Fred ClarkReleased: March 31, 2025
Host: Fred Clark
Guests: Gus Smith and Julie Van Stappen
Summary
In this episode of Pulse of the Bay, host Fred Clark discusses the current state and future of public lands in the Bay Area, focusing on the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and the Chequamegon – Nicolet National Forest with Julie Van Stappen and Gus Smith.
Our conversation delves into the historical significance, management challenges, and the impact of recent federal changes on staffing and resources and the uncertainty and inefficiency that is creating for all federal programs. Our discussion highlights the importance of these lands for local communities and the potential consequences of reduced federal support.
Julie Van Stappen
Julie recently retired from the National Park Service, having had the privilege of spending the majority of her career in resource management at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. In her most recent position, she oversaw the park’s natural and cultural resource, research, compliance and planning programs. She and her family love living in Lake Superior country.
Gus Smith
Gus is a graduate of Northland College who fell in love with the big lake. Gus came back to teach at Northland for 10 years, then started a career in Federal Land Management at Yosemite National Park, then on the Superior National Forest in Ely, MN, then as Chief of Science at Grand Teton National Park, and finally, as the District Ranger on the Washburn District of the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest, where he retired in January 2025.
Topics Covered:
- The Future of Apostle Islands and Chequamegon-Nicolet
- Challenges Facing Public Lands Management
- Impact of Federal Changes on National Parks
- Staffing and Resource Concerns in Public Lands
Links and References Cited:
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
Chequamegon – Nicolet National Forest
Friends of the Apostle Islands
Show Transcript
Fred Clark
Well, hello and welcome to Pulse of the Bay, the news and public affairs show from 97.7 FM WVCB LP in Ashland, Wisconsin. We are the voice of Chequamegon Bay.
WVCB 97.7 FM is community radio. Our programming, music, news, documentary and discussions strengthens our sense of place and connections among communities along the south shore of Lake Superior. You can check us out on wvcb.org.
I’m Fred Clark, one of your hosts for Pulse of the Bay. And Pulse of the Bay is a program for sharing news, events, and in-depth discussions with interesting people of all kinds throughout the South Shore and the Chequamegon Bay. Today, we’ll be talking about two of our most important pieces of public lands in the Bay Area, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.
These two lands make up a huge portion of the lands and waters around the Bay Area and are being affected right now by changes happening in Washington. In our front yard is our own Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. National Park Service staff maintain 69,000 acres on the mainland and 21 islands. Park staff are responsible for providing a safe and positive experience for more than 250,000 visitors each year.
They accomplish that work with the help of permanent staff and seasonal staff who are hired and trained over the course of the winter and spring. In our backyard is the Chequamegon -Nicolet National Forest of Wisconsin, which covers more than 1.5 million acres of Wisconsin’s north woods. The U.S. Forest Service manages the land for multiple uses, including forestry, wildlife habitat, recreation, harvesting timber products, fisheries, wilderness, and natural areas.
In Bayfield, the National Forest includes 268,000 acres of forest streams and over 600 inland lakes in places like the Valhalla Recreation Area and the Rainbow Lakes Wilderness. Well, beginning in January, the hiring of new employees throughout the National Park System was frozen and job offers for seasonal employees were rescinded.
In February, we learned of the firing of over 2,000 probationary employees at the Department of Interior, which includes the National Park Service and other agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as as many as 3,400 probationary employees of the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies in the USDA. At Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, there have been many impacts already, as well as on the Forest Service.
But what we know is changing rapidly and is likely just the beginning. So we’re here today with two people in a very good position to help us address the questions of what’s in store for our federal lands in Wisconsin. I’m here with Julie Van Stappen and Gus Smith. Julie Van Stappen, excuse me. I’m here with Julie Van Stappen and Gus Smith.
Julie recently retired from the National Park Service, having had the privilege of spending the majority of her career in resource management at the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Her most recent role, she oversaw the park’s natural and cultural resource research, compliance, and planning programs. And Julie and her family love living in Lake Superior Country. Julie, thank you for joining us.
Julie
You’re most welcome.
Gus Smith is a graduate of Northland College who fell in love with the big lake.
