The U.S. Forest Service has announced plans to buy more than 6,200 acres of land in the Superior National Forest from a conservation group.

In a decision memo issued last week, Superior National Forest Supervisor Thomas Hall said the decision to buy the land from the Conservation Fund will help it manage lynx habitat, wetlands and wild rice waters, among other resources.

“Consolidating federal ownership of these lands will promote effective management for recreation opportunities, public access, and other uses and values,” Hall wrote in his decision.

The land must still be appraised, Hall wrote.

The purchase is one piece of a broader proposal that would see the Forest Service buy 80,000 acres of school trust land in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from the state of Minnesota. School trust land is intended to support Minnesota school districts with revenue from activities like mining and logging, both of which are not allowed in the BWCAW.

The plan came together last summer after a land exchange first proposed in 2012 fell through. The land swap would have seen the state give the land to the federal government in exchange for federal land outside the BWCAW that the state would then use as school trust land.

That exchange’s replacement is a complicated trio of transactions that includes the Forest Service buying land from the state inside the BWCAW, the Forest Service buying Conservation Fund land outside the BWCAW but within the Superior National Forest, and the DNR considering buying Conservation Fund land outside the BWCAW as new school trust properties. The transactions are not contingent on each other, Hall wrote.

The plan initially included the Forest Service buying more than 17,000 acres of land in the Superior National Forest from the Conservation Fund. However, concerns over parcels that weren’t adjacent to existing Forest Service land whittled it by 10,700 acres.

Now, the 6,200 acres the Forest Service is buying abuts property the federal government already owns. Hall wrote that the DNR and St. Louis County are evaluating the remaining 10,700 acres of parcels.

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