With a proposal to turn the Driftless into a national park shelved, what happens next?

Jul. 8—ROCHESTER — A proposal to turn a portion of Minnesota's Driftless area into a National Park

has been walked back by its designer.

Some residents in the Driftless say they're still spooked there might be a plan to turn over privately owned land to public control. A few promoters of the area say they're intrigued by the prospect to market the entire region.

People from outside the area (and a few inside too) are asking, "What's the Driftless?"

The Driftless is an approximately 24,000-square-mile region of Southeast Minnesota, Southwest Wisconsin, Northeast Iowa and a corner of Northwest Illinois.

The name comes from the geological distinction that glacial drift — debris, dirt and silt in the ice — never filled the million-year-old valleys, steep hills and ridges in the area.

Wisconsin contains most of the Driftless landscape. It also escaped four rounds of glaciation whereas Minnesota and Iowa merely gave the advancing glaciers three swings and misses for a geological strike out.

In the regions surrounding the Driftless, drift filled in the valleys and glaciers flattened the land, which created the more typical flat Midwestern landscape. Even for people who don't associate the region with a name, the area is already a draw with its wildlife and landscape.

"People are already coming here for the beauty of it," said Parker Forsell, of Winona, Minnesota, and founder of Ocooch Mountain Echo. "I just don't think it's been collectively marketed in a way in which the Driftless concept is front and center."

Forsell promotes people and culture in the Driftless through his magazine, Ocooch Mountain Echo. The name comes from the name of bluff valley in Wisconsin's portion of the Driftless area.

He said he first heard the term Driftless from a farmer while he was working at the People's Food Coop in La Crosse, Wisconsin. As he learned about the region, he learned about the people who live there and appreciate it.

"What I ended up finding out over the years is that this landscape has attracted really interesting, eclectic people," Forsell said.

The bluffland around La Crosse is what first inspired Sean Macaday to explore the area when he moved to Minnesota in 2017.

Macaday drafted an idea to link public lands into a national park system to protect and preserve a portion of the Driftless. Adverse reaction to that idea from people living in the area prompted him to withdraw the proposal. That doesn't mean he's done working to advocate for preservation of the area.

Macaday notes more than 1,200 acres of

Driftless land in Clayton County, Iowa, is designated a National Wildlife Refuge.

The land contains rare species including the northern monkshood flower and the endangered Iowa Pleistocene snail. The species are holdovers from pre-ice age populations surviving next to cold air flows called algific talus slopes. Along the slopes, cold air flows out from underground ice caves through openings in the porous limestone underneath the caves.

One of Macaday's favorite spots in the Driftless is above one such slope in Whitewater State Park. The park was the center of his plan in part because it has been managed so well, he said. He points to the woods on the bluff above the slope.

"This is a healthy forest," he said. "It has a good canopy and it's nice and open underneath."

Coincidentally, when John Weiss, Post Bulletin outdoors writer, is asked to show his favorite spots, his first choice was to visit an algific talus slope. However, he opts to go trout fishing in the Whitewater River downstream from and below where Macaday hiked days before.

"People just don't realize what we've got here," Weiss said.

Streams and rivers fed by coldwater springs allow trout to live year-round in many of the streams and rivers in the Driftless. The Driftless has the highest concentration of coldwater streams in the world, according to Trout Unlimited's Driftless Area Restoration Effort. The group works to restore trout habitat and streams affected by pollution, erosion, farming, invasive species and other challenges.

Weiss said he's of two minds on promoting the area. He talks as he casts flies to lure some feeding trout in the late morning of a warm late June day.

"Part of me says, 'Great, I have this whole stream to myself,'" Weiss said.

On the other hand, the desire to care for and protect the area often comes from

experiencing the unique landscape,

he added.

"If you see it for yourself, you've got some skin in the game or whatever the cliche is," Weiss said. "You preserve what you love and you've got to get people out here to love this."

Weiss said he was dubious about a national park idea and how that would be reconciled with more than 2,700 acres of state-run park and the more than 27,400 acres of state-managed land of the Whitewater Wildlife Management Area around it.

