Nancy Wiegand:
THE FINAL DRAFT of the DNR master plan for Blue Mound State Park (BMSP) includes building a snowmobile trail through the park! BMSP is currently a mecca for cross country skiing and other silent sports. It is a small park such that noise and exhaust would negatively affect many users.
Some of the best, most scenic, and often-used cross country ski trails in southern Wisconsin is no place for the noise, odor, and wildlife risk caused inherently by snowmobile access.
Snowmobilers currently use the Military Ridge Trail, which is close to part of the ski trail, already causing noise and exhaust problems in that area. Otherwise, the park has been quiet for the last 30 or so years that I've skied there. However, last winter, snowmobilers groomed a trail along Mounds Park Road, which runs through the park. This brought noise and extra activity into the park proper, destroying the skiing and the nature experience.
Apparently State law allows operation of snowmobiles on roads regardless of the road being in the middle of a state park. This should not be allowed! Nevertheless, in the new draft DNR plan, a new snowmobile trail will be built through the park's Pleasure Valley area. This beautiful area lies adjacent to the groomed ski trail. Many hikers, skiers, and snowshoers, who regularly use the trail, would find themselves displaced. Pleasure Valley, an ecologically sensitive natural environment, further makes it a bad place to allow snowmobiles.
Bottom Line: Adding snowmobiles to this small, precious, and highly silent-sports used park will destroy that same silent sports experience. Along with clean air, silence is a natural resource vital to people's health that needs to be protected. The notion, "Hey let's enjoy nature by invading it on high-speed, decibel-ear-busting, gas/oil mix fumes," should be a sarcasm in a cartoon, not part of permitting legislation. And to claim one's right to do such things totally misses the point. That is, that the noise, fumes, and speed giving pleasure to one snowmobiler does so at the expense of all others, wildlife, and the very place that is supposed to be enjoyed.
Please Act Now! Thank you!
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