Lake County Highway 8 off the North Shore tells the story well, but it could be any of hundreds of Northland back roads.
Driveways and fire numbers are emerging along once-desolate roads, along with ``For Sale'' and ``Posted'' signs. Cabins and homes are going up.

With little fanfare or even public notice, chunks of Minnesota's north woods are being divided up, sold off and developed.

Thousands of acres of privately owned land that for a century were managed by timber and mining companies and open to the public have been sold to investment companies that often parcel it off for re-sale.

Conservation and natural-resource officials say nearly 1 million acres of large, undeveloped tracts of Minnesota forest are at risk of being:

• Off limits to the public for hunting and recreation.
• Taken out of timber production for mills.
• Developed to the extent that birds, wildlife and water quality suffer.

That's an area larger than the Chippewa National Forest. And it doesn't count millions more acres of private forest owned by individuals and families that also is being divided up.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources reports that since 1989, 400,000 acres of private forest land have been lost permanently to development such as house and cabin sites, driveways, and roads.

While public attention has focused on heated debates about logging and ATVs on state and federal land, the social, ecological and economic impacts of this massive private-land selloff could be larger, said Ron Nargang, state director of the Minnesota Chapter of the Nature Conservancy.

Nearly half the state's northern forests are in private hands.

``Minnesotans had come to see the timber company land as their own, pretty much as public land, and we assumed it would always be out there for us,'' Nargang said. ``Now, it's getting sold off and developed. This has kind of caught us by surprise.''

HUGE TURNOVER

In the past decade, more than 13 million acres of private, industrial timberland has changed hands nationally - an amount equal to six Yellowstone National Parks. Most of it was owned by former paper and mill companies that are getting out of the land business. And nearly all of it is being purchased by Timber Investment Management Organizations, or TIMOs.

In Minnesota, 309,000 acres of former Boise Cascade Corp. land was sold last month, part of a 2.2 million-acre deal nationally. The land was purchased by a Boston-based TIMO that owns forest land for its real-estate value.

So far, Potlatch Corp. and Blandin Paper Co. are hanging on to much of their land in Minnesota. But experts say it may be only a matter of time before rising land prices pressure the companies into selling.

Other big landowners in Minnesota - including USX, Minnesota Power and investment firm Wolfwood - are selling land on the recreational real-estate market, much of it in remote areas. Minnesota Power is halfway through selling 26,000 of its 30,000 acres for cabin sites.

``People are calling us to say they've lost the land they've deer hunted on for decades,'' said Brad Moore, assistant DNR commissioner for operations. ``They want to know what we're going to do about it. We tell them there's nothing we can do. It's private land.''

PLAYING CATCH-UP

While the DNR can't stop companies from selling land, it has joined the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land and other groups to raise money - including federal grants and state bonds - to either buy the at-risk land outright or easements that would keep the land in conservation.

But the widespread ownership changes have mostly caught the state and others off guard. The trend started in Maine, New York and Vermont a decade ago, spread through the south and now is entrenched in the Great Lakes.

It's great news for Minnesotans who can afford the skyrocketing price of raw land and who are eager to buy a chunk of the Northland dream: their own piece of the woods for a weekend camp or retirement home. But it's bad news for thousands of people who had come to depend on timber company land for hunting and camping who are encountering ``No Trespassing'' signs.

``Not everyone can afford their own land,'' Moore said. ``And we're finding that, as the timber lands get parceled up, it's putting more (people) pressure on the nearby public lands. That's going to cause more conflict.''

The trend also is bad news for some birds and wildlife as the forest becomes fragmented into loosely managed and increasingly developed smaller tracts. Continued development is leaving disconnected pockets of the best habitat. Species from owls to woodpeckers depend on interior forest, away from the edges of forest where people, predators and competing species are waiting.

Ornithologists say jays, crows, raccoons, cats and cowbirds typically don't thrive in extensive forests. But when a forest is fragmented, those species gain access to more of the land. Populations of several species of migratory forest birds already are crashing.

