Citizens for Sustainable Off-Roading

02/21/2022

Excerpt...

Here, at an event hosted by snowmobile lobbyists, the industry was helping to treat lawmakers to the event's self-described "VIP" treatment of lawmakers and DNR decisionmakers. Not only does Polaris benefit from state-funded snowmobile trail maintenance and expansion, the Medina-based company has a growing stake in public trails being built for ATVs and side-by-sides. This year, there's a bill in the Legislature to increase the legal weight limit for those off-road vehicles, a would-be benefit for Polaris.

Sarah Strommen, who attended the 2019 Winter Rendezvous, was asked what she would say to people who question DNR's embrace of a hospitality-heavy event held by an interest group that relies on the agency's financial support. "We need to meet our partners where they are and DNR attends events that highlight collaborative work in outdoor recreation and conservation," the commissioner said. She said participation is guided by the state's ethics policy. "While the primary purpose isn't social, it's not uncommon for events to include social elements and other opportunities," she said.

The DNR's enforcement chief quickly informed the local sheriff that he was involved in the crash, then was startled when the sheriff's news release didn't disclose it.

12/24/2021

Excerpt...

The state Department of Natural Resources did not fully comply with federal environmental review procedures for a planned, off-road vehicle park in Houston, Minn., according to a federal highway official.

The lapse, explained in a memo obtained by the Star Tribune, happened during the land acquisition phase of the slow-developing project and doesn't disqualify it from continued federal support. But now that the procedural gap has been investigated by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), officials are focused on the upcoming possibility of an expensive environmental review that lacks a preordained funding source.

Houston City Council Member Cody Mathers said this week that the developments could galvanize local opposition to a plan long nurtured by DNR and the city as a regional playground for riders of ATVs, side-by-sides, Jeeps and dirt bikes. The DNR has said southeastern Minnesota is bereft of off-highway vehicle trails on public land and City Hall sees the would-be park as a sweetener to the local economy.

"We've learned that some steps were missed,'' Mathers said. "I guess it kind of confirms what some of the opposition has been saying.''

Critics say the proposed complex of 7.5 miles of trails and a "rock crawl'' area would invite noise pollution and environmental damage to a delicate, erodible piece of land that includes a rare section of bluff prairie, habitat for timber rattlesnakes and signs of other valuable resources.

Karla Bloem, a naturalist who previously worked at the DNR, said she blew the whistle on the Houston Trail project for what she considers wide-scale environmental neglect. She poured over government documents dating back to the project's origin in 2009, finding that the DNR bought land for the motorized trail complex without first clearing environmental review hurdles tied to the acceptance of grant money from the highway administration.

"This whole thing would have taken an entirely different route if DNR would have coordinated with federal agencies from the start,'' said Bloem, executive director of the International Owl Center in Houston.

Her campaign against Houston Trail is focused on the steeply sloped site, not against ATV riders. Besides ripping the DNR for side-stepping the federal level of environmental review tied to FHWA grant money, she has publicly shamed DNR for ignoring resource-protection concerns voiced by the agency's own field staff.

"This isn't about minor paperwork,'' Bloem said.

One of her examples is a recommendation from Lisa Joyal, DNR's endangered species environmental review coordinator. In 2011, Joyal advised her agency that any off-highway trail planning should completely avoid two areas on the site: A rare native remnant of "dry bedrock bluff prairie'' and a natural forest of red oak, white oak and sugar maples. Nevertheless, Bloem said, the trail complex was designed to tread across both areas.

Bloem is part of a grassroots group in the Houston area that started a "Save our Bluffs'' lawn sign campaign. This summer, the organizers circulated a petition signed by 400 people requesting that the City Council cancel development of Houston Trail. The signatures constituted 59% of the voting population, Bloem has said.

There is no record of the DNR following federal environmental protocol early on in the development of a Driftless Area off-roading park in the southeastern Minnesota city.

