Milestones in Conservation History
John Tuma’s Capitol Update – Summer Edition, July 1, 2010
“Logging roads have recently been indiscriminately slashed through and across park lands, disfiguring their beauty, and opening the way to all the dangers of forest conflagrations against many magnificent evergreen groves and promiscuous forests which were numbered among the most valuable park holdings the state possessed.”
- Jacob V. Brower, Former Itasca State Park Superintendent, May 9, 1904
Minnesota’s first state park, and still one of its jewels, was established in 1891 by order of the State Legislature and action by the U.S. Congress. That happened in no small part due to the tireless citizen lobbying by Jacob V. Brower. Born in Michigan, Brower moved to Minnesota as a young man. In 1862 he volunteered to serve in the hastily mustered military regiment under Henry Sibley in response to the Sioux uprising on the western prairies. He was happy to return to his home in Todd County after the campaign and eventually rose to serve his community as county auditor and county attorney.
The passion of Brower’s life, however, was history and exploration. In the fall of 1888, he self-funded an exploration under the charter of the Minnesota Historical Society to finally settle the claims of what lake was the origin of the Mississippi River. Upon his return from the north woods, he joined several others in an effort to preserve the land around the true source of the Mississippi – Lake Itasca. Their vision was to have a great wild park for Minnesota in the fashion of the newly minted parks at Yellowstone and the Adirondacks – a new vision of conservation often maligned by the powerful political interests of the mining and logging moguls of the time. Against great odds these citizen lobbyists successfully engineered passage of the first state park out of the 1891 Legislature.
Fortunately that wasn’t the end of the story of preserving one of the crown jewels of wild parks in our nation. Because of his tireless advocacy, Brower was hired as the park’s first superintendent and he continued to advocate for its interests after he retired in 1895. In the early 1900s powerful logging moguls convinced state officials to turn a blind eye which allowed them to exploit timber stands within the park’s boundaries and dam up the lake in order to move the logs. The above-quoted effort by Brower caused him to be relentlessly attacked in the papers by the interests of the powerful logging moguls.
The new superintendent of the park, Mary Gibbs, was a young lady who took over the post upon her father’s death, becoming the third superintendent of the park and the first woman to ever hold such a position in the nation. Despite death threats, she courageously served a legal warrant on the loggers, forcing them to take down dams which were damaging Lake Itasca.
Logging did continue in the park’s boundaries for another couple of decades, but eventually ceased, with several of the historic stands of pine trees within the park boundary being preserved to this day. It took the courage and vision of people like Brower and Gibbs to suffer ridicule and threats to change the mindset of the public at the time. The preservation of Itasca State Park is cited today as one of the great milestones in our nation’s conservation history. It was one of those milestone events that helped begin to change the ethics of the country from one of exploitation to stewardship.
Over the last century, forest management has been changing and new threats have emerged. The large and established timber companies have been divesting themselves of large tracts of property. Land developers have been taking advantage of this action to profit off the subdivision of these large tracts. This national trend started in the northeastern United States and has spread across the Great Lakes region. More than 13 million acres of private industry forest land has been sold across the United States in the past decade. Though this land was privately held, it facilitated good management of these forests to maintain a vibrant and diverse wildlife habitat. If the land is subdivided for development, it will lose its forest management potential which could severely harm outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat.
Minnesota is blessed to have a new set of visionary leaders who recognized the threat of this coming change in land ownership. Two of those visionary leaders who should be recognized are Michael A. Kilgore, Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Natural Resources Economics, Policy, and Administration; and Tom Duffus, Minnesota Director of The Conservation Fund, a national group that helps fund land purchases for conservation. These two men were able to identify the changing timber industry dynamics. They recognized the opportunity to preserve large tracts of land by working with timber companies for a reasonable cost by using Forest Legacy easements. It was through their leadership that the first major project under the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment Funding will be the Forest Legacy easement preserving nearly 190,000 acres of forest land near Grand Rapids along the Mississippi River at the cost of only $36 million to taxpayers — that’s less than $200 an acre.
Recently the Star Tribune ran an article questioning the motives and visions of Kilgore and Duffus. As with Brower and Gibbs, I am sure it is easy to cast stones upon visionaries who are seeking to change long-standing political and economic paradigms. The reality is, however, that through their leadership Minnesota has received a great deal by the preservation of a significant tract of land which could easily have been harmfully subdivided in a matter of a few years. Today we have long forgotten the detractors and opponents of the vision laid out by Brower and Gibbs. As time passes I’m confident that Kilgore and Duffus will be similarly remembered for their common sense stewardship. They are true conservation champions for a new century.
