Wisconsin Public Television

Transcript For: "Land Trust Stories"

Joanne Garrett:

This is a look at some of our state's special places and how they have been preserved, protected from development. The subject is land trusts. Wisconsin has more than 50. They're non profits that buy land or work with landowners like these placing easement, a conservation easement on their property. The landowner get a tax break, the land gets protected. From a small marsh next to a city to a 64,000 acre forest in the northwoods. How did they do it? Join us for Land Trust Stories, an "In Wisconsin" special.

Announcer:

Major funding for "In Wisconsin" is provided by the people of Alliant Energy, who bring safe, reliable and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in Wisconsin running smoothly. Alliant Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web. The University of Wisconsin Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center, comprehensive as designated by the National Cancer Institute. Providing cancer research, education and treatment for people throughout Wisconsin. UW Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center, cancer care for the greater good. And by the Animal Dental Center of Milwaukee and Oshkosh. A veterinary specialist working with pet owners and family veterinarians throughout Wisconsin providing care for oral disease and dental problems of small companion animals.

Garrett:

How do you preserve a forest of 64,000 acres? A Wisconsin Land Trust figured out how. The result is the largest land conservation project in our state's history, the Wild Rivers Legacy Forest. How do I give you a sense of how big this deal is? To cruise through this forest, you drive 101 square miles or an area just a little bit larger than the City of Milwaukee. You'd head past 48 lakes and ponds, 70 miles of river. Including parts of the Popple and the Pine, rivers so pristine they're part of our Wild Rivers System. This forest used to be called the Goodman Forest after R.B. Goodman, the original owner. Goodman was a pioneer. In 1927 he chose to forego clearcutting on his forest in favor of selective logging. He was the first timber owner in Wisconsin to do so. Selective logging, or sustainable forestry, has been the practice in this forest for over 80 years. Chainsaws have given way to bigger machines. But the result is the same. Trees are extracted. The forest remains. Tony Kowalkowski of Florence County is a logger.

Tony Kowalkowski:

If you can go in and selectively take certain trees out. If you look in here, the landscape still looks beautiful. It's virtually unchanged. In two years you won't even tell there was a crew in here.

Garrett:

Tony and his brother Andrew work for his dad, Tom Kowalkowski, who owns the family logging business. He took it over from his dad, Ed.

Ed Kowalkowski:

My dad was a logger.

Garrett:

Who's been logging on the Goodman Forest for over 50 years.

Tom Kowalkowski:

This chunk we're on right now I cut for another logger when I got out of high school, '81, '82 we cut this same area. Now we're back again. It's been managed right. That's the future, the way you got to manage it. Otherwise it ain't going to be here.

Garrett:

This forest, a place of beauty and board feat, is also the backbone of communities in northeastern Wisconsin, like the town of Goodman.

Tom Kowalkowski:

Pretty much our source is working in the woods, logging.

Tony Kowalkowski:

It's a charge chunk of the local economy up here. It's hundreds of people throughout each mill. All these families, we're all tied up in this one industry. If it goes under, there's a lot of people in this area that wouldn't be able to survive. It is a real thick root in this economy.

Garrett:

That thick root, the forest, faced an uncertain future in 2005, when the owner at the time, International Paper, announced Goodman Forest was up for sale.

Andrew Kowalkowski:

I was pretty worried that they were just going to close it all down so you can't cut it.

Tom Kowalkowski:

Stomach was turning a little bit, you know.

Andrew Kowalkowski:

I was pretty worried that I'd be out of a job.

Garrett:

Loggers, the local communities and conservationists were worried that the forest would be fragmented, sold off in 40-acre lots, limiting access for logging and recreation. And, the most desirable lots, those around the lakes and rivers, would be sold, locked up, lost.

Jeff Kochel:

It's a hard asset and markets for timber may fluctuate up and down somewhat, but the trees are always growing. The investment is always growing. So it's a pretty stable, long-term investment.

Garrett:

Enter a company that sees great possibilities in trees. Jeff Kukel works for Forest Investment Associates. It's a TIMO. What's a TIMO? It's short for Timber Investment Management Organization. TIMOs invest in trees. They buy timberlands as a non-risky portfolio for large institutional investors such as endowments or pension funds.

Kochel:

The returns are not dramatic like the stock market, but they are steady.

Garrett:

Think of it like a bond with bark, and this forest was particularly attractive.

Kochel:

It's been managed sustainably since I think 1926 or 1927. The timber has been allowed to develop so that there are different age classes on the forest, which is important for our investors. You have some mature timber that is very high quality and can be sold as veneer in the world markets and you have seedlings that are knee high and everything in between.