11/20/2021

Stephanie Hemphill, formerly with MPR, publishes the Agate and has picked up and expanded greatly on the theme of recent letters to the editor from Steve Thorne and Jan Green in the Strib that were critical of MDNR’s decision-making.

http://www.agatemag.com/2021/11/experts-clash-over-logging-in-wildlife-areas/

11/12/2021

Minnesota's long wrong turn on natural resources
There are still dedicated professionals at the DNR, but support from the top has weakened.
By Steve Thorne

The Minnesota DNR has prioritized short-term profits over long-term conservation, and special interests over the public interest, Steve Thorne argues.

Not so long ago, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was one of the most admired agencies of its kind in the country. Generations of professionals who dedicated their careers to conserving, protecting and improving Minnesota's land and water treasures and the plants, animals and fish that depend on them deserve much of the credit for this achievement, as do the many citizens who supported them.

Top management supported them by fighting for the laws, funding and people necessary to do the job and by vigorously opposing efforts to seek short-term profits at the expense of long-term environmental health and the needs of future generations. And they listened to and stood by field managers and citizens who were on the front lines of the fight.

I fear this is no longer the case. The dedicated professionals and citizens are still there, still doing their best, but support from the top has weakened. Instead, in too many recent cases, the agency has prioritized short-term profits over long-term conservation, and special interests over the public interest.

This troubling shift is apparent in these examples:

• Forest management: In 2017, responding to pressure from the forest products industry to increase the annual timber harvest on lands managed by DNR from 800,000 to more than a million cords, the agency commissioned an analysis of sustainable timber harvest levels. The report suffered from significant uncertainty with regard to projected yields, effects on biodiversity, the impact of climate change and the effects on other non-timber values on a landscape scale. Moreover, timber demand actually was declining, and the primary result of dumping more wood on the market would be to reduce stumpage prices.

Nevertheless, in 2018 the DNR opted to increase the annual harvest to 870,000 cords.

• Logging on wildlife management areas (WMAs): State law requires WMAs to be managed primarily to benefit wildlife. Logging is permissible, but only as a habitat management tool. Nevertheless, perhaps because it couldn't achieve its new harvest goals on its other lands, the agency mandated hard timber production targets on these areas regardless of habitat effects. This alarmed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which, after a careful review of the situation, imposed unprecedented conditions on future multimillion-dollar federal grants in order to ensure wildlife comes before logging on these lands.

• Regulation of off-highway vehicles (OHVs): OHVs can do serious damage to lands and waters. Although only a small minority of Minnesotans own OHVs, the DNR has been promoting more use rather than regulating it to protect the environment. Nearly all of the statewide and regional trail plans undertaken in recent years have been for motorized trails. One state trail plan even contemplates allowing OHVs to access state parks despite this being expressly excluded by law.

The DNR hired a national off-highway special interest group to help plan the route of another, which would cross the entire state from North Dakota to Lake Superior. It has refused to do necessary environmental review of the proposed border-to-border trail, and now the Federal Highway Administration is investigating whether the DNR properly reviewed the environmental impacts of a proposed motorized trail in Houston County.

• Permitting copper-nickel mining: Throughout the permitting process for what would be Minnesota's first nonferrous mine, the DNR has shown a bias in favor of the project. It has expressly described its role as being to promote mining when, in fact, state law requires the DNR to issue permits to preserve the natural resources of the state from adverse mining impacts. Faced with the agency's failure to comply with the law, public-interest groups went to court, ultimately obtaining an order from the Minnesota Supreme Court reversing the permit and returning it to the agency.

As I know from personal experience as both an agency attorney and a longtime deputy commissioner under both DFL and Republican governors, this is a difficult balancing act. The DNR is charged with protecting the environment and natural resources while providing for reasonable use, especially for timber production, mining, outdoor recreation, and public and private water supplies. This requires top managers to weigh current use against protection and conservation for the future. They must do this in the face of constant political pressure for immediate economic development. Although the agency has not been perfect, it generally has managed to maintain a reasonable balance.

We've lost that balance, and we need it back. In this time of accelerating climate change when every decision needs to help our natural environment become more robust and resilient, the DNR's actions too frequently do the reverse.

