I Heart Public Lands, Volume I

I own a little trout stream west of Gaylord, perhaps you've heard of it-- its called the Jordan.

Living so far north, we typically go south to vacation or visit family-- meaning we get to see all the traffic coming north on our way south, and vise versa on our way home.  It always blows me away to see three lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic from Detroit up past Bay City going the opposite way.   Take that 150 miles, multiply by 5,280 to convert it to feet, divide by your average family car length of 15-feet, times your average american family of 3-people, times three lanes, and you've got about ~475,000 people heading north for the weekend- and that's just on I-75 and doesn't factor in US23, 127 or 131-- all, day, long.  Thats a lot of people driving north to enjoy our back yards, which is a nice reminder not to take where I live for granted.  All those folks vacation where I get to live in the heart of northern Michigan because of the abundant opportunities we have up here to enjoy natural resources, (camping, fishing, canoeing, backpacking, boating, etc.) almost all of which are on public lands. 

We're talking about a $22-billion dollar annual tourism industry coming up those highways to recreate in large part on public land.  Not to mention the $26-Billion dollar annual outdoor recreation industry in this state alone. Numbers only made possible by public land opportunities.  

 You think about all of the northern Michigan businesses who are getting a huge influx of customers from downstate on weekends and holidays thanks to the recreation made possible by public land, and you have to wonder why some of our elected officials are so quick to limit or reduce those public land opportunities that these small businesses and big boxes are benefiting from? 

One of the key pieces of anti-public land legislation passed by anti-public land legislators in the last decade was the Land Cap Bill passed by the State Senate back in 2011 and signed into law by Governor Snyder in 2012.  That bill was introduced by Sen. Tom Casperson (R) of the western UP, who fortunately is term limited-- don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out-- but unfortunately, was almost constantly attacking our public lands during his terms in office.    

This is how the current republican party works (sorry GOP readers, but I'm not aware of any non-republican government officials actively working against our public lands, and attacking our public lands is actually in the official republican party platform which is why its no coincidence that this kind of thing is happening simultaneously in multiple states throughout the country and at the national level.  I know there are a lot of republicans and alot of republican leaders who don't like that its in there, but it still is, and until its not, I'm calling you out.  The Democratic party is perhaps more useless when you consider their inability to get anything accomplished and their constant preoccupation with republican built straw men, but at least they aren't trying to steal my public lands from me).  There are companies who want to exploit natural resources on our public lands for their private profit.  They have our elected officials in their pockets, and tell them that the rules protecting our public lands are costing them money or preventing them from making more money.  The repubs are actually smart about how they attack their rich donors' problem.  They don't come at our public lands with a bazooka.  They bring a pocket knife and try to kill them with the proverbial death by 1,000 cuts, and then every now and then when the time is right, they chop a limb off with a machete.  Eventually, the problem is completely crippled and useless. 

Casperson needed a way to make chicken shit taste like chicken salad, so he used the bogus property tax argument.  He stated his primary motivation for the bill was to help local municipalities get their property tax money from the State of Michigan for lands it owned in their jurisdiction.  Those poor local communities couldn't pay their bills cause the State didn't pay its bills on time.  But why didn't the State pay them-- because republicans previously held those payments up at the State legislature.  Its kind of like national republicans who cut the funding from agencies who manage western forests to the point they can't manage them effectively, then scream there are too many dead trees in these forests, we need to cut them all down.   Its kind of like someone going to a restaurant, eating 3/4 of their meal, then plucking a hair from their head and putting it in their food, and complaining about the hair in their food so they can get a free meal.   Its pure deceit.

But I digress.

Some friends having dinner along one of our other trout streams, perhaps you've heard of the Au Sable River?

There are almost no cons to a people having abundant public lands.  Public lands are one of America's best ideas.  If someone can own their own property great, but as a species, human beings have always had a need for a large home range.  Cramp a wolf or a bear into a little zoo exhibit, and they just aren't happy campers.  People are no different.  You cramp us into a small area and we start getting mentally and physically stressed out.  And yet, we're only just beginning to understand the health benefits of spending time in the great outdoors.  But the human need for open spaces is not a new idea.  Between 1821 and 1855, New York City almost quadrupled in population.

"As the city expanded northward up Manhattan Island, people were drawn to the few existing open spaces, mainly cemeteries, to get away from the noise and chaotic life in the city."

Thats right, people used to go hang out in cemeteries to escape the daily grind.  Which, as you can imagine, is kind of a buzzkill, so they built Central Park.  A couple decades later, Yellowstone became the first National Park, which sparked a worldwide movement.  Today, there are over 100 nations with over 1,200 national parks or equivalent preserves. 

But the bulk of public lands aren't parks or preserves.  They're just land, held in trust for the American people, by multiple federal government agencies.   They come in the form of national forests, national wildlife refuges, national monuments, national conservation areas, national wildernesses, national wild and scenic rivers, national historic sites, national memorials, national marine monuments, national battlefields, etc.

In total, the American people own 650 million acres of land.  Thats something I don't think sinks in completely for most.  We own it.  So that whole Grand Canyon out west...yeah, its mine.  That beautiful alpine forest in state "x"?  Mine, too.  That trout stream running through Rocky Mountain National Park?  Yup, I own it.

I own a little blueberry patch northeast of Gaylord.  You might have heard of it-- its called the Pigeon River Country...

