The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is placing new conditions on millions of dollars in outdoor aid for Minnesota after witnessing harmful logging practices by the Department of Natural Resources.
DNR Wildlife Chief Dave Olfelt said Thursday that the federal agency drafted the additional conditions as part of a $26.4 million block grant established in July for habitat management in DNR Wildlife Management Areas. (WMA) of Minnesota. He said the two agencies are “working on” the preliminary set of conditions to ensure DNR compliance.
“We’re working to make sure we get it right,” Olfelt said. “They have legitimate interests…their role in this is to ensure that money is spent on wildlife management.”
The latest two-year block grant to boost wildlife habitat, hunting, birding, hiking and other outdoor recreation in the WMAs is tied to federal excise taxes collected from hunters. Under the so-called Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Act, Minnesota has received $398 million since 1939. DNR accesses the money through biennial block grants on the condition that land acquired or managed with the proceeds be managed for living purposes. wild.
In Minnesota, the heightened oversight of the program by federal regulators stems from a formal complaint filed in 2019 by 28 of the DNR’s own wildlife managers and scientists. The group wrote to DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen, saying an intensified state logging program for the wood products industry was nullifying the DNR’s wildlife management responsibilities in the WMAs. Since then, the call for change has been taken up by a group of retired wildlife managers, retired foresters and conservationists known as the WMA Stakeholders Network.
“The feds have the strings in the pocket on this,” said Craig Sterle, a retired DNR ranger and former president of the Minnesota chapter of the Izaak Walton League. “The DNR may have to pay the price.”
Sterle said his group has been frustrated with what members see as a slow response to his campaign. A central concern is that DNR wildlife managers responsible for fostering healthy populations of game and non-game species have lost local control on which stands of timber must be felled in the many WMAs in the state.
Rich Staffon, another member of the stakeholder group, said the new conditions for the use of the Pittman-Robertson money in Minnesota indicate federal fish and wildlife officials are moving in the right direction. “They have definitely put some pretty significant restrictions on the DNR,” he said.
In February 2020, the feds toured logging sites in three of the largest WMAs in Minnesota. According to the “findings and conclusions” drawn from the field audits, wildlife habitats were compromised at all three locations.
Red Lake MMA: Auditors photographed a wide swath of fallen black spruce trees that had been felled and abandoned by loggers. With so much wood covering the forest floor, the clutter “severely reduces wildlife habitat and creates an area unusable for hunters and other wildlife recreationists,” the document says. wildlife and that the DNR “did not identify any wildlife benefits or objectives for harvesting from these types of stands.” The auditors also noted that the DNR’s forestry division “plans to harvest, apparently for economic reasons.”
Whitewater WMA: Auditors found a stand of oak felled in 2017 and 2018 that did not regenerate as oak. Instead, the site was filled with invasive buckthorn, aspen, and ash trees.
Mille Lacs MMA: Auditors photographed a sloppy overabundance of post-logging “felling” piles that are expected to minimize forest regeneration and invite invasive plant species. At another logging site, prolonged storage of aspen logs created a “continuous disturbance to wildlife.” At another Mille Lacs site, loggers cut a road with oversized berms that were ripe for erosion, sedimentation and the introduction of invasive plant species, the report said.
In a larger section of the report, Fish and Wildlife Service staff wrote that they struggled to find records related to logging decisions, responsibilities and processes. “Thus, (DNR’s Fish and Wildlife Division) appears to have ‘lost control of land’ acquired or managed with Pittman-Robertson funds and license revenue,” the report says.
The federal report also noted the absence of wildlife plans and wildlife goals for logging activities in the three WMAs. The DNR’s Olfelt acknowledged that the agency needs to be clearer about the wildlife purposes being served by logging. He also said that the DNR has wildlife management plans that are out of date.
Olfelt said the USFWS “wants documentation that decisions are made for wildlife management purposes.”
In the list of conditions now listed for the DNR to receive Pittman-Robertson grant money for the next two years, the DNR must describe how timber harvests benefit native birds and mammals. The agency must also document that planned timber harvests exclude areas with high value fish and wildlife and irreplaceable forest types.
If loggers plan access roads or landings, the DNR must document how those changes will be designed, developed, and restored using methods that preserve critical natural environments for fish and wildlife. Another drafted condition states that the USFWS must preview any anticipated timber harvest on “Critical Habitat” acres before submitting a bid for a logging contract.
Olfelt said one of the drafted conditions requires the DNR to document which stands of WMA timber are to be harvested each year. That’s one of the mistakes the two sides are trying to iron out, he said, because registry contracts give winning bidders a choice of when to cut over several years.
“We can’t predict which stands will be harvested in any given year,” Olfelt said.
In a joint statement issued Thursday, DNR Commissioner Strommen and USFWS Regional Director Charlie Wooley said agency officials meet regularly to update the terms of the grant.
“Grant agreements can be complicated, and we are working together, as we always have, to ensure that the DNR manages the WMAs and documents that management in a way that meets the service’s funding requirements,” the statement said.