Garrett:

Different ages, different species, a sustainable forest, and a steady flow of funds. Now enter a land trust, looking for partners to help save this property. Matt Dallman works for the Nature Conservancy, a Wisconsin land trust.

Matt Dallman:

In the history of Wisconsin this was the largest conservation transaction to date. 64,000 acres for us was three times the size of anything we've done in the past.

Garrett:

It was large. The final price tag was $84 million. And it was complicated. The project included a slew of partners. Jeff Kochel's TIMO and another TIMO, the Nature Conservancy, and the State of Wisconsin. The end result? The forest was saved. The Nature Conservancy fostered a deal that got a conservation easement attached to the deed of this property, and that easement states that the current owners, the two TIMOS, cannot develop the property. They must allow public access. And they can harvest timber, but it must be done sustainably. This place will stay as it is now forever.

Matt Dallman:

Conservation forestry and forest investment associates cannot develop the land or sell it for development. There will be no homes on it. They can't put cabins up here. They can't lease it out for hunting. The only thing they can do is manage from timber. The next people who buy it from them and the next people who buy it from them can only manage timber. The easement stays on the land forever, no matter who owns it. The public can have access to it, we can hunt and fish, recreate out here. We'll never see homes out here. We know it's through the easement, sustainably managed. If this would have been purchased by possibly a different owner and that different owner didn't value these lands for their natural value, we could have seen cabins and homes being developed on these edges of the lakes and we never would have had the opportunity to come here. It stays on the tax rolls. It's still privately owned.

Garrett:

But with access for the public and loggers.

Tom Kowalkowski:

They cut it the way it's supposed to be cut and get the seedlings growing again and not making their money and running. They're managing it to where it's going to be here for my great, great grandkids.

Tony Kowalkowski:

They are helping us make this forest last so my kids and grandkids and great grandkids can come back. I can say I cut that five times in my lifetime and every time it keeps coming back. Everything is still here. Everything is perfect.

Garrett:

This is the Patrick Marsh Natural Resource Area, 990 acres of undeveloped land in Dane County, one of the most rapidly growing counties in the state. Yes, there is highway traffic in the distance, but there is nature aplenty, and on this day, children. Patrick Marsh in also the meeting place for an after school program called the Discovery Club.

Mark Smith:

This coming spring and stuff we're going to have all these native species growing underneath the trees.

Garrett:

The program is sponsored by the Patrick Marsh Middle School which is just one walk across a field from Patrick Marsh. The Discovery Club is run by this man, Mark Smith, the seventh grade science teacher.

Smith:

The Discovery Club Started about 11 years ago and it's still the same. It is a bunch of students that go out and monitor what's going on out at the marsh.

Discovery Club Student:

Tadpole, we've got tadpoles.

Smith:

We do water quality stuff. We just make observations of the wildlife that we've seen.

Student:

Do you want the air temp?

Smith:

Yeah, give me the air temp too. The data is cool. The data shows were we've been, but I really think that what they get out of it is an opportunity that they don't get at home. They get an opportunity to throw a stick and see a turtle and poke in the mud and crawl on a tree, really an opportunity to kind of be kid and explore. And I think that's the best part of being out at Patrick Marsh and being in Discovery Club. Look at the toad.

Students:

Awwwww.

Smith:

Fantastic.

Students:

It's so cute.

Garrett:

But Patrick Marsh faces pressures. Take a look at a map. Those 990 acres are what the county and others would like to see protected from future development to keep the marsh and surrounding watershed in good shape. But so far, only about 300 acres are actually preserved. The DNR owns some, the county owns some more and here is another key partner. They've saved the area in red. That's the work of the local land trust of Dane County. It's called the Natural Heritage Land Trust.

Smith:

The land trust started getting involved and said well you know we can pick up a piece over here and there was 55 acres here and 27 here and they really come together, they kind of bring the puzzle together. And so now, the land trust has about -- I believe about 100 acres total.

Garrett:

And the land, this living lab is invaluable to teachers like Mark Smith.

Smith:

When I sit here in the classroom and I talk about prairies, and I talk about wetlands, and I talk about forests, it is just pictures in a book unless I can have the opportunity to take the kids out and show it to them. Okay, awesome. Show them where the fox lives.

Student:

We've seen the fox coming in and out.

Student:

We saw the fox in it and out of it. Does it look like he has been digging in there?

Student:

Yeah, it looks like he's digging more, renovating.

