A Northwoods Almanac for 9/6 – 19, 2013
Public Lands
I recently led a hike on a state-owned
property, and one of our many discussions concerned the amount of public land
in Wisconsin – was it too much or too little? One of the participants noted
that relative to our state neighbors to the east and west, we have the least
public land. I looked it up, and she was right:
State Total
acres Public
acres %
of total
Wisconsin 34,766,000 6,189,000 17.8%
Minnesota 50,954,000 11,975,000 23.5%
Michigan 36,357,000 10,231,000 28.1%
Remarkably,
New Jersey has a higher percentage of public lands – 18.3% - than Wisconsin.
Who would have thought that?
As
for Illinois, our favorite neighbor to the south, 4.1% of their land is in
public ownership, a similar number to Indiana (4.5%) and Ohio (4.2%).
Leading
the list by far with the highest percentages are the western states, which also
have the highest percentages of non-arable lands.
The
numbers do little to resolve the value-laden question of whether we have too
little or too much public land statewide or nationally; however, they lend some
perspective from which to begin to judge.
There
is, of course, no “right” percentage. It’s helpful to consider that the amount
of public land within each state came about through a unique combination of
conserving highly desired areas, and conversely, through receiving lands that
were tax-delinquent – lands that no one else wanted at the time.
During
European settlement of the Northwoods, the prevailing belief was the plow would
follow the ax, a belief that was based more on boosterism than ecological
understanding. In the early 1900s, land companies acquired cutover lands with
hopes of selling them at a big profit to settlers. The Blue Grass Land Company
of Minneapolis advertised land for a settlement near Eagle River describing the
area as “suitable for all kinds of farming . . . the land is rich,
clay-bottomed, making it the most productive hay land in America, just as good
as those famed ‘blue grass’ lands of Kentucky.” The Blue Grass Land Company
town, Farmington, eventually changed its name to St. Germain.
The
Wisconsin Central Railway had 1 million acres to sell, and distributed
brochures such as “A Farm in Wisconsin Will Make Money for You from the Start:
Crops Never Fail” accompanied by pictures of prosperous farms, since pictures
don’t lie.
The
University of Wisconsin’s College of Agriculture distributed 50,000 copies of a
pamphlet entitled “A Handbook for the Homeseeker,” printed in English, German, and
Norwegian, extolling the
virtues of farming in northern Wisconsin. Since most immigrants couldn’t read
English, the booklet was filled with pictures of prosperous farms and employed
boosterism to entice farmers to the Northwoods: “After a most careful and
thorough examination of the situation I am prepared to say without
qualification that I believe no better place exists today for profitable sheep
husbandry than northern Wisconsin. The reasons for this is the natural
adaptation of the soil and climate, the free and bountiful growth of Kentucky
blue grass, red and white clover, the easy culture of root crops; the ample
growth of corn for forage purposes, and the fact that oats and peas flourish
here remarkably. The climate is all that could be desired for sheep . . . With
farms supplanting the forest, northern Wisconsin will not revert to a
wilderness with the passing of the lumber industry, but will be occupied by a
thrifty class of farmers whose well-directed, intelligent effort bring
substantial, satisfactory returns from fields, flocks and herds.”
This
boosterism finally lost its shine in the early 1920s, and land clearing in
northern Wisconsin slowed to virtual halt. In 1921, one million acres in 17
northern counties were offered for sale as tax delinquent (out of a total of 11
million acres in these counties). By 1925, 2.25 million acres were offered for
tax sale, and in 1927, 2.5 million acres. Four-fifths of these deeds went
unsold. Nearly one-fourth of the Northwoods was tax delinquent land at this
time, and only 18% had been purchased.
After
40 years of the State and Federal governments making every effort to create
farms, only 6% of the total acreage of the Northwoods was in cultivated crops
(only 1.4% in Vilas Co.).
Meanwhile,
by 1925, only 1.5 million acres of saw timber were left in the 17 counties.
At
a 1929 hearing in Madison, a letter about an isolated farmer described the
reality of getting crops to market in the Northwoods: “This man lived several
miles from a highway. It had taken him two days to get his year’s crop – 30
bushels of potatoes – out to the highway and another half day to deliver it the
rest of the way to a lumber camp where he received 35 cents a bushel [he made
$10.50 for his entire crop]. The road from his farm to the highway was sometimes
covered by as much as 4 feet of water making it impossible to get through. His
children were often unable to get to school.”
These
isolated farmers created an enormous tax burden on towns and counties because
state laws required local governments to build roads and schools, and provide
other community services, but the towns and counties were going bankrupt trying
to do so.
T.W.
Brazeau, representing Nekoosa Edwards Paper Company, said in 1929 there ought
to be a “fine and imprisonment for anybody to go there and farm such land. A
man ought not to be allowed to take his family in there and subject them to the
starvation and deprivation some of them are doing, trying to make farms out of
something that is not farming land . . . It is too bad there is not some kind
of comprehensive and efficient scheme to take it (this land) out of private
ownership and put it into state forests.”
