The Upper Peninsula is known for its wild, natural beauty with hundreds of miles of Lake Superior shoreline and hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine forests.
It’s a large part of what drives Michigan’s $26 billion outdoor recreation economy.
A new coalition wants to take the protection on some of those lands a step further.
Keep the U.P. Wild wants federal wilderness protection for four tracts of public land.
Right now, Sylvania, McCormick, and Sturgeon River Gorge in the western Upper Peninsula have the designation.
Keep the U.P. Wild wants to make Trap Hills, the Ehlco Area, and Norwich Plains wilderness areas as well as add to the existing Sturgeon River Gorge.
“They truly are special places that we can ensure future generations can experience also if we look at a proposal like this carefully,” Joe Hovel with the Northwoods Alliance, one of the 60-plus organizations part of the Keep the U.P. Wild coalition.
Hovel said the idea of designating these places as wilderness areas has been floating around for years, but the boom in outdoor recreation during the pandemic was the final push the groups needed.
“Just protecting special features has never been more important because things truly have been threatened in recent years. With this pandemic driving more people outdoors has also driven more people north. I think we’re seeing forest fragmentation at an unprecedented level. It’s becoming a little frightening,” said Hovel.
The coalition needs congressional approval for those areas to be designated Wilderness Areas.
Hovel said right now, they’re working to gain public support.
“Without public support congress isn’t going to consider anything. I truly feel that it’s up to the public at the grassroots level to instill the fire to make something like this happen,” he said.
You can learn more about each of the areas the coalition wants to protect on the Keep the U.P. Wild website.
