> Minnesota gets a fair amount of revenue from out of staters who bring their > canoes into state to use the 10,000 lakes. Here are a few more points about the Minnesota registration law. there are both plusses and minuses to the way it's set up. The registration is $7 for three years for canoes and touring kayaks; however, there is currently an added $5 fee for all watercraft to fund the Eurasian Milfoil (a nuisance waterplant spread by powerboat props) cleanup and enforcement efforts. The $7 portion goes to a dedicated fund that has actually resulted over the years in a several thousand-mile network of access points and primitive campsites on over a dozen of the state's non-technical rivers. Excellent maps of these routes are available from the Minnesota DNR. These are a very underutilized resource and an excellent alternative to the crowded BWCA canoe wilderness for those who can figure out how to do a shuttle. The funding also provides for a staff person who has put in many hours of work on the Lake Superior Water Trail of Minnesota, a 150-mile section of the Lake Superior coastline. Unfortunately, the law also requires that watercraft not registered by other jurisdictions must obtain a Minnesota license before being used in the state- and this includes the BWCA and the Lake Superior Water Trail. Many irate out-of state visitors have run into trouble because of overzealous enforcement of this provision. Recently, the DNR has made it much easier to obtain the licenses from local parks, etc. but it still has a negative impact on our tourism image. The bottom line: if you can't prevent your state or province from licensing paddlecraft, make sure the money goes into a dedicated fund. -Andy Knapp Minneapolis Homebound on a dreary Memorial weekend *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sun May 28 2000 - 17:37:50 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:25 PDT