© 2024 Interlochen
CLASSICAL IPR | 88.7 FM Interlochen | 94.7 FM Traverse City | 88.5 FM Mackinaw City IPR NEWS | 91.5 FM Traverse City | 90.1 FM Harbor Springs/Petoskey | 89.7 FM Manistee/Ludington
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

State To Reduce Public Land Holdings

http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/PublicLand.mp3

Natural resource officials have sent a plan for managing public lands to Governor Snyder. It proposes to sell off nearly a quarter of million acres and to shrink the boundaries of some state parks.

Land Cap
In recent years the debate over public lands has been hot. People in some rural areas have complained there’s too much public land and that local communities ought to have more say when the state buys and sells properties.

Last year, the Michigan legislature passed a bill that cut off further purchase of land by the state. Paul Rose didn’t agree with that approach. He’s past president of Michigan United Conservation Clubs and he thinks the land cap was arbitrary.

“It was essentially pulled out of the air because I think there’s a fair number of people that had a significant amount of resentment about public land in their area,” Rose says.

But the law also says the land cap can be lifted if the Department of Natural Resources comes up with a new strategy to manage state owned land.

Management Strategy
So the DNR formed an advisory committee, drafted a plan and met with the public. Donna Stine led that effort for the DNR. “We did public hearings across the state and we never heard one person say that we had too much state land or that we should be selling more of it,” Stine says.

Still, the plan calls for the state to sell off 240,000 acres of what it calls surplus property from the 4.2 million it holds in public ownership.

And the DNR would shift boundary lines around state parks and other state lands. “We’ll be looking at those boundaries to take approximately a million private inholdings out of those areas. So we’ll be shrinking those boundaries,” Stine says.  

Three Legged Stool
The DNR has tried to manage land with a three-legged stool approach. First, protect natural resources, second provide recreation and third foster regional prosperity. Stine says the new plan places more emphasis on the economic leg of the stool.

Here’s an example. The fish weir on the Manistee River has always been important for collecting eggs from spawning fish to raise more fish in state hatcheries. But what the DNR is just now realizing is that the weir also is the biggest tourist attraction for miles around.

“So we’re now going to be working with that area of the state to figure out how to make sure that it’s well signed and that it’s interpreted and that it’s easy for people to get access to,” Stine says.

Access
The advisory committee talked a lot about access. It’s no surprise that most public land is in the northern lower peninsula and the U.P. The strategy will shift attention to create more recreational opportunities near where the people are.

Dan Stencil is on the public land advisory committee. He’s in charge of parks in Oakland County. And he thinks urban areas can be a sort of gateway to foster more recreation while opening doors for state-wide tourism.

“So that people can learn how to hunt, fish, do archery, anything outdoors, camping, kayaking. They can learn that locally and then take that trip up north,” Stencil says.

Healthy Discussion
If there’s a common thread in the plan, it’s to be more strategic in which properties to sell and where to buy new pieces that fit the DNR’s goals. One clear way to do that is to develop more trails that link communities and state facilities.

Paul Rose, former president of MUCC, thinks getting all this out there for public discussion is healthy because it dispells a lot of the misinformation. And Rose bristles at the notion that the DNR has done a poor job of managing the lands it has.

“A lot of these lands, in fact nearly the majority, were tax reverted lands and there was nothing strategic about how those were acquired. They were just given up for back taxes,” Rose says.

Those are likely to be the properties that the state would sell off first. But the legislature still has to approve the plan. If it doesn’t, then the cap on land purchases would stay in place across the U.P. and the Northern Lower Peninsula.

The Governor has asked lawmakers to consider the public land strategy by the end of the year.