Here & Now

Charles Carlin on Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Funds Expiring

Frederica Freyberg:
A long-standing state conservation program expired this week. For more than 35 years, Wisconsin outdoor recreation and land projects have been created and maintained by a program called the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund. Created in 1989 by then Governor Tommy Thompson and the state Legislature, it has been a successful bipartisan fixture for protecting natural areas. However, recent changes to who can veto new projects led to the Republican decision to not renew its funding in the last budget. Charles Carlin of Gathering Waters: Wisconsin’s Alliance for Land Trusts is hoping the next Legislature can still make it happen.

Charles Carlin:
The Wisconsin landscape and the outdoor recreation infrastructure that we have in Wisconsin simply wouldn’t be here today without the successes of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program. The program has been operating for over 35 years, has helped us permanently protect more than 650,000 acres of land, most of which is open for public recreation. Getting out there, bird watching, going hunting, going for a hike with your family, and every single neighborhood in the state has been touched by Knowles-Nelson. It’s not an exaggeration. You know, more than 90% of households are within a mile of a Knowles-Nelson investment. So these are the trails that we walk and bike on, the beach fronts where we go swimming, the weed harvesters that help keep our lakes clean, the playground equipment that our kids play on at local parks. All of this is made possible by the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.

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Land that has been protected with Knowles-Nelson is permanently protected. Nothing is going to undo that. What it means, however, moving forward is if we need a new segment of the Ice Age Trail or the North Country Trail, there’s no state money to make that happen.

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And then all of that stuff that we need to get out and enjoy the places that make Wisconsin special. So a trailhead to park your car at, a kiosk that shows you the map of where you’re going to go walk, the boat launch to put your kayak or your fishing boat in the water. As that stuff ages and needs to be repaired, we have now shot ourselves in the foot and taken away really our only significant source of funding to do that, to take care of that infrastructure.

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This doesn’t have to be Knowles-Nelson is done forever. So what’s happened is the money has run out, but the program stays on the books. So all of the laws that guide it are there. The DNR staff who administer the program are still there. What we need is for the Legislature to come back and invest money in the program so that it can get moving again.

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Knowles-Nelson costs each Wisconsin resident about $11. So I took my kid to fish fry at Culver’s the other week, and I think it was about $15 each. This is a value we can afford.

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Our November elections are going to have really real consequences for what kind of latitude the Legislature has to fund Knowles-Nelson again, and what priorities they’ll choose.