Members of the Forests and Wildlife Stewards participated in a public engagement meeting for the Mille Lacs Wildlife Management Area (WMA) master plan. The Mille Lacs WMA is nearly 40,000 acres and is one of the largest in the state. The Mille Lacs WMA plan is nearly 50 years old, and the Department of Natural Resources acknowledges that many things have changed in the intervening years. One of the most common uses of WMAs is for hunting, but hiking, biking, wildlife observation and foraging are also popular.
During the session, participants, including several Sierra Club members, brought up the need for wild lands to be part of Minnesota’s climate change solution and to be used to promote biodiversity and preserve natural lands. Both the DNR and the public were unanimous in the desire to keep motorized vehicles out of WMAs. The DNR addressed questions about timber harvesting from WMAs, explaining that per federal statute, timber must be managed exclusively for wildlife, not for economic benefit.
And the Stewards are celebrating the news that we have made progress to protect habitat and keep carbon sequestered in high priority state-owned lowland conifer forests and peatlands – ecosystems which are rare across the world. The bill made it through the House, but since it didn’t pass the Senate, it did not get through the conference committee. But the legislature appropriated $500,000 for a study on the benefits of protecting these lands, which will be conducted by the University of Minnesota.