Some Wisconsin land conservation groups are pushing back against a Republican proposal that they say would gut a bipartisan land preservation program that has existed for more than three decades. 

The future is at stake for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, named after former Republican Gov. Warren Knowles and former Democratic Gov. Gaylord Nelson, unless Wisconsin lawmakers act soon. The program was established in 1989 and helps the state, municipalities and nonprofit groups buy land for conservation and public use. The program is funded through June. 

Last month, the Wisconsin Assembly advanced two Republican bills that would fund it for two more years. But that legislation would essentially pause land acquisitions and have the state Department of Natural Resources conduct an inventory of all land acquired using money from the program over its existence. 

“Sadly, I hate to bring politics into this, but sadly it almost seems like the Republicans want a stewardship program in name only,” said Joe Hovel, the volunteer director of daily activities for the Northwoods Alliance. “If it doesn’t have some avenue of land protection, then I don’t understand the great value in it.”

“Just the very thought of this program being diminished to not provide those essential needs for the next generation, it just saddens me terribly,” he told the Wisconsin Independent. 

The Northwoods Alliance used Knowles-Nelson funds to acquire a 200-acre area called the Headwater Cedars Community Forest. Hovel said the alliance’s main mission is land conservation, mostly in the Border Lakes region in northern Wisconsin. The community forest project means the land is managed by the community for the community. 

Beyond the environmental and sustainability benefits of conserving land in northern Wisconsin, he said, the alliance’s work also boosts the economy through helping the timber and tourism industries. There’s some timber harvesting, and families can also enjoy spaces through hiking, snowshoeing, skiing, hunting and fishing. 

“I want legislators to know that the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program is an absolute critical opportunity for Wisconsin to carry on its long-term tradition of land protection with public benefits,” he said. “If we can’t do that for future generations, then we’re failing miserably.”

Lawmakers point fingers over lawsuit, court ruling

During a Feb. 3 hearing of the Senate Committee on Financial Institutions and Sporting Heritage on the GOP bills, Republican lawmakers blamed a lawsuit and resulting state Supreme Court decision for putting Knowles-Nelson in jeopardy. 

The high court in 2024 ruled 6-1 that the provision of state law granting the Legislature the right to review certain expenditures of the program unconstitutionally impeded the executive branch’s duty to execute the law; the ruling stripped the Legislature of the ability to block projects that have already been funded under Knowles-Nelson. 

Republican state Sen. Patrick Testin during the recent hearing accused the court of ending a system of review that “worked extremely well, by and large.” Testin said if the Knowles-Nelson program goes away, the odds it can come back are slim to none. There have been several different versions of bills proposed to restore the program’s funding, he said, but he has “run into buzz saws from every side of the aisle, every corner within our respective caucuses.” 

Democratic Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim recalled that when she served on the Appleton City Council, an anonymous legislator blocked roughly $700,000 for a trail project that the Legislature had approved. The budget committee eventually released the money. 

“I don’t want to treat this conversation as, everything was working fine,” Dassler-Alfheim said. “We were literally holding municipalities hostage by not releasing the money that our Legislature had approved because of that process. It was broken.” 

GOP Rep. Tony Kurtz said that it had become “abundantly clear, for the caucus I represent, that land acquisition was a problem.” He also said he’d like to see more money for the Knowles-Nelson program, but, he said, “I know what the palate of our caucuses is. They don’t like borrowing money, and so that’s an issue. They don’t like buying the land up north.” 

So, Kurtz said, “let’s focus for a couple years on maintaining what we have, and let’s do the inventory. Let’s see what the path is forward, and in two years, we’re going to be right back here saying, Hey, we need to do this, this and that.”

“We have come a long way, and this is not an easy task,” Kurtz told the committee. “I think waiting two years is not a real hard thing to do.” 

The bills would pause land acquisitions for two years, reduce the annual program funding from about $33 million to about $28 million, and call for the project inventory.

The other Democrat on the Senate committee, Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, coauthored a proposal in September that seeks $72 million annually for Knowles-Nelson. Gov. Tony Evers called for $100 million per year in his budget proposal last year, but that did not make the final state budget.

Habush Sinykin said land acquisitions can be very time-sensitive and called waiting two years “a no-go.” 

“They turn into condominiums rather than public spaces,” she said. “We have a program. We just need it to be funded at a level that it is functional.”