Conservation and environmental experts in Michigan are speaking out against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s controversial plan to clear cut state forest for solar farms.

Whitmer’s Department of Natural Resources created an uproar with a public notice published Tuesday for a proposed solar lease on 420 acres of state forestland near Gaylord.

The proposal, part of a broader plan to lease 4,000 acres of state forest for solar development, is designed to move the state towards Whitmer’s goal of 100% “clean energy” by 2040, while generating revenues for the DNR.

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Much of the land for the proposed lease in Otsego County’s Hayes Township is heavily forested with red and other pine species, but state officials contend the site, with existing oil and gas wells adjacent to another solar development, offers a “less than pristine” place to locate solar development that would minimize impacts on higher quality forest elsewhere.

The proposed lease, published as a public notice with no community input, immediately sparked calls from lawmakers to terminate DNR officials involved in the decision and a promise to probe the department’s efforts to install solar on state forests.

And while the blowback from lawmakers and locals has seemingly convinced RWE Clean Energy, the company behind the 200-megawatt solar project, to shift its sights to private land development, effectively scuttling the plans, environmental and conservation experts are weighing in on why it’s a terrible idea to begin with.

“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.

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The lost carbon sequestration from the trees cleared to make way for solar is only one of many impacts to consider, she said.

“Losing the trees is one thing, but you’re losing that biodiversity. You’re losing the habitat connectivity as well,” Ramsdell said. “And as you start to scale these up to into the thousands of acres, there’s potential compromise to our water resources, groundwater recharge areas. Our forest and our soil provide that filter system for our groundwater. And so those are all really important factors to be considered as well.”

Larry Leefers, a retired professor of forestry at Michigan State University, agrees there’s much better places for solar development than on state forests.

“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,” Leefers said.

While the retired professor and others with the Society of American Foresters who are tracking the issue are “certainly supportive of renewable energy – whether it’s solar or wind or wood or water – we would think that there would be better places to do this sort of thing,” he said.

“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 told MLive. “This just doesn’t seem like a very appropriate use of state forest land.”

It was a similar message from Michigan United Conservation Clubs, the state’s largest conservation organization, which recently sent a letter to DNR Director Scott Bowen criticizing the department’s solar plan.

MUCC called on Bowen to reveal the criteria used to select state land for solar leases, focus on lands “ill-suited for other uses,” include a public review process, and pair the leases with “tandem land acquisition to recoup the lost acreage.”

More than 50 Republicans and Democrats in the Michigan Legislature, meanwhile, have sent their own letter to Bowen demanding answers.

“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.”

State Rep. Ken Borton, R-Gaylord, and others are demanding Bowen terminate DNR employees involved in the department’s solar plan, which he vowed to dissect after Republicans take control of the lower chamber this week.

“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,” Borton said. “I’ve already been made aware of similar projects in Otsego and Roscommon counties.

“I’m sure the buck doesn’t stop there,” Borton added. “The DNR has lost the public trust and failed at managing conservation efforts; there is no way we’re going to let them find new ways to screw up energy production, especially at the expense of our natural resources.”