Spring                    Waning Seed Moon

Lost Forty Chippewa Forest

But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.
Alan Watts

Yes, but what if the far, far forest got given away to land owners who share border with it?  What if the far, far forest, instead of being quiet, had the sound of management activities taking place?  Management by paper companies.  If these things happened, then we might not come to know we’re connected to everything.

There are two bills making their way through the legislative process which would allow both of these incursions on our public lands.

The first bill, HF696, Rep. Dill, allows property owners whose lands are contiguous with public lands to acquire those lands which touch their property with a quit claim deed from the state if there are trespass issues involved.  As one environmental advocate puts it, what will prevent a land owner from encroaching on public land with a building or a fence or a continuous use that will then get “resolved” by a private sale.  A private sale means no public input.  This bill has passed its division in the House.

HF1132, Rep. Dill and others, allows a pilot project which would lease our forest lands to private industry for management.  This is, as MCEA puts it, an attack on public lands.  The most essential word in the phrase public lands is public.  If we allow our lands, our commons, to fall under industrial management then they lose their essence.   Here is language from the bill itself:  “Forest management lease-pilot project. Allows the commissioner to lease state-owned forest lands for forest management purposes as a pilot project.”