Presenting

The Thanksgiving Puppies

The true story of a mother dog, her puppies, and a battle to save them.

An Old Favorite

The Apostle Islands Scrapbook

Historic tales of the Lake Superior archipelago, back on-line by popular demand.

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
General Management Plan

"Options For Management,"
or Instrument Of Surrender?

An examination of the in-progress
Apostle Islands General Management Plan.

Guest Commentary

Concerning the Options For Future Management of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, one reader emailed:

My biggest problem with the way the Apostle Islands General Management Plan is being proposed is that all the options assume the downward spiral of never-enough-funding is going to continue indefinitely. It's as though the only visions the writers have are worst-case-- "no money, no staff, no public support" -- into the indefinite future. They're calling this "realism;" I think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I've seen Resource Stewardship Plans for other parks, part of the exercise has always been to think about what could be done if money weren't an issue. Here, when they come out with "options," they're not options at all; they're the management equivalent of throwing one's hands in the air and exclaiming, "We're screwed!"

More Guest Commentary:

"Dave O," on his excellent Lake Superior kayaking blog, wrote,

...a hearing on the Apostles Islands Management Plan that I attended in Minneapolis last year reminded me of those car seats that were around when I was a kid. They were unsafe as hell but had a little plastic steering wheel that let you pretend you were driving. Every once in awhile the car would turn in the same direction that you turned the wheel and it gave you the illusion that you were driving. But you weren't and you knew very well who was in the drivers seat. I think that meeting was much more of a 'here's what we're gonna do' rather than a 'please tell us your ideas and concerns' type of scenario.

Read more on the Options For Future Management...

... or visit the official National Park Service page on the Apostle Islands planning process.