Public access key to tourism

What do restaurants, motels, vacation rentals, gas stations, grocery and retail stores, plumbers and real estate agents have in common? Their owners and employees all depend heavily on tourism for survival. Lake County Commissioners, through the County Parks Board, have developed a draft management plan to help guide parks and recreation activities to support this economic engine for the next 10-20 years. The 120-page draft plan is available for review on-line and at the county’s libraries. The comment period ends April 30. If you enjoy walking, biking, fishing, boating, and swimming or your job depends on visitors to the area that participate in these activities, please comment.

Unfortunately, a major challenge to the county is managing their recreation lands without dedicated funding. At times, this lack of funding and oversight has resulted in private property owners encroaching upon public lands. Other challenges managers face are development and maintenance of areas, parking, litter, and trespass on adjacent private property.

I would like to share one issue of special concern to our family, public boating access. There are some property owners adjacent to county access areas that have put pressure on our County Commissioners to sell or close access to these properties. Once these public lands are lost, they are most likely gone forever. Public access on the Swan River and Lake areas are probably the most threatened. This is especially unfortunate since there is already very limited public access. For example, there is only one non-fee public access on Swan Lake’s 10-mile eastern shore and two that support floating on 13 miles of the Swan River between Swan Lake and the Bigfork dam. Hopefully, we can work together and find solutions to protect continued and respectful use of our public lands.