Amen to Ulli's speech on gas guzzlers. Now, pulling up to the boat ramp in my diesel gets the thumbs up from PWC riders, bass masters, and usually nasty looks from Mr and Mrs baby boomer with sea kayaks on the roof of their Jeep grand cherokee. Little do they now I only start my truck once or twice a week and consume the same as a lot of Subarus. As a biologist, seasonal closures to all traffic in wildlife sensitive areas is unpopular as heck and hard to enforce. But definitely one of the best things we can do to protect wildlife. (I am not familiar with Indiana Dunes situation and don't know what their resource objective is with the proposed closure) One interesting thing is that wildlife gets used to motorized traffic in some places. At merrit island national wildlife refuge the birds will sit around and pose for photos from passing cars and buses all day. But if you go ride your bike around the same loop you will frighten flocks of 100's of tired birds birds recovering from migration into flight. At my favorite lake for paddling this summer the nesting sandhill cranes, cinnamon teals, geese, and other birds would happily sit on their nests while folks trolled by for bass in their motorized craft. But when I slipped along the same route in my kayak the birds would all go into their distraction routines trying to lure me away from their nests. I felt horrible after paddling there once during nesting season and didn't go back until late summer. That time the females would go into their defensive displays and the chicks would scatter into the vegetation. I felt guilty again and cut my paddle short and vainly tried to reduce my impact by staying as far away from shore as possible. --------------- Shawn Servoss *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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