Steve Thorne, of Two Harbors, was deputy commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources from 1978 to 1990.

https://www.startribune.com/minnesotas-long-wrong-turn-on-natural-resources/600115609/

11/11/2021

The Destructive ATV Free for All of Deer Hunting Season and Forest Fragmentation

By Barry Babcock

A recent timber sale and logging operation on 80 acres occurred very close to my place. It was done three winters ago. The site is now regenerated with dog-hair aspen. They are about twelve feet high now and the thickness at chest height is as big as my thumb. And the density is about two to three thousand (or more in places) per acre. For those who do not know, aspens sucker up from their extensive roots system, called suckers. They are very dense and in ideal sites will sucker five thousand per acre.

This week, some brain-dead and lazy ass deer hunters drove their XXL ATV right through these suckers, making a trail for their ATVs. I was asked to call the DNR CO by my friend but I informed him that this is legal on state land and most county lands. It is totally permitted and legal for these people to cut down any tree that is under "merchantable size" which means anything under three inches at chest height, termed DBH, (diameter breast height), can be cut. Deer hunters are permitted to ride their ATVs anywhere, off trail from Sept 15th to Dec 31st. State and county forests are a maize of thousands of renegade ATV trails done by deer hunters. This is forest fragmentation at its worst and it is permitted.

Recreational riders cannot do this cross county (off trail) travel, making it ironic that while the only illegal aspect of recreational riding is going off trail on state forest lands, we have several hundred thousand deer hunters on ATVs ripping up our forests legally as bad or worse than the true gearheads do! Minnesota law says deer hunters can even ride their ATVs in wetlands, unless they are damaging them. When COs ask what quantifies damage, the definition is super vague! All of the above were made legal by the MN Deer Hunters Association.

I am proud of the "wanted" poster the MDHA has on me!

11/10/2021

PUBLIC INPUT MATTERS: See highlighted text below in USFS letter. OHV access to remote campsites denied!!

A USFS trail/ road effort, had an undisclosed proposal in its PROJECT title that would allow OHVS into some remote camp sites. A member alerted the group fortunately read the entire proposal and alerted us to this. We spread the word. Input to USFS included many points, but also internet postings from users talking about the beauty and quietude of these remote campsites. These remote campsites remain closed to OHVS.

The point we want to make is that INPUT MATTERS.

11/09/2021

The following is from Dan W.

Last weekend was Minnesota's fi****ms deer season opener. I like to refer to it as the silly season. Why? Recreational riding is banned during this period, yet deer hunters can use their ATVs to travel where ever they like, as in cross country. The reality is quiet recreation gets some sort of a break, while the lands do not. Absurd.

From July 2021 MNDNR: ATV registrations have grown to more than 324,000 machines, a 36% increase from 15 years ago. Riders have access to 2875 state trail miles, a more than 100% jump since 2005.

WOW. That mileage is enough to go from east to west across the USA!!!!!!!!!!!! And that's only on state trail miles, not counting ditch riding, county trail systems, county and township road riding. And yet they want MORE. Evidently it's never ever enough.

11/07/2021

Northern Lights last week in Grand Marais, Mn. This pristine creek in Cook County was spared from being on the designated B2B route. The County was dropped due to ongoing & unanswered route concerns about long term funding logistics for road maintenance, invasive spread management, permanent added professional enforcement & increased fire risk support .

11/01/2021

By Russel Smith
Houston, MN

The OHV trail proposed for Houston’s South Park is extremely unlikely to yield any significant financial benefit for the community.

I’ve taught marketing and marketing research for 28 years, currently at Winona State University; I’ve also conducted a good deal of tourism-related research. Over the years I’ve seen my share of wrong-minded tourism development that degrades nature and disrupts communities, always with prior assurances of a financial payoff that never adequately compensates for the loss of natural habitat, the loss of a community’s quality of life and the loss of opportunity to pursue other more promising and suitable alternatives. An abundance of credible research on this topic has provided best practice do’s and don’ts for small town and rural tourism development. My recommendation for Houston’s OHV trail is ‘don’t.’

OHV recreation has rapidly expanded in recent years as a result of OHV manufacturers’ strong promotional effort and millions of dollars spent to lobby state legislatures to open public land to OHV trails; Minnesota currently has over 3000 miles of OHV trails with more being planned. OHV rider clubs and associations have fueled this growth with aggressive membership drives. The fly in their ointment is that OHV groups have to convince rural communities to turn their parks and public lands over to trail development. This is not an easy sell. Research has shown that people generally do not want to live or recreate near OHV activity, not to mention the push-back OHV trails get from environmentalists who are too familiar with the damage they cause.

