EMPIRE, MI (AP) -- Managers of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore have approved a plan that includes a 35-mile hiking trail and sets aside 45 percent of the land as protected, roadless wilderness.
The federal parkland headquartered at Empire in the northwestern Lower Peninsula contains some of Lake Michigan's most striking coastline.
Federal officials this month approved the changes as part of a new management plan.
The Traverse City Record-Eagle says the wilderness portion of the lakeshore amounts to 32,100 acres, an increase of about 1,200 acres from the area managed as wilderness since 1981.
One change includes creating fixed campsites on Lake Michigan's North Manitou Island, where campers now choose scattered sites.
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