The Pelican River area in Wisconsin. A group that worked with local officials to try to prevent the establishment of a conservation easement on land surrounding the river has influenced a propsal to change Oneida County's comprehensive plan. (Jay Brittain | Courtesy of the photographer)

A committee of the Oneida County Board has approved a number of changes to the draft of the county’s new comprehensive plan suggested by a timber industry group, aided by U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and American Stewards of Liberty, a right-wing nonprofit that has taken an interest in land use policy in Wisconsin’s Northwoods.

The five-member planning and development committee approved the recommended changes of the Rhinelander-based Great Lakes Timber Professional Association (GLTPA) at a meeting earlier this month. 

Since the approval of the Pelican River Forest conservation easement earlier this year, American Stewards of Liberty has undertaken an effort to influence local planning decisions up north. The organization has traditionally focused on ranching issues in the American west. Now it has begun to grow and, after being introduced by Tiffany, worked with officials in the region to oppose the Pelican River easement on the grounds that federal and state officials had not “coordinated” with locals. 

The group’s executive director, Margaret Byfield, later spoke at the timber group’s convention in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula this spring. 

ASL’s ideology, in the name of protecting property rights, calls for an expansion of extractive uses of land, including increased logging and the approval of open pit mines in the area. Opponents say the group twists a desire to protect private property owners into a belief system that prevents others from acting to conserve resources on their own land. 

The organization was also involved in helping to write the environmental policy sections of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation document written as a policy guide for the second Trump administration. 

Every county in Wisconsin is required to establish a comprehensive plan and update it once per decade. The document outlines goals and strategies for achieving the county’s land use plans. Oneida County has already made a number of changes to its draft plan that move county planning decisions away from support of conservation and toward more extractive uses of the land. 

The acceptance of the recommended changes concern environmental advocates, who argue that once one county has codified the ASL agenda, it becomes easier for neighboring counties to simply cut and paste those sections when their comprehensive plans are up for renewal. Opponents also worry that ASL’s viewpoint  will have more sway across the country once Trump takes office in January. 

Ahead of the committee’s Nov. 8 meeting, Henry Schienebeck, executive director of the GLTPA, sent a 31-page list of recommended changes to the body. The document mirrors the comprehensive plan, going through each chapter and recommending new, more anti-conservation language. It includes a number of provisions straight from ASL talking points, including sections that require conservation efforts to be coordinated with local officials, encouraging mining in the region and listing a need to “protect property rights” as a “top priority.”

GLTPA Oneida County Comprehensive Management Plan Comments 2024

At the nearly six-hour meeting, Schienebeck said that GLTPA’s recommended changes were developed by a committee that included the organization’s board members and Byfield as well as Tiffany and his staff. 

“We really just want to make sure that forestry is included in that and that we don’t lose access to the forest,” Schienebeck said. “And a lot of the issues that are in this plan deal with forest and natural resources, and that’s really what we’re working with every day.” 

Schienebeck did not respond to a request for comment on his organization’s recommendations. 

The GLTPA recommendations include proposals to change a section in the comprehensive plan that previously stated the county should “minimize impacts to the county’s natural resources from nonmetallic mining.” The new language states that the county should “consider impacts to the county’s natural resources from nonmetallic mining.” 

Many of the GLTPA recommendations were accepted without amendment by the members of the planning and development committee. Of the committee’s five members, four did not respond to a request for comment and one, Scott Holewinski, said he was out of the country and unable to comment. 

Eric Rempala, a member of local conservation group, Oneida County Clean Waters Action, spoke against the GLTPA recommendations at the meeting and tells the Wisconsin Examiner it’s “outrageous” to give an industry group this much influence over county land use policies.  Everyone involved should be more honest about ASL’s involvement, he argues. 

“You guys need to admit who you’re working with and what you’re trying to accomplish,” Rempala says. 

Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives for Gathering Waters, was heavily involved in getting the Pelican River Forest easement established. He says the language in the GLTPA recommendations is straight out of the ASL “playbook” and poses a threat to the health of the Northwoods environment and future conservation efforts in the area. 

“This is kind of a thing that we’ve all been worried about since Pelican River,” he says. “If that stuff actually gets written into a [comprehensive] plan, that is a dangerous foundation — both for Oneida County, but then something that could easily be copied by other counties.”