Welcome to beautiful Crow Wing County, MN!
Crow Wing County is blessed with 104,000 acres of county land that is open to for the enjoyment of the public. Our county officials should be dedicated to protecting our forest land and forest trails so that future generations can continue to enjoy the abundance that we inherited for many generations to come. Instead they seemed to be determined to turn Crow Wing County into "hillbilly heaven" by allowing a tiny special interest group (<2%) turn our forest trails and wetlands into endless ATV ruts. The commissioners don't seem to understand that the watershed delivers clean water to our lakes and wells. They also don't seem to understand that Crow Wing County already has a tourism base worth 100+ million dollars a year and while most of that is related to water recreation a sizeable amount is directly related to our forest trails. By allowing those trails to be vandalized they jeopardize that contribution to our county funding. The lack of foresight shown by our county commissioners and land commissioner in protecting our public land speaks volumes of their inability to govern for the benefit of all people and to think long term.
At least one commissioner campaigned on the promise of fiscal responsibility yet he sits back and allows a public asset (our forests) worth at least a billion dollars to be degraded by a small but demanding and sometimes violent group of 4 wheeled vandals. There is nothing fiscally responsible about vandals to drive existing recreational users out of our forests and to allow those same vandals to destroy our forest trails.
ATV riders and county commissioners are quick to point out the fabulous economic benefits of allowing ATV riders to destroy our ditches, driveways and forest trails but that is phony beyond words. How can anyone possibly say there are economic benefits when the cost or repairing the massive amount of ATV damage isn't factored into the economic equation? Even a first year lemonade stand operator knows that you have to subtract the costs from the income before you know if you've made a profit or not. By my estimation just the ditches of our county have sustained $2 million in damages and it continues to grow. That doesn't factor in the cost of repairing driveways nor does it factor in the cost of repairing forest trails, wetlands or the degraded water flowing out of our watershed into our lakes.
Please come with me on a photo tour of your Crow Wing County forest trails. You’ll be outraged at the deliberate negligence of our county commissioners to protect this immeasurably valuable public asset.
This land belongs to you so if you want to tell our county officials that they need to do their job you can use the links below.
Crow Wing County commissioners can be reached at:.
http://www.co.crow-wing.mn.us/county_commisioners/index2.html
Crow Wing County Land Commissioner (Tom Cowell ) is just as negligent at protecting our resources. I have yet to see him make more than a token effort to protect our forest. He can be reached at tomc@co.crow-wing.mn.us
Mr. Cowell also is responsible for reducing the value of some county land by approving a permanent snowmobile trail easement through the property before it was sold. That might be a nice gift to his motorhead buddies but the Crow Wing County taxpayers will take a loss on the sale of that property. Would you buy property knowing that it had a permanent easement on it and no matter how many times you caught snowmobile and ATV trespassers leaving the designated trail there is nothing you could do to close the trail? Supposedly the county will make up the difference from the increased sales of alcohol to people riding snowmobiles. That sounds like a lawsuit in waiting and once again Crow Wing County taxpayers will foot the bill.
Trail photos (page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4)