Gus came back to teach at Northland for 10 years and then started a career in federal land management, first at Yosemite National Park, then on the Superior National Forest in Ely, Minnesota, then as chief of science at Grand Teton National Park, and finally and most recently as the district ranger on the Washburn District of the Chequamegon-Nicolay National Forest here in Bayfield County where he retired just back in January. He’s still learning how to relax and read a book in the afternoon. Gus, thank you for joining us.
Gus Smith
Thanks for inviting me.
Fred Clark
Well, so excited that you’re both here. Lots of people have lots of questions about what’s going on and what are the impacts that we’re going to experience from everything that we’ve all been reading in the news.
Julie
Julie let’s start with you and maybe take a step back. Tell us about the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore a little bit about its history and what does it mean for us today.
Well the Apostle Islands was established in 1970. Actually there was an earlier proposal in the 1940s but Gaylor Nelson and a lot of other people were instrumental in establishing the National Lakeshore. Twenty one islands spread out over an area Lake Superior over 280,000 acres.
Each island is unique, has a rich cultural history. Indigenous, there’s an indigenous history going back thousands of years. And then you have the fur trade era, you’ve got…
You’ve got especially Norwegian immigrants coming in and making a life, fishing and farming. You’ve got rich maritime history and light stations. All really rough, rough life out there. But, you know, lot of people absolutely loved it. And then that’s all there for us. And then really, it’s, you know, even the recreation era goes goes way back as far as a place to renew yourself and have clean air and places like that. And then from a natural resource perspective, you know, amazing old growth forest and mature forests and sand scapes and cliffs and rich geology history.
And it’s just a refuge for so many species from Canada U to state endangered American Martin to federally endangered piping plover. So it’s just a really amazing place. And it’s a boating paradise, whether it’s sail boaters or motor boaters or especially kayaking. It’s a really, really
really special place.
Fred
it absolutely is and it’s part of the National Lakeshore Network and it’s one of several national lakeshores in the Great Lakes region, right?
Julie
Yeah, and it’s part of the National Park Service so no matter what the designation is, it’s all under the same management policies. You know, there’s just a lot of different names for a little different types but it’s all under that National Park Service umbrella. Got it.
Fred
And headquarters is located in Bayfield, but there’s Park Service facilities at other locations, correct?
Julie
Yes. So the main headquarters is in Bayfield, but then there’s also our facility maintenance management and where we launch boats and stuff at Royce Point. then, yeah. Yeah. Wonderful.
Fred
Well, and let’s take a look at our backyard. Gus, tell us about the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest. When was it established and what are some of the really important resources that are managed there?
Gus
Sure. So the Chequamegon Nicolet is a hyphen forest. So it was the Chequamegon National Forest and the Nicolet National Forest in the 90s. I think it was the 90s. It was a sort of a downsizing of of forests and many became hyphenated forests. Consolidated or? Yep. so the Chequamegon Nicolet has one, you management team that runs the entire forest where there were two, on each side. It was established in 1933.
It’s a place, mean, I think depending on the person, the Schwangen means very different things to very different people. We talked earlier that there are people that have been camping at Two Lakes Campground and Campsite 97 since they were kids brought here by their family and now they’re in their 70s. There’s people that depend on the Schwangen Nikolai for their hiking on the North Country trail or other than the Apostle Islands.
It’s an opportunity to experience wilderness and the Rainbow Lakes wilderness or the porcupine wilderness. Yeah. And in Bayfield County alone, I think of, you know, great evidence of the indigenous people that have been here since probably the ice ice age left. And in the Mucco Barrens, you can see a landscape, literally a landscape that was managed by people.
And producing berries that were so consistent that Kickapoo Indians from Portage, Wisconsin would walk up to Northern Wisconsin every year to pick berries. So an amazing landscape that the forest management still protects. It’s also economically important for Bayfield and National Counties, as well as the other counties that contain national forest.
You we have a timber industry. I wouldn’t say it’s thriving, but a timber industry that we produce. The CNNF produces just about the most timber out of any forest in the country. We’re either number one or number two. So very important economically.
Fred
And that’s an amazing statistic. How many national forests in the country? Over 200? So to know that not only are all those resources protected, but the amount of timber management that occurs with a very, would you say it’s a progressively minded forest management plan that you all have operated under?
