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New Season… Old Issues! BY JIM DUKE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Trespass warning & stay on trail signs have, so far, had little effect.
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All paint marks on posts and/ or trees must be highly visible.
FEBRUARY • 2022 • MICHIGAN SNOWMOBILER + ORV
he 2021-2022 Snowmobile Season has just begun and already the complaints have started pouring in about snowmobilers running amok, disregarding signs and, in general, creating problems between landowners and the grant sponsors who are struggling to keep the trails open. In many areas the trails haven’t even been groomed yet and where they cross private property, permission to do so is in jeopardy. Why?? Because snowmobilers, albeit just a few, refuse to play by the rules and can’t or won’t stay on the allotted trail corridors. Early snows and recent storms have brought significant amounts to permit snowmobile use, but the warm temperatures have, so far, prevented the frost from penetrating deep enough to allow the ground to freeze, and especially the wet, low-lying sections of trails throughout the state. The anxious riders that feel the need to be first on the trails are, in some areas, damaging the prepared surface before any base can be established and, in many cases, even repaired. The bulk of complaints, however, aren’t about the trails, but about riders not staying on them! Trespassing on privately owned lands is nothing new, but the issue has been escalating at an alarming rate the past few years. The grant sponsors initially tried to take care of the complaints around their own trails by going to the landowners personally with attempt to make amends, however, this has become so common with almost every tract of land in private ownership, that it has drawn attention from the DNR’s Snowmobile Program Administrators as well as the DNR Director himself. A few years ago, the Snowmobile Advisory Workgroup (SAW) established a committee to look into the trespass problems and after some initial research, found that with the rising popularity
