Here & Now

Jan Lee on the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore's Status

Frederica Freyberg:
As the nation honors fallen service members this Memorial Day on Monday, the tourism industry marks the start of the summer season. A bill in the U.S. House would redesignate the Apostle Islands as Wisconsin’s first national park. The 21 islands and 12 miles of mainland off Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin is already a national lakeshore. Supporters say the designation as a national park would boost tourism and local economies. Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany introduced the measure and it passed committee this spring. But local governments in and around Bayfield County and the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa oppose the redesignation. The county and the tribe drafted a formal resolution together opposing it. We asked Bayfield County Board Chair Jan Lee why. And thanks very much for being here.

Jan Lee:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So we’ve done some reporting in Bayfield, kind of during the summer season and the crush of tourists can be difficult for small businesses there to manage. How would a national park designation increase those crowds?

Jan Lee:
Yes. Thank you. So I think to start, like you said, the tourism area here in Bayfield, in particular, at the gateway to the Apostle Islands hasn’t been a problem in the summertime. There’s never been a problem with not having enough tourists up here in the late spring, summer, early fall, basically through Apple Fest every first weekend of October. As a matter of fact, we’re pretty much bursting at the seams in terms of what we can accommodate in terms of lodging and restaurants and that affects workforce, of course. And we don’t have housing for people up here. It’s hard to have workforce come in that can accommodate all these tourists for the businesses. So and I know that Mr. Tiffany has touted this redesignation as a boon for tourism, but we’re basically looking for tourism in other directions. I, you know, I think as a whole, you know, we’ve done a lot of work over the last 15 to 20 years trying to create tourism as an industry up here, getting people all the way up to northern Wisconsin to enjoy Lake Superior and the inland lakes that we have. And we’ve done a really good job of that but what we’ve really been trying to do is subsequently also is to try to do that in the shoulder seasons and in the winter, to expand tourism in those areas. And the big problem with Mr. Tiffany’s bill at this point in time is that we don’t know where the infrastructure is going to come to support it.

Frederica Freyberg:
Infrastructure like roads and lodging and parking but wouldn’t the Federal Park Service be responsible for that?

Jan Lee:
Well, we are responsible as a county for our roads and I mean the highway department for our county roads and County Highway 13 is what gets you up to Bayfield. It runs through Washburn, which is also a small city about 12 miles south of Bayfield. And that is also sort of a gateway point to the Apostle Islands, as well as north of Bayfield, where the Red Cliff Lake Superior Band of Ojibwe live. About two miles north of Bayfield is where the reservation starts. And they have treaty rights, of course, to the area. The big — another issue that we’ve been sort of trying to address is the treaty rights and the fact that we’ve invited Mr. Tiffany to come. We want to be a part of the dialog. We want to share our concerns and our questions, have our questions heard but he hasn’t come. And so we received about a year and a half ago, we and by that I mean the county board and the Red Cliff Tribal Council first heard about Mr. Tiffany’s bill, or resolution H.R. 9111. And when we heard about it, we found out that the resolution had basically already been written and was already on its way to Washington, D.C. without consultation with the county board or the City of Bayfield or the Tribal Council. And so we never got a chance to express our concerns or ask our questions. And that pretty much left us in an area of the only option that we have left at the federal level is to enact some resolution. So that’s what we did. We don’t normally like to enact negative resolutions. We like to work in the positive. And but this is an instance where we felt that since we hadn’t been heard or consulted, that we really didn’t have another option.

Frederica Freyberg:
What would you be seeking from the federal government or the Federal Park Service to make this thing work?

Jan Lee:
I think, first of all, what we’ve never heard is a deeper explanation of why. The national lakeshore designation is already a part of the Park Service. It’s a part of the national parks programing of designation of land matter and bodies of water. So and right now, as the national lakeshore, it is at one of the highest, if not the highest level of protection, because it is a wild area. It’s a wilderness area even though people live in these small communities on the shoreline, the lake itself and the islands are subject to very dramatic weather shifts and very cold water that as we know of anybody who knows this area knows has been responsible for hundreds of deaths, either in ships or boats or people out kayaking or, you know, canoeing, who aren’t familiar with how unpredictable this very big lake, which is actually more of an inland sea, how quickly the weather can change, how cold the water is, and how prepared and knowledgeable you have to be in order to embark on it. So that’s one of our concerns, is just the safety of it, of it all as well.

Frederica Freyberg:
Well, we will watch this bill as it moves through and prepare to visit and do some field reporting up there.

Jan Lee:
We’d love to have you come up, take a look, enjoy the area.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Jan Lee from Bayfield County. Thanks very much.

Jan Lee:
Thank you.