Senior managers at both the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should be held to account for allowing the misuse of federal grants to facilitate logging in Minnesota’s wildlife management areas and aquatic management areas.
In 2020, U.S. Fish and Wildlife performed a field review/site inspection of some wildlife management areas in Minnesota. The agency did not release their report — and continued to provide grant funding. The DNR continued to award logging contracts.
The report — acquired by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, in 2023 — found the DNR claimed approximately $1.4 million in program income from timber sales under the Pittman-Robertson grant. But selling timber without regard to habitat disregards the spirit of the law, and pretending that doing so reduces the cost of the grant to taxpayers is misleading, at best.