Gus
Yeah, mean, it was. mean, our forest plan is from 2004. We should have a new plan. Yeah. But because of priorities and funding, we don’t have a new plan. Yeah. But I still think the forest, there’s a cut rate that you can cut the forest and you still have a growing forest on whole on all forest acres and so the amount of volume that we cut each year is far below the amount of trees that grow back so in terms of conservation, it’s a very conservative plan.
Julie
And something I forgot to mention is an economic impact of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
Basically the impact economic impact in national parks that comes out every year and the economic impact of the local and regional community is is huge. So every dollar that goes into it is multiples that it benefits. Sure.
Fred
And we’re talking here at Honest Dog books in Bayfield and everyone in Bayfield knows that a huge part of Bayfield’s summer especially is being driven by visitation to the Apostle Islands. So most of us have all followed the news. If you haven’t followed the news, you may be fortunate, the firings by the Doge team and now…pending plans for reduction in force or for basically reorganization of agencies that agencies are now going through all will be creating significant changes.
Julie, knowing that a lot is in flux right now and a lot of what we know today will be different in a week. What sort of implications or what outcomes are you most concerned about with regard to Apostle Islands?
Julie
Well right now there’s a lot that isn’t known and a lot of things are.
You know, for example, the seasonal employees were, they weren’t allowed to hire. And now all of a sudden it’s like, oh no, you can go ahead and rehire it. Oh, you know, you can’t. So anyway, you’re absolutely right. There’s a lot of things in flux and that’s creating a huge amount of stress on the staff. So in a situation where, you know, as federal employees, and I were very fortunate in having a lot of security, you know, with, you know, once you got on as a permanent employee,
And now all that, the rug’s been taken out of that. So there’s a lot of uncertainty about will I have a job? Won’t I have a job? Should I be looking for something else? Shouldn’t I be looking for something else? And then also…
Fred
Federal employees are being targeted, which is when I look at the staff at Apostle Islands, they are so collaborative, so hardworking, and some of the most dedicated and passionate people I’ve ever met. know, people in the Park Service, I’m sure the Forest Service also is, you go into that not because you want to get rich, not because of whatever, it’s because you’re passionate about protecting the resource, passionate about the mission, and
And you want to serve the American public. So, you know, it’s conservative protections for future generations. And so it’s it’s really difficult. yeah, and and you know, a lot of the work that you all do, I understand to be long term projects, whether you’re monitoring a wildlife species or development project to rebuild a harbor or a facility. These are things that take planning and execution that might go on over a couple of years.
Julie
Oh yeah, some of it a number of years, know, and especially things like you can’t protect what you don’t know. And so that’s where things like resource management and research come into play. there’s, you know, the
I can go in later about the, you know, actually what the staff does. so in this particular question, though, is it’s it’s just that you’ve got a lot of really passionate people and folks that have worked really hard to try to, you know, get a job to be able to do these sort of things only to have it kind of taken away. And we just don’t know right now.
Fred
And but the ability to plan for those long term projects is affected by the uncertainty. It’s yeah, it’s it’s hard to know. mean, some we have this was supposed to be a really big year for the park, and it’s just unknown whether or not some of these projects that have, as you say, taken years of planning and trying to get funding and get it all together and all that, whether they’ll.
It’s just not known right now. Whether the person who is going to lead that project will have a job in three months. It’s hard to know. And in a park, a national park like this in a northern climate, very dependent on seasonal employees, correct?
Julie
Oh, definitely. Yeah. And then also very dependent on the summer season to get anything done. Right. Because the park is only accessible by boat. Right. And as as we all know, Lake Spur is very temperamental. And so the you know, you get normally kind of calm weather for a couple of months, but the side seasons are a little iffy and you’re trying to, you know, repair a long needed dock or whatever. have a very or put, you know, rewrote a historic structure, you know, do something that’s critically important to maintain these things.
You have a really short time period. So it’s challenging. It’s challenging to get contractors that are willing to do it. And almost always there’s other things that come up. there’s a lot of flux. Yeah. And one of the things we’ve understood is that the ability to make expenditures, the credit cards that federal employees use to buy supplies have been limited to $1.
They’ve actually been taken out of the… Yeah. Yeah. They’re not allowed. So you can’t… You can’t plan and purchase things ahead of time that you need to carry out your work.
