Landwehr highlights for The Journal DNR issues
Avid angler and hunter Tom Landwehr visited Borderland this week.
But it wasn’t to experience the area’s natural wonders, though Minnesota’s head of the Department of Natural Resources said Rainy Lake looks like a perfect destination for a future vacation.
Instead, International Falls was the last stop on a tour of mills across the state intended to meet a directive of Gov. Mark Dayton that calls for commissioners of state agencies to “do good outreach” and help fulfill the governor’s mission of creating jobs and better government and connecting with the constituency.
“This is what he wants and I want to do — to visit with some of our most important partners,” Landwehr said of the mill tours.
The DNR and its policies play an important role in local economies and people’s livelihoods and quality of life, he said.
“When your sitting in St. Paul, you don’t get that perspective, so it’s really important for me and my staff to get out and visit,” he said.
Landwehr was joined in the mill tour by newly-appointed DNR Forestry Division Director Forrest Boe, Northwest Region Director Lori Dowling and former Sen. Bob Lessard.
Lessard, a long-time advocate for the outdoors, serves as assistant to the DNR commissioner for community outreach. The Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council, which provides funding recommendations to the Legislature from the Outdoor Heritage Fund, was named after Lessard.
The visit included a discussion with Boise Inc. officials in an effort to better understand the needs of Minnesota’s timber industry, said Landwehr.
“We’re grateful Commissioner Landwehr and members of his staff took the time to meet with us today,” says Lori Lyman, Boise public affairs manager. “We had a good discussion and are encouraged that retaining a healthy forest products industry is a top priority of the DNR.”
Landwehr said proper forest management involves cutting trees. “Using the forest for fiber and lumber is important for the forest health,” he said. “So we need the forest products industry to help manage forests as much as the forest products industry needs us to provide trees.”
One of the goals of the visit is to find out what is working in the relationship between the industry and the DNR, what is not working and what can be improved, Landwehr said.
Minor policy changes can impact the industry’s economy, he said. As a primary, low cost provider of timber, the state must be cognizant of the challenges faced by the state’s timber industry.
“There is a lot of things that impact how we sell wood, where we sell wood, what the prices are, so we want to make sure we’re doing the best job we can using the forests and working with industry to keep this symbiotic relationship going,” he said.
But as part of the visit, Landwehr met with The Journal to discuss issues now at the Legislature that involve the DNR.
Issues Landwehr pointed to involve bills that would switch management of the state’s school trust land — of which Koochiching has 855,000 acres — to a new panel; aquatic invasive species; the wolf season; and request by the DNR to increase hunting and fishing license fees.
And, he noted, include moving the fishing opener up a week — while not a huge priority for the DNR, the idea is spurring a lot of discussion at the Legislature.
Landwehr said his job changes when the Legislature is in session. He said he provides recommendations and advice about ideas and proposals.
“The most challenging thing is how to promote something proactively while playing defense on some of the other things,” he said.
Hunting, fishing fees
An increase is absolutely critical to help maintain hunting and fishing opportunities, Landwehr said.
“I hunt and fish a lot,” he said, noting he had fished at Lake of the Woods just five weeks ago.
“The economy that’s generated by the Lake of the Woods fisheries, it’s stunning, especially in the winter,” he said. “And it’s not by accident.”
The management provided by biologists with the DNR is critical to maintain the health of the fisheries to maintain that economic engine for local communities and the state, he said.
“If we don’t get that increase, we’re going to go into the red by June 2013 and we can’t go into the red,” he said. “This is our last legislative opportunity to adjust the fees before we start cutting programs.”
Landwehr said every statewide hunting and fishing group has supported the increase proposal. “It’s one of those Legislatures, especially in the House, that everything that sounds like a fee is equated to a tax. This is a user fee — the people who pay for it get direct services, and many are supportive of it.”
He noted that there is no House companion bill yet, with just two weeks left in the legislative session.
Landwehr said the DNR is making a last minute appeal for people to contact their legislators to urge them to approve the increase.
School trust lands
Landwehr says he believes the DNR is doing the best job it can of managing the 2.5 million acres set aside to fund schools.
Most of those acres in the northern part of the state are considered lower valued land: 1 million is peatland, with limited value; 1.5 million is commercial timber land, with half million acres of low value timber land.
