License no longer required to cross restricted portion of Bonneville Shoreline Trail

KEY TAKEAWAYS

A hunting or fishing license is no longer needed to cross the Bonneville Shoreline Trail at the Timpanogos Wildlife Management Area.
Utah's wildlife and recreation divisions reached a deal to maintain the trail and lift the requirement.
The permit requirement remains in place in other places over maintenance concerns.

OREM — Hikers and bikers will no longer need a hunting or fishing permit to cross a section of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail that runs through a wildlife management area in Utah County.

The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation reached an agreement late last week on a "special use permit" that will keep the trail segment open for people without a permit, state wildlife officials said. The agreement follows backlash from concerns raised by trail users who were caught off guard by the rule.

Division of Outdoor Recreation officials will "maintain and update" the trail segment of the Timpanogos Wildlife Management Area, along with a segment of the Great Western Trail that runs toward the eastern edge of the management area, according to the agreement.

"Basically, effective immediately, any user of specifically the Bonneville Shoreline Trail and the Great Western Trail ... are not required to have a hunting, fishing or combination license as long as they stay on those two designated trails," said Faith Heaton Jolley, a spokeswoman for the Division of Wildlife Resources.

The area's permit requirement went into effect in May, following a bill passed by the Utah Legislature earlier in the year. HB309 requires that anyone 18 years old or older must possess a hunting, fishing or combination license to access a wildlife management area or waterfowl management area in Davis, Salt Lake, Utah and Weber counties.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, was in response to an uptick in recreational use of wildlife management areas that the Division of Wildlife Resources maintains for hunting and fishing opportunities. The division uses hunting and fishing license fees and a tax tied to the purchase of hunting or fishing equipment to pay for upkeep. However, officials said it was becoming difficult to keep up with maintenance as people visited the areas for various recreational activities.

The management areas had become "loved to death," and there were also cases of vandalism and littering, Jolley explained at the time.

While the new law applied to over two dozen management areas, it came as a surprise to many people who use the popular Bonneville Shoreline Trail, particularly those who use the section that runs through the Timpanogos Wildlife Management Area.

"It's a very used area," Utah County resident Kyle Burgess told KSL-TV earlier this month, after a Utah Department of Natural Resources officer stopped him on the trail. "There are a lot of mountain bike trails, a lot of running trails, so it is definitely, maybe, a surprise to a lot of people."

State wildlife officials received a flood of responses regarding the Bonneville Shoreline and Great Western trails' inclusion in the permit law, Jolley said on Wednesday. DWR then reached out to the Division of Outdoor Recreation to work on a solution, as both agencies fall under the Utah Department of Natural Resources' umbrella.

"Since their division oversees a lot of trail maintenance and things, it made sense to have them be the ones overseeing these specific trails, their maintenance, signage, and then also acting as the permittee or 'contractor' for this specific special-use permit," she said.

It could be a one-off addition to the new permit rule. The division is now actively seeking similar agreements at other wildlife management areas within the Wasatch Front, which means visitors must have a hunting, fishing or combination license to enter one, she added.

Meanwhile, the Timpanogos management area, including the trail access, will be closed between Dec. 1 and April 15, which has been the case in the past. The closure aims to protect big game that are more vulnerable during the wintertime, state wildlife officials say.

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