Fred
Right. So that’s… I’ve heard people asking if 250,000 people who would typically come to the Apostle Islands are going to find toilet paper in the bathrooms or other basic elements of running a park.
Yeah, well Gus, tell us about what the experience you understand so far in the National Forest has been with recent changes.
Gus
Yeah, same with Julie. I think demoralized staff, fear. locally there were four people that were fired. All four of those people worked at the visitor center, Northern Great Lakes, David R. Oby, Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center. Right here in Ashland? Here in Ashland. were hired, I hired two of those people. We were asked to staff the visitor center. To have more hours for public to come for locals to use the facility for community events, for meetings. We did that. We filled those positions and then those were the people that were fired. Largely because, or all because of their tenure was less than their probationary period. They’ve all been told they’ll be reinstated. They’ll in theory come back to work on Monday, whether that’s in person or not, those kinds of things I think are still in flux.
But then they face a planned for reduction in force or a RIF that will be announced soon.
I don’t know anyone that knows those plans, there are plans and they are just more, they are legal. Whereas the way that the firings happened before, OPM can’t fire a forest service or a park, only the supervisor. And OPM’s the Office of Personnel Management. you. Yeah. Office of Personnel Management. For the federal government. For the federal government, right. And so they’re being reinstated.
that may mean that there are more people on the chopping block. We also know that there are early out opportunities for people to retire early, to reduce the force. All of those will impact the services that we talk about. So whether it’s the recreation staff that… fills toilet paper at birch grove campground or cleans toilets at birch grove campground or manages that can well actually there is no concessionaire at Two lakes campground. Okay, the that campground wasn’t economically feasible for a concessionaire to run it. Okay, so So when we think about Government running things and private people running things. Yeah, literally a private corporation said this is not worth it to us
Yeah, and so it goes back to the federal government to run uneconomically but opportunities for the public to get out and be in nature sure so so anyway, so all those things my expectation is the objectives of the Trump administration, the Forest Service will not be able to cut those positions. So things that are related to timber extraction, there’s the green light proposal for the mine, those things we will be obligated to staff. so we’ll have to sacrifice in areas that are less obvious.
You know, our mission is also to maintain healthy and diverse and productive forests for future generations, right? And so years ago, Congress said, well, show us that you’re doing that. Show us that those forests are diverse and that they’re going to be around for future generations. So we are forced into this monitoring. So we do ecological monitoring. We do surveys for cultural resources and those sorts of things. I’m concerned about those being values in this administration.
So the archaeology or the rare habitat. Yeah, for wildlife biologists or ecologists or even the recreation folks that are maintaining our trails and maintaining our campgrounds.
Fred
And you can describe it much better than I could, but you have sort of the normal day to day operations of the Forest Service and then you have responding to natural disasters, like fires. And I know the Chequamegon – Nicolet sent staff to other fires around the country during the fire season. talk about sort of the capability to respond to those kind of things with a much smaller workforce.
Gus
So on the fire side, looks as though Doge has steered away from firing fire, fire, primary fire personnel. So you come in and your primary job is fire. We also have people that work in their secondary job as fire. When I was a fire ecologist in Yosemite, I wasn’t a primary fire person. I was secondary. But when we had fires, I was part of the team that managed those fires. Sure. I was also on those fires as a resource advisor.
There are many positions, people in the Park Service and Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, that their primary job is not fire, but they staff fires. And so all those people, those are the ones that I’d be concerned about not being available to staff fires this summer. And if we have a difficult fire season as we have in the past,
there won’t be people to pull from. And so those are big concerns. We run out of fire people typically August, or actually no, two years ago or three years ago, it was July. We have different planning levels and when you get to planning level five, which is the highest planning level, it means that whatever your job is, if you are in a qualified position, your supervisor could tell you, you need to go to a fire.
If we have fewer people in fire, that’s going to happen earlier and probably more frequently. And burning out fire people early in the season is dangerous. Anyway, all those things.
Fred
And we’re seeing around the country, of course, a longer fire season with more intense, large fires that are more severe. And if there’s ever a time when the federal government is needed more than ever, it seems like it’s now. And the capacity to respond is gonna be reduced. Is that a fair assessment?
