Friday, May 6, 2016

WI DNR wants huge increase in Kettle Moraine State Park logging

As the Walkerites ramp up sweetheart deals, special-interest favors and other giveaways of Wisconsin's public waters, land and clean air, and with the Wisconsin DNR intentionally run by a Scott Walker team chosen for its "chamber of commerce mentality," I note this item on the DNR website and wonder if "a variance" calling for a more than seven-fold increase in some timber cutting in a popular state park is completely science-driven: 
EAGLE, Wis. -- The annual allowable amount of timber that could be harvested from the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest would be increased under a proposed master plan variance that is currently open for public comment. 
The forest's 1991 master plan calls for approximately 50 acres of hardwood and 100 acres of softwood annually. The proposed variance would allow for approximately 360 acres of hardwood stands and conifer plantations may be harvested each year.
Prairie wildflowers at Kettle Moraine State Forest - Southern Unit.
That sure sounds like the removal of an awful lot of habitat which serves and preserves plants and wildlife - - and which belongs to the public, by the way - - so color me skeptical.

Especially since this comes on the heels of another Walkerite plan to increase logging on private lands formerly open to the public, yet which are subsidized with public tax breaks.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Walker's DNR is just droppin' another "log" on the Badger State. When are people going to get sick of this crap.

nonheroicvet said...

I own 200 or so acres of timberland/hunting land. What these increased timber sales accomplish is to significantly reduce the value of the timber on my property that pays full property tax. I wonder how many small landowners are aware of how their value is being eroded by government timber sales. Supply side economics ??

Anonymous said...

Check Walker's donor list....................remember he has a nearly $1 million debt he needs to clean up. What better way than get the donations flowing than increasing the amount of lumber his donors can take off of state land!

Anonymous said...

DOA and DNR have now put their heads together & pretend they want public comment not only on "double fencing" to stop CWD (after the sick deer already got out of the game farms & infected our wild deer), but also:

CAFO manure spreading (poisoning water) and "land use" (e.g., selling public land, allowing mining, shoreline development, timber sales, the chaining down of bogs in the Flambeau Flowage -- whatever) -- because it all smells like money when they're busy oiling the Koch conveyer belt of cash to rightwing political coffers.

Not only legislators, but we the citizens of Wisconsin also have the right to request a ruling on whether E.coli is a THREAT to our health and our well water and whether cumulative water-taking by industry/ag & the deforestation of Waukesha, Walworth counties is bad for replenishment of our water table.

DNR web site you directed us to reveals that a dam broke and the trout died...oh, well...

Do we have confidence that the DNR will ask for public comment on how it uses the new online database of Wisconsin's "real estate" (the real purpose of DNR) for the benefit of local communities' protection of natural resources and the furthering of community economic development? DNR probably needs former state forest land for burial of dead deer carcasses and coal ash waste:

http://www.dnr.wi.gov/topic/Waste/documents/faclists/WisLic_SWLandfills_byCnty_withWaste.pdf