Michigan is famous for many different things including the auto-industry, the assembly line, and post-manufacturing blight in places like Detroit. However, Michigan’s landscape is best characterized by Great Lakes, rivers, and forests. It was these that brought the French to our region using waterways to skirt the edges of the vast woodland to trade for its resources. It was the forest that brought lumbermen to our state in one of the most lucrative natural resource booms in our nation’s history. These changes set the stage for reforestation and our modern forests today.

Recently, I bought a copy of Footsteps through the Ogemaw State Forest: Logging, Fire Devastation, and Reforestation by LuAnn Zettle. This book describes how the lumber industry left much of Northern Michigan barren of forests. The land was bought cheaply from the government and logged for great profit. Subsequently, the lumber companies abandoned the land which reverted back to the government due to delinquent taxes. While today, we typically expect idle land to follow succession and gradually revert back to forest, this assumes there are enough parent trees to reseed the area. The remaining scrub forests and piles of branches and logs contributed to great fires in the region.

I find it ironic that our government sold our lands to the lumber barons for what must constitute the tiniest miniscual fraction of what it cost us to undo the environmental damage they created. This required great reforestation efforts in the early 20^th century culminating in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps of the Great Depression. These were some of the earliest and most successful in the country and served as a blueprint for similar efforts elsewhere. College courses were crafted based on experience in the field demonstrating great wisdom in comparison to the current practice of teaching material developed by professors with no practical knowledge of the subjects they teach.

In 1931, Michigan had made such great progress in reforestation around the Au Sable River, that a site west of Oscoda, Michigan was chosen to celebrate both the lumber industry and success reversing it. The Lumberman’s Monument portrays a cruiser who scouted new forests for purchase, a sawyer who sawed and bucked the trees, and a river rat who floated logs down the nearby river. As part of the 2005 Century of Service, the Forest Service chose 16 significant locations throughout the country to place survey markers in celebration of its history. One of these was placed at the Lumberman’s Monument in Michigan.

Thanks to efforts at reforestation, Michiganders can now walk through forests a century old. However, managing forests is far more complex than allowing them to grow undisturbed. Mature forests are frequently poor for wildlife habitat and diversity of trees and plant life. Historically, forests were disturbed by fires, flooding, and wind which killed off mature trees and allowed young trees to grow up again in their place. Fires and flooding have been greatly limited by human intervention.

Many wildlife rely on younger forests, such as white-tailed deer. White-tailed deer were an important source of sustenance for humans throughout Michigan’s history and today are a common source of meat for rural Michiganders. During winter months, snow covers green plants and nuts on the ground and deer eat the younger tips of branches and buds. Deer can only reach these branches on younger trees.

In addition to the more economically important deer, several birds live in young forests. In previous posts, I have written about ruffed grouse and American woodcock which live in young forests typified by early successional trees such as quaking aspen and white birch trees which conceal birds from predators. Michigan has established Grouse Enhanced Management areas (GEMs) comprising 73,000 acres specifically managed to provide homes for grouse and other wildlife. In absence of floods and forest fires, these lands are managed, ironically, by clear cut logging. By cutting trees, young ones can regrow in their place providing habitat for wildlife. While in the past Michigan may have sold its lands to unscrupulous commercial interests and suffered the consequences, the public is now rewarded for its timber and lands are managed in the public interest. Today, many consider Michigan to be one of the three most important states for ruffed grouse and perhaps the most important state for American woodcock.

Michigan can also point to lands managed for Kirland warblers. These birds migrate to the Bahamas in the winter and return to a small area centered between Mio and Grayling, Michigan to mate in young jack pines. Due to maturing jack pine forests, Kirtland warblers were an endangered species. In response, large areas were logged and replanted with young jack pines. Today, one can drive around northeast Michigan and find large stands of these trees and the Kirtland warbler is no longer endangered or even threatened.

During late spring, one can visit Hartwick Pines state park to attend a birdwatching tour for the Kirtland warbler. Hartwick Pines is one of the final stands of old growth timber in Michigan saved from logging. Conversely, the Kirtland warbler was saved by actively logging timber and replacing it with young trees. Our forests have and must retain this dual nature. Natural resource management in Michigan is not without its controversies. However, we all have a role in this whether it be professional, volunteer, buying hunting or fishing licenses, or simply visiting these areas to give them a human reason to exist. In a hundred years, our ancestors will unlikely remember our names, our stories, our dreams, our struggles, or our possessions. But by retaining our current standard, they will someday walk through forests hundreds of years old and, somewhere down the trail, walk the edges of jack pine filled with the mating songs of Kirtland warblers. In doing so, they will honor us.