Battle Over Beach Access Taking Place on Great Lakes Island

Rugged dunes tower hundreds of feet above a wide, sandy beach, where the screech of a soaring bald eagle is barely audible over wind gusts and pounding surf.

Such is the majesty of South Fox Island in northern Lake Michigan, a remote jewel treasured by boaters, hikers and deer hunters. Its beauty and isolation help explain the intensity of a battle over a proposed land swap between its two owners--David V. Johnson, a Detroit developer, and the state of Michigan.

Johnson holds a patchwork of parcels amounting to roughly two-thirds of the 3,431-acre, crescent-shaped island about 30 miles west of the mainland. He says he bought the land in 1989 intending to build an upscale resort community--”the Nantucket of the West”--but soon decided its wildness was too precious to tame.

His only desire now, he says, is to use his share of the island as a private retreat. Problem is, his parcels are intermingled with the public’s in a “crazy-quilt” pattern that causes frequent trespassing.

For more than a decade, Johnson has sought a land exchange that would provide clearer boundaries. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is backing a plan that would consolidate his holdings on the central and southern portions of the island and leave the northern end to the state.

But a coalition of sporting groups, environmentalists and an American Indian tribe is staunchly opposed. Critics say the plan is a raw deal for the public, which would lose more than a mile of shoreline. They contend it wouldn’t improve what they label as the DNR’s lax management of the island for citizen enjoyment and resource protection.

And they accuse the DNR of favoritism toward Johnson because he is a leading contributor to Gov. John Engler and other Republicans. The agency says its policy is based on merit, not politics.

Both sides are making their case with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, previous owners of the public sections of the island. Their approval is needed for the exchange to take place under conditions imposed when the state procured the property.

In October, Congress prohibited any South Fox land swap without its approval. The order was attached to a budget bill, meaning it will be in effect only during the current fiscal year unless extended.

Meanwhile, the DNR is crafting an environmental assessment of the proposal now on the table. It may produce other alternatives. But after years of increasingly bitter debate, prospects for compromise appear slim.

“The DNR is proposing to give up the best part of the island and take properties . . . that Johnson has no use for,” says Brian Upton, attorney for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. “It’s very obvious that the public won’t benefit from this--only David Johnson will.”

Rebecca Humphries, chief of the DNR’s wildlife division, says clearing up the boundary confusion would help everyone.

“This is not in my mind the rich guy trying to take advantage of the public,” she said. “We want more accessibility for the public.”

Johnson’s foes don’t trust him not to develop the island, which they say would be easier if his holdings were consolidated. They say his claim of environmental sensitivity is belied by his recent construction of a 5,500-foot asphalt runway for his airplanes, his use of all-terrain vehicles and his offer to build a road across fragile dunes to a historic lighthouse on the island’s southern tip so he could restore it. The state rejected the offer.

“It’s not my place to say whether Mr. Johnson is being greedy or inappropriate,” said Jim Lively, an analyst with the Michigan Land Use Institute, an advocacy group. “But the DNR is supposed to uphold the public’s interest in our land . . . instead of just trusting a private landowner to do what’s right.”

Johnson, 52, labels himself an “environmentalist developer.” Earlier this year, he sold 836-acre North Fox Island to the state for $2.2 million. Johnson says that island, four miles north of South Fox, was targeted for a golf and marina development before he purchased it in 1994. Now, it will remain unspoiled.

He bristles at criticism of his South Fox Island stewardship: “I’ve treated this land with the utmost respect.”

Johnson’s South Fox estate consists of a main house on the island’s lee shore, a kitchen building and houses for staff and guests. There’s a barn for 16 Tennessee walking horses, which he breeds and rides with his 12-year-old daughter, Samara.

He says he built the runway because the island’s grass airstrip was dangerous; a previous owner died in a plane crash there. He acknowledges using ATVs to get around, but denies riding them across dunes and other sensitive areas, as his critics contend.

While describing the island as “my refuge” and insisting he has no plans for commercial development, he says that could change if the land swap doesn’t happen and trespassing “continues to threaten my peace of mind and the security of my daughter . . . to the point that we can’t utilize the island.”

He says there have been more than 100 trespassing incidents, primarily by deer hunters. People have wandered into the houses and barn, he says, and the abandoned lighthouse is riddled with bullet holes.

Swap opponents contend the trespassing problem is exaggerated.

“I’d like to know who these people are,” said Richard Robertson, a member of the South Fox Island Public Hunters Club, who has hunted there since the 1970s. “Most people who go out there try very hard to avoid any kind of hassle. We’ve used [boats] to get from one isolated parcel to another without trespassing.”

Other disputes center on whether the land the state would gain has the same wildlife habitat and recreational value as what it would lose. Critics are especially unhappy that Johnson would get a parcel near the southern tip that includes a spacious beach and open land ideal for the piping plover, an endangered shore bird.

While no plovers have been spotted on the island since 1939, Johnson offers to protect the habitat with a conservation easement. Mark Moore, a wildlife biologist who manages Johnson’s estate, would oversee it. Opponents say habitat protection is the government’s job.

“They talk as if a land swap is the only way to deal with these problems,” Lively said. “There are simple, basic alternatives they’re not looking at.”

The state could buy some of Johnson’s land, obtain easements to state holdings that visitors currently cannot reach because they are surrounded by Johnson’s property, and put up more fences and signs to discourage trespassing, swap opponents say.

The Grand Traverse tribe says some of its members have unresolved claims to parcels that Johnson proposes giving the state. Historically, the island was a stopover point for natives traveling by water and an important hunting and gathering site, Upton says.

Johnson contends Indian land claims are for the courts to decide. He says he’d consider minor modifications to the swap plan but has made plenty of concessions.

The opposition, he says, is practicing “the politics of exhaustion--raise another issue and another and another . . . until nothing happens. We’ve done enough.”