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8/9/10 |
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8/9/10 |
Forester
hired to help stop ash borer near LaCrosse
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10/9/09 |
Judge backs Wis. law aimed at managed
forest lands
ROBERT IMRIE | Posted: Wednesday, October 7, 2009 5:30 pm from the WI State Journal, Madison A Dane County judge has upheld a new law that bans owners of private land enrolled in a state-managed forest program from leasing the land for hunting. But the judge ruled a portion of the law that immediately scrapped existing leases was unconstitutional. The ruling affects about 3 million acres of land in a state Department of Natural Resources program that offers huge property tax breaks in return for making more private land accessible to the public for recreational uses, authorities said. DNR attorney Quinn Williams said Wednesday the agency was happy with the decision that mostly upheld changes in the program designed to stop abuses and close some legal loopholes. A typical hunting lease generally runs year-to-year anyway, he said. According to court records, the Legislature passed the managed forest lands law in 1985, allowing landowners to enroll property for 25 or 50 years and either open it to the public for recreational activities or close it to public access. The property tax break is less for land that is closed. The program was designed to better manage the lands as well as provide hunters and other outdoor users access to more private property. A new law effective January 2008 banned landowners from leasing land for exclusive hunting and declared all existing leases as void, ending a practice that had been allowed for at least 12 years. Tigerton Lumber Co. of Tigerton, with 22,000 acres in the program and at least 26 separate leases to hunters involving 2,800 acres, sued the state a year ago, claiming the law was an unconstitutional taking of their property. The company said it would cost it $644,000 in "withdrawal fees" to pull the land from the program and continue leasing it. Jerry Ort Jr., a co-owner of the sawmill business, said Wednesday that money from the leases provided "huge revenue for us" at a time when he was laying off workers. He said the company did not intend to withdraw from the program, and no decision had been made whether to appeal the ruling. Sen. Russ Decker, D-Weston, who was involved in the 2008 law change, did not immediately return a telephone message Wednesday. Kathy Nelson, the DNR's forest tax section chief, said 3.04 million acres of forest land are enrolled in the program, with about 1 million acres signed up by industrial owners like Tigerton Lumber. She said 1.2 million acres were open to public access. It's unknown how many of the closed 1.8 million acres are leased to hunters, she said. Land closed to hunting gets a 75 percent break on property taxes, while land left open gets a 95 percent break, Nelson said. The DNR said that between 1987 and 2004, one acre of land was open to the public for every 1.3 acres that was closed. However, between 2005 and 2008, when 422,000 new acres were enrolled, the ratio changed dramatically _ one acre open for every four acres closed. It's evidence that more landowners saw leasing as a "revenue generator," Nelson said. In a 17-page ruling issued Tuesday in Madison, Circuit Judge Sarah O'Brien ruled the managed forest program only establishes policy by creating a voluntary program. Therefore, she said, Tigerton had "no vested property right in leasing its lands" signed up for the tax break for the state to illegally seize. There has always been a limit on the amount of acreage that could be closed, suggesting a goal of ensuring public access, O'Brien said. But the law went too far in scrapping the existing leases, she said. "The history of regulation of MFL (managed forest law) lands would lead a reasonable landowner not to expect impairment of the right to lease lands, especially not a retroactive impairment," the judge wrote. The state had no vital public interest that would be "destroyed" by letting existing leases expire on their own, O'Brien said. "It was not necessary to make the statute retroactive, thus impairing existing contracts, in order to fulfill the goal of the statute." |
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4/2/09 |
Good
news: There is interest in changing
the Fence Law Update
– Good news: There is a new bill SB
136 Senate Bill 136
is sponsored by Senators Senators
HOLPERIN, LEHMAN,
COWLES, PLALE
and OLSEN, cosponsored by Representatives MURSAU and CLARK
. It has been
referred to Committee on Agriculture and Higher Education. Read the bill at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2009/data/SB-136.pdf
The past legislative session saw the introduction of a
promising Fence Law reform bill. The bill was numbered AB 796 and may still
be viewed on the Wisconsin State Legislature web page at: http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2007/data/AB-796.pdf The bill was quite simple in concept. Briefly, it changed the wording in the current law so that shared fences would be required only when both of two adjoining landowners used their properties for pasturing livestock. This would remove the onerous element of shared-fence responsibilities when only one of the landowners pastured livestock. To read the entire note, CLICK HERE. To read the Farm Bureau’s letter, CLICK HERE. To read James Sorenson’s statement to the state Assembly, CLICK HERE. To read WWOA’s letter, CLICK HERE. |
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