A decades-old dispute over what to do with state land locked inside the federal Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness may be moving toward at least a partial resolution.
The U.S. Forest Service on Monday announced a proposal that would swap about 30,000 acres of state land inside the BWCAW for an equal value of Superior National Forest land outside the wilderness.
Forest Service officials say they have identified about 39,000 acres of Superior National Forest land that would be appropriate to pick from for the exchange. They’ve set five public meetings to outline the idea.
The process, if it continues to move ahead, still must clear the federal environmental review system, including developing a series of alternatives as well as multiple opportunities for public input.
If the proposal advances and clears both state and federal government hurdles, it would resolve part of the problem left behind when the federal wilderness was created in 1964 and expanded to its current form in 1978.
In all there’s about 86,000 acres of state “school trust” land inside the 1.1 million-acre federal wilderness. That land has been managed as de facto wilderness for decades, with no return to the state.
If the transfer is concluded, the federal government would finally gain control of the land within the BWCAW and the state would have more land to offer to loggers and mining companies hoping for a return to state trust funds that help pay for a small amount of public school costs.
Superior National Forest officials say their plan is to purchase the remaining state acres as federal money is made available.
“We’re looking at internal opportunities for funding as well as other opportunities,’’ said Kris Reichenbach, spokeswoman for the Superior National Forest.
She said state officials support the combination land sale and trade.
Reichenbach said the land swap alone could take up to five years to complete, depending on what level of environmental review is determined necessary. But she said the land trade fits into the forest’s long-term plans by consolidating federal lands in key areas - in this case the BWCAW - and shedding small, remote parcels on the periphery of the national forest.
Many state and local officials have been pushing for the exchange as a means to open up more land to commercial logging and mining outside the BWCAW, especially close to the Iron Range. But environmental groups oppose the exchange, favoring instead a federal buy-out of the state lands to avoid shrinking the overall size of the Superior National Forest.
Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness said Monday that they oppose any land swap until money is appropriated to complete the purchase part of the deal. Many of the parcels of federal land include ecologically valuable lands that would fall into state hands where logging and mining would take precedence over ecology and recreation, the Friends said.
“We are very disappointed that after years of waiting, the federal government is no closer to funding a purchase of the state land in the Boundary Waters,” said Paul Danicic, executive director of the Friends. “The U.S. Forest Service should go back to the drawing board and come back with a solution that doesn’t shrink the Superior National Forest.”
The issue last made headlines in 2012 when the Republican-controlled U.S. House passed legislation allowing all 83,000 acres of state land in the BWCAW to be swapped for federal lands outside. Under pressure from environmentalists, the bill didn’t advance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and died.
A compromise agreement that would have seen about 40 percent of the state land in the BWCAW traded and another 60 percent purchased by the federal government failed to advance in 2012. Several groups came together at that time to forge the compromise deal, including the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Superior National Forest, environmental and conservation groups. But that deal was quickly discarded by lawmakers who opted for the total land trade.
Some say the school trust fund would be better off with cash for a land sale to the feds, much as nearly all school trust land in the southern half of Minnesota was sold to farmers more than a century ago.
The Forest Service and local counties have been working for years to trade federal parcels for county lands locked in the BWCAW.
State/federal BWCAW land swap
U.S. Forest Service public open house meetings, 4-7 p.m.
March 9: Gunflint Ranger Station, 2020 W. Minnesota Highway 61, Grand Marais
March 10: Laurentian Ranger Station, 318 Forestry Road, Aurora
March 12: Forest Headquarters, 8901 Grand Avenue Place, Duluth
March 23: Kawishiwi Ranger Station, 1393 Minnesota Highway 169, Ely
March 26: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Headquarters, 500 Lafayette Road, St. Paul
