DNR hosting virtual meetings on public land review

The Michigan Division of All-natural Methods recently introduced it would be internet hosting two digital conferences to establish what to do with land parcels in Tuscola County, as properly as 9 other counties. 

The conferences will be held Wednesday and Thursday, June 15 and 16. They will protect overview of land parcels that meet the DNR’s aim of delivering broad community accessibility to outside land with recreation opportunities such as hunting and fishing. The DNR invited the community to take part in the conferences to give their enter on the results of that evaluate.

The overview will include land in Delta, Kent, Livingston, Menomineee, Montcalm, Oakland, Ogemaw, Oscada, Saginaw, and Tuscola counties.


“We set out to cautiously appraise the more than 20,000 acres established for evaluate in these 10 counties, and then possibly retain them as getting important to the DNR mission, secure them through conservation partners, trade to consolidate condition possession, or make them obtainable for sale to the community by means of auction,” spelled out director of the DNR’s Office of General public Lands Scott Whitcomb.

Whitcomb stated that the method aids make certain that the DNR is concentrated on the lands with the finest conservation, recreation, and resource management likely on behalf of Michigan residents.

“We got a excellent reaction from before community testimonials and, working with neighborhood knowledge of the locations, built many corrections to our maps and ownership documents, underscoring how important it is to have (community) input,” Whitcomb explained.

The DNR’s initial proposed classifications for the community land in the 10 counties the meetings will go over is as follows: 69.7% to retain, offer you 2.1% to an alternate conservation lover, trade 3.9%, and dispose 24.3% as a result of community auction.

Participation from the general public is necessary, Whitcomb clarifies, simply because it provides on-the-ground viewpoints that the DNR may possibly not know about. For illustration, if the DNR was looking at letting go of a piece of land that is normally utilized as a fishing spot, the community can convey to it that and thus impact the final decision on what to do with the land.

The meetings can be joined via a Microsoft Teams link or by a cell phone number, each of which are available on the DNR’s condition land assessment internet site. The website page will also have a recording of the conferences for these unable to go to. The Wednesday conference will start off at 6 p.m., while the Thursday meeting will be at 2 p.m.