Nothing like that. Our historical spring FT grounds are in fact a county park called Three Rivers Park District. We have been eventing on this parcel since the mid 1980's. During that time the Park was, and currently is, trying to restore native tallgrass prairie. And now after 25 or so years, they have decided that in an effort to promote migratory birds to take up residence (and non-migratory such as phez) in a larger population, they have decided that all the commotion FT's have in the spring are preventing the birds from calling the park home. In essence, they is so much use that the wildlife sees little "down time" during their nesting season. So we have made some concessions such as the gallery has to stay on the designated bridle paths (the park is open to equestrian riding)...now only the handlers/judges/scouts and bird planter may ride where they need to. We have also made other concessions as to the staking out of dogs and horses.shags wrote:
I'm sorry to hear that Minnesota grounds are in jeopardy. Is US Fish behind the trouble?
Also back in the mid '80's the Park as a whole had 1.5 million visits/year. The last year they have data for, the Park had 10 million visits. So we used to be out there by ourselves...and now we have some conflicts, trail riders and FT dogs being the primary one.
If there is/was any good that came from the meeting is that we hopefully are using some leverage of the Park against the MN DNR to find a suitable place to FT dogs. We have off leash parks for dogs, we have off road recreational parks parks...now we need something for horseback recreation.