Public Land, Public Trust

This post originally appeared on the Michigan League of Conservation Voters blog on Nov. 16, 2011. 

Hunting public land, Nov 2010

Public Land, Public Trust
by Drew YoungeDyke
Yesterday was Nov. 15. That may seem like a meaningless statement to some, but where I’m from, it’s like saying that yesterday was Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Independence Day, and my birthday all rolled into one: it was Opening Day for firearm deer hunting.

In northern Michigan, that usually meant a couple days excused from school and a trip to a neighbor’s property, if you were able to secure permission, to sit in a plywood blind and freeze while waiting for a buck to appear silently from the woods. If you didn’t know someone, or didn’t have your own acreage to hunt, then you went to the nearest patch of state land wearing as much blaze orange as you could while retaining the ability to walk. Hunting is so important in this state that even the legislature has recessed for deer season.

However, the very concept of public land is under attack here in Michigan. The resource that has defined our state since it was a territory is now deemed expendable, even burdensome, to some state legislators. Bills recently introduced in the Michigan House and Senate include proposals to limit the amount of public land Michigan may own, to force the DNR to grant permits for easement roads over public land - even when landowners know there is no road access when they purchase the land – and, most appallingly, to raid the Natural Resources Trust Fund in order to publicly fund private mining and logging roads through state land.

These proposals indicate contempt for undeveloped land held in the public trust, and thereby contempt for those who use it. State land, public land, is the great equalizer that allows every Michigan citizen to hunt if he or she so chooses. State land means that you don’t have to be land rich, or inherit a farm, or even know a farmer (though they’re generally great people to know), in order to engage in the oldest outdoor activity in the history of our species. Hunting also contributes $153 million in state tax revenue, and most hunting license fee revenues go to conservation programs. In Michigan, public land means that you can live in a small town and still hunt, or live in a city like Grand Rapids, Traverse City, East Lansing, Detroit, Marquette, or even Ann Arbor (really) and still hunt.

While true that there is plenty of public land across the state – approximately 4.5 million acres, the most of any state east of the Mississippi – most of that land is concentrated in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. It gives great character to the northern part of the state, but if you live in southern Michigan, there are precious few places to hunt. The DNR has an innovative tool for locating public hunting areas, called Mi-Hunt, but you’ll find many of those areas are crowded with other blaze orange dots scattered throughout the tract.

The problem with bills that would cap the amount of state land, ordestroy its wild character by slashing it with roads, or deplete the trust established to purchase new state lands by spending it on private industry roads, is that state laws apply statewide. Someone from the Upper Peninsula or northern Michigan may look around and think that state land is infinitely abundant, but a state law preventing new land acquisitions would apply equally to southern Michigan, where what little available state land exists is already fractured by roads, easements, and development. At a time when the biggest obstacle to hunter recruitment is the availability of a place to hunt, there is no action more anti-hunting than limiting and destroying public land.

While the legislature is recessed, I hope they go out on state land and hunt. I hope they experience the outdoors as an active participant, first-hand, and realize what they rob from Michigan citizens when they introduce and pass bills like these. When they return from their break, I urge them to oppose any bill that would limit, carve, or destroy the abundance and character of public land in Michigan. Until then, I’ll be tracking whitetails on state land while we still have it. 

---