Arctic Offroad Forums

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Quote:
FAIRBANKS - If you have an idea on how to improve outdoor recreation opportunities in Alaska’s state parks, the Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation wants to hear it.
The northern region of Alaska State Parks is hosting a community meeting on Wednesday to begin the process of updating the Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation’s Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan.
The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. at the Department of Natural Resources office at 3700 Airport Way, near the corner of Airport Way and University Avenue.
Whether you want the state to build more trails, take care of existing trails, build new public-use cabins or fix up old ones, northern region parks superintendent Brooks Ludwig encourages people to show up and voice their opinions on the parks and what they think the future of parks should be.
The comprehensive plan is updated every five years in order to keep Alaska eligible for federal grant funds for recreation projects, Ludwig said.
In addition to a potential source of funding, the plan provides state parks with information about user trends.
“It tells us whether people want more trails or more public-use cabins, whether we should be improving more RV sites in more campgrounds, what percentage of people are riding ATVs and what percentage of people are riding snowmachines,” Ludwig said. “It gives us a gauge on what people are doing on public lands and what they would like to see us doing.”
People can go to the meeting to testify before the parks advisory committee or they can go online to alaskastateparks.org to complete a short user survey, Ludwig said. The online survey takes only about 10 minutes to complete and respondents do not have to provide their name.
“It’s pretty easy to do, so that’s pretty neat,” Ludwig said.
The survey questions users about what kind of equipment they own, which activities are important to them, how often they recreate, parks expansion, fee structure, how much enforcement they want to see and various other topics.
“It’s an opinion survey that helps state parks figure out what Alaskans do for recreation,” Ludwig said.
There also is a youth user survey for children 16 and under to fill out, Ludwig said.
State parks uses the information gathered at meetings and from the online survey to help write management plans for parks and recreation areas, Ludwig said.
“It gives us some good hard data that we can plan with and will help guide our funding decisions,” Ludwig said. “Any time I write a grant application I can quote from it. I can say, ‘Look here, 74 percent of Alaskans support trails.’”
User trends change as different interests develop and the statewide comprehensive plan helps track those changes, Ludwig said.
Contact outdoors editor Tim Mowry at 459-7587.

another survey? heh heh

I cannot make meetings on Wednesdays - so someone - hopefully many of us - need to step up and show up.

I WILL be filling out a survey.

Mentioned it to the norakor guys and another organization as well. If 1 or more club reps. from different clubs came to speak in support of each other and trail use in general, the entire offroad community might benefit.

in contact with Tim Mowry from DNM. If you guys want on board, jump on quick because this ship is about to sail.

i'll be there

Talked to Nate about this. He has some Guard duties to take care of but is going to try to make it and speak for his group of guys, I think someone from NORAKOR is going to be there and I am going from AO. But I would like to see more than jsut me from AO. In the past there has only been a cpl guys go to these metings and only AO guys. With more folks from are interest group and different clubs going and beginning to have a unified voice we can make things happen.

So lets go and show our support and voice our opinions. Gina and I will be there.

Any chance I could bum a ride?

Sure man. I think we will leave around 500. I'll give you a call when we are on our way.

I got my lab finished last night so I have tomorrow night free to do this.

I will be going...

any of the other BOD going to make it?

My wife will meet me there after she get's off work.

I try to get by there.

good stuff, folks - the more the better. Sorry I can't make it.

Sorry guys I'm not available tonight either.

who went ? what happened. did they have free coffee and cookies ?

Me, Ole, Mel and Kelly showed...just a bunch of talk about funding and not having enough of it...Ole and I both had to leave early so I'll let Mel or Kelly post up the details. I heard some nice talk about adding some motorized-use connecting trails on trails around Chena Dome, and there's one section of the trails up there that we didn't know about that apparently would make a pretty nice 4x4 obstacle...gotta find out what that is. :p

This meeting was the Citizens Advisory Board meeting for the state parks. As usual most things discussed were not concerning the 4x4 community. I talked to a cpl folks at the end of the meeting about us. As of now there aren't any state parks trails designated for our use or that even allow our use. Mention of motorized use was referring to ATV use. But hey we got a word out there about us atleast. One thing that was reinforced to me was that "WE" need to speak up. We need to voice our opinions and concerns to representatives, legislators, the parks division, dnr, blm, the advisory board and everyone else. It was stated that this year about $800,000 will be given to the Chena State recreation area for maintenance, further developement and other things. Why? because that was a big concern voiced to the the above people. The survey that was posted above is a good start for this. It was talked about there being a need for off road trails for our use.

The section of trail Joe is speaking about is off limits to us. I alked to one guy about it and he talked about how a bunch of jeeps had been up there once and tore up the trail pretty bad. He didn't really state when this was but it seemed like it was quite some time ago. It is obstacles like this that we will have to overcome.

Money was a big talk at the meeting. It seems that budget cuts and the economy are going to take a big tole on alot of trail issues.

So it boils down to each of us getting actively involved with keeping existing trails open and establishing new trail (unless fct and banner seem to be all you want to go on).