Smith:

The land trust is just doing so much for me to make my job easier. Since we're so close we have just a fantastic resource that we can't ignore, we have to get the kids out there and get them to see it. Careful, don't step on him.

Student:

I've been going here since the start of the year. My sister and my brother go here and I just love being out here.

Student:

Well, it's just really fun learning about nature and then going on the water and catching stuff.

Student:

Well, it's just really fun learning about nature and then going on the water and catching stuff.

Student:

You get to find animals tracks. You get to see feathers, different bugs.

Garrett:

Many of us no longer grow up in nature, the club an access to this wild place, provides that experience for these children. Recently Smith participated in a school-wide survey that looked at how the students got to school. The results?

Smith:

After a week of checking the kids out to find out how many of my 29 kids were walking or riding the bus or getting a car ride, out of an entire week only 4 trips were taken on a bike. Not a single kid walked. About half of those kids took a bus and the other half were picked up. So really, almost none of my students ever get an opportunity to just be outdoors, just walking to school. Kids today -- they even said that in their backyard they're like "oh, we don't have any of this stuff in my backyard. I don't have any trees in my backyard, I don't have the creek, I don't have weeds. My backyard is mowed and trimmed and we're not allowed to climb the trees. It's just an opportunity that there's a place that's different and it's wild and it's exciting. Oh, that's cool. I don't know. My first thought is that it's from and oriole.

Student:

Oooh, spider.

Smith:

I just think that there's like a window of time we need to get out and see these things and you've got to have these opportunities. I wish that even in the future that when schools are cited that the whole idea of a connection to the land would be made. I just think that in planning in the future, what a great opportunity. Save a green space for your kids.

Garrett:

Aldo Leopold, the father of America's conservation movement once voiced similar sentiments. Leopold wrote: "I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are 40 freedoms without a blank spot on the map."

Smith:

These are those tree swallows and so they're the ones that you see flying around there, the bright blueish green ones.

Garrett:

A blank spot on the map, filled with wonder.

Smith:

So we'll keep checking them, maybe they'll hatch before school's out.

Student: Mr. Smith, our robins eggs in the garage hatched.

Garrett:

A blank spot that the Natural Heritage Land Trust hopes to grow, piece by piece, into the future.

Smith:

There's a tree swallow up there.

Joanne Garrett:

This is a story that takes place up north, way north. It's the story of one woman's wishes for her land and how, no kidding, some tourists from Chicago made it happen. The story starts here in the Catherine Wolter Wilderness Area, an immense treasure trove full of lakes a few miles from the U.P. and owned by the Nature Conservancy. Matt Dallman is the Director of Conservation for the Nature Conservancy.

Matt Dallman:

This is 2,189 acres with 15 lakes. It has a majority of the habitat types typical to northern Wisconsin from young aspen to maple to hemlock and yellow birch forest. You can come to this property and pretty much see what northern Wisconsin is all about. It's a place to get away from the Minocqua-type of area where you have busy waters and busy streets.

Garrett:

Here quiet reigns. The Catherine Wolter Wilderness Area is undeveloped, wild and accessible. This place isn't locked away. Visitors are welcome.

Dallman:

It's open to the public. We think for people to enjoy and want to protect the northwoods they need to be able to get out and touch it. The public has the ability to hunt and fish out here and will have the ability to hunt and fish here forever.

Garrett:

The public can thank the woman in the photo, Catherine Wolter.

Derek Kresser:

It's funny because growing up I always thought every grandma had 3800 acres.

Garrett:

She has passed on. This is her grandson, Derek Kresser. He lives in the family homestead.

Kresser:

This is Rudolph Lake. This has been the one constant in my life. My grandmother and grandfather had this since 1942. My grandfather, because he was born and raised in Germany during a time where people could not own property, which is my understanding, so when he came to the States one of his big goals in life was to own a piece of property. Because he liked to hunt, fish and be outdoors it all came together to what motivated him to own what he eventually owned here.

Garrett:

Catherine and her husband Fred came here as tourists from Milwaukee in 1938. They loved it. They moved north in 1942 and had the resources from a manufacturing company in Milwaukee to keep adding on bit by bit to their home here until they had acquired 3800 acres. Fred died in an accident here in 1960. Catherine stayed on.

Kresser:

She just loved the wilderness. She loved to hunt and she loved to fish. I think it was just very important and in her heart that that's something she had to do, you know, with this property. Just preserve it.

