Protecting more than 32,000 acres of land for public use takes a long time. But the process to transition the Keweenaw Heartlands to a public entity will be well worth it. Project Manager Julia Petersen attributes the project’s progress to the commitment of the 29-member advisory committee and the community’s interest.
And it’s been going well overall. We have a significant commitment from community members, both within Key Winnah County and the broader region. We have a community advisory committee of 29 plus members, and those members represent multiple organizations and perspectives. They’ve collectively put in through the large committee work and subcommittee work over 1700 hours of volunteer time. That’s a significant under-investment that doesn’t count. All the time they spend reviewing documents and thinking about the project. That’s just the meeting time. – Julia Petersen, Project Manager, The Nature Conservancy
About 10,000 acres, the Point of the Keweenaw, will transition to the Michigan DNR sooner than other tracts. Last year the state department obtained 5 million dollars from its Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund.
So they are, you know, hoping to shore that up and to purchase those 10,000 acres within the next couple of years. Moving more to the west, we have the other tracts of the Keweenaw Heartlands, and that is, you know, it’s 32,500 acres total, so minus 10,000, you’re talking about anywhere from 20,000 to 22,000 acres that we’re talking about for the local forest portion. – Julia Petersen, Project Manager, The Nature Conservancy
Last week the nature conservancy announced intentions to apply for the federal Forest Legacy Program’s funding to support the conservancy’s 21,000 acres.
That’ll have to come over two application processes. There are funding caps for Forest Legacy in any given year. And so we have to do one chunk of the local forest, you know, an application for that this year, and then next year we’ll do another chunk of the local forest. And so, you know, as we said, two to three years for that. Meanwhile, on those 10,000 acres that the DNR anticipates purchasing, that’ll take about one to two years. – Julia Petersen, Project Manager, The Nature Conservancy
If approved the Heartlands would transition to the holdings of a public entity made of community stakeholders and purchased by the Michigan DNR.
If the heartlands are selected at that point and keeping in mind that this is just a portion of the heartlands, it’s not the whole thing. At that point, it would move on to the national level, the US Forest Service consideration. And there’s a whole process for that, a review panel, etc. And then again, if it is selected at a national level, it has to go through the approval process beyond that, like the congressional approval process. It is a lengthy process and that’s just to get to the point of acceptance and then from there it’s you know paperwork and so on as you would expect with any kind of real estate deal so to speak. If we are successful at the end of it, the Department of Natural Resources would purchase the land because they would receive the funds through the federal government from the Nature Conservancy and the land would shift into DNR folding. And then the Department of Natural Resources would work with a new local government entity that we’re working with the community on creating to figure out the arrangement between the DNR and this new local government entity for governing and managing the forest. – Julia Petersen, Project Manager, The Nature Conservancy
In 2022 when TNC acquired the property, the organization boasted the heartlands miles of coastline and rivers, many wetlands, and unique flora and fauna native to the region.
In terms of the large lava flow has created these cliffs and balls that stick up out of the peninsula. It is underneath one of the largest native copper deposits in the world. So you’ve got geologically significant mining history here, both indigenous mining for thousands of years and post-settler mining as well. So you have all of that history combined with the geography and the topography to create a forest that is quite special. And we have endangered and threatened species on this footprint, both mammals, and we have very unique bats on the property, as well as plants that are found nowhere else in the world. – Julia Petersen, Project Manager, The Nature Conservancy
Since 2022 the Forest Legacy Program has provided funding for four Michigan properties transitioning to public holdings. Including the Michigamme Highlands Project that was awarded funding in 2024.
What I can say is it is a fairly large tract of land. We’re looking at several thousand acres in this first round and then cumulatively over a couple of years, about 20,000 to 21,000 acres. So that’s a sizable application. Is certainly not, I’m sure, one of the biggest that’s ever been done through a forest legacy program process. And we have the UP big deal, which decades ago, with the DNR, we worked through a Forest Legacy program funding application through three rounds to secure the funds for that one. And that was a large amount of land. So it’s been done before. I imagine that there will be some large tracts across the state of Michigan. But certainly, the Heartlands is a strong contender because of how special the land is and how special the peninsula is as well. – Julia Petersen, Project Manager, The Nature Conservancy
