Action Needed:
Read below letter and send a message to DNR Commissioner Mark Holsten echoing the following points:
- St. Louis County vote needed on DNR plan
- Five Benchmarks needed in this or any ATV plan for any state forest
- Completion of Environmental Assessment Worksheets to select routes
- Policy requiring riders to stay on selected routes
- Adequate enforcement to keep riders on routes
- Funds and plan to repair accumulating damage
- Oversight and accountability to meet above objectives
Contact Commissioner Mark Holsten: E-mail: mark.holsten@dnr.state.mn.us, Phone: 651-259-5555
November 19, 2007 Via Electronic and U.S. Mail
Mark Holsten, Commissioner
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
500 Lafayette Road
St. Paul, Minnesota 55155
Dear Commissioner Holstein,
You may not remember me but I was the one with the crying baby at the jet ski hearings years back during your legislative days. Here we are again discussing a terrestrial form of motorized recreation on public land and water.
Minnesotans for Responsible Recreation understands that you may soon provide your approval for an ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive truck plan for the Cloquet Valley State Forest. MRR urges you to withhold such approval until resolving the following substantive issues:
1. The people of St. Louis County do not support 795 miles of ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive trucks routes in the Cloquet Valley State Forest. While your ATV planner, Brian McCann states in a recent reply to a MRR data request that, “interactions with St. Louis County Land Department staff and discussions with county elected officials...lead the DNR to conclude that St. Louis County remains supportive” of opening the Cloquet Valley State Forest to ATVs, dirt-bike motorcycles and four-wheel drive trucks, this is simply not the case. MRR knows that St. Louis County Land Department staff have not supported opening of the forest to ATV use. St. Louis County Commissioners have not declared their support in any resolution. In fact, in the approximated words of St. Louis County Commissioner Mike Forsman, an avid supporter of motorized recreation – the county would never approve so many of miles of ATV routes in the Cloquet Valley State Forest.
Most disturbing in the lack of local democracy is that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has for several years engaged the people of St. Louis County in a false and cynical process of ostensibly deferring to them regarding proposed ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive truck routes in the Cloquet Valley State Forest - 80% of which is owned by
the people of St. Louis County. For several years MRR has received direct reports from staff at your planning tables that 880 miles of routes would be opened in the Cloquet Valley State Forest. This was a forgone conclusion. That the DNR has closed 85 miles of inventoried routes - leaving 795 miles open - as a result of your long “public process” is testimony to the DNR’s pre-decision to open the forest to ATVs, dirt-bike motorcycles and four-wheel drive trucks.
While the quiet majority of St. Louis County residents participate in “fishing, walking, hunting, camping, hiking and cross-country skiing” and are in fact being displaced by motorized recreation (2001 St. Louis County Outdoor Recreation Participation Survey), common sense policy would protect the quiet majority’s access to St. Louis County’s state forest land from encroachment by ATVs, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive trucks.
MRR continues to seek data supporting DNR claims that St. Louis County supports 795 miles of ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive trucks routes in the Cloquet Valley State Forest. MRR will submit an updated request to Mr. McCann in the coming days for this and other data.
2. Despite the #1 recommendation of the 2003 Office of the Legislative Auditor’s Program Evaluation Report: State-funded Trails for Motorized Recreation, that Environmental Assessment Worksheets be completed for proposed ATV routes no such public and environmental review of any of the proposed routes for the Cloquet Valley State Forest has taken place. Nor has a forest-wide ground-truthing of the DNR’s 795 miles of proposed routes taken place. Retired DNR staff noted early in the plan that trail designations were cursory and being made from aerial photos lacking detail. It is our understanding that at least 25% of DNR ATV route data gathered in this manner in the Sturgeon River State Forest in Northern St. Louis County was in error. MRR concurs with the Legislative Auditor that called not only for Environmental Assessment Worksheets but for on-the-ground wetlands delineation and engineering. All missing from the current Cloquet Valley State Forest plan.
MRR supports the opening of selected routes for ATVs in the Cloquet Valley State Forest through completion of Environmental Assessment Worksheets. The DNR has not met this #1 benchmark set by the Office of the Legislative Auditor.
3. The spirit of the process of forest classification and ATV route designation, established by the 2003 legislature, has always been assumed by Minnesotans to be one of restricting these machines to a selected routes. In the Cloquet Valley State Forest plan, the designation of some routes while also leaving system forest roads and forest access roads open to ATVs, dirt-bike motorcycles and four-wheel drive trucks does not restrict machines to selected routes and is misleading at best.
