Yesterday the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) voted to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program for four years at $32 million per year. Please see this link for another thorough report from Gathering Waters, which led the well-conceived and well-executed plan for reauthorization.
Before I descend into editorial comment, some prognostication. This may well be the decisive action regarding Stewardship in this budget. The JFC vote probably represents the compromises of the Republican caucuses in the Senate and Assembly. If the Governor approves or partially vetoes the budget, he will not change the Stewardship provisions unless he can strengthen the program with a partial veto. The Republicans would have been exceedingly careful in drafting those provisions to make that impossible. One ominous possibility remains. If the gulf between the Governor and the Republican Legislature widens too much, he might veto the entire budget. Should that happen all bets are off as to which provisions of the budget survive, are changed, or disappear. Conservationists can't do anything about that. We just have to be prepared to battle for Stewardship again should a full veto occur. Normally, a full veto is not even a serious consideration. I don't know about this budget.
The JFC agreement is better than nothing. When nothing was a real possibility, that's a win. Any of us who care about Stewardship join Gathering Waters in thanking all of you who contacted legislators. That massive grassroots effort is the key reason we'll have Stewardship for four more years.
Irony is all too common in our increasingly droll world. Yesterday offered a perfect example. As JFC was debating Stewardship, the DNR issued its June Board Meeting agenda. Three real estate transactions appear, in all of which Stewardship provides critical funding.
The first was a 260 acre addition to Devil's Lake State Park. That purchase in combination with The Nature Conservancy purchase of an adjoining 80 acres will mark the full acquisition and protection of the park along its key and most accessible boundary. It also better protects a State Natural Area.
The next is a multi-thousand acre forest easement in Oneida County that offers the public excellent access to a variety of hunting, fishing, hiking, and foraging. As or more important it provides the local timber industry with a permanently secure supply of professionally managed forests.
Finally, the purchase of a small but expensive lot in Waukesha County provides a safe parking lot and trailhead for the Ice Age Trail in place of the very dangerous on road parking that exists now.
These three actions perfectly illustrate the benefits Stewardship offers to citizens and visitors across the state. The economic benefits to tourism and timber are very obvious in the first two. Those facts and the location of two of the purchases in Republican represented parts of the state have me suspecting that irony just didn't happen. My guess is the DNR had an eye to the timing of the debate on Stewardship as they scheduled those items for the Board.
If so, good for the DNR. The Legislature always needs examples of the many benefits Stewardship has in every part of Wisconsin.
Thank you for your vital help in saving the Stewardship program. And here's hoping you won't read another blog on this topic for quite some time.
Topf Wells, Madison Audubon board of directors and advocacy committee chair
Cover photo by Joshua Mayer
