This presentation will detail the author’s research into Cornell University’s ongoing extractive relationship to Wisconsin’s pine timberlands from 1881 to the present.  Picking up where Paul Wallace Gates left off in his pioneering (1940) study, The Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University, the presentation will explain how the University’s timber management practices optimized the wealth taken out of northern Wisconsin that rescued Cornell University from near-certain bankruptcy, transformed it into one of the nation’s wealthiest institutions of higher education, but left behind significant ecological and economic damage.  The lecture will conclude with information on the University’s retention of approximately 155,000 acres of reserved mineral rights on its former Morrill Act lands in twelve northern Wisconsin counties.