Forest Parcelization in Vilas County, Wisconsin Research Paper

Forest Parcelization in Vilas County, Wisconsin - Research Paper Example A huge portion of this forested land parcels is under the ownership of non-industrial private landowners. It is estimated that these non-industrial private landowners own over sixty percent of the whole forested land in the county of Vilas. The rest of the forested parcels of land are under the ownership of the county government of Vilas, the federal government, the state government, the forest industry department and Wisconsin’s Indian Tribes. The federal government carried out the land survey of the State of Wisconsin forest in the nineteenth century. The purpose of the survey was to divide the huge land under public ownership into parcels that could be sold to private owners, in order to raise revenue for the federal government and provide settlement for the people (Allred et al. 2011). The work of the survey was implemented using the Public Land Survey System that usually divides the land into six-mile square townships and one-mile square sections. Six-mile square townships are the primary units of the public land survey. They are further sub-divided into one-mile-square sections. The townships are then regularly arranged across the state whereas the sections are similarly arranged in the townships (The Vilas County Mapping Department, 2010). The Wisconsin-Illinois border is the location of the initial point of the public land survey in Wisconsin. The locality is roughly ten miles east of Mississippi (Allred et al. 2011). The location is the point of intersection of the base-line. It is also the boundary of the southern state and the principal meridian, which is a latitude running due north from the initial point. Township lines are the east-west lines that cross the principal meridian after every six miles. Range lines, on the other hand, are north-south lines that run through the middle of the baseline after every six miles.