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Monday, December 05, 2011

Environment - "Report calls for study of national lakeshore boundaries"

Joyce Russell of the NWI Times reported this interesting story on Dec. 1st. Some quotes:

It also is difficult to manage a park of about 15,000 acres when you're not quite sure where it begins and ends.

The park is fragmented into 16 disconnected pieces, according to "National Park, Regional Treasure The Future of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore," which gives unique ecological and resource management challenges.

The report calls for a boundary study performed by the National Park Service at the request of Congress to identify how to fill gaps and notches and connect fragments.

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Superintendent Costa Dillon agreed the sometimes undefined boundaries of the park cause difficulties and lost opportunities. Only 10 percent of the park's boundaries have been surveyed.
Visitor identification and understanding of what's in and what's out of the park is difficult. Parking areas are a prime example, Dillon said. Because of the irregular boundaries, visitors often are uncertain as to which lots are owned by the park and which are owned by municipalities.

There's also no defined entrance or gate into the park, which confuses visitors and prevents the national lakeshore from charging entry fees like other national parks do, Dillon said. Fees collected at a national park stay within that national park and could be used to pay for infrastructure or shuttles.

A boundary study, Dillon said, would determine if the park's present boundaries are effective in meeting the park's mission.
However, the National Park Service is not looking to do a boundary study now, Dillon said. * * *

Former Superintendent Dale Engquist, now president of the Shirley Heinze Land Trust, said that during his tenure the park's boundaries were expanded in 1976, 1980, 1986 and 1992.

Each expansion was done on a piecemeal basis at the request of an outside group, Engquist said.

"No one ever looked independently at what should be in the park," Engquist said, adding that has added to the disjointed, fragmented boundaries. "As the former superintendent, if someone had proposed a boundary study to define where the boundaries are, I would have supported it."

If there were a study to identify new boundaries, those boundaries would have to be approved by Congress. Even then, the National Park Service wouldn't own the land. There are about 100 parcels within the park's boundaries that are not owned by the park service.

Current policy dictates property be purchased only from willing sellers. Funding for park land purchases also has been cut.

But buying land doesn't have to be the only answer to protect the park, Engquist said.

"We have to look at where is the park most threatened, where is its most sensitive boundary," he said. It is those locations where a conservation easement could be in place to protect the boundaries.

Here is the full report,The Future of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 5, 2011 10:18 AM
Posted to Environment