By Scott Thistle
News Tribune staff writer

Duluth, MN - Sept. 3, 2001 For Minnesota's 240,000-acre demonstration forest to work the way it is intended, it needs the support of the small-tract landowners within the demonstration area.

Collectively, those owners hold more than 55,000 acres there, and that's why Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Allen Garber wants them on board, especially as new management ideas begin to be tested and monitored.

"It's easy to get the large landowners -- the state, county and federal governments together with the industrial owners, but it's not as easy to reach all the small landowners, and they are so important to this process,'' Garber said.

They are important because testing and monitoring changes in the forest will depend on their involvement, said Ben Anderson, a DNR area program forester based in Hibbing.

Most of the small tracts of privately owned land are intermingled with the other ownerships, Anderson said.

The state also hopes that by involving smaller, nonindustrial landowners in the project, they will become examples for other landowners and the health of the state's forests overall will be improved through more active and thoughtful land management, Anderson said.

DNR officials met with about 70 of about 500 landowners who hold land within the forest area Thursday.

It's a meeting DNR officials and the landowners who attended characterized as a positive first step.

"But I think we have a ways to go because we do want every landowner to have an opportunity to be involved,'' said Stephanie Kessler, executive director of the Minnesota Forestry Association, which represents the state's nonindustrial woodland owners.

Kessler said landowners were concerned that they'd be forced to participate, but much of that misunderstanding was laid to rest during the meeting Thursday.

Improved communication about happenings within the forest also will help landowners understand how their neighbor is managing timber, whether that neighbor is an industrial landowner like a paper company or a public landowner like the state, she said.

"The forest isn't necessarily going to be managed that much different than it has been for the last 100 years,'' Kessler said. "There's just going to be a lot more open communication.''

Ed Schimdt, who owns about 80 acres on the southern border of the demonstration area, said he sees the project as a big opportunity.

Schimdt, like many smaller landowners, uses his land for hunting deer and grouse.

"The demonstration forest is an exciting concept, especially when you look at the entire picture,'' Schimdt said.

That picture includes focusing management efforts on the economic, ecological and social components of the forest, he said.

"If we can keep those things in balance, I think we are going to end up with a tremendous forest here,'' he said.