The Ely miner., 1929-07-05
PROPOSE TO BUILD
PERMANENT FOREST

The first proposal for building a per-
manent forest under private owner
ship in Minnesota is contained in the
application made by the Cloquet COM
panies, now pending before the 81.
Louis county board, to set up l72 600
acres as auxiliary forest" under the
new law.
This is the land that the Cloquet
companies own in a tract covering
600, 900 acres in all, lying north Of Clo-
quet river between the Mi1leg trunk
highway and the Duluth d Iron
Range railroad. The Vermilion trail
runs through the middle of it, Brim-
son road and the CloQuet logging road
cross il, and otherwise there is no oc-
cupation no local roads or schools ard
no settlers
1t is the first application under the
new act and it is the first proposal to
set up permanent forest on lands
privately owned, on any considerable
scale, in the three lake states. The
area Of 172, 900 acres compares with
125.000 acres in The proposed Mouuan
national forest in Bayfield, county.
Wisconsin, or with the proposed st.
Croix national forest in Pine county,
Minnesota.
One must go to Louisiana to the
BogaduSa forest, or to Washington
where the Long-Bell operations are on
permanent basis, to find private
plans Of similar magnitude.
The CloQuet companies which have
been operating in this block of land
have maintained IRE protection for
the entire area of 6O0, 900 acres at a
cost Of about $4,000 year while they
were harvesting the timber to protect
the 100000 acres they owned Now
that they are through operating, they
plan to keep the land in permanent
forest and maintain fire protection if
this application is accepted. The al
Tentative Is either to let the land 90
oerelict or TO provide fire protection
at public expense.
The law under which the applica-
ton is made is the product of a move
ment that goes back ten years. when
the first interim committee of the
legislature reported that some such
measure was essential if owners of
lands were to hold them in forest. A
constitutional amendment to permit it
was submitted In 1924 and almost got
through 1t was put up again, with
improvements, in 1926 and adopted.
A special committee of the legislature
brought in a bill in 1927 which wa.
passed 1t did not produce results. In
the 1929 session the act was amended
TO make it workable, and it is under
this law that the pending application
is made
This is the first tangible result of the
effort which has been carried on for.
nearly ten years to accomplish the re-
forestation of the 100000 acres of.
cutover lands in northern Minnesota
which presumably viii raise trees IN
private ownership or lie idle for the
next fifty or hundred years
The main provisions of the law are
that the land shall pay five cents an
acre tax, plus three cents for IRE pro-
lection, and plus a ten per cent yield
tax when the timber is harvested.
On this land, if the valuation of s.
an acre is correct, the annual tax
amounts to rate of 80 mills the Weld
tax comes on top of that. The theory
OF the yield tax is about equivalent
TO taking eight or ten cents a bushel
on crop of wheat and reducing the
tax on the wheat field to correspond
There are other provisions for put
ting the land back on the ordinary
basis Of taxation and collecting the
regular taxes for all the time it was
held under the auxiliary forest law in
case it turns out TO be worth more for