Aitkin County's Forest Management Plan

Just a note: all of the links on the right are PDF files. You will need acrobat adobe to read them. You can install it for free by clicking here: . It may take awhile to load these files as they are large, please be patient.

Planning for the Forest and the Trees

          Aitkin County, through its Land Department, is responsible for the management of more than 222,000 acres of tax forfeited land. The County has a long tradition of being a sound steward of this resource providing timber and fiber for industry, offering recreational opportunities for residents and visitors, and sustaining the ecological integrity of the land and its forests.

    The Aitkin County Land Department 2011-2016 tactical plan will be up for public review shortly. Details on the plan will be available to look at here.

         The County has revisited the strategic management plan and has completed the process of public hearings and county board approval. That plan is available on the strategic management plan link. As this is a large document, you will need to be patient as it downloads. It will take awhile.

How will the plan be used?

The forest management is a strategic document. It is intended to identify the broad direction to be taken in order to properly manage Aitkin's tax forfeited lands for 100 years. Among its essential features will be:

1.    Definition of the County's mission relative to the forested land.
2.    Statement of objectives in terms of the ecological, social, and economic aspects of the land.
3.    Description and evaluation of the land and forest resource.
4.    Identification of a "desired future condition" for the forest 100 years from now, including a set of policies intended to achieve that condition.
5.    Establishment of management objectives for discrete geographic areas within the forest.

The plan will not prescribe specific management activities for specific parcels of land. That level of activity will be devised on a regular basis by the County's professional foresters and is available in the tactical plan. The strategic plan will be the basis for guiding decisions on that level of management.