The US Forest Service is looking for public comment as they look to acquire around 100,000 acres of land throughout northern Minnesota.

All of the proposed land falls within the boundaries of the Superior National Forest, and around 80,000 acres is within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

“Though a very large acquisition it’s a small proportion of the 1.1 million acres that is the boundary waters,” says Tom Hall, the Superior National Forest’s supervisor, “Most of the boundary waters is actually managed by the Forest Service already so 80 to 90 percent of the boundary waters is already national forest system lands.”

Those 80,000 acres are currently owned by the Minnesota Office of School Trust Lands – which holds over 2.5 million acres throughout the state. Trust lands are publicly owned and managed to generate revenue for the state, often through logging and mining. That revenue goes to fund public schools throughout the state.

However, the law prohibits logging or mining in the boundary waters – even if it were possible, the remote nature of the landscape would make access difficult.

“They’re not able to manage those for productive purposes for revenue generating purposes because of it being surrounded by wilderness.” Said Hall. In other words, the lands simply aren’t making money for the school trust fund, hence the sale. If it goes through, it consolidates most of the BWCA land under federal ownership, helping with logistics issues.

Public comment on the proposal opened the first week of August, and runs online through September 3. While some of the comments made were supportive, not everyone is happy with the plan.

On August 15, five Republican state lawmakers from the northeastern Minnesota sent a letter to the DNR’s Commissioner Sarah Strommen opposing the proposed sale. In it, they argue both that the sale would violate federal law, saying that a land exchange should be made instead. They also argue that the money made from the sale of these lands would be less than potential school trust revenue made from swapped land.

The current proposal comes after years of talks over a potential land swap deal, where the BWCA land in question would be traded for federal land that would make money for the school trust, but that deal fell apart.

“There were issues that were a part of appraisals and comments that we received that that helped to influence both the Forest Service perspective and the state’s perspective of whether that was viable or not and really came to understand on all parties part that that was not viable at this point and so that’s when we came to the conclusion that that needed to be canceled.” Explained Hall.

The proposal also includes the Forest Service buying around 3,200 acres of land in St. Louis County made up of tax-forfeited property, as well as about 17,000 acres of land being offered up by the non-profit organization The Conservation Fund. This land, as well as the BWCA land is within Superior National Forest, which is owned by the federal government.

The Forest Service is holding a virtual open house on Thursday, August 29, from 4 to 6 p.m. More information can be found on the project website.