Lutsen protests feds’ decision on county lynx habitat

Nancye Belding

True North correspondent

At the regular Lutsen town meeting on September 19, County Commissioner Bruce Martinson warned supervisors of “dire effects in Cook County” if the proposed federal rule for critical Canada lynx habitat designation in Northeast Minnesota is approved on October 11, the closing date for comments. On September 11 the United States Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, announced the final 30-day period before the rule is adopted. In Cook County, the designated area runs along the Lake Superior shore and includes mostly privately owned land for two to five miles inland as far as the Grand Portage reservation. From the reservation north and eastward it includes all lands up to the Canadian border.

Martinson explained that the problem is that development can be severely restricted in critical habitat areas, basically at the discretion of FWS. During the comment period, some townships wrote letters requesting exemption for privately owned land in Cook County, which is less than nine percent of total land area, due to the economic hardship resulting from restricted private development. The county had prepared a map identifying the privately owned land as well as state, forest, and tribal lands. “They didn’t even use the map we provided,” Martinson said. FWS refused the request for exemption of private land based on its own study which determined the economic impact would be zero.

The Lutsen supervisors voted in favor of a motion that: Lutsen township is in favor of exempting all private land, so that the lynx critical habitat designation would only apply to publicly owned land within Superior National Forest. Voting for the motion were Chair Brad Ludlow and Supervisor Marland Hansen. “There have always been lynx here,” Hansen said. Ludlow said, "We need to be stewards, but we could be looking at critical lynx habitat delineation studies down the road. Supervisor Diane Parker abstained, saying she did not know enough about the issue and its impact to vote.

More information on the proposed rule is available at the following website:

http://mountain-prairie.fws.gov/species/mammals/lynx/criticalhabitat.htm.

This article re-printed from the Cook County News Herald