Copper Country Land Deal Near (complete article from source)
Source: Mining Gazette, by Dan Schneider
January 11, 2008
WATTON — Rocky cataracts on the Sturgeon River and acres of forested terrain fronting rivers in Iron County are part of a land acquisition plan between the state and a private environmental nonprofit.
Wednesday, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources announced the purchase of three land parcels totaling 373 acres in Iron County. The land will be added to the Crystal Falls Forest Management Unit.
It includes 85 acres at the confluence of the Hemlock and Paint Rivers.
It’s land Tom Duffus called “as wild and spectacular a wilderness river property as you will ever see.”
Duffus is the Upper Midwest director of The Conservation Fund, the nonprofit group that helped the DNR purchase the land. The Conservation Fund purchased the land from We Energies and held it until the DNR could arrange funding to put it into state ownership.
Duffus spent time on the land alongside the Hemlock and Paint rivers in September and November. He described tall white pines, cascading water and pull-out campsites on the rivers suitable for backcountry canoe expeditions.
“I didn’t sample the fishery but I hear it’s darn good,” Duffus said.
Another two parcels that are part of the purchase comprise 288 acres where the Brule River flows into the Menominee.
“The parcels down on the Brule and the Menominee really go a long ways to helping us consolidate our land ownership along the rivers,” DNR Crystal Falls Unit Manager Steve Milford said.
He said it will help preserve the natural character of the rivers.
“We’ve been able to really keep the river pretty wild,” Milford said. “At least on the Michigan sice there aren’t many roads ... you can go a long ways on that river without seeing a house.”
This land is also important because it comes with an easement that allows public access to 870 acres of state forest land downstream. Previously, legal access to the 870 acres could only be achieved by water.
The Conservation Fund is also assisting the DNR in the purchase of 681 acres on the north shore of the Sturgeon River in Baraga County. This includes frontage on Tibbets Falls, a stretch of water cascading over jagged and angular slate protruding from the river.
Both land sales are among 11,000 acres We-Energies has sold over the last year in the Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin. The utility had acquired the land with the intention of developing hydroelectric projects, but these never came to be.
The Conservation Fund purchased the Baraga land in the last days of December, 2007, Duffus said.
“That’s what we do, we assist public land agencies and private land conservancies with complicated conservation land transactions, especially projects like this that provide public access for traditional uses like hunting and fishing and so forth,” he said.
Legislative approval of a $1.9 million grant from the Michigan National Resources Trust Fund would put the 681 acres into the DNR’s ownership. The grant would cover multiple DNR land acquisitions in the state. The MNRTF board of directors has already recommended the funding be appropriated.
State Rep. Mike Lahti, D-Hancock, said the funding should have an easy path to approval in the state House and Senate.
“Usually it’s an easy situation because the whole idea of this trust fund board and the make-up of it is to take politics out of the award,” he said.
The MNRTF is separate from the state’s general fund.
The land borders the Copper Country State Forest to the west and north.
Four miles of the North Country National Scenic Trail runs through that property. The parcel includes the location of the Oren Krumm Shelter.
Built in 1999 to commemorate Krumm, a Michigan Technological University student and avid outdoorsman who died of a rare bacterial disease the previous year, the shelter burned in the Baraga Bump Fire in the spring of 2007. Volunteers rebuilt the shelter last summer.
Ted Soldan, vice president of the Peter Wolfe Chapter of the North Country Trail Association, which manages the NCT in the Western U.P., was glad to hear the Sturgeon River property is on its way into public ownership.
“If it would have gone into private hands it might have jeopardized that section of trail,” he said.
Further up the Sturgeon, The Trust for Public Land has purchased about 2,000 acres in the Sturgeon River Gorge. Trust spokesperson Brian Madson said the organization plans to convey that land to the U.S. Forest Service in two phases, this year and in 2009. The land will become part of the Ottawa National Forest.
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