Agriculture
Deadline looms to remove private camps from Ottawa National Forest
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FORESTCAMPS
By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — With 104 long-time leaseholders seeking an extension of their right to keep hunting and vacation camps in the Ottawa National Forest, the Senate wants the federal government to grant them a reprieve. An extension also has backing from a Western Upper Peninsula filmmaker whose new documentary highlights the history and traditions of the camps and the dispute over their future. But the U.S. Forest Service says the law is clear that the leaseholders — who signed non-renewable 25-year agreements to abandon their one-acre lots by Jan. 1, 2017 — must leave. By then.