The Feds do a fairly cruddy job of taking care of their land. I trek through Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and find trees down across paths and left there for months (so far), and branches and trees down throughout the woods, never cleaned up (that would be unnatural), making a likely fire hazard.
Yet they are now contemplating a wide bicycle path through the edge of the woods, "to encourage tourism." They will bulldoze trees and, it appears, one "critical dune" (if a landowner touched such a dune, he'd be fined and/or prosecuted).
Trees and nature, au naturel, are nice and all, but private landowners almost always take better care of their land than any government entity. With regard to the Sleeping Bear Dunes park, it seems to have fewer visitors than a hundred landowners would have (with the exception of Pierce Stocking Drive and the Lake Michigan Overlook, which would make a fine, separate state or federal park) -- and those landowners' improvements would undoubtedly bring in more property taxes than what the Feds pay the various taxing bodies. More people would derive more enjoyment from the private development of the lakeshore, plus state law provides that the beaches are open to the public.
The Feds already own more property than they can properly maintain. Cash-strapped Michigan should consider selling the land to a responsible developer.