Gus
There isn’t an equal alternative. There are contractors out there and they get pulled in, but there aren’t contract crews that can fill out, you know, hotshot crews and be smoke jumpers and engine crews and all that. There are some, but there aren’t enough to handle. We have this system that expands and contracts, and it’s a beautiful system. And it expands to almost as many as we need tougher fire seasons, but we exceed that. There’s many years where we have fires typically in the West that don’t get staffed. And so they prioritize those fires. so you may have a fire and you’re sent no one to help you.
Fred
Yeah. And Julie, on the National Lakeshore, your park service staff, I’d your former park service colleagues. You are also part of the incident command system. They also provide resources for national issues. Can you talk about that?
Julie
Yeah, they do. And they do on many levels. Our protection staff, especially one of our protection staff, say he’s really involved in incident command systems. So he’s there during special events, whether it’s at Mount Rushmore, whether it’s in D.C. or whatever is part of that Midwest team. But then also there’s firefighters and as Gus said,
We don’t have anyone that’s, you know, is only a firefighter. You know, but there’s a number of people that are trained there and also search and rescue and things like that. any reduction would have an impact as well as a reduction. we work really collaboratively. It’s a very small staff.
And so if you have, say, for example, a search and rescue need. The first boat there is often the resource management boat because we’re out on the lake so much or it could be someone from facility management or something else. And so we all work together and the park service plays a key role in search and rescue and works with a coast guard and local protection agencies and as that staff decreases or if our ability to actually operate boats is significantly reduced.
Because if we don’t have any funding for fuel, people’s lives could be definitely at stake. Lake Superior, as we know, is cold. It’s always cold water conditions. It can change in a heartbeat, you know, and most people don’t realize that because their experience may be in the lakes where you go out and if you tipped over, that would be a bummer, but it wouldn’t be life-threatening and, you know, around the Apostles. It definitely could
Fred
For sure. So if you’re visiting the Apostle Islands and you know that it’s a National Park Service unit, probably have some expectation of people and resources being available to help you in an emergency or.
Julie
Yeah, and people that go to national parks or I mean national forests as well. They’re on vacation. Sometimes they, you know, they just have an ex kind of thing. You know, they have an expectation that, if I get in trouble, someone will come and rescue you. Yeah. And that may not necessarily be possible as it is, even if we had a larger staff.
It takes a long time to get to where people are. And so the park staff has spent a lot of time and effort doing what we call preventative SAR, preventative search and rescue. And so there’s staff that are at Myers Beach all summer long talking to people. We’ve got a buoy system that…
is in place so you can see what the conditions are at the the sea caves and they’re talking to people and saying okay here’s the situation and may look really calm you know here you are at Myers Beach but look at over there and it has a tendency you have a tendency you have cross waves and they ricochet off of the the sea caves and cause really dangerous conditions and people are necessary they’re just going out for a little day paddle and they may not have the right equipment and and the right knowledge and so those folks save lives and if we can’t have the staff to do that it is you know people people safety would be reduced.
Fred
Yeah and especially in a park where there’s not a single gated entrance to…
Julie
No you come in from from wherever yeah exactly exactly yeah it’s yeah it’s an amazing place it’s incredible but it is it does have a lot of safety risk because of that.
Yeah. And we do our best. Yeah. Just both of you were career federal employees, so just take a step back for a minute.
Fred
Gus, talk a little bit about your sort of trajectory with the federal government. You worked both as an academic professor, you work for the Park Service, you work for the Forest Service. What did that career mean for you and your family?
Gus
Well, it’s been a really great experience to both experience teaching and to start out teaching.
That teaching, when I left teaching to go to Yosemite was really a big change for me, a difficult change to understand the park service systems, the language, and then not only that, to be in fire, which is a totally separate language, and to be in California, as California came out of this, you know, sort of wetter, almost decade and into the drought that, you know, killed the lower Mexi- conifers or the Ponderosa pine trees that you saw all red-needled. And so that was a powerful experience for me as a resource manager person. But also, we chose to live in Ashland or in the Ashland Bayfield area.