Here in Michigan, we've got a bunch of State land, too.  4.6 million acres'ish.  And while federal public lands are awesome, State land is most near and dear to my heart.  My favorite chunk of State land is one of the crown jewels of our State, the Pigeon River Country State Forest.  I also really like hunting, fishing and hiking on State lands in close proximity to the PRC, but not part of it.  So that gem called the Black River?  Thats mine, too.  In fact, during trout season, I can go catch my family dinner there whenever I want.  The Witness Tree?  It's mine to relax under whenever I want.  All those hardwood hills along Tin Shanty Rd?  Mine to hunt for morel mushrooms each and every spring until my knees stop bending or I die.

Some of those same anti-public land Michigan politicians think we have too much public land in the northern lower.  Despite donating American Flags that flew over the capital for conservation club banquets, or their campaign ads showing them wearing new, crisply ironed hunting clothes, kneeling next to hunting dogs, or paddling a canoe down a picturesque northern Michigan river with their family;  its pretty obvious that they don't actually hunt or spend much time on our public lands, because if they did, they wouldn't think there were too many acres of them up here.  While some areas are relatively untouched, most of our State lands and waters are at or above carrying capacity. 

We need more public lands and access to them.  But where do we start?



  

Bigfoot and Snowshoe Hares

I was listening to the Meateater podcast the other day where they were interviewing Laura Krantz, a journalist and host of the Wild Thing podcast, about the man, the myth, the legend…Bigfoot.  One of the things that particularly caught my attention was that Laura’s relative, Grover Krantz, one of the pioneers of the whole sasquatch thing, who believed there was a bigfoot, was actively trying to kill a bigfoot.  He felt that a researcher would be much more successful at saving the bigfoot population if they were able to sacrifice just one as evidence they do, indeed, exist.  I guess that kind of makes sense, but what if he actually found one?  What if he successfully shot and killed it in the name of science, and later found out that it was the last one on earth?   

That's what I pondered the other day while I was hiking through the heart of the Pigeon River Country State Forest (PRC) in Northern Michigan on a Christmas Day grouse hunt.  I wasn’t seeing any sign of grouse so my mind began to wander to other small game species I might be able to make a meal out of.  Squirrels and rabbits are in season, and I was trying to decide if I would take either if the opportunity presented itself.  That sent my mind down the proverbial rabbit hole—pun intended-- and I was trying to think about the last time I encountered a snowshoe hare in the PRC?  Its actually been a couple years since I’ve seen a live rabbit while hunting anywhere in northern Michigan.  I’ve seen a few cottontails here and there while driving, and I saw a snowshoe this summer on the way to one of my trout spots, but none while hunting or fishing, and I’m out there a lot.    

Where’d they all go?

I’ve never been a diehard rabbit hunter, but when I was in my early 20s—in the early 2000’s—you would commonly see cottontails while hunting other animals.  Even then, snowshoes weren’t as common, but it wasn’t uncommon to see one.  Now if you see a snowshoe, you tell someone about it.  Now, if you even see a snowshow track, you tell someone about it—and probably take a pic with your phone and post it on social media.  Just over the last week, I've hiked over 15 miles in the PRC   Much of that through river bottoms, conifers and cedar swamps,  clearcuts, etc.  Most of this was prime rabbit habitat, and I didn’t see a single rabbit track.  Not one.  I would have probably been better off looking for bigfoot. 

No one alive today remembers how sportsmen spearheaded and led the conservation movement in the late 19^th and early part of the 20^th century.  I’m sure those guys who were saying we need to start conserving our wild places and critters might have gotten a little bit of pushback from their fellow sportsmen.  It probably got a little easier to promote the idea of conservation when species like the passenger pigeon—a bird whose numbers were so high they would literally black out the sky—went extinct.   Martha, the last known passenger pigeon died in the Cincinatti Zoo in 1914.  That same year, Michigan built a grayling hatchery in an effort to restore a rapidly declining grayling population but it was too little, too late.  Michigan grayling were gone by the 1930’s.   

I bet if you told a Michigan resident in 1850 that in only 80 years, grayling would be extirpated and passenger pigeons would be completely extinct, they would look at you like were crazy.  Probably the way someone would have looked at me in 1990 if I told them in 30 years, it would feel impossible to find a snowshoe hare in the Pigeon River Country. 

I was talking to my buddy, Lance, about it.  He spends just as much time in the PRC as anyone I know and has similar observations.  He shared an article with me that says MSU researchers attribute the showshoe’sdecline to climate change.  My other buddy, Steve, showed me a trail cam picture not far outside the PRC of a couple under his corn feeder, but his other half won’t let him shoot one.    My friend, Tim, rabbit hunts mostly in the U.P. and says it’s a night and day difference between there and here.  Tim thinks its because we don’t get enough snow anymore in the northern lower, and have more avian and mammalian predators. 

I’m sure Tim’s right.  But I think the elephant in the room is, why haven’t showshoe hare bag limits been reduced in the northern lower in response to their declining population?  If I could find five, I could go take 5 today, the same as I could in the 90’s.  How long are we going to all talk to each other about how we’re not seeing snowshoe hares in the northern lower anymore, before we don’t have any snowshoes in the northern lower anymore?  I'm not saying we shouldn't be allowed to hunt showshoes in the northern lower anymore, but maybe the daily bag limit should be adjusted.

So getting back to my Christmas day hunt for a partridge in a pear tree, I decided that if I did encounter a bigfoot, er, I mean, snowshoe hare, I wouldn’t kill it.  While I’m not naïve enough to think it would actually be the last one in the PRC, I’m still not willing to take that risk.