Protect Minnesota's North Shore from ATVs: Tell Minnesota House Environment Committee members and your state legislators to vote "No!" on House File 59.
House File 59, authored by Rep. Tom Hackbarth, Cedar, would convert the North Shore State Trail from Normana Road in St. Louis County to the Moosewalk ATV trail in Lake County to ATV use. The DNR has stated it wants to use the 165 mile North Shore State Trail as the backbone of its system of ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive truck routes and scramble areas in Northeast Minnesota.
The North Shore State Trail runs from Duluth to the Canadian border and parallels, crosses and shares treadway with the Superior Hiking Trail, one of the state and nation's most popular hiking and backpacking destinations. While the North Shore ATV Club, St. Louis County and the DNR claim conversion of the North Shore State Trail would concentrate ATV use on a single treadway, the intention is to disburse ATV and other off-highway vehicle use in the region with a web of publicly funded connecting routes perpendicular to the North Shore State Trail. This would greatly increase encounters with these machines and their accompanying noise and fumes for visitors to the Superior Hiking Trail and Minnesota's North Shore.
A 2006 DNR Feasibility Study found that converting the North Shore State Trail would require flattening over 100 hills, installation of 276 culverts, 190 treadway alterations and 12 miles of fill at a cost of at least $875,000. Minnesotans and our guests fund ATV and snowmobile trails every time we buy gasoline. In 2005 we paid over $15 million at the pump to expand motorized recreation in Minnesota. These public funds would be used to convert the North Shore State Trail into an ATV superhighway and to disperse ATVs along the North Shore and throughout Northeast Minnesota.
Protect Minnesota's North Shore
from the noise, fumes, danger to others and environmental damage caused by ATVs.
Tell the below Minnesota House Environment Committee members and your state legislators to
vote "No!" on House File 59.
Environment and Natural Resources Committee Membership
2007 - 2008
Copy and paste the below e-mail addresses into the "To:" line of your e-mail.
Contact Committee Administrator Kirk Koudelka, (651) 296-6937, and
request to be put on a listserve for updates to track committee action on this bill
Committee meets: Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. in Room 5 of the State Office Building, St. Paul.
Find the name and contact information of your state representative.
Contact MRR for more information about
how you can help protect Minnesota's North Shore from the unwanted effects of ATVs.
Thank you to MRR Member Clyde Hanson for the "heads up" on this important legislation!
