Door County Land Trust Executive Director Emily Wood is asking for public support to help preserve a state program that has helped protect tens of thousands of acres on the peninsula.

State legislators left Madison earlier this month without reaching a deal on the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, signaling its potential end in the coming months.

Approximately 93 percent of Wisconsinites support the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund as a way to protect some of the state’s most valuable and vulnerable lands.

According to Wisconsin Watch, there have been several attempts to save the program, including a compromise that would have allocated about $28 million per year through 2030. That proposal would have shifted the focus toward maintaining existing land rather than purchasing new parcels.

Under that plan, any Department of Natural Resources land purchase using a grant of $1 million or more would have required full legislative approval.

Wood says the land trust can pursue other grants to purchase land in the future, but those funding sources are even more limited than the Knowles-Nelson program.

Given the broader impact land protection has on Door County’s ecosystems, Wood encourages residents to contact their local legislators and share what the program means to them.

With no deal in place, the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program is set to expire June 30.

Rep. Joel Kitchens told Wisconsin Watch the opposition is more geographical than ideological.

“It’s a program that is viewed very differently in different parts of the state,” he said. “In the Northwoods, where they have less of a tax base, they really don’t like seeing property coming off the tax rolls. There’s always been more of a geographical split than it is really liberal, conservative.”