Minnesota's long wrong turn on natural resources

Not so long ago, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was one of the most admired agencies of its kind in the country. Generations of professionals who dedicated their careers to conserving, protecting and improving Minnesota's land and water treasures and the plants, animals and fish that depend on them deserve much of the credit for this achievement, as do the many citizens who supported them.

Top management supported them by fighting for the laws, funding and people necessary to do the job and by vigorously opposing efforts to seek short-term profits at the expense of long-term environmental health and the needs of future generations. And they listened to and stood by field managers and citizens who were on the front lines of the fight.

I fear this is no longer the case. The dedicated professionals and citizens are still there, still doing their best, but support from the top has weakened. Instead, in too many recent cases, the agency has prioritized short-term profits over long-term conservation, and special interests over the public interest.

This troubling shift is apparent in these examples:

• Forest management: In 2017, responding to pressure from the forest products industry to increase the annual timber harvest on lands managed by DNR from 800,000 to more than a million cords, the agency commissioned an analysis of sustainable timber harvest levels. The report suffered from significant uncertainty with regard to projected yields, effects on biodiversity, the impact of climate change and the effects on other non-timber values on a landscape scale. Moreover, timber demand actually was declining, and the primary result of dumping more wood on the market would be to reduce stumpage prices.

Nevertheless, in 2018 the DNR opted to increase the annual harvest to 870,000 cords.

• Logging on wildlife management areas (WMAs): State law requires WMAs to be managed primarily to benefit wildlife. Logging is permissible, but only as a habitat management tool. Nevertheless, perhaps because it couldn't achieve its new harvest goals on its other lands, the agency mandated hard timber production targets on these areas regardless of habitat effects. This alarmed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which, after a careful review of the situation, imposed unprecedented conditions on future multimillion-dollar federal grants in order to ensure wildlife comes before logging on these lands.

• Regulation of off-highway vehicles (OHVs): OHVs can do serious damage to lands and waters. Although only a small minority of Minnesotans own OHVs, the DNR has been promoting more use rather than regulating it to protect the environment. Nearly all of the statewide and regional trail plans undertaken in recent years have been for motorized trails. One state trail plan even contemplates allowing OHVs to access state parks despite this being expressly excluded by law.

The DNR hired a national off-highway special interest group to help plan the route of another, which would cross the entire state from North Dakota to Lake Superior. It has refused to do necessary environmental review of the proposed border-to-border trail, and now the Federal Highway Administration is investigating whether the DNR properly reviewed the environmental impacts of a proposed motorized trail in Houston County.

• Permitting copper-nickel mining: Throughout the permitting process for what would be Minnesota's first nonferrous mine, the DNR has shown a bias in favor of the project. It has expressly described its role as being to promote mining when, in fact, state law requires the DNR to issue permits to preserve the natural resources of the state from adverse mining impacts. Faced with the agency's failure to comply with the law, public-interest groups went to court, ultimately obtaining an order from the Minnesota Supreme Court reversing the permit and returning it to the agency.

As I know from personal experience as both an agency attorney and a longtime deputy commissioner under both DFL and Republican governors, this is a difficult balancing act. The DNR is charged with protecting the environment and natural resources while providing for reasonable use, especially for timber production, mining, outdoor recreation, and public and private water supplies. This requires top managers to weigh current use against protection and conservation for the future. They must do this in the face of constant political pressure for immediate economic development. Although the agency has not been perfect, it generally has managed to maintain a reasonable balance.

We've lost that balance, and we need it back. In this time of accelerating climate change when every decision needs to help our natural environment become more robust and resilient, the DNR's actions too frequently do the reverse.

Steve Thorne, of Two Harbors, was deputy commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources from 1978 to 1990.