Parceling off large tracts of land also makes it harder to manage for wildlife, removing options such as intentional fires and clearcutting. Some cabin owners are unwilling to have their nearby large trees cut, and even fewer are willing to allow fire or clearcutting, even if it helps species such as grouse or moose.

``Divide a section up from one industrial owner to 16 new owners (of 40-acre tracts) and you have a bunch of driveways and cabins and new roads and lights. It affects wildlife. It affects timber management. You lose the connectivity,'' said Tom Duffus, state director of the Conservation Fund.

Even with high prices paid for trees, many of those 16 new landowners may be less willing to sell their timber to local mills. That could become a big issue for the state's forest-products industry, which annually infuses $7.1 billion into the economy.

The U.S. Forest Service figures show that private land accounts for about 56 percent of the trees for state mills even thought it accounts for only 46 percent of the forested land.

WALL STREET'S IMPACT

Unlike the timber companies of old, TIMOs don't count the trees growing on their land as long-term assets, Duffus said. The pressures of a global economy hit home in a complicated deal involving the former Boise Cascade Corp. The company first purchased OfficeMax for $1.154 billion to diversify, then sold its mills and land to help pay off its debt. The mills' new owner then sold the forest land to a TIMO.

``Wall Street looks at all that land and sees it as undervalued. It's worth a lot more to them in a real-estate deal than as a source of fiber 40 years down the road,'' Duffus said.

``It's become a short-term outlook. That's what investors demand. That's reality. But it's not necessarily what's best for the people who live here or the industry,'' he said, referring to forest products, ``or, especially, for the land itself.''

TIMOs hold their land an average of seven to 12 years, Duffus said. TIMOs often log what trees they can just before selling the land in chunks, often for development into homes or cabins.

And it's selling fast. According to a recent report compiled by the Blandin Foundation, northern Minnesota forest land prices have jumped 12 to 25 percent each year since 2000 and have risen sixfold since 1989 - from about $200 per acre to more than $1,200. Land with a view or on water fetches double the average.

The number of new homes and new recreational properties in northern Minnesota counties jumped 25 percent between 1990 and 2000, the foundation's report says.

While that may sound good for communities eager for economic growth, local officials say that's often not the case. The more rural the development, the more expensive it is to provide services. Local communities are better served when development is focused in towns, keeping forests intact, said Norm Moody, Cass County land commissioner.

``If the tax burden is more than the tax base, then you don't want the development there,'' he said. ``We looked at the cost of bringing one school bus down a road an extra half mile and, not even looking at police or fire or snowplowing, the cost of bringing the bus down the road was nearly what the new taxpayer paid in.''

Neither officials from GMO Renewable Resources nor The Forestland Group LLC, two of the larger TIMOs, returned phone calls for this report.

LARGER PROBLEM LOOMS

As they scramble to keep track of who may be selling the largest tracts of private forest land, state officials and conservation leaders concede that another problem looms with the 5.2 million acres of Minnesota forest in the hands of individuals and small developers.

Corporate-owned land accounts for only 17 percent of the private forest total. The rest is owned by thousands of average folks. From 1989 to 2003, the average size of each parcel of private forest land dropped from 72 acres to 59 acres as the land was subdivided.

``We need to look at what's happening to those non-industrial lands and what can be done so they don't keep moving out of forest management and keep dividing into smaller to smaller developed plots,'' Moore said, adding that a crisis coalition should be called soon to address the issue.

Moody agreed, saying Minnesota is falling behind eastern states and Wisconsin in identifying the problem and attracting federal money to buy land or conservation easements.

``We need to stop wringing our hands about it like old men and get going. We need some better tax law down in St. Paul to keep timberland in timber,'' he said. ``We need a state revolving loan fund now so we can get serious about getting a hold of this land when it comes up on the market. If we're going to have trees for our mills and land for people to recreate on up here, we need to get serious.''