TNC/Devin Leonarduzzi/Quincy Aerial, LLC. This photograph offers a sense of the vast scale of the Heartlands, said Project Manager Julia Petersen, while still providing a solid view of road/trail system.

As a result of heavier than expected road usage by full-sized vehicles throughout the Keweenaw Heartlands, The Nature Conservancy has felt compelled to limit the Clark Mine Road to ORV and ATV usage. Several factors led to the limitation of the road, including the cost of maintaining the road and the safety of ORV users.

Rich Bowman, director of policy for the Nature Conservancy, in Lansing, said that until the road was limited earlier this year, there were not any trails or roads dedicated strictly to off-road vehicle users. Bowman said that as vehicular traffic has grown significantly on the roads through the Heartlands, so has the cost of maintaining those roads. TNC is considering the road limitation as an experiment.

Julia Petersen, project manager of the Keweenaw Heartlands for TNC, said that the intent is to limit the road by user type.

Petersen said that there are 73 miles of roads and trails throughout the Heartlands, and of those, only five miles are limited by user type. Twenty-nine miles of those are overlapping, she added, as 47.5 miles are also snowmobile trails.

“That is what we manage and maintain,” Petersen said, “and much of maintenance is in coordination with the Keweenaw ATV Club and the Keweenaw Snowmobile Club, because there are overlapping trails.”

Bowman said TNC has had one or two people in the local area that were not happy with the restriction and there have been very few complaints. The road remains open to full public access, he said, but just not to full-sized vehicles such as cars and pickup trucks.

“It’s really about all the summer traffic,” he said.

TNC is aware that the road is an access to an area popular with hunters and they want everyone to have use of the Heartlands.

“We want to help the hunters and accommodate them,” Bowman said, “so I think where we’re going to ultimately end up probably restricting it from June 15 to Oct. 15, which gets us through the heavy traffic season and color season. Then after that re-open the gates and allow full-sized vehicles out there so people can go there and hunt.”

The road has increasingly seen an unexpected high usage. Petersen said TNC has counters on the Manganese Road leading to the Clark Mine that record the number of vehicles that travel the road. During the peak season this year, she said, the road has averaged just under 200 vehicles per day.

“We adjusted the counters in the middle of this summer so we don’t have a full summer of data yet, Petersen said, “but we got upwards of 184 per day in August, and those counters probably underestimated the count, just because of the way that they function. ”

Petersen said that the counters and the experimental summer restriction of the Clark Mine Road is to help TNC understand how to manage and maintain the 73-miles of road infrastructure efficiently and keep it safe for everyone to use.

“We’re really just trying to keep that whole summer, everybody-and-his-brother going down the road under control,” Bowman said. “We honestly don’t care if the local population uses it in the off-season, because it isn’t that much traffic, but it’s a lot of traffic in the summertime.”

Petersen emphasized that the entire 35,000 + Keweenaw Heartlands is open to public access, and although it will continue to remain open, it may not be open in a way that satisfies everyone.

“There’s a place for every type of recreational use,” said Petersen, “but that doesn’t mean that every type of recreational use can occur everywhere.”