A real estate developer standing here would drool over the prospects.
Unspoiled hardwood forests covering rolling hills. Deer tracks running past a trout stream and a small, pristine lake. Popular Sugar and Pokegama lakes over the hill. And all just a few miles from Grand Rapids and its amenities.
The thought of dozens of retirement and recreational homes, condominiums or townhomes here comes with dollar signs aplenty.
But John Rajala sees something different on this 1,670 acres his company owns.
Rajala sees big maple trees that provide wood for his company's sawmills. He sees a 28-kilometer cross-country ski trail, a favorite of local families, tourists and high school athletes. He sees unbroken habitat for birds, animals and trout.
"This would sell in a minute," Rajala said. "But that doesn't mean it should. There are values to our community, to our business, to the forest that outweigh the value on paper."
Thanks to a new partnership aimed at preserving Minnesota's remaining big tracts of private forest, Rajala's vision of this land may be about to win out.
This tract of trees, formerly part of the now-defunct Sugar Hills ski area, has been rated at the top of Minnesota's list of private forestland that should be preserved.
A new partnership between conservation groups like the Trust for Public land and Nature Conservancy, nonprofit foundations, private landowners and the state and federal governments is taking shape to buy conservation easements for private forests just like this.
In coming months, the partnership hopes to use $750,000 from Congress' Forest Legacy Program and another $375,000 each from the Minnesota Legislature and the Blandin Foundation to pay for the easement. The deal, paying Rajala about $1.5 million for development rights to this land, could be sealed within a year.
Rajala will continue to own the land and pay property taxes. But the legally binding, state-held easements guarantee it won't be broken up.
The easements also would mandate that the land be managed in a sustainable manner and that it be left open to the public for hunting, skiing and other recreation.
"It's a beautiful, unique piece of northern hardwood forest that people have been talking about preserving for years.
Now we can do it," said Becca Nash, field representative for the Minnesota office of the Trust for Public Land. The conservation group is acting as the project manager.
"We think this is a great example of how conservation easements can work."
FORESTS SELLING FAST
Nearly half of Minnesota's forests, 46 percent, are privately owned, and that land is being sold at an unprecedented rate. Hundreds of thousands of acres have changed hands in recent years, some of it formerly owned by timber companies and now owned by investment companies.
Conservation experts are worried that the emphasis has switched from growing trees over decades to growing profits overnight.
The Minnesota Forest Resources Council, the governor's forest management advisory board, has called the loss of private forestland the top concern for forestry in the state.
For example, Rajala figures that his 1,600 acres could be subdivided into about 300 lots that probably would sell for about $50,000 each. That's $15 million. No amount of trees logged now or in the next 100 years could match that profit.
"The development values for forestland in northern Minnesota have blown right past the value of growing trees. Just paying the taxes now, with the assessed values rising so fast, it doesn't balance out with traditional forestry," Rajala said. "So we have to think of something else to do with the land other than just manage trees."
Rajala, whose companies own about 25,000 acres, sees easements as a reasonable option for some of the larger tracts. He also might be forced to allow development on some land, with caveats to allow logging.
His companies might even join other large landowners, such as Potlatch Corp., and lease land to hunters to bolster income.
"Whatever we can do to help pay the property taxes and not have to sell, we'll take a look at," Rajala said.
TREES FOR TOMORROW
Because 56 percent of all trees cut for mills in the state come from private land, it's an important issue for the timber industry. Once land is broken up and developed, it becomes nearly impossible to manage or harvest for forest products, Rajala said.
Rajala bought this land specifically because of the big maple, basswood, white and yellow birch and red oak growing on it. The wood is perfect for his firm's veneer and flooring plants that use selective logging to make high-value products.
They've already done some logging here but are careful to leave trees to shade the ski trail and leave the best trees to grow bigger.
But if much more private land with big trees falls into development, Rajala may not be able to get enough high-value trees to feed his mills. His companies have bought land to help ensure supply, but the price is becoming prohibitive.
Unlike many businesses that react to quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year pressures, Rajala looks at a small yellow birch on his land and talks about their potential value as veneer in his company's mill -- 100 years down the road.
"It's a long-term business plan. My kids will be the ones to see the real gravy from this land... if we can keep it managed and not developed," he said.
But the concerns over rampant development of forests don't end with lost logging opportunities and jobs. Biologists and wildlife managers are worried that the continued breakup of large tracts of northern forest will harm several species and could harm water quality. Every driveway, every cabin site, every yard light affects species that favor deep woods.
The Sugar Hills land was rated high for protection because it's a large, contiguous tract and is unique in the amount of hardwoods and its geology, called a thrust moraine.
Just to the south, thousands more acres of paper company land, owned by UPM, the former Blandin Paper Co., also are being eyed for future conservation easements.
Conservation groups like the Nature Conservancy note that Itasca County, like Cass County to the south, has been especially hard-hit by development pressure. It's also where the Blandin Foundation is rooted for its projects, and having local matching money helps attract federal money.
ACCESS FOR HUNTERS, SKIERS
Sporting groups say the loss of large tracts of former timber company land to development is kicking hunters and others off land they had traditionally used. On Rajala's tract, a local volunteer club maintains a scenic cross-country ski trail, popular with local residents, that could be lost if the land were developed.
Rajala said he won't get rich on the conservation easements.
"We'll put it in the bank and use it to pay the property taxes; that's where it will go," he said.
Using conservation easements to protect land is relatively new in Minnesota but has been common in eastern states for a decade. Millions of acres of private land are in easements in Maine, Vermont and northern Michigan.
Now, Minnesota conservation groups and the DNR are scrambling to get ahead of the state's forest development trend before it makes deeper impacts on the land, wildlife and public access.
Catherine McLynn, a board member for the Northern Lights Nordic Ski Club that maintains the Sugar Hills ski trail, and an Itasca County Commissioner, says more people are warming to the easement concept in northern Minnesota.
McLynn said anyone who skis these hills just once would agree.
"As someone who knows the value of this resource, how important that ski trail is to our community, I know the value of conservation easements," McLynn said. "More people are starting to see the value of keeping forestland open for tourism, for our timber industry, for the environment and for our community."Duluth News Tribune
