by David Boehlke
Wisconsin, in the not too distant past, along with many of
the other forested regions of the U.S., was covered with thousands of acres of
private timber company lands. Besides
the large volumes of wood that could come off of these large-contiguous tracts
and the lower cost, manpower, and resources to manage and harvest these areas;
they had another benefit. They were
large, unfragmented, contiguous pieces of forestland. Land like this has a strong benefit for wildlife
and many types of recreation, but today these lands are disappearing
quickly. In Wisconsin, paper companies that are already
in dire economic straits are realizing how much these lands are worth as real
estate. Many of the massive paper
company lands of the past 150 years have been parcelized, and sold off to
thousands of different private land owners.
Not only will it be harder to manage these lands for timber production,
but we are also losing the large tracts of forest that once characterized
Northern Wisconsin; forestland that was great for wildlife, recreation, and a
feeling of being “in the middle of nowhere.”
Luckily, beginning in the early 1900’s, Wisconsin began to set aside land as state
parks and state forests. Shortly after
this, national forests came to our state, and shortly after that, our state’s
county forest system was born.
This summer
I worked in Douglas County, Wisconsin for their forestry department doing
forest inventory. At over 278,000 acres, Douglas County has the largest county forest in
the state. This forest provides many
benefits. First off, forestry is one of
the few county services that will actually bring in revenue. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are made off
of timber sales in Douglas
County each year, which
help to offset taxes and fund county improvement projects. Besides the money the county is seeing
directly from these sales, these forests are also supporting the second largest
industry in the state. The county will
contract out timber sales to dozens of logging companies every year who sell
their wood to local and regional mills who sell their products to many
different industries around the state. It
would be a stretch to say that the same amount of acreage made up of 10-40 acre properties owned by
hundreds of different landowners with varying objectives, could support the
same industry.
Besides the
economic benefits from timber coming out of these public lands, these forests
also support a large recreation industry.
Douglas County has over 100 miles of ATV trails,
and over 300 miles
of snowmobile trails within its forests.
Where else can you ride for 100 miles through solid forestland today in Wisconsin without seeing
another human being? And how hard would it be to construct 100 miles of ATV trails
through an area comprised of solely small landowners? This is just the tip of
the iceberg concerning the benefits of large public forest land. Residents of our state must realize the
importance of these lands which must be protected and increased into the
future.
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