Then we chose to live in Yosemite because it was a beautiful place. We chose to live in Ely,
I thought Grand Teton National Park would be my last stop before I retired. But then this opportunity to come back to Washburn opened up. And so we’ve really been place-based, looking for opportunities to learn about other places. I think the cost is, I look at Julie, who I started working with, by 30 years ago in the Apostle Islands with my students.
And so I’ve missed getting intimately, know, getting to intimately know an area. Sure. But just sort of sampled these places and it’s we’ve enjoyed it, but we’re also glad to be back in the Bay Area.
Fred
Yeah, that’s so great that you two have known each other years and years back. careers both took some different paths. But Julie, you’ve spent most of your career around the Apostle Island.
Julie
I have. And I, you know, Initially, my first job in the parks was at Glacier, and I was still in college, and I was seasonal, and I came there and I felt like I was home. It was just, you know, and then I went out, had the opportunity to go out with resource management on a float trip on the Flathead River, and I was like, this is what I want to do. So anyway, long story short, I ended up…working for the Pacific Northwest region for a little bit.
back to college, know, to grad school, bounced back there, worked at the Washington level office and Colorado, went for the regional office and the Midwest and then ended up at Apostles.
I never thought I’d be anyplace more than, you know, 10 years, but it’s an amazing place and life happens and I’ve been very grateful for it and I have had that opportunity to really get to know a place you can put your arms around and get to know it really, really well. Yeah.
Fred
At some point I want you to tell me where I can get a deer on the Apostle Islands. good luck with that. Off a sailboat.
So both of you with federal government careers and, you know, so the move now is reform and efficiency. for everyone who thinks that we need to reform the federal government because it’s slow and it’s bureaucratic and you all…so many acronyms that many of us don’t understand. And certainly it’s a bureaucracy, right? if it were up to you, what kinds of ways would it be effective and appropriate to find reforms in federal agencies? And how would you envision the Park Service or the Forest Service just getting better and more effective? Are there things that could be done that would be positive?
Gus
I’m sure there is a lot of process and looking at that process and trying to streamline. And that actually has been happening all along. And especially at Apostles, we’re so small that we’ve had to be really efficient and we’ve had to work really good. That doesn’t mean that there’s not room for improvement, but the people that are best suited to make those decisions and do those efficiencies are the people that are familiar with them. have expertise in them and could provide that information and really, you know, pull together people that can do that.
Julie
That would be the appropriate method to try to even do better. of course, as Gus knows, I mean, there’s a lot of systems and there’s a lot of places. I don’t think that the park service or the forest service really stands out as, my gosh, super inefficient agencies, think, as the ones that people have to wait a long time with that they get frustrated with. there’s certainly, definitely, room for improvement, but it should be the people that are most knowledgeable about them that would be most effective.
Fred
It seems like a management tenet that changes and decisions should be pushed down as low as possible. Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. Gus, any thoughts about having been with the Forest Service?
Gus
For sure. I mean, I would say…
This is the inefficiencies, the bureaucracy that we have is based on decades and decades of getting told what to do. And we are, you know, we spend the taxpayer’s dollar and so Congress has asked us to be accountable for all of that. And so there are systems on top of systems to account for the hour that you spent on doing X or Y. There are,
You know, just the, I’m amazed that Doge has a staff, right? They haven’t been in, they haven’t been in, they haven’t had that department long enough to put out a job announcement, have those people respond to the job announcement, vet those people, check their resumes, interview, check their references. I mean, the system’s just to hire a person. takes us, I don’t know, half a year. And is that our choice? No, that’s because we have to be accountable for all those things.
Gus
Yeah. And so that’s just, that’s one example. Another great example is, you know, getting somebody started on their first day of work and actually having them with a cell phone and a computer if that’s what their job requires. Those things take also months to do. To buy something. So now Elon Musk is, he has to okay purchases over $50,000 or something. So again, you’re taking this decision that could be made by myself, the local manager, or the forest supervisor, and imagine the paper trail that it takes to get all the way up to whatever that position is. That takes way too much time.
Julie
I would say back to employees is if it all looks the same to you, you who are listening and you’re in the Apostle Islands National Park or you’re in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, it’s because those employees that are left really care a lot. They care about you getting an experience out in nature and so they’re doing everything they can to keep things going and my concern is that can’t last forever.
