voyageurs national park reopens bays

Voyageurs National Park, located in northern Minnesota, announced that it will reopen eleven bays once closed to snowmobilers. Citing a new study that found no significant correlation between wolf activities in the bays and snowmobile usage, park officials said sledders will be allowed back onto the 4,667 acres of lake surface this season.

Snowmobiles were effectively banned from the eleven bays on Rainy, Kabetogema, Namakan and Sand Point lakes in 1992, when they were set aside as Wildlife Protection Areas (WPAs). Park officials took the action under fears that snowmobiles were having a negative impact on local timber wolf and bald eagle populations. The decision was based on research performed in the 1980s, which found that sled usage in remote bays hampered the wolves' deer hunting and feeding. Bald eagles normally return in the spring and feed on these lake-kill carcasses. But the reduced carcasses impaired the birds' feeding.

The initial Park decision earmarked 17 areas, but the Minnesota United Snowmobilers Association (MNUSA) challenged the decision in court in 1994, saying the biological data did not support the closures, and the number was reduced to eleven in 1996. MNUSA also sought to have all human activity barred in the eleven WPAs and won.

In 1998, a new study performed by Dr. Rolf Peterson from Michigan Tech found that wolves in the Voyageurs National Park area showed an increase in stress hormones in their dung than their counterparts in remote Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. But, VNP biologist Jim Schaberl noted that the study did not necessarily indicate that the added stress was caused by human activity.

In her statement, Park Superintendent Barbara West noted that, "Although we now know much more about park wolves than when we initiated the protection areas, what we know is not enough to warrant further closures. We used the best information in 1992 and now the best available in 2001 to guide our decisions.

The total area reopened is actually a very small portion of the overall snowmobile-accessible 80,000 acres of the park, but is reputed to be among the most picturesque shoreline.

Information for this story was pulled from a variety of sources.