The Legislature's budget committee has approved spending more than $4 million to purchase more than 14,000 acres of forest land in northern Wisconsin under the state's stewardship program.
The state may purchase nearly 1,000 acres of land along the Lower Chippewa River in northwestern Wisconsin from Xcel Energy which once had plans to build a nuclear plant on the site.
Twenty-six citizen groups have expressed concern about what Wisconsin natural resources officials will do with the former Badger Army Ammunition Plant near Baraboo.
The state Department of Natural Resources' board has approved spending nearly $2 million to complete a new recreational forest in northwestern Wisconsin, despite Republican lawmakers' misgivings about the stewardship program.
The state is at least two years away from having a scientific model to determine how high-capacity wells affect water levels on the surface and underground in one small river basin.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' board will get an in-depth look this week at dramatic cuts Republican lawmakers made to the agency's stewardship program, the key mechanism for preserving land in the state.