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Executive Summary
“Pure Michigan” is the tagline for the current Michigan Economic Development Corporation travel and tourism campaign. Across neighboring states and into Canada, TV and radio ads are telling citizens about Michigan’s “clean lakes” and “clear streams”, and encouraging them to “dive into the waters of Pure Michigan”. While this label stems from Michigan’s nearly unparalleled natural heritage, these “pure” features, particularly those on our state-owned lands, are currently under attack from special interests ranging from logging to mining to developers. We are reaching
a tipping point where either our public lands will once again become ravaged by private industry while the public is left to deal with the consequences, or our elected and agency officials will begin to put our natural heritage first by protecting one million acres of our most precious areas now. Immediate threats to our state-owned public lands include: - The logging industry’s attempts to turn state forests into tree farms through legislation that would require timber sales on nearly all public lands.
- A looming resurgence of hazardous mining in the U.P., including a proposal for a sulfide mine in the pristine headwaters of a stream near Lake Superior.
- Sales of state parks and other treasured lands to private developers.
- Proposals to increase oil and gas drilling in the AuSable watershed, Pigeon River area and other natural areas.
Given the increasing intensity and scale of these threats and the few areas of state-owned land that are off-limits to such damage, Environment Michigan Research
& Policy Center is calling for strong action from the Governor, the Department of Natural Resources and both gubernatorial candidates. - Governor Granholm should order the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to use its authority under the Wilderness and Natural Areas Act to designate the most precious 10% (approximately 450,000 acres) of our state’s land as off limits to development, beginning with the 45,669 acres of pending requests before the DNR;
- The DNR should strengthen and finalize its old-growth and biodiversity protection plan, and use it as management criteria on 550,000 other acres of state land, bringing the protected total to one million acres
- Both gubernatorial candidates should commit to conserving one million acres of state-owned land;
- The DNR should focus on protecting the public interest in the remaining 3.5 million acres of state-owned land, avoiding management where one sector’s use dominates the others.
Only by taking these initial proactive steps in the face of industry pressure can our state rightfully stake the claim to a “Pure Michigan” label.
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