Property owners seeking long-term protection of their land have permitted the North Central Conservancy Trust (NCCT) to expand into Portage and Waushara counties.
NCCT is a land trust that holds conservation easements, which restrict development while leaving the property in private ownership.
Conservation easements were recently given to NCCT near the upper Tomorrow River in Portage County and west of Wild Rose in northern Waushara County. Until then, the land trust had only operated in Marathon County. It owns a piece of land near Wausau and has an easement from Manley Mumford on 160 acres along the Eau Claire River in northeastern Marathon County.
The easement in Portage County was donated by Lowell and Christine Klessig on 94 acres north of Nelsonville. It is near the Tomorrow River, one of Wisconsin's best known trout streams. Poncho Creek, a Class I trout stream and a major tributary of the Tomorrow runs through the Klessig land. Old-time trout fishermen knew the property as the Mitcheltree farm.
The Waushara County property is west of Wild Rose and totals 120 acres. Eighty acres are owned by Dr. John Swanson, a physician living in Neenah, and his wife, Deanna, and the other 40 belongs to the Swansons and their son, Seth. Like the Klessigs, they donated the easement.
Lowell Klessig retired last year as a professor in the College of Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, though he continues to teach one course, and Christine Klessig is an attorney who practices in Amherst.
The Klessigs live on the property. Under the terms of the easement, no development can take place on the land except on the homestead site and one other small parcel. The easement goes with the property so future owners can't develop it, either.
Most of the land is wooded, and the Klessigs are allowed to do some logging. However, "dominant" pine and oak are protected from cutting. Robert Freckmann, chairman of the NCCT Property Committee, described one stand of trees as comparable to New Hope Pines, a nearby state natural area.
On part of their property the Klessigs have beef cattle and grow forage crops. The easement allows them to continue this, although the number of animals is limited.
Klessig joined the College of Natural Resources faculty in 1980 and taught land use and integrated resource management, lake management and forestry. "I'm one of the dying breed of generalists," he said.
The property, said Klessig, would be valuable as home-building lots, "but that's not what we want. You live in a place and love it for many years, and you don't want it to change in ways you don't like." The easement with the land trust, he said, is a mechanism that protects the land long-term.
Similar sentiments were expressed by John Swanson. The Swanson property has red and white pine plantations, native red and white oaks and sandy prairie. It is rolling and scenic, and the Swansons have given the Ice Age Trail Foundation permission to route the trail through it "so others can enjoy the beauty of these central sands as part of the western edge of the last glaciation."
He had always wanted a tree farm to escape from work pressures, he said. There's work to do on the land but it's different - "There are always trees to trim, fire lanes to maintain, grass to mow and trails to keep open."
The Swansons, like the Klessigs, can practice forestry on the property. Also, they plan to re-establish and expand prairie areas, "especially lupine to attract the endangered Karner blue butterfly," he said, adding, "I manage to find lots of little projects each year to keep me well occupied."
What he didn't want, he said, was to see the land developed. "I see houses going up all over the county and really could not envision this property ever being subdivided for industry or small house lots in the future. I have installed bluebird houses throughout the forest borders and have seen an increase in that population each year, as well as the continued growth of the wild turkey population. More and more grouse are nesting in the thickets, and of course deer are abundant. Now, even sandhill cranes are seen to fly over every once in a while. These factors prompted me to initiate the conservation easement without even a second thought."
North Central Conservancy Trust was founded in Wausau in 1996. D.J. Freeman, a retired Wausau cardiologist and one of the founders, was the first president. In the late 1990s people in Stevens Point looked at creating their own land trust but decided a better course of action was combining with NCCT. The current president is Jo Ellen Seiser of Stevens Point.
"People who agree to protect their property with a conservation easement are holding a bit of the future in their hands," said Seiser. "A future with old traditions, wild views and habitat for red osier dogwood, the monarch butterfly, lichen and the sandhill crane. How rich we are when we have enough to leave it be."
"I have some favorite views around town, like the climbing trees near Wells' Landing on the riverfront or the dark, unlighted stretch over the Plover River by Iverson Park, but best of all is the rural land outside of the towns in central Wisconsin."
When an easement is donated, it is considered a charitable donation for income tax purposes if it meets IRS requirements.