Normally, we could expect the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to oversee the interests and well-being of all parties involved in this issue, but it seems that much of this oversight is being delegated to OHV clubs and associations, groups that now bill themselves as “experts” in trail development and management. Our problem is that these groups are now targeting the bluffs of Southeast Minnesota. As it turns out, this is highly desirable real estate. Bluffs provide more exciting trails that challenge increasingly powerful machines designed to pe*****te deeper into rugged terrain. In order to achieve their expansion goals, club “experts” have assured environmentalist that the local wildlife will scarcely know they’re around. City councils and rural administrators on the other hand, are more interested in the financial payoff, and the clubs are only too happy to predict impressive economic benefits in order to close the deal. Problematically, these benefits may be overstated to say the least.

There are established methods that municipal and rural decision-makers and leaders should use to responsibly project the revenue potential for a plan such as the one now on the table in Houston. Although these projections are not perfect, they are far more accurate than any one or a few people’s inspired vision for an imaginary future. I’ve used a conventional protocol to the best of my ability to estimate an annual revenue of something between $10,000 and $20,000 that would result from Houston’s proposed OHV trail installation. I could be off a bit but not by much.

Next, there are costs that must be subtracted. One is the loss of other types of tourists who will be deterred by OHV activity. Nature and small town-friendly tourists (e.g., cyclists, hikers) already represent a growing visitor segment in Houston. This type of visitor engages in more discretionary spending, deliberately targets small town businesses, and actively avoids community disruption and environmental impact. I assure you that OHV activity will discourage these visitors. The evidence for this overwhelming. Period.

Also, attracting OHV riders requires more than simply building a trail; it requires other investments, amenities, and community accommodations. For example, users want to ride into and through the community to access community services. Ultimately, the remaining revenue flow to Houston would be minimal if not negative.

Unfortunately, it has become increasingly acceptable in our culture to deny data, facts, and credible information simply because we don’t want it to be true. Houston’s City Council has said they support this project because they “looked at the numbers,” but to my knowledge they have yet to make these “numbers” available to the public.

Let’s rethink the Houston OHV trail November 1, 2021 by Fillmore County Journal Leave a Comment By Russell Smith Houston, MN The OHV trail proposed for Houston’s South Park is extremely unlikely to yield any significant financial benefit for the community. I’ve taught marketing and marketing r...

10/24/2021

Letter to the editor
October 18, 2021 by Fillmore County Journal

Letter about OHV trail…

To the Editor,

The recent article in the October 4 Fillmore County Journal about Off Highway Vehicles (OHVs) was an unpaid advertisement in favor of OHVs.

In his one-sided screed Keith Nelson from Virginia, Minn., asserted that hikers, bikers, canoeists, bird watchers and hunters are all “aging out of their sports,” and there are no young people taking up those activities. Um, what? Where are the facts to back up this claim? Or does he “feel” it, so it must be true?

Mr. Nelson must never have been on our Root River Trail. Bikers, hikers and canoeists make up the majority of the tourism revenue in the Root River Valley area. Contrary to what Mr. Nelson would have you believe, these folks spend plenty of tourist dollars on food, drink, and entertainment all along the Root River Trail.

They also bring their families. If you bike or hike the trail on any given summer day, you’ll see families and folks of all ages enjoying the beauty and peace and quiet of nature.

Regular physical activity can help protect from serious diseases such as obesity, heart disease, cancer, mental illness, diabetes and arthritis. Biking, hiking and canoeing are all excellent ways to keep in shape and appreciate nature.

OHVs (4 wheelers) are loud, do not require any exercise, damage eco systems and burn fossil fuel – which contributes to global warming. These vehicles must be trailered into the area, which burns additional fossil fuel. The people who gravitate toward this activity do not seem to care that the noise might bother the animals or humans that are impacted by their choice.

I am glad that the Houston city council listened to the objections of the people who actually live in the area and would be affected by these activities.

Glenn Thomas

Lanesboro, Minn.