Columns

Ken Winter

Land Trust Turns 35

January 16, 2012

There aren’t many times Michigan residents can preserve land in their own backyards worth more than $816 million — even now during Michigan’s beleaguered economic times.

But they’ve been staking claims for the past 35 years in all 83 counties, protecting scenic and ecologically sensitive lands from a Detroit harbor park to the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. They’ve been able to preserve the riches thanks to the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund. The land protection movement started in 1976, after forming a unique private and public political alliance.

While the official anniversary isn’t until July 23, Central Michigan University’s Clarke Historical Library and its director, Dr. Frank Boles, kicked off a late-last-year event with a day of special programs, including the “who’s who” involved in the state’s conservation movement, past and present.

“There was a groundswell of people to allow the DNR to go in this direction,” recalled then-DNR Director Howard Tanner, who made a cameo appearance at the CMU event. “The people deserve a great amount of credit.”

Because of the fund, Tanner said, the people, when spending a public resource, are now able to replace it with another non-renewable resource. Tanner credited Don Inman, his former DNR deputy director, with the idea of dedicating oil and gas royalties from state-owned property to acquire additional state land.

However, former State Senator Kerry Kammer said it was more Bob Garner, his then-legislative aide, who had the idea. He said they worked together through a unique alliance of the Michigan Gas and Oil Association, Michigan United Conversation Clubs (MUCC), and state government leaders and lawmakers — with the blessing of former Michigan “conservation” governor William G. Milliken.

“With me was my friend Bob Garner, who had consented to work with me for awhile so that we could mutually pursue our shared vision of changing the world,” he shared in a letter read to the gathering. Garner was a one-time television host of Michigan Out-of-Doors and a Natural Resources Commission member. He is said to be a modest man who has never taken any credit for getting legislation adopted and who now serves as the Trust Fund board chairman.

“We sat that afternoon awaiting a visitor — who had also become our friend. This man shared our love of the outdoors — he hunted and fished — and he fiercely fought for Michigan’s natural resources,” Kammer wrote. “That man was Tom Washington.”

Kammer said the late MUCC executive director arrived and, in his wise way, laid out a proposal and strategy that ultimately passed as legislation creating the Trust Fund that has awarded monies for purchasing some 135,000 acres of ecologically significant land and funding 1,600 public recreation facilities, from rails to trails to parks and fishing piers.

He said the concept introduction and its promotion took more people than the three. Enormous help came from now-Governor Rick Snyder Policy Advisor Bill Rustem, former House Speaker Bobby Crim, Senate leader Bill Fitzgerald, late Detroit Free Press Editor Joe Stroud, Gov. Milliken, Michigan Oil & Gas Association President Frank Mortl, and a host of others.

Originally named the Kammer Fund, after its legislative sponsor, it was renamed when Michigan residents supported a 1984 referendum for a constitutional amendment to prevent Michigan lawmakers from raiding the fund. Lawmakers had diverted more than $100 million to support the Michigan Economic Development Authority and other state programs outside the fund’s intended purpose.

Renamed the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, it now generates between $20 to $25 million annually, with another $10 million yearly for state park operations, maintenance and capital improvement projects.

Little Traverse Conservancy Director Tom Bailey of Harbor Springs called the creation of the Trust Fund the “great compromise” in a battle over oil and gas drilling in the Pigeon River State Forest.

“It was a great moment for Michigan conservation and a great precedent for the nation,” he said about the fund that helps purchase new public lands and assists with other development projects for recreation, such as campgrounds, water access sites and other facilities.

“And none of the money came from taxes! One of the fund’s unique characteristics is that it utilizes monies generated by the sale of oil, gas and minerals. This represents a return to citizens for income generated by public land, a sort of natural and recreational resource dividend.”

Bailey also credits Keith Charters of Traverse City, a former Trust Fund board member and the longest serving Natural Resources Commission chairman, as well as one-time Trust Fund chief of staff and current DNR Director Rodney Stokes, for helping the fund achieve its 35-year milestone.

Ken Winter, former editor and publisher of the Petoskey News-Review and member of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, teaches political science and journalism at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey and Michigan State University.