The
combination of tax delinquencies and the impossible requirement to provide
community services forced the northern counties to request the once
unimaginable authority to zone their lands, a remarkable reversal of the long
established right of northern land owners to use their land as they
desired. The counties desperately
needed to deter the ill-advised location of farms and to relocate poorly
situated farms. They wanted to classify lands for recreation, agriculture, and
forestry, and they wanted large-scale reforestation and the establishment of
county forests. The legislature responded in 1929 by giving counties the right
to zone for the regulation of agricultural lands, and to acquire lands by tax
deeds and put them under the forest crop law.
Wisconsin’s
Attorney General declared: “The county zoning statute is undoubtedly in the
public welfare. The cutover areas of northern Wisconsin speak as eloquently
against haphazard development as any city condition. The spotting of these
lands with remote or abandoned farms, resulting in sparsely settled districts
with insufficient population or value to support roads and schools, . . . the
misdirected efforts to farm lands not well-suited to agriculture, with
resulting personal grief and social loss; the far-reaching economic ill effects
of stripping the state of timber, the fire hazard of the cutover lands, and the
fire hazard of human habitation in their midst, all cry out for planning, for
social direction, or individual effort.”
And
then the coup-de-grass – the Depression struck and some northern towns reported
tax delinquency at 70% of all their land, while many whole counties reported up
to 50% of their land as tax delinquent.
Oneida
County, the most virulent of counties originally opposed to forestry,
ironically enacted the first state zoning laws in 1933, which were also the
first of their kind to be enacted in the United States. As a “Special Circular,
Making the Most of Oneida County Land” published in 1921 had noted, “The future
of Oneida County depends on knowledge of essential facts governing past and
present conditions and a determination to face these facts and to plan for the
future.” And though there were still a few who said that zoning deprived
settlers of their constitutional rights, economic failure at every turn exacted
its final toll.
By
the end of 1932, Oneida County owned over 200,000 acres of tax deed land. By
1935, 23 counties had adopted zoning ordinances. And by 1944, 2 million acres
of county forests had been established.
Meanwhile,
the state established the Northern Highlands State Forest in 1925, and the
American Legion State Forest in 1929.
The
Federal Government followed suit and purchased 1.5 million acres during the
1930’s for the Nicolet and Chequamegon National Forests, and the Civilian
Conservation Corps planted millions of trees in the 1930’s to help make forest
restoration possible.
The
total story is far larger than I have space for, but all of this is to say that
any discussion of public land ownership needs historical perspective. It wasn’t
a bunch of tree huggers who coerced various government entities into the
creation of public lands, but a fierce economic reality that allowed no other
choices, and which gave us, very thankfully, the reforested lands we enjoy so
much today.
Sightings
On
8/26, Randy and Debbie Augustinak in Lac du Flambeau wrote: “Last evening, one
of the warmest of the summer, we looked up from our wooded Lac du Flambeau yard
to see what appeared to be a squadron of sleek and very nimble birds
feasting on dragon flies just above the treetops. Trying to focus the
binoculars on these darting birds was nearly impossible, but they clearly had
forked tails and a distinct white bar on the underside of each wing . .
.The accompanying photo confirms that the 2 dozen or so feathered fighter jets
we'd been watching were in fact nighthawks, a first for us here.”
On
8/20, Gary Bohlin wrote: “This evening on a Vilas County lake I saw an eagle
swoop down for a fish, which it caught but was unable to fly away. It simply
dropped itself in the water and wrestled with the large fish for a few moments,
then began to butterfly stroke to shore, which was a good 150' away. What a
sight to see those massive wings rowing to shore! The eagle headed for a
partially submerged log on shore and had a 20-minute feast on a large mouth
bass. As I was watching this whole ordeal with binoculars, it then leapt into
the air and a second eagle came into my field of view and intercepted the
first. There was mid-air contact, and they were only 20 to 30 feet above the
water when the first eagle dropped what was left of the fish. At that point the
second eagle plummeted to the water and simply plopped on the fish carcass.
Then within a few seconds it spread its massive wings and elevated itself like
a harrier jet. As the second eagle was gaining some momentum in swooped the
first eagle and made in-flight contact. The thief eagle made a turn into the
dense pine shoreline with the other eagle in tight pursuit. I instantly lost
sight, but the snapping of branches and loud noises made me just put down the
binoculars and smile thinking you sure can't buy a ticket to see that.”
Celestial Events
On
9/8, look for Venus just north of the waxing crescent moon. On 9/9, look for
Saturn about 2 degrees north of the moon. On 9/16, we are down to 12.5 hours of
daylight, less than a week away from equinox.
Loon Study Addendum
In
my last column on a loon research project that took place on the
Turtle-Flambeau Flowage, I noted that the failure of nearly two-thirds of the
loon nests was “not cause for great concern given that loons are long-lived,
often to 20 years or more, and thus don’t need high annual replacement rates.”
This was the stated conclusion of the authors of the study. However, I failed
to note that that an estimated 3000 loons died from botulism
in Lake Michigan in 2012. This could have a significant effect on loon populations
if it occurs annually, given that there are only an estimated 20,000 adult
loons in the Great Lake states.
Many thanks to Helen Williams on Crab Lake for reminding me of this.
No comments:
Post a Comment