With beautiful forests, clear lakes, sparkling streams, dense swamps and rolling hills, the Pigeon River Country covers approximately 180 square miles of Cheboygan, Otsego and Montmorency counties. It is the largest wilderness area in the Lower Peninsula and is home to Michigan's elk herd.

Ninety years ago, however, it was a barren, wrecked piece of land. The once pristine forest had become a landscape denuded of trees; its rivers choked with sand and silt, and the wildlife was gone.

But P.S. Lovejoy, the primary architect of Michigan's Conservation Department organized in 1921, and now the Department of Natural Resources, had a vision of the area as the Lower Peninsula's "Big Wild."

By 1919, the state had acquired 6,468 tax-reverted acres that became part of the Pigeon River Country State Forest. Beginning in the mid-1920s, large acreages were purchased with sportsmen's dollars or acquired through tax reversion.

The land remained little noticed by the public while its forests and wildlife were regenerating, its scars healing. The Department of Conservation assisted by bringing in elk, turkeys, trout and other wildlife and in the 1930s the federal CCC program brought forest plantings.

But even Lovejoy was unaware of the buried treasured that was some 6,000 feet beneath the wilds of the Pigeon River Country.

Through the 1940s and 1950s drilling for oil on public land was looked upon with favor by most everyone. The oil companies prospered and the public approved of those annual fees and royalties, which the state used to pay for more forest plantings, forest fire control and other land management efforts.

Public attitudes began to change in the 1960s, and the Conservation Commission adopted a policy against drilling in the Great Lakes and key areas of public interest, such as state parks. Nothing, however, could be done about lands already under lease, including a majority of the state lands in the Pigeon River Country State Forest.

In July 1970, the Shell Oil Company struck a rich reservoir of oil that triggered a series of events that forever changed the history of Pigeon River Country.

One of those events was the adoption of a formal Concept of Management for the Pigeon River Country State Forest in December 1973. To protect its wild character from overuse, the policy said development will be more limited and people's activities will be more restricted than on most other state forest lands.

Although amended in 1983, over the past three decades, forest, wildlife and fisheries management practices have evolved with advances in scientific knowledge. Several large private tracts have been acquired by the state and added to the forest that was not covered by the original Concept of Management. The area around the forest has experienced growth and patterns of recreational use have changed that threaten the wilderness character of the "Big Wild."

"The forest is a magnet for outdoor enthusiasts," said Mindy Koch, DNR resource management deputy, "Its wilderness character is being challenged by the overall amount of use, and we were getting a lot of complaints about different users and different events."

The original Concept of Management, Koch said, was written before the phenomenal growth of mountain biking and the increased popularity of horseback riding and snowmobiling.

"A major emphasis of this planning process, which took more than two years, was getting a better handle on recreation," Koch said.

One of the guiding principles was to write a plan that provided management direction that was consistent with the funding sources used to purchase the land.

"More than half of Pigeon River Country was purchased with hunter and angler money, and in recent years the integrity of the forest and the ability to hunt and fish have been compromised by the increase in other recreational uses," said Koch.

Following a two-month public comment period and two public meetings at the Pigeon River Country Headquarters in Vanderbilt, implementation of the updated Concept of Management began with a Land Use Order approved by DNR Director Rebecca Humphries at the December meeting of the Natural Resources Commission.

The order restricts the use snowmobiles to open forest roads and to those county roads which are open for such use in the Pigeon River Country.

"We've made it very clear that snowmobiling is prohibited on trails and from going cross country through the forest," Koch said.

Although the updated Concept of Management also places restrictions on mountain biking and horseback riding, the department will be conducting an additional review of those areas within the Pigeon River Country where these activities may be permitted.

"Many of the public comments received by the department were related to mountain biking and horseback riding, which are not big uses in winter," Koch said. "Director Humphries is forming a special work group that will be able to conduct a more in-depth review of these recreation uses within the Pigeon River Country. We'll be using the winter get more input from the various user groups to identify potential conflicts and opportunities based on the guiding principles established in the 2007 update."

And we'll have the hunters and anglers at the table as well, discussing their issues," she said.

The 2007 Concept of Management for the Pigeon River Country is available for review on the DNR Web site at www.michigan.gov/dnr.