Finally, one of Wisconsin’s Managed Forest Law’s biggest benefits at the state level has been its effects on Wisconsin’s and its forest’s ecosystems. Within forests, the MFL has helped to provide wildlife habitat for game and threatened/ endangered species, maintain forest ecosystem health and vitality, conserve and maintain water and soil resources on and around forestland, and promote forest conservation and biological diversity (Gass 10). To help aid in creating sustainable forest environments, the Wisconsin MFL requires that landowners follow mandatory practices including releasing trees from competing vegetation, reforesting land to meet minimum forest density standards, performing pre and post harvest treatments to insure forest regeneration,…show more content… Although there is currently over 3 million acres of forestland enrolled in the MFL program, nearly two thirds of that land is closed to the public, and within the last 10 years the proportion of closed MFL land has gradually kept increasing. The MFL states that one of the major objectives of the program is to provide the public with recreational benefits from MFL land, but the increasing amount of closed lands keeps this goal from being fully attained. In 2004, the MFL tried to curb this trend by limiting the amount of acreage a landowner can close to 160 acres per landowner per municipality and by lowering tax rates on open MFL lands to just 5% of the average statewide forest tax. But still, landowners have continually either closed their lands or found legal loopholes to get around the changes; including have multiple family members enroll adjacent lands in the MFL so each member can close 160 acres until the entire forestland is closed, or landowners have also started isolating open land within areas of closed land so the public cannot legally get to and use the open land without permission from the landowner (Nelson…show more content… One reason cited as to why landowner’s close their lands is that the owner’s aren’t allowed to impose any rules on their land. Although some might try a create rules that are discriminatory or limit the public’s right to recreation on the open lands, one solution might be to allow certain rules to be made as long as these rules are deemed appropriate by the DNR or the landowner’s municipality. Other solutions could be to provide more monetary incentives for open lands or to further revise the Managed Forest Law by decreasing the amount of land an MFL landowner can close to the public or make it required that only one person whose name is one the deed of the land may enroll the land within the MFL
