Natural resources can be Koochiching County’s economic bread and butter, but only if we can use them.
Clearly, protected areas have their place in our world. They offer places for people to hunt and bird watch and preserve and perpetuate the ecological diversity of Minnesota’s natural heritage.
But we must strike a balance in places like Borderland, with plentiful forests, vast wetlands, and many areas of protected land.
What is lacking here are jobs and development that allow us to live here and offer the amenities that visitors and new residents seek.
While it may be a difficult process, we urge local official to seek help from our newly elected lawmakers for a way to use one of Koochiching’s Scientific and Natural Areas to explore the potential for a peat harvesting operation.
In Koochiching County, 16 percent, or 182,464 acres, of the total peatlands are within SNAs and Watershed Protection Areas.
One of these SNAs contains the number of acres and quality of sphagnum peat moss that a Canadian company needs to accommodate a peat harvesting operation. No other areas in the county appear to have the quality of peat or amount of acreage this company needs to be successful.
Commissioner Mike Hanson this week told the county board that the undisclosed company, customers of which are featured on television advertisements, is talking about investing millions of dollars — in the right location.
State lawmakers could consider a land swap with or a purchase by Koochiching County, if the SNA designation was removed.
An expert in peat, Kurt Johnson of the Natural Resources Research Institute, told the board that developing a peat operation is difficult at best, and would be very challenging in this case. He also notes that such a proposal would face opposition from people concerned about the environment.
We saw such difficulties as the county moved forward with a peat operation near Big Falls. While the development is moving slowly, Berger Horticultural Peat Co., of Quebec, has hired a contractor to harvest trees at the site, has created ditches at the initial harvest area, has built an all-weather road and conducts monthly water tests.
Peat harvesting operations must have reclamation plans in place before they are permitted. And while these plans take decades to return the land to its original state, it does happen.
And in the meantime, residents benefit by the increased tax base and jobs that result from the harvest this natural and eventually renewable resource.
Such a proposal would have to be considered in the long term. But it may be worth the investment in time and exploration for the positive results.
