Logging
The biggest threat that the forest faces is logging. Now I understand basic forestry and ecology concepts. There is such a thing as weeding on a large scale that does help the forest, such as removing Popple (Large-Tooth or Quaking Aspen), a tree with poor quality wood that tends to strip the soil depriving other trees of precious nutrients. What is going on far surpasses that though. The CNNF is the most heavily logged forest in the country. It is logged at a rate of 116 million board feet of lumber each year. Between 1992 to 2001, 188,000 acres were logged. At the current rate it is being logged it will be gone in 45 years. The Bush administration, in their infinite wisdom and sagacity (sarcasm people, sarcasm) is opening more than 70,000 acres of the Northwoods to logging and mining. The Forest Service plan that I included a link to in the previous section allows massive logging projects which require construction or reconstruction of over 100 miles of roads in order to provide loggers access to almost 45,000 acres of the CNNF. This is beyond retarded to me because, in addition to all the environmental and moral reasons this is a bad idea, non-timber values in Wisconsin National Forests are ten times that of timber revenues, recreational visitors spend over $1 billion in the Northwoods annually.
Legally there has been a small ray of hope as the Environmental Law and Policy Center contested 3 out the 5 major timber sales by the forestry service and won, saving a significant portion of the 13,000 acres that would have been destroyed (3,000 of those acres would have been clear-cut). The three contested sales were the Howell, the McCaslin and the Cayuga. The Howell and the Cayuga are some of the last forests that are old growth, the final remnants of the mammoth pines (and I mean mammoth, trees that had the diameter of a buick) that used to dominate eighty-five percent of the Northwoods, but now are only two percent of the CNNF. The Howell parcel has one of the largest population of goblin fern, a species that is state endangered and globally rare. It is also in the heart of pine marten habitat, which is also on the Wisconsin endangered species list. The McCaslin contains old growth hardwoods which in turn are ideal habitat for declining populations of goshawks and red-shouldered hawks. It also supports fragile populations of eastern timberwolves and cerulean warblers. The sale of the Cayuga would have destroyed large stands of yellow birch. Yellow birch is not doing so well in Wisconsin National Forests because of the short rotation logging practiced by the Forestry Service. This practice boost the deer population but the deer eat most of the yellow birch seedlings. This is also true for white pine, white cedar and hemlock. Ordinarily large fallen yellow birch trees become nurse log habitats for the next generation seedlings, without this protection the seedlings are quite vulnerable. Fallen yellow birch also reduce fire risk by retaining moisture (there have already been two fires in the forest this year) and they provide habitat for countless insects, fungi and are shelter for wildlife like pine marten, blowing the theory espoused by a lot of the locals around here that deadfall harvesting is not harmful. The Cayuga is also home to fairy shrimp. These little guys are very rare and are found elsewhere only in California and Oregon. They require pools with no other fish and as shrinking natural ecosystems become more crowded these fellows are losing out globally.
The fact that these sales were contested and won does not mean the forest is permanently safe however, pardon the pun but in no way shape or form are we out of the woods. The Northwoods is primarily private or corporate lands. Much of the land is owned by the paper companies and they can do whatever they want with their land. The need for forest products needs to decline so we can starve and destroy these corporations. Our planets survival depends on the fact that we stop cutting down our oxygen supply and the photosynthetic organisms that ‘breathe” the carbon dioxide out of our air. I will not be able to stress enough throughout all the installments I write how gravely important it is we realize how interconnected all life and this planet really are.
Another case in point are beavers. I love beavers, but they are doing too well. Beavers love Popple, which springs up like mad in clear cut areas or where the forest canopy has been opened up to let enough sunlight in. The beavers dam up the trout streams which make the streams too warm for the fish. Over half of the class one trout streams in the CNNF are too warm for brook trout to reproduce now. Too many of a particular creature is as detrimental to an ecosystem as too little. Nature is a delicate balancing act, we must respect this.
Not only do we need to continue fighting deforestation but we need to start actively trying to propagate trees. We know enough about ecology to be able to restore these lands to their natural glory. An idea like the Civilian Conservation Corps should be revisited I feel. Forest stewardship needs to be a the top of our agenda, not something we cut the funding for when money gets tight in our government. Nature heals us. Green is the color of healing, the color of life. Study after study, testamonial after testamonial speaks of the regenerative power of forests. The soothing effect they have on the nerves, the ability they have to allow us to return to ourselves and center ourselves. Honestly, I shouldn’t even have to “sell” this though. The Earth, Nature, is our Mother. We are killing the beautiful Goddess that gave us life, in addition to all her other children. That is the real point in all of this, we are committing murder, and we all have the blood on our hands. The only chance of redemption is to stop this, not because of our survival being threatened, but because it is right thing to do.
