Wisconsin Voters Support Increasing Stewardship Fund

Poll Finds Strong Support for Boosting Protection of Wisconsin’s Land, Water and Wildlife

MADISON, WISCONSIN — June 21, 2007 — More than three in five voters back a proposal to increase the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund to $105 million per year and renew it for another decade, according to a poll released today by The Nature Conservancy.

Conducted by a bipartisan research team, the poll found that 63 percent of voters supported enlarging and extending the Stewardship Fund, which will expire in 2010. Less than one quarter of voters opposed the proposal. The number of voters who expressed “strong support” exceeded those who expressed “strong opposition” by a more than 2-1 margin.

The Stewardship Fund is a state program established in 1990 that protects natural areas, water quality, wildlife habitat, parks and recreational lands through voluntary agreements with willing landowners. More than 470,000 acres have been protected to date.

“We are asking state lawmakers to take note of the majority of residents who want the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund – Wisconsin’s most effective conservation tool - increased and renewed,” said Mary Jean Huston, director of The Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin. “It’s an essential investment for the state to make.”

The proposal to reauthorize and increase the Stewardship Fund as included in the Governor’s proposed state budget is currently before both houses of the Legislature. It is expected that each house will pass its own version of the budget and then work together to reconcile differences sometime this summer or fall.

More than 90 percent of voters surveyed agreed that both protecting land and water quality is critical to Wisconsin’s economy and that having undeveloped open space and natural areas improves the quality of life in the state.

Eighty-nine percent of those surveyed agreed that Wisconsin should find the money to invest in protecting its land, water and wildlife even in times when the state budget is tight.

A large majority – 68 percent – also rejected the idea that we do not need to do any more to protect natural areas and open space in Wisconsin.

Support for increasing and renewing the Stewardship Fund is broad. Majorities of almost every major demographic group and from every area of the state support the idea including:

65% of women and 60% of men
70% of voters under 50 and 59% of those age 50 and over
72% of college-educated voters and 57% of those without a college education
67% of sportsmen and sportswomen and 59% of those without a hunting or fishing license
66% of independents, 73% of Democrats and 43% of Republicans (a plurality)

Huston said that the Stewardship Fund not only helps conserve Wisconsin’s best forests, grasslands, lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands, but it also provides public access for outdoor recreation including hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, camping, snowmobiling and skiing.

“Our lands and waters give us clean air and drinking water. They also provide fish and wildlife habitat,” Huston said. “By conserving our most valuable natural areas we also preserve Wisconsin’s great quality of life.”

The telephone poll of 600 registered Wisconsin voters likely to cast ballots in the November 2008 election was conducted between May 21 and May 24 by the bipartisan research team of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican political and public affairs research firm, and Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin and Associates, a Democratic research and public policy analysis firm. The poll’s margin of error for the full sample is 4.0 percent.

The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working to protect the most ecologically important lands and waters around the world for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at
Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.