Anti-conservation group works to influence land use policy in three northern Wisconsin counties

A right-wing anti-conservation group has been working to influence officials in Forest, Langlade and Oneida counties, at the urging of U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, in an effort to prevent conservation efforts and promote extractive industry. 

The Texas-based group, American Stewards of Liberty, has a track record of successfully blocking  conservation efforts across the country. In Nebraska, for example, the group helped change state law to give individual counties the ability to halt private conservation easements. 

At the center of ASL’s ideology is the idea of “coordination,” a discredited legal theory which holds that any conservation efforts that use federal or state dollars require the approval and “coordination” of local governments. Similar to constitutional sheriffs who believe they’re the ultimate arbiter of which laws to enforce within their jurisdictions, ASL promotes the idea to county officials aiming to prevent conservation projects. 

But a 2010 opinion by former Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen found that local governments don’t have the authority to require that the federal and state governments get their blessing. 

Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, who has studied the group, says the idea of coordination doesn’t mean anything or have any basis in the law. 

“Coordination is one of these magic words they bust out and pretend it does something and by saying ‘we’re going to invoke coordination,’ that’s their term by which they mean government control and government vetoes over private property,” he says. “So it’s again one of those words that does not mean what they pretend it to mean.”

ASL bills itself as a group dedicated to protecting private property rights. But for conservationists, the group has a twisted and hypocritical view of what private property rights mean because they frequently oppose private property owners’ decisions to conserve their own land. ASL has also been a major contributor to right-wing opposition to President Joe Biden’s 30×30 plan, which aims to conserve 30% of the country’s land and water by 2030. 

“This is a group that wants to limit what property owners can do with their property, and they want the government to have control and to be able to tell property owners, you can or cannot do this with your private property,” Weiss says. “So that’s the biggest, the most important thing to realize is that when ASL claims they are about private property rights, that is an absolute lie. The policies they promote and as you see it playing out in Wisconsin, are all about limiting private property rights.” 

Pelican River

The organization first got involved in Wisconsin during the fight over the approval of the Pelican River Forest conservation project, which was initially proposed to be completed using money from the federal government and the Department of Natural Resources’ Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program. The project moved forward anyway when Gov. Tony Evers used additional federal money to replace the stewardship funds that had been denied by Sen. Mary Felzkowski and other legislative Republicans. It  is now set to be the largest conservation easement in state history. 

The Pelican River property was purchased by the Conservation Fund, a nonprofit group aimed at protecting natural resources. The group then sought to create a conservation easement, a legal designation for the land which transfers it to state ownership and permanently restricts how that land can be used. Under the easement for Pelican River, the forest will continue to be used for logging. 

Some local officials were skeptical of the project, worried that it would restrict possible future development and reduce an already small property tax base. Many residents and municipal officials were for the project, passing resolutions in support, but a number of county officials in the three counties set to be affected by the easement went in search of ways to stop it and turned to Tiffany. 

Tiffany, a longtime advocate for more aggressive logging in northern Wisconsin and a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, introduced them to Margaret Byfield, the executive director of ASL. 

Tiffany has strong ties with Byfield and ASL. Last September, he was a keynote speaker at the organization’s conference in opposition to the Biden 30×30 plan. He also supported ASL’s efforts to block the Securities and Exchange Commission from creating a rule that would allow so-called Natural Asset Companies (NACs) to be established. NACs would have been a publicly traded company that takes land off the market and prevents extractive industry, operating similarly to carbon credits. 

With local officials looking for a way to stop the Pelican River project, Byfield and Tiffany worked to write a letter that county board members could send to state and federal officials opposing the easement. 

In emails obtained by the Examiner through an open records request, the pair were in regular contact with county officials last fall providing draft letters to county leaders. 

“There are two asks in this letter,” Byfield wrote in a December 11 email sharing a draft. “The first is to withhold final distribution of the grant to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) until the planning conflicts have been resolved, and the second is to meet face-to-face to discuss the conflicts.  Also included in the letter is the suggestion that the grant should be rescinded.” 

The shared letter states that the easement cannot move forward without the approval of the county board members. A week later, three copies of the letter, with minimal changes from Byfield’s draft, were sent to a U.S. Forest Service official by locals from the three counties. The letters bear official county letterhead even though they aren’t signed by the full county boards and weren’t approved in official board votes. The Oneida County letter is signed only by board chair Scott Holewinski and Town of Monico Chair Robert Briggs. 

Land use policies

As the opposition to the Pelican River continued, Forest and Oneida counties were beginning the process of updating their 10-year-old comprehensive plans. Comprehensive plans, required to be enacted under state law, lay out a county’s land use priorities a decade at a time. 

For the last decade, those plans have included provisions that promote the protection and conservation of county land. 

“Land and water resources are a major attribute of the quality of life in Oneida County,” the county’s 2013 comprehensive plan states. “In addition to their contribution to the area’s history, environment and economy, they are valued for their natural and scenic beauty, wildlife habitat, and the recreational opportunities they provide. The planning effort needs to consider natural resources and incorporate methods to implement conservation strategies. While using those resources which contribute to the economic success of Oneida County, there needs to be a balance between the natural environment and human environment in the use of our resources.” 

Locals are concerned the rewritten plans will be less focused on preserving the natural environment and more on promoting extraction. In December, Forest County’s forestry and recreation committee met with Tiffany to discuss the importance of including coordination in the new comprehensive plan. According to the meeting minutes, he suggested an attorney who could assist with the effort. 

Eric Rempala, a member of local conservation group Oneida County Clean Waters Action who was at the meeting, tells the Examiner that the attorney Tiffany suggested was Byfield. 

“I don’t think that the plan they’re pushing is what the people of northern Wisconsin — if they understood all there is to it — we’ve always been very conservation conscious and had plenty of land put aside and protected,” Rempala says. 

As the county comprehensive plan updates continue, so does ASL’s influence in state environmental policies. In April, the Rhinelander-based Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association will host its spring celebration on Michigan’s upper peninsula with UW-Madison’s Kemp Natural Resources Station as a major sponsor.

Byfield, who did not respond to a request for comment, is a featured speaker at the event.