Lawmakers think it’s a bad idea, as do environmentalists and conservationists speaking out against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s plan to clear cut state forest to make way for solar development.

Now, records obtained by MLive through a long-delayed Freedom of Information Act request show even staff within the Michigan Department of Natural Resources that plans to destroy 4,000 acres of state forest for solar are not on board.

“It seems that we should be able to have both enough square miles of solar development to meet climate goals and maintain our forested acreage,” a DNR staffer in Gaylord wrote in an email to the Society of American Foresters in August. “I don’t want to see our state forest value boiled down to metric tons of carbon.”

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Other documents show Mike Smalligan, the DNR’s forest stewardship coordinator, attempted to dissuade his superiors on the proposal, which is designed to promote Whitmer’s goal of 100% “clean energy” by 2040 and generate revenues for the DNR.

“Clean energy is not green energy if it starts with deforestation,” read a presentation Smalligan prepared on “Michigan’s Forests and Climate Change.”

“Michigan might need 400 square miles of solar (256,000 acres) to meet its clean energy goals, but policy makers, land managers and solar developers should create and use best practices to site solar responsibly,” according to the presentation. “’Green energy’ should be located in places that restore sites already degraded from prior land use change such as brownfields, parking lots, rooftops, road rights of way, reclaimed mines and replacing corn ethanol (800,000 acres or one-third of corn is grown for ethanol in Michigan).”

“I appreciate hard choices land managers need to make about land use, but please help the DNR be a bold leader in conservation & protection of natural resources rather than promoting deforestation when less harmful alternatives are available,” Smalligan wrote to DNR Office of Public Lands Director Scott Whitcomb in an August email cited by MLive.

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Despite those concerns, DNR leaders forged ahead with the deforestation plans, which were exposed as the department prepared to lease 420 acres for solar development in Otsego County’s Hayes Township.

The revelation sparked an immediate backlash from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, as well as the public, prompting a developer interested in the lease to back out.

The DNR nonetheless published a public notice for the proposed 420 acre solar lease on Tuesday, as environmentalists and conservation groups panned the idea.

“The more research I do on deforestation for the sake of solar, especially as you start to scale that up, and for thousands of acres, that seems really short sighted,” Lisha Ramsdell, associate director for Huron Pines, a Gaylord-based conservation group, told MLive.

Larry Leafers, a retired professor of forestry at Michigan State University, told the news site “this proposal to cut down a living forest that is sequestering carbon and replace it with solar arrays just doesn’t track very well with the way we manage for sustainability.”

“Because there would be the loss of hundreds of acres of habitat for wildlife and the other many benefits that forests give related to water, soil and wood products,” Leefers said. “This just doesn’t seem like a very appropriate use of state forest land.”

Michigan United Conservation Clubs, the state’s largest conservation group, sent a letter to DNR leadership, suggesting that the department develop better criteria to analyze potential sites to minimize environmental impacts.

Documents from MLive’s FOIA request show the DNR’s forest staff and an internal field review of the Hayes Township site came to the same conclusion, but were overruled.

“There is not currently policy that guides this process and (it’s) being fast tracked in the name of urgency for the sake of an additional solar development adjacent to this one on private land,” Gaylord-based DNR Forester Derek Nellis wrote in an email to the Society of American Foresters in August.

A month later, the field reviews suggested just 225 of 1,218 acres surveyed at the Hayes Township site should be developed for solar, and Whitcomb shared that reality with DNR Director Scott Bowen.

“These parcels have already been reviewed at the field level and the supervisor level and in each review field staff have stated that these most of these lands should not be developed for solar; however, these reviews have not provided any opportunities to mitigate for the losses of habitat or timber production,” Whitcomb wrote in an October issue statement presented at a Resource Bureau Management meeting.

“Revenue generated by leasing for solar can be used to mitigate those expenses incurred for planting red pine or be used to buy replacement lands. Additionally, Director Bowen has charged the department to find land for solar development and these reviews do not seem to fully consider that mandate.”

DNR officials refused to release records to MLive on materials related to the field review in Hayes Township and related emails from staff, citing exemptions to the state’s FOIA laws for communications of an “advisory nature,” that contain things “other than purely factual materials,” and are “preliminary to an agency decision.”

Regardless, lawmakers are demanding answers, with 50, both Republican and Democrat, sending a letter to Bowen admonishing the department’s plans this week.

“Projects like this highlight the blatant hypocrisy within the DNR. You’re completely willing to jump into bed with the solar industry and the foreign powers controlling their purse strings but deny other smaller land-lease proposals without a second thought,” the lawmakers wrote. “You have a responsibility to be good stewards of public land – replacing forests with solar panels does not live up to that standard.”

Some lawmakers are also calling for the termination of DNR employees involved in the department’s solar plan, which they’ve vowed to dissect with a new Republican majority.

“The curtain is coming down on these terrible ideas and House Republicans aren’t going to stop digging until we uncover every single place the DNR plans to kill wildlife to further the radical green energy agenda,” said Rep. Ken Borton, R-Gaylord.