Fred
Well, and both of these agencies are also, you’re driven by what Congress has directed you to do, right? And in many cases, those are laws that have been passed over a period of decades that sometimes can present conflicting goals that you need to try to resolve. And you’re not necessarily given more resources to do it. Yeah. Well,
It’s a conversation that will be ongoing because all of these changes are in progress and there’s a lot of uncertainty. But anything else either of you want to share about our big front yard and our big backyard here in Wisconsin?
Julie
Well, yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, mean, there’s a lot of uncertainty, but, you know, depending on whether or not there is funding to build, or to get boats out there, there’s people out there, people may end up experiencing a real decrease. How are we going to pump the toilets? Are we going to put the toilet paper in there? How are we going to maintain things? How are we going to protect resources? All those sort of things are really concerning, but as Gus said, who’s ever left is certainly going to do the absolute best they can. go from there.
Fred
Well, we have a civil service in this country that has really rewarded dedication and professionalism. I think you both are just examples of that. We’re people who want to learn more. If I want to plan a camping trip or a trip to the islands or my favorite forest service campground are the websites for the forest and the Apostle Islands both the best places to find current information.
Gus
The website’s a good place, and if you just, if you wanna make reservations and stuff, you can go to rec.gov, which is a uniform thing, and Forest Service and Park Service campsites and things like that. Depending on the staff availability, I mean, in the past, people would call our interpretation and education staff, and they would be able to provide a lot of personal information as far as, you you wanting to go from here to here to here.
Well, that’s not really as possible anymore. But you can definitely go to Rec.gov. You can go at the websites. And there’s a lot of information just in general on the web.
Gus, Forest Service users, where’s the best resource for those Same, recreation.gov. The National Forest webpage will also say, kind of give you local info, if there’s closures. Same with our website. Same with Apostles. So those are good to just check. I think there’s a place on ours that says, before you go. And so it’s just, you can just double check to make sure that campground is opened or roads are open or closed.
Fred Clark
That kind thing. Yeah, okay. And it sounds like just at least concerned that folks who’ve had their customary, traditional, you know, summer trip to the islands or to the forest should be extra careful this year to make sure that those resources will be there and open.
Julie
Yeah, and there is also a list on the website of, you know, if you wanted to go out with the kayak outfitters, run a sailboat or things like that. And those, people that are, the companies that are listed on that, on our website are the ones that have been vetted and are approved by the park service. Good to know. And I know here in the…
In the Apostle Islands area the friends of the Apostle Islands is an independent friends group that accepts support and encourages and they’re and they’re doing they’re trying they’re doing their best to and have started a new initiative called love our lakes, so check it out. They’re pulling together different stories and information and supporting points to have as much they can.
Fred
And is there a similar group for the National Forest? Is there a friends group or a user group? There’s the National Forest Foundation. There isn’t a local friends group for the Chequamegon Nicolet? Well, maybe it’s time to start one. Right,
Gus
Yeah, group is great. there are, but I mean, there are groups like the North Country Trail has each section has local groups that are that take care of the North Country Trail on the forest. Sure. So depending on the type of user you are, whether it’s canoeing and kayaking or horseback riding, there’s probably a group that reflects your interest that works on the forest. Yeah. OK.
Fred Clark (43:07.883)
Well, there’s a lot more to cover, but this is a good marker for where we are right now. And we’re going to want to revisit this conversation regularly with other people. But I know a lot of people are just wondering what’s the summer going to look like? And of course, it goes well beyond the summer to think about how our important public lands are here for us.
Gus and Julie, thank you so much for sharing your insights. for the invitation. Appreciate it. It’s been great. And for all your work, and you may be retired from federal service, but you’re not done supporting public lands. No, not at all. Yeah.
So, I’m Fred Clark, the host of Pulse of the Bay, and for our listeners, on behalf of everyone at WVCB, thank you for being with us.
Special thanks to our producer, Scribner, and the many other volunteers who work hard establishing this small radio station right here in Ashland, Wisconsin. You can check out our programming and our events at wvcb.org. And if you find the programming valuable, we encourage you to make a donation and help support the establishment of community radio here in the Chequamegon Bay area.
So until next time, let’s all remember to do our part to help our communities thrive, protect and conserve our lands and waters, and be kind and caring to the people around us. Thank you.
Corey James Scribner
