redistribute Wilderness areas within the park.

The Park Service is now managing 30,903 acres of the 70,000-acre Lakeshore as Wilderness based on a recommendation made by a Congressional subcommittee in 1981. The full Congress has never taken up the issue, but will be asked to designate Wilderness zones in the Lakeshore following the GMP process.

The proposed GMP would increase the Wilderness designation to 32,200 acres by picking up an area from Sleeping Bear Point south to Pierce Stocking Trail while removing land in the Port Oneida historic district.

“It’s very sandy,” said Shultz of what is referred to in the GMP as the “Sleeping Bear Plateau.” “It’s a huge dune.”

The popular dune climb would remain out of Wilderness designation, she added, and visitors would still be able to walk along trails from the climb to Lake Michigan through “Wilderness.”

The proposed GMP, “Wilderness Study” and environmental impact statement are contained in a 337-page, glossy book available at the Lakeshore headquarters in Empire. Call 326-5134 for a copy, or go online to the park’s website. Nearly $1 million was allocated to fund the GMP project.

Other aspects of interest in the plan, for which public hearings have been scheduled June 3-5, include:

•The Park Service plans to encourage public use of the Little Glen Lake picnic area by repaving and possibly enlarging the parking lot and even clearing vegetation to improve swimming.

• One major component of the GMP would be development of a “bay to bay” trail with campsites not accessible by roadways. The trail, designed for hikers and easily followed by canoeists, would extend along the Lake Michigan shoreline from the southern end of Platte Bay “all the way to Good Harbor Bay,” said Shultz. “There was talk of one 20 years ago, but it was never formalized,”she said.

• Scattered campgrounds along the trail would replace what is now known as “Valley View”campground, a group camp at the end of a trailstarting near The Homestead.

• A hiking trail and parking lot would provide access to the 975-acre Bow Lake area in Kasson Township, about one-half of which is now federally owned.
• In Benzie County, designs to purchase lands for a “Benzie Corridor”on hills overlooking Platte Lake and Lake Michigan would remain. Also, improvements to road ends at Esch and Tiesma roads are planned, as well as paving a popular parking lot at the mouth of the Platte River.