Nature Conservancy-backed amendments aim to create local recreation and natural-resources authorities in U.P.

The House Committee on Natural Resources and Tourism heard testimony on House Bills 4694 and 4695, a pair of technical amendments to the Michigan Recreational Authorities Act intended to enable creation of a local recreation and natural-resources authority.

Rich Bowman, director of external affairs for The Nature Conservancy, told the committee the amendments respond to a recent private sale of roughly 32,400 acres at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Bowman said the sale posed an ‘‘existential threat’’ to local trail networks because large parcels of private forest changed hands with no permanent public easements. He described a community-led effort that resulted in The Nature Conservancy purchasing the property with a plan to transfer parts to the DNR and other portions to a local authority that could manage working forest and recreation uses.

Bowman said the proposed authority would be a public unit of government — not a private conservancy — with powers to manage recreation and natural resources, including timber sales, contracts and other commercial uses when appropriate. He described the authority as a tool to provide local communities a legally durable governance option for multi-jurisdictional trail systems and working forests.

Bowman recounted that the Nature Conservancy paid about $39 million to acquire the parcel to prevent unfavorable private ownership, and that the organization is working with the DNR and local officials on a transfer plan that would keep substantial acreage under state ownership while creating a local governance vehicle for other portions. He said the local authority could resemble state forests in management practice but would be governed locally.

Committee members asked whether the authority would resemble private-conservancy land-conservation tools used in other states; Bowman said the difference is that the authority would be public and able to hold land as a local public forest rather than as private tax-exempt conservation parcels. Bowman offered to provide technical detail and to meet individually with members to review the draft statutory language.

Multiple local and statewide organizations filed written support; the committee received no immediate opposition during the hearing. No committee vote took place on the bills during the session.