As Macaday researched places to explore in the Driftless, he found that only a small percentage of the land is designated public and protected.

Macaday anchored his idea of a national park in the Whitewater River Valley in part because it has the largest protected land-based area of publicly owned and managed land in the Driftless.

The largest protected publicly owned land within the Driftless is the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge which protects more than 240,000 acres of river shores and floodplain.

It's the largest of the federally protected area in the Driftless. The Driftless National Wildlife Refuge and the Effigy Mounds National Monument in Northeast Iowa are the other major federally protected and managed areas within the Driftless area.

Macaday said his thinking was that federal management would provide the highest level of protection and stewardship for a portion of the Driftless. He admits now that he underestimated the pride and stewardship individual landowners have in their portions of land in the Driftless.

Weiss added that partnerships between private landowners and conservation groups go a long way toward restoring and preserving habitat.

"It doesn't have to go to public hands to be well-managed," Weiss said.

Ross Greden is sure his land has less invasive buckthorn per acre than what's in the Whitewater Wildlife Management Area.

Greden, a dairy farmer in Winona County, is the fifth generation to work the land his great-great grandfather settled in 1866. He's laying the groundwork to pass the operation on to a sixth generation.

His family enjoys hunting, fishing and walking around on their land. Taking care of it is a priority, they said. Ethan Greden, Ross's son, said there is both pride and pressure being in line as the sixth generation to work the farm.

"You don't want to be the one who messes it up," Ethan said.

In the farm's office, eight deer heads mounted on the south wall display multiple generations of 10-point trophies. Ethan said he hopes to add his own to the display someday.

Larry Greden, Ross's father, notes the work he and generations before and after him have done to care for their land.

His father was one of the first to practice contour farming, the practice of tilling and planting along elevation to slow rainwater runoff and reduce soil erosion. Over the decades family members have planted more than 100,000 trees, he said. Larry personally helped plant about 10,000 of them in just 1960. Ross restored and planted prairie habitats near his bluff-top home on the farm, along with a windrow of various trees and fruiting bushes.

They grow their own corn and alfalfa to feed the dairy's 550 cows. More than a decade ago, they began working with cover crops to prevent soil erosion and nitrate runoff. The result has been soil that better retains water. Winter rye also seems to be effective at keeping pests down but it does stress the alfalfa if the weather is dry, Larry said.

"We plant the trees, we burn the prairies," Ross said. "In my opinion, we're as focused on good stewardship, conservation and habitat as any public entity and probably more so."

For a Midwest dairy operation, the Greden farm is small. For a dairy operation in Winona County, it's a big operation. Larry said he thinks farmers get unfairly blamed for nitrate pollution in the area.

"It's a balance, but you've got to make a living," he said.

The farm sits in the Whitewater Rivershed, which has seen increasing concentrations of nitrate pollution over the last two decades.

Ross points out that not all farmers use best practices to prevent nitrate runoff. Municipalities also contribute to the problem, Larry added.

Other factors are out of farmers' control. In a recent incident, Ross recalled spreading manure on a nearby property he tenant farms. Shortly after, a storm dumped about 3 inches of rain on the land in less than 15 minutes —

an occurrence becoming more common due to climate change.

"I guarantee that elevated the nitrates in this watershed," Ross said. "But what can you do when you get that much rain in 15 minutes?"

Although Macaday has withdrawn his idea for a national park, Ross said he's still concerned there's a movement to take land from private hands in his corner of the Driftless.

Private landowners have more skin in the game for managing and protecting the land, he said.

Ethan said farmers notice when things are wrong and are quick to correct them.

"Farmers, they notice everything," Ethan said. "We're not just a bunch of Joe-whoevers just throwing cows on the land."

Macaday said he regrets not having residents involved with his proposal from the beginning, but he isn't giving up on doing what he can to further protect and care for the Driftless area.

Weiss said he understands the desire to do something big. He was equally impressed with the area when he discovered it, he said.

"The first step is getting your butt out here," Weiss said. "It doesn't sound as big and sexy as a national park, but that's where it starts."