EXECUTIVE BRANCH

contributions for retirement funds, social security, health insurance, and life
insurance. The employes pay part of the cost; the state or the municipality,
as the employer, pays another part. In the 1965-67 biennium, the funds so
handled included $88 million from general purpose revenues as the state's
contribution to the retirement and insurance programs, and $187.6 million
collected from the employes, school districts and municipalities.
AGRICULTURE, CONSERVATION, NATURAL RESOURCES
Wisconsin has a land area of 54,705 square miles; including inland water,
the total area is over 56,000 square miles. Based on its area, Wisconsin ranks
26th among the states. However, the state also contains about 10,000 square
miles in Lakes Michigan and Superior filled with valuable fresh water re-
sources.
Somehow, Wisconsin seems bigger. Wisconsin has nearly 9,000 recorded
lakes; its trout streams alone have a combined length of over 8,900 miles.
On a day-long motor trip from Kenosha to Superior (427 miles), if you
pick the right roads, you may pass through coastal plains along Lake Michi-
gan, through the picturesque Kettle Moraine glaciated country, and through
the prairie farm lands of Columbia County. At Merrimac, Wisconsin's
"navy", the Colsac II, will ferry you across the Wisconsin River. Devil's
Lake and the Dells impress upon you the awesome manifestations of the
forces of nature and, simultaneously, cause you to wonder about the differ-
ence between the solemn serenity of nature's beauty and the shrill gaudiness
of man's "improvements." With no traffic lights to obstruct your progress,
you now advance quickly along the newly completed portions of Interstate
Highway 90-94 through the sandy areas of Wisconsin's heartland and mar-
vel, perhaps, at the wideness, the solitude, which surrounds you just a few
hours northwest of the greatest population concentration in the Middle
West. You have traveled little more than half your distance and already the
environment belongs to a different world. Still ahead of you, before you
reach your destination, are miles and miles of fertile farms, of deep forests,
beautiful lakes and of the majestic Lake Superior highlands.
It is against this background that we must study the efforts of Wisconsin
state government in relation to the natural resources of this state. Resource
development includes the protection, use, and development in the public in-
terest, of land and water resources. But, resource development is broader
than that, because it includes what is fast emerging as one of the most im-
portant functions of modern state government: the economic development of
the state. In this broad sense, resource development is closely akin to "public
welfare." Any activity of state government that can improve the economic
status of the state improves the state's public welfare. Good education, good
highways, available natural resources and the facilities to use them: all con-
tribute to the public welfare of a state as well as to its economic develop-
ment. All elements of the state have a stake in the success of governmental
efforts to promote economic development. Agriculture, tourism, manufactur-
ing and service industries will flourish as the state's economy prospers.
Nearly 1,200 employes of the State of Wisconsin are engaged in tasks
which are related to the conservation of natural resources and their eco-
nomic development. The fish and wildlife, forestry and recreation programs
of the Conservation Department employ 1,150; the programs of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture, the Grain and Warehouse Commission and the Exposi-
tion Department employ about 500, and the programs of the Department of
Resource Development with their new emphasis on water quality employ
about 100. In the 1965-67 biennium, the federal government contributed

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