[BCNnet] Chicago Tribune editorial calls out to birders, hikers and others for legislative action

[Randi Doeker - Chicago]

FYI - Randi Doeker
Chicago



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Slipping up in Springfield 
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August 27, 2005

A few winters back, Tim and Sue Henn built a sled run in the back yard of their McHenry County
home. One day they let a neighbor bring some visitors by to try it. One of them slipped on the ice,
broke an arm, tore a knee ligament and knocked herself unconscious.

This being America, she sued for negligence, setting in motion a series of court and legislative
actions that open-lands advocates now fear could inhibit public access to bike paths, hiking
trails, fishing holes, bird-watching spots and other recreational delights of the great outdoors.

The fretting is prompted by a new state law, signed this month by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, that aims
to clarify liability questions raised by a 2003 Illinois Supreme Court ruling in the Henn case.

The law is a classic example of legislative myopia that does more harm than good. Outdoors
enthusiasts should demand a redo when lawmakers return to Springfield in the fall.

The court decision and related legislative action involve a 40-year-old state conservation act that
encouraged private landowners to open their property to the public for outdoor recreation. As long
as the landowners didn't charge for the access, the law in most cases insulated them from
negligence claims if someone got hurt on their property.

Downstate, the law helped farmers feel a little less nervous about letting hunters traverse their
property. In the Chicago area, the more practical impact was to help park and forest preserve
districts secure easements from landowners to build bike trails and nature paths that crisscross
public and private land.

Without such easements, for example, Lake County could never have built the popular Des Plaines
River Trail and Greenway uninterrupted from the Wisconsin border to the Cook County line.

In fighting the sledding lawsuit, the Henns sought to invoke the liability protections of the
conservation act. The state's high court said no, ruling that the protections apply only when
property owners allow the general public to use their land, not a select group of invitees. (The
case then went back to trial and, on Wednesday, the jury found for the Henns anyway--even though
they weren't allowed to argue that the conservation law in question insulated them from liability.)

Fearing the Supreme Court ruling would make it financially risky for a farmer to have pals over to
hunt, lawmakers set out to fix the problem last spring. And they did--for hunters.

As rewritten, the law explicitly guarantees liability protections to landowners who allow people on
their property to hunt or shoot, including those with a special invite. But the new language dwells
so much on hunting that it appears to now exclude forms of sport more relevant to the Chicago
area--like biking or hiking--from the protections.

"This begins to erode our ability to provide recreation," said Brent Manning, executive director of
the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. "The legislature should fix it."

Make that refix it.


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