DNR Director OK's South Fox Land Exchange

LEELANAU, MI-Concluding more than a decade of negotiations with a private landowner, Michigan Department of Natural Resources Director K.L. Cool has accepted a proposal consolidating state and private properties on South Fox Island, located 30 miles off the coast here. Cool made the announcement at the Michigan Natural Resources Commission’s regular monthly meeting recently in Lansing.

The NRC previously had endorsed the exchange, which consolidates state land holdings in the northern end of the island and provides contiguous property lines for the island’s only private landowner.

“This is a smaller exchange than we previously considered, but it better enables us to meet the department’s management objectives for the island,” Cool says. “Visitors, especially the limited number of hunters who use the area, will benefit from the fact that it secures the landing access area on the northeast face and provides clearer hunting boundaries in the northern half of the island.”