Wisconsin DNR has reached goal of putting up for sale 10,000 acres

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Worried about rising costs in Wisconsin's land purchase program, the Republican-dominated Legislature in 2013 ordered the state Department of Natural Resources to put thousands of acres on the sale block.

Northern Wisconsin land purchased with state stewardship program. The DNR is unloading some parceled deemed unnecessary.

Officials were given a deadline of June 30 to conduct an inventory of the agency's 1.5 million acres, identify parcels that they deemed unnecessary and place 10,000 acres up for sale.

This week, a DNR official said the agency had met the 10,000-acre goal.

Terry Bay, director of the Bureau of Facilities and Lands, told members of the Natural Resources Board at a meeting in Madison that:

10,198 acres had been offered for sale.
67 transactions involving 2,795 acres have generated revenue of $3.6 million.
27 more sales are pending involving 955 acres.

If the DNR closes on those pending sales, Bay said in an interview that a total of 3,750 acres would generate roughly $5 million for the state. Buyers are both private parties and local units of government.

The funds will help pay down debt from the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program or pay back money owed to the federal government to buy the land. The stewardship program has long been popular but has come under closer scrutiny in recent years from GOP legislators because of rising costs.

Bonding from the program has allowed Wisconsin to buy large blocks of land from paper companies, which have been selling large swaths of northern timberland for more than a decade.

When the Legislature ordered the land sales in 2013, the interest on the debt of Knowles-Nelson was costing $1 million a week. The program was named after former Gov. Warren Knowles, a Republican, and former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat.

The parcels targeted for sales have been isolated or landlocked so the public could not gain access. The DNR did not consider selling land in official project boundaries of a state park, state forest or natural area.

When the program began, there were some missteps: Trout fisherman opposed the sale of land with spring ponds in Langlade County prized for brook trout. The DNR took the properties off the sales list.

And while it was not officially part of the 10,000-acre effort, the DNR held off on the sale of 1.75 acres of frontage on Rest Lake in Vilas County to business executive Elizabeth Uihlein, who with her husband is one of Gov. Scott Walker's largest financial supporters.

Eventually, the DNR worked out a trade with Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein, with the DNR getting land on another lake in Vilas County with more lake frontage.

Former DNR Secretary George Meyer has kept close tabs on the land sales as executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.

Meyer, who has often been critical of the DNR under Walker, said that his group has objected to less than 80 acres targeted for sale so far. That's not much, he said.

"We think that the DNR has done a very good job of finding those 10,000 acres," Meyer said in an interview.

He said the process shows the DNR has only a small inventory that doesn't fit into the agency's mission of providing public access to land for forestry and recreation.

The DNR is not required to sell all 10,000 acres. Lawmakers required only that the land be offered for sale. Meyer said some remaining parcels will be less attractive and harder to sell.