MRR supports ATV use on selected routes only.
4. No adequate enforcement plan and budget exists to patrol 795 miles of proposed ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive truck routes given DNR budget data provided. In response to MRR’s request for such a plan, Brian McCann, on 10/29/07, provided MRR with a copy of a 2006 DNR Enforcement Plan for Newly Reclassified State Forest: Special “Focus Areas”, May 2006 memo. While MRR applauds the wisdom of the plan’s “enforcement strategy [that] features an especially strong focus on OHV enforcement on fewer miles of better managed trail, the DNR’s current ATV plan to open 795 miles - 78% - of routes in the Cloquet Valley State Forest violates this strategy and is contrary to its wisdom.
While MRR applauds the hiring of additional Conservation Officers, current enforcement budget data from the above memo for the northern two-thirds of Minnesota provides less than 3 hours of enforcement per Conservation Officer per week regionwide based on the following data provided:
- ATV enforcement: 2.5 hours/Conservation Officer/Week
- Dirt-bike motorcycle enforcement: 0.33 hours/Conservation Officer/Week
- Four-wheel drive truck enforcement: 0.16 hours/Conservation Officer/Week
The memo notes that only 7.1% of the DNR’s ATV enforcement budget comes from ATV accounts. MRR encourages the DNR to greatly reduce the number of miles proposed (through completion of Environmental Assessment Worksheets) in order to increase ATV account funding contributions to enforcement for the forest.
Missing from the current plan, is not just adequate funding but data indicating what level of enforcement is required per mile of ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive truck route. Without such data one simply cannot determine is what level of funding, staff, equipment and other resources are required to keep riders on selected routes. MRR will continue to request such data from Mr. McCann.
MRR supports opening selected routes to ATVs only once adequate enforcement is in place.
5. The DNR’s plan to use gas-tax funded motorized clubs to implement its ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive truck plan for the Cloquet Valley State Forest lacks benchmarks, oversight and accountability. Minnesotans for Responsible Recreation recently audited St. Louis County’s gas-tax funded program for snowmobile clubs and routes and finds that basic state grant-in-aid program requirements are not being met by the county and that gas-tax funded clubs are trespassing on private property with their bulldozers, building illegal routes and damaging forests and wetlands. To protect the county’s taxpayers, private property owners and wetlands, forests and streams, MRR has called on St. Louis County to suspend gas-tax funding of snowmobile clubs until all grant requirements are met and new benchmarks, oversight and accountability are in place.
MRR is deeply concerned that gas-tax funding for ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive truck routes will produce an even greater negative impact on the county’s taxpayers, property owners and environment. The U.S. Corps of Engineers found that the DNR’s own “prototype” Moosewalk/Mooserun ATV route in Northeastern Minnesota and bulldozed by a gas-tax funded snowmobile/ATV club, the Silver Trail Riders, resulted in major damage to wetlands and forests in the Finland State Forest. MRR is highly concerned that gas-tax funding of any clubs to implement ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive truck routes could result in similar damage in the Cloquet Valley State Forest.
MRR does not support an ATV plan for the Cloquet Valley State Forest involving local clubs until the below benchmarks, oversight and accountability are in place.
It is one of MRR’s founding principles that there is a place for everything when everything is in its place. MRR finds that the way to determine the place for ATVs in the Cloquet Valley State Forest is by meeting the following benchmarks – each sadly missing from the current plan:
1. Completion of Environmental Assessment Worksheets to select routes
2. A policy requiring machines to stay on selected routes
3. Adequate enforcement to keep riders on selected routes
4. Funds and plan to repair accumulating damage
5. Oversight and accountability to accomplish above objectives.
As Minnesota taxpayers pump over $15 million annually in gas-tax funding into dedicated accounts for motorized recreation, Minnesotans should have a say in how these funds are spent. A founding principle of our country was that taxation should bring representation.
Minnesotans for Responsible Recreation urges you to withhold your approval of the DNR’s ATV plan for the Cloquet Valley Sate Forest until the people of St. Louis County have been represented and the above issues resolved.
Respectfully,
Jeff Brown
Executive Director
Gas-tax Funded State Forest ATV Route "Designations" in Your Backyard and Quiet Place :
74 miles?, 880 miles!, 20,000 miles! of ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle & four-wheel drive truck routes coming your way...
