outdoors

No clearer example exists of the excess baggage that can be appended to otherwise well-meaning legislation than the bills being considered in the Legislature to intensify conservation in Minnesota.

For nine years, the notion of setting aside a fraction of the sales tax to restore the state's uplands and wetlands, conserve its forests and clean up and protect its waters has foundered in the Legislature.

With the introduction this week of a House bill calling, like its Senate companion, for a three-eighth of 1 percent increase in the state sales tax, the possibility of achieving dedicated funding via a constitutional amendment became more likely.

But problems remain, and the one group of Minnesotans that will be needed to pass a proposed constitutional amendment -- hunters, anglers and rank-and-file conservationists -- must remain resolute in their demand that any proposal presented them represent, first and foremost, sound public policy.

Absent that characterization, it's no deal. Meaning no support -- not in the Legislature this year, and not at the polls in November 2008, should a bill be approved by the House and Senate that strays too far from its intended purpose.

Recall that Minnesota waters and lands are in tough shape, and in order for your kids and grand kids to fashion lives remotely resembling the ones you, your parents and grandparents have enjoyed, increased conservation of the state's land and waters must occur in a hurry, and on a large scale.

We have only about 20 years to get this stuff done, or at least well-started. After that, it's bye-bye to many of the remaining open spaces in and near our most populous cities, and bye-bye to still more swimmable lakes and rivers, wetlands, shallow lakes and public forests.

Which is why I and many others have been adamant about excluding an arts and culture component from what should be solely a conservation bill.

But, OK, the DFL runs the Senate. The DFL runs the House. And the DFL wants arts in the bill. So arts it will be.

That said, the House has arts and culture far more reasonably apportioned at 10 percent of the approximately $327 million the proposal would raise annually, whereas the Senate gives arts and culture a 22 percent cut.

As importantly, the House bill doesn't steamroller the envisioned statewide conservation effort by requiring, as the Senate does, 25 percent of the approximately $1 million in fish and wildlife funds to buy up and/or manage forest land.

Word is that's the price lawmakers from northern Minnesota demand for supporting dedicated funding in the Senate: $25 million for 25 years.

Many northern Minnesota forests are in fact at risk of being parceled, sold and made off limits to the public. But problems also exist in southeast Minnesota, as well as the southwest, the west, the transition zone between prairie and forest, and in the metro.

Which is why the House and Senate bills create councils made up of citizens and legislators to decide how funds benefiting natural habitats should be spent. Five years from now, bigger and still more pressing natural resource problems might arise -- will arise -- and they rightly should be given the most attention and money at that time.

Which won't be possible if 25 percent of funds raised for habitats has been earmarked for "forest legacy."

More thoughts:

• The House bill reduces the natural habitat portion of the dedicated-funding pie to 25 percent from the Senate's 34 percent. Thirty to 34 percent should be the target figure.

• The House and Senate should include language more specifically spelling out the proposals' legislative intent. On the conservation side, these include, for example, habitat and water cleanup, not, for instance, construction of ATV trails.