Michigan/Parks

Linear Parks are listed on the Michigan/Trails page.

For information on how to tag a State park see the Public Lands section of the Michigan page and the National Park Services' guide on park tags in OSM.

MapRoulette

• Michigan GNIS park nodes MapRoulette

Current Status

Addresses, wikipedia links have been updated for the state, county, township, and other local parks listed below. There still remain some naming and mapping issue to be resolved as noted below. Please use official State of Michigan sources for resolving conflicts. The originator of this list included minor areas or management units within parks. Is there interest in mapping this finer level of detail? Splitting off state parks into a separate list may be desireable, in Wikidata the appropriate "P31" instance of value for Michigan State Parks is "Q37998944" Michigan State Parks.

State Game and Wildlife Areas Status

As these areas are added, please populate the way/relation tag link to track data entry status. The State of Michigan owns and operates many state properties for the primary goal of wildlife management. "State Game Areas" are operated by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife division. "State Wildlife Management Areas" are areas within the boundary of State Forests, dedicated to wildlife management and co-managed by the Forestry and Wildlife Divisions. Like state game areas, state wildlife management areas offer enhanced visitor opportunities for recreational hunting and/or wildlife viewing. Initial guidance is to map wildlife management areas within the State Forest boundaries as separate features because these have specific rules that pertain to them. In Wikidata, the appropriate value for P31 "Instance of" is recommended as "Q106908136" : wildlife management area of Michigan.

County, Township and other Community Forests

Common in other states like Wisconsin both Marquette County, Michigan and Delta County, Michigan have publicly-owned forest lands that are open for public recreational access. These lands are primarily managed for landuse=forest, but also fall under leisure=nature_reserve and boundary=protected_area as they maintained in a near-natural state and are protected from development.

University Forests

Michigan Technological University, University of Notre Dame, University of Michigan, and Michigan State University all hold forest lands within the State of Michigan for research or instructional purposes. Please see U of M Field Properties

Privately owned preserves

Non-profit or community organizations that hold properties in the public trust for the purposes of leisure=nature_reserve can be found in the National Conservation Easement Database managed by the Trust for Public Lands and in the National Protected Areas Database (PAD-US) operated by the United States Geological Survey. Often to avoid property tax liabilities, these properties are made open to the public but this should be confirmed before tagging access=public.

Commercial Forest Lands open to public hunting, trapping, and fishing

To increase opportunities for hunting, trapping, and fishing, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources offers the Commercial Forest Program in which enrolled ownership=private landowners receive a lowered property tax rate in exchange for granting access=permissive for hunting=*, fishing=*, and trapping purposes. To be enrolled in the program, properties must have a prepared forestry management plan with the primary goal of landuse=forest. The Hunting Access Program makes similar opportunities available. In 2019, Lyme Great Lakes Timberlands acquired holdings of Weyerhaeuser (Plum Creek Timberlands, L.P.) and from Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC (GMO Threshold Timber, Michigan, LLC).

State Forest Management Units Status

As these areas are added, please populate the way/relation tag link to track data entry status. The State of Michigan owns and operates many state properties for the primary goal of forest management, List of Michigan state forests. What were formerly managed as "State Forests" are now organized by regional forest management units under the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Forest Resources division. Currently these are mapped as "subarea" roles within a super-relation for each state forest (example- Au Sable State Forest 13989117 13989117. Each Forest Management Unit or "FMU" may have several field offices as well as a headquarters office. The headquarters office location open to the public should be added as a node (amenity=ranger station), assigned the "admin_centre" role within the relation. Cleanup may entail removing obsolete state forest names and replacing with the current forest management unit name, address, website, phone number, etc. to facilitate better access to outside informational resources. These obsolete names may be found on out-of-date USGS Topographic Quadrangle maps, but serve only as a historic reference and only serve to confound current mapping efforts. See Michigan#Public_Lands for current tagging, but these should not be tagged "landuse=forest" or "leisure=park". Within the hireachy Michigan State Forests also makes available Compartment, which have specific management plans available for public review and comment. These lower level organization units have potential for later addition as lower-level boundary subareas within the forest management unit relations. If you really want to go ham on the organizational level, compartments are further organized by collections of stands upon which individual management actions are carried out and for which forest inventory information is summarized.

Federally Managed Lands

Various federal agencies manage lands in Michigan, most of which are open to the public with few access restrictions. For tagging of these lands, see United States/Public lands.