“Most have marginal value with the value on them being timber or mineral leases,” he said.
Last year $23 million was placed in the school trust fund, with $21 million coming from mineral leases.
“Some legislators are looking at what’s happening nationally,” he said. Many point to Utah’s model, which he said increased its fund from $16 million in 1996 to $1.3 billion today.
“What they don’t highlight is that Utah had the opportunity for a huge federal land swap,” he said, creating more valuable lands in the school trust lands.
“They picked oil fields and land around developing cities,” he said. “It’s great what they’ve done, but it’s not what we have in Minnesota.”
Landwehr said creating a whole new agency is not the answer. And, he said, it would likely result in the need for that new agency to hire additional workers to manage the 2.5 million acres of trust lands, with the DNR managing the other 3 million acres of state lands.
“In many cases this means two different agencies managing lands right next to one another for which we are doing the same practice, forestry or minerals, for which we now have to lease from each other the right to cross those lands.”
He said loggers and paper mills would need to deal with two agencies to harvest and purchase timber.
Utah has 70 people working to manage the trust lands with just one of those people a forester. The others, he said, are attorneys, brokers, developers, marketers.
The DNR now uses 130 people, 100 foresters and 30 geologists, to manage state lands — that’s one person for 20,000 acres or 30 square miles, he noted.
“We would have to add people above that to do what they do in Utah,” he said.
Handing the trust lands to counties to manage would also require additional staff, he added.
Landwehr said bills have cleared both the Senate and the House. He called the House version, which would create the new agency, “terrible.” The Senate version, he said, creates a trust lands advisor — “an arms length objective analyst that would look at what the department is doing and suggest ways we could do things different. We support that.”
Sen. John Carlson, R-Bemidji, authored the Senate bill and Landwehr said the DNR will support that in conference committee.
Landwehr said if the House version gets to the governor’s desk, he will recommend a veto.
AIS
Landwehr said he hopes fighting the spread of aquatic invasive species will be awarded additional funding.
The new regulations may appear “bureaucratic, burdensome and nonsensical, but the only way we can slow the spread of aquatic invasive species is through education and personal responsibility. We have 850,000 registered boats in the state and any one of them is capable of infesting a lake.”
Landwehr said every boat in the state cannot be inspected coming into and out of a lake, so the state must rely on users to prevent the spread.
“We have a long history of unfettered use of the public waters and want to continue that, but we have to take care of the lakes by doing modest checks,” he said.
Landwehr said formal and informal conversations about AIS have been held with Ontario officials in an effort to share information and encourage similar rules.
Wolf season
“In the scheme of things its a relatively small issue, but it’s important to a lot of people and important we do it right,” he said.
Landwehr said establishing a wolf license is important to generate funds to operate the program.
However, he said, the whole plan is contingent on the state not getting sued over the plan for a hunting season.
“We believe there is some very basic information that we do not have now,” he said. The first season involving a conservative 400 wolves in a hunting season, should provide that information.
“What we want to ensure is that people look at this like a valuable resource, like a bobcat, not as a pest, or something they want to eliminate,” he said. “So we need to get to the point that respects it as a trophy animal and allows for a reasonable harvest and that we don’t have to worry about getting sued over.”
Landwehr said the wolf, like no other animal, evokes an emotional response in many people, making establishing a hunting season challenging.
Fishing opener
Landwehr said there are minimal biological reasons not to hold the walleye fishing opener this year one week earlier than its normal time.
“The fish spawn is based on water temperatures,” and he said the regular opener is set for an average of the lakes in the state. Warm spring temperatures likely played a role in an earlier spawn in many lakes, he said.
Biologically, the regular state opener is early for many northern lakes, but it may increase harvest on Mille Lacs “and in the middle of summer where we would have to tighten the regulation — that’s our biggest concern.”
However, he said the Legislature must consider the social and economic aspects of the fishing opener. Many resorts, he said, will not open earlier than regular opener regardless of whether it is held one week earlier.
A technical issue, he said, is that it’s possible that even if it passes the Legislature, the governor may not have an opportunity to sign the bill into law until May 1, leaving little time for anyone to prepare.
And, he said, it may be included in a bill that the governor will veto.