An introduction to the forest and it’s history
The “chwam” as it is referred to locally is 1,519,800 acres of old and second growth forest in northern Wisconsin, and is part of the Upper Great lakes Keystone
Forest a.k.a., “the Northwoods”. It is composed of several different ecosystems; uplands, bogs, wetlands, muskegs, rivers, streams, pine savannas, meadow and glacial lakes, black spruce bogs, cedar swamps and alder thickets. It is home to a plethora of flora and fauna. In the tree category there are 3 different kinds of maple, 3 different kinds of oak, aspen, beech basswood, sumac, 3 different kinds of birch, 3 different pine, white spruce and balsam fir and the forest is the eastern most range for the eastern hemlock. Among smaller flora there are blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, service berries ferns, mosses, cattails, mushrooms, the list goes on. Animals that inhabit this area are white tail deer, black bears, foxes, raccoons, rabbits, beavers, otters, squirrels, chipmunks, timber wolves, elk, moose, coyotes, badgers, wolverines and lynx. Birds that dwell here are pheasants, grouse, wild turkey, northern cardinals, blue jays, American crows, American robins, red tailed hawks, red wing blackbird, owls, ducks, loons, bald eagles, thrush, sparrows and warblers. Populating the waters of this primeval paradise are brook trout, rainbow trout and brown trout, walleye, small and large mouth bass, crappie, northern pike and several species of pan fish. Those you familiar with the endangered species list will recognize a few threatened creatures amongst the ones I have just mentioned. The forest is amazing. You have not lived until you’ve camped out on a spring night here and listened to the sound of grouse thumping to attracted mates, the sometimes deafening sound of spring peepers, the eerie laughing of loons in the middle of the night and early morning and seen the night sky look like a million diamonds radiating on black/purple velvet. There is no feeling in the world like watching the sunset over a pristine glacial lake deep in a pine forest and knowing you’re the only human and vestige of “society” for miles around, feeling the unmistakable presence of a wolf watching you, or the sight of two yearling deer frolicking, totally unafraid and uninhibited, or watching the Aurora Borealis on a –30F night in the dead of winter, when it’s so cold the snow crystallizes and it looks as if the whole earth and sky are covered in diamonds. Words do not do the experience justice.
The human history of the forest is an interesting study, it has a deep dark and sadly still very relevant past. The area was severely over logged by the end of the 19th century by the lumber and mining barons who founded this area. During the days of prohibition it was also home to many mobsters including Al Capone. One of the most prominent cities in the area at the time, Hurley, which was and is a mining town, was a hotbed of crime including forced prostitution, trafficking and murder. I have stayed in the apartments above the old clubs where this stuff went on and the area defines the word haunted. I have a theory about such things, issues in the present often have deep roots in the past, old injustices or cover-ups that people forget about. Thing is the land and the spirits of our ancestors that dwell on the energies of the land do not forget. It is plagued by the lingering energies of past crimes, dooming itself to have the same injustices and wrongs repeated until someone figures it out and stops it. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. When the land became useless to those exploiting it, it was sold off to poor immigrants hoping to farm it. Well Northwoods soil is not meant for farming as anyone who lives here can attest to and these poor people found it out the hard way. They ended up going bankrupt and selling their land to the federal government. In March of 1933 Herbert Hoover established the Nicolet
National forest and soon after in November of that year FDR established the Chequamegon National Forest. It was combined and managed as one in 1993. Chequamegon is an Ojibway word meaning place of shallow water, and Nicolet is after Jean Nicolet a French explorer and fur trader who came to great lakes area in the 1600’s. The Civilian Conservation Corps came through in the 1930’s and replanted the land with native trees and a lot of the forest is second growth from that planting effort. However, under the loosening of restrictions and undermining of environmental law by the Bush administration, severe mismanagement by the Forest Service, and some severely underhanded maneuvering by corporations (corporations that also have deep roots in the past) the CNNF faces many diverse but fundamentally linked critical threats. For your perusal I have included a link to the forestry service’s plan for the CNNF.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/cnnf/natres/final_forest_plan/index.html
More information than you ever wanted to know
I started out just trying to find out more information about environmental issues in my area, and now it seems I know more than most do, and so it is my duty to pass on what I learned. There is so much to this story of the northwoods, that I have started a serial. For the next week or two i will be posting in depth what I have learned and what people can do to help. I hope you enjoy and you find it very enlightening.
