Local citizens groups, the Cleveland Township Board, the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council, the National Parks Conservation Association, and the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (GTB) have all voiced opposition to a planned 4.25-mile extension of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail. Amidst the backlash, the Leelanau Ticker sits down with representatives from the trail’s two key partners – the National Park Service and TART Trails – to find out what the controversy means for the project.

First, a refresher: The Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail has been in the works since 2005, when a steering committee began sketching out a 26-mile route to allow users to travel from Empire to Good Harbor Beach. Construction started in 2011, and as of 2024, 21 miles of the trail’s planned 26 miles are on the ground. The main piece remaining is Segment 9, a 4.25-mile stretch from the trail’s current stopping point at Bohemian Road to its long-planned northern terminus at Good Harbor Trail.

Segment 9 has become a hot-button issue thanks to an environmental impact study commissioned by local property owners group Little Traverse Lake Association (LTLA). Performed by Borealis Consulting of Traverse City, the study estimated that Segment 9 would require routing trail through sensitive ecosystems and removing nearly 7,300 trees.

Since LTLA shared the Borealis study in February, organizations like the National Parks Conservation Association and the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council have written to Scott Tucker, superintendent of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, urging NPS and TART to consider less environmentally impactful plans for Segment 9. Another citizens group called Sleeping Bear Naturally commissioned an independent analysis from Traverse City’s Mansfield Land Use Consultants, envisioning “what the potential engineering design might entail” for Segment 9.

The backlash hit a new zenith this summer. In a letter dated August 26 and addressed to Tucker, U.S. Senators Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow, and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, GTB Tribal Chairwoman Sandra Witherspoon stated that the tribe opposed Segment 9 due to “serious concerns regarding the potential impacts on wetlands, tree removal, and the treaty gathering rights of our Tribal members.”

Then, in September, the Cleveland Township Board voted to rescind its support of Segment 9, questioning whether the project’s estimated $15 million price tag was fiscally responsible.

Given all the pushback, have there been any conversations about scrapping plans for Segment 9?

“I don’t think there has been that conversation,” Tucker tells the Leelanau Ticker. “I like to talk about fiscal responsibility, too. We have obligated a contract to design this trail. The next step is to build. So, I think we'd be fiscally irresponsible not to follow through with the obligation of dollars. But I can promise that no other funds are going to be expended on the Heritage Trail until we have a buildable, constructible, maintainable, permittable design that the GTB supports.”

For her part, TART Executive Director Julie Clark still believes demand for a finished Heritage Trail outweighs the loud backlash.

“Our private funding [for Segment 9] is close to $4 million right now, and that’s a testament to the fact that there is still a lot of interest in this trail,” Clark says. “That support isn’t just locals, either; it’s also statewide support and national support. Which matters, because these are national lands we’re working in. This is meant to be hosting everyone.”

Tucker is frustrated that much of the controversy stems from independent studies paid for by the trail’s fiercest critics and prepared by people who he says lack requisite knowledge about the National Lakeshore or its lofty permitting standards.

One example: The claim from Borealis Consulting that Segment 9 will necessitate removing 7,300 trees. For one thing, Tucker says it’s impossible to estimate a tree impact given that TART and NPS have not finalized a design for Segment 9. For another, much of the wooded territory around the Segment 9 route is earmarked for prescribed burns in the near future, which would render the 7,300-tree tally moot.

“We have the Good Harbor prescribed fire plan, which includes a good portion of that Segment 9 area,” Tucker explains. “We did two of our four prescribed burns in 2023; we will do the other two in 2025 and 2026. So, there is going to be significant prescribed fire resource restoration within the same corridor [as Segment 9], which will dramatically change the tree count, because most of those trees are saplings and will not survive the prescribed fire. The intent of the prescribed fire is to clear out the understory.”

Tucker also takes issue with the Mansfield Land Use report, which produced a widely-circulated rendering of a retaining wall the height of a 2.5-story house. The image, which the Detroit News ran in an article about Segment 9 last month, is cited in Mansfield’s report as a “possible construction design” to route the trail “through the state-regulated critical dune area” along Little Traverse Lake Road.

“The report that produced that graphic, I find interesting, because I never received one phone call from that design team asking me what NPS standards are, or what would be considered and what wouldn't,” Tucker says. “That image is the absolute extreme of what could happen on Little Traverse Lake Road. I stress ‘could’ because I would never permit it. It’s a great emotional catch, showing a two-and-a-half-story sheer wall along Little Traverse Lake Road. But our design team knows the challenge of mitigating environmental impacts along Little Traverse Lake Road, because that road did the initial cut into that dune when it was constructed.”

Tucker says NPS has asked its designers to “come up with the minimal impact” for every inch of Segment 9, including that section along Little Traverse Lake Road. While he admits that a retaining wall will likely be required there, he assures “it will be nowhere near the images that are out there. I would say it will be in the 10-15-foot range, tiered along that turn, and that it will mimic other retaining walls along M-22 and within our park.”

Tucker hopes the controversy will diffuse when NPS shares a final design. This past winter, he says, “there were 40 percent designs out” of the trail extension “that got some attention within the local community and led to where we are today.” Even now, he insists the design is only 60 percent done, and says there will be considerable revision before it gets to 100 percent.

“We’ll see the next round of design this winter, and I’m going to share that with the NPS experts on trail building, water resources, and other park service lenses that we’ll be examining it through,” Tucker says. “I’ll also share it with the GTB and their tribal leadership and natural resources team. Then we’ll take all the comments that come back from the GTB and the NPS and present them to our design team to further fine-tune it into a final design. And once we have that final design, we’ll do a public meeting to show that to the community, allowing them to see the final trail alignment, the trail corridor, where boardwalks will be, what materials we’re going to use, and all the construction techniques and mitigation strategies we’re going to use.”

Tucker expects those meetings will happen next year, with NPS aiming for a fall 2025 groundbreaking for Segment 9.