Fish & Wildlife Service leans on Minnesota DNR to correct course on logging

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is slapping new conditions on millions of dollars in outdoors aid to 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 extra conditions as part of a $26.4 million block grant set forth in July for habitat management on Minnesota's Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs). He said the two agencies are "working through'' the draft 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 the money is being spent for wildlife management.''

The latest two-year block grant to boost wildlife habitat, hunting, bird-watching, hiking and other outdoor recreation on WMAs is tied to federal excise taxes raised 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 lands acquired or managed with the proceeds are managed for wildlife purposes.

In Minnesota, the stepped-up oversight of the program by federal regulators is flowing from a formal complaint raised in 2019 by 28 of the DNR's own wildlife managers and scientists. The group wrote to DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen saying that a state logging program intensified for the wood products industry was overriding DNR's wildlife management responsibilities on WMAs. Since then, the call for change has been taken up by a group of retired wildlife managers, retired foresters and conservationists known as WMA Stakeholders Network.

"The feds hold the pocketbook strings on this,'' said Craig Sterle, a retired DNR forester and past president of the Minnesota division of the Izaak Walton League. "DNR might have to pay the price.''

Sterle said his group has been frustrated with what members consider a slow response to their campaign. A central concern is that DNR wildlife managers responsible for fostering healthy populations of game and nongame species have lost local control over which timber stands should be cut on the state's many WMAs.

Rich Staffon, another member of the stakeholders group, said the new conditions for Minnesota's use of Pittman-Robertson money signals that federal fish and wildlife officials are moving in the right direction. "They've definitely slapped some pretty significant restrictions on the DNR,'' he said.

In February 2020, the feds toured logging sites at three of Minnesota's largest WMAs. According to "findings and conclusions'' drawn from the field audits, wildlife habitats were compromised at all three places.

Red Lake WMA: Auditors photographed a broad swath of fallen black spruce trees that were cut and abandoned by loggers. With so much timber covering the forest floor, the mess "severely reduces wildlife habitat and creates an area unusable by hunters and other wildlife recreationists,'' the document said. It went on to say the fallen black spruce forest had been a vibrant, important place for wildlife and that DNR "identified no wildlife benefit or objective for the harvest of these types of stands.'' Auditors also noted that DNR's forestry division "plans to harvest, seemingly for economic reasons.''

Whitewater WMA: Auditors found an oak stand logged in 2017 and 2018 that did not regenerate as oak. Instead, the site filled in with invasive buckthorn, aspen and ash trees.

Mille Lacs WMA: Auditors photographed a sloppy overabundance of post-logging "slash'' piles expected to minimize forest regeneration and invite invasive plant species. At another logging site, prolonged stockpiling of aspen logs created a "continual disturbance for wildlife.'' At another Mille Lacs site, loggers made a road with oversized berms that were ripe for erosion, sedimentation and introduction of invasive plant species, the report said.

In a more broadly written section of the report, Fish and Wildlife Service personnel wrote that they struggled to find records pertaining to logging decisions, responsibilities and processes. "Therefore, (DNR Fish & Wildlife Division) appears to have 'lost control of land' acquired or managed with Pittman-Robertson funding and license revenue,'' the report said.

The federal report also noted the absence of wildlife plans and wildlife objectives for logging activities on the three WMAs. Olfelt of the DNR acknowledged that the agency must be more clear on wildlife purposes served by logging. He also said DNR has wildlife management plans that are out of date.

Olfelt said the USFWS "wants documentation that decisions are being made for wildlife management purposes.''

In the list of conditions now listed for the DNR to receive Pittman-Robertson grant money over the next two years, DNR must describe how timber harvests benefit native birds and mammals. The agency must also document that planned timber harvests exclude areas with high fish and wildlife value and irreplaceable forest types.

If loggers plan access roads or landings, DNR must document how those changes will be designed, developed and restored using methods that preserve natural settings critical to fish and wildlife. Another drafted condition states that the USFWS must preview any timber harvest envisioned on "Critical Habitat'' acres prior to bidding for a logging contract.

Olfelt said one of the drafted conditions calls on the DNR to document which WMA timber stands are going to be harvested each year. That's one of the bugs the two sides are trying to work out, he said, because logging contracts give winning bidders the option of when to cut spanning a number of years.

"We can't predict which stands will be harvested in a given year,'' Olfelt said.

In a joint statement issued Thursday, Commissioner Strommen of the DNR and USFWS Regional Director Charlie Wooley said agency officials are meeting with each other regularly to update the grant conditions.

"Grant agreements can be complicated, and we are working together, as we always have, to ensure that the DNR is managing WMAs, and documenting that management, in a way that meets the service's funding requirements,'' the statement said.