Garrett:

And she did. In 2000 she made this extraordinary gift. She sold these nearly 2200 acres that make up the Catherine Wolter Wilderness area to the Nature Conservancy for a million dollars less than the appraised value. It became a corner stone of a long term plan to protect the north that the conservancy calls the Border Lakes Conservation Area.

Dallman:

Our project here is focused on what we call linkages or connective corridors. Our work is really trying to piece together these large ownerships that remain to the Ottawa National Forest in the north, to the Northern Highlands to the south. The Ottawa National Forest is about 1.2 million acres of land. Northern Highland is our largest state forest, 240,000 acres. Great wildlife habitat and great for species to move from point a to b.

Garrett:

An animal highway from the Ottawa to the Northern Highland. A green hallway patched together through conservation easements or land purchases. It is a great plan but it faces a considerable obstacle.

Kresser:

In the last five years most places have doubled, if not tripled in value.

Garrett:

Land prices are soaring. Catherine Wolter passed away in 2001. Through her inheritance the family acquired this 322 acre parcel here on Rudolph Lake and adjoining the wilderness area. They loved it. The place was full of memories. But they couldn't afford to hang onto it.

Kresser:

The biggest single thing was the property taxes.

Garrett:

Catherine Wolter had specified in her will that the Nature Conservancy should have the right of first refusal after the family if the property ever came up for sale. The organization had just made a big purchase. They couldn't swing it. Plan b.

Kresser:

There was an offer on the table from a developer that would have put 24 lake lots and approximately 20 more back lots. We were looking at somewhere between 40 and 50 total lots on this parcel. So it would have been chock full of development otherwise. And, you know, in my heart I didn't want to see that happen because I knew that grandma didn't want to see that happen, either.

Garrett:

Subdivision was the plan but the plot turns. Enter some tourists from Chicago. Jeff Johnson and Jody Sterret.

Jody Sterret:

We had the privilege of coming up here a few years back and fell in love with it. The eagles and the loons and the small lake, just fell in love with the Northwoods. It's just beautiful.

Jeff Johnson:

I think it's one of the great hidden secrets of the great places in the United States. It's so pretty up here.

Garrett:

Not unlike Catherine and Fred Wolter, this Illinois couple wanted to buy land here and they had some resources. They were in search of a larger parcel. They saw this one but assumed after some research that the deal with the developer was going forward. But maybe not. Next chapter.

Sterret:

We knew the nature conservancy had a last look at it. And so we thought let's go to Madison and talk to the people at the Nature Conservancy. If this is gone maybe they have other pieces where we could be involved and get to understand how these trusts work and how these large tracts are being protected.

Garret:

Sparked and Jody and Jeff's interest, the Conservancy decided for the first time ever in Wisconsin to employ a program often used by other land trusts in the US. It's called the conservation Buyer Program. Here is how it works. A land trust, in this case the Nature Conservancy buys a property and holds it long enough to attach a conservation easement to it. In this case, development was limited to just three houses on this entire parcel. Once the easement is on the deed, the land trust immediately offers the property for sale. Now with the easement attached. Jody and Jeff were among the bidders and they won. The property was protected.

Dallman:

We know that we won't have 50 lots right next door to the Catherine Wolter Wilderness Area.

Garrett:

It's protected. Because it's now in private hands it is not open to the public. One could argue that the best outcome would have been for the nature conservancy or the state to own this property so they could provide access and everyone in the state could enjoy it. Still, in a time of tight dollars, the conservation buyer program served the purpose of protecting the land. The land in the Rudolph Lake parcel and the land in the Catherine Wolter Wilderness Area.

Kresser:

To have it saved was the most important thing.

Garrett:

The conservation buyer program, another tool in land use. To balance protection and development. A tool first used in the northwoods, a place in peril because it's so deeply loved.

Dallman:

It really is being loved to death. At the same time, the people like the Johnsons who love it so much are also the ones able to come back and help us protect the property. I think that that model, I hope, can then be replicated at other places.

Sterret:

The two of us said it's our turn, what can we do at our level? We just feel lucky to be here.

Garrett:

Land Trusts first took wing in Wisconsin in 1937. Since that time, these non-profits have managed to protect more than 200,000 acres in our state from development. Places like the Wild Rivers Legacy Forest, Rudolph Lake, and Patrick Marsh. There are now more than 50 land trusts in Wisconsin, protecting land. Sometimes by helping landowners with easements, sometimes by buying land outright, sometimes by brokering complicated conservation land deals. These land trust stories all come back to this common thread, saving Wisconsin's special places for the next generation, for now, forever.