Went up to Aldo Leopold Center to talk to director Buddy Huffaker and Curt Meine, author of Aldo Leopold’s biography. I wanted to talk to them to get general insights about land ethics and Aldo Leopold.
I started Mr. Meine’s book a couple of years back and the upcoming visit gave me the incentive I needed to finish it. It was well worth it. I have been much influenced by Leopold’s “Sand County Almanac.” It was useful to read the biography and get more insight into the origins of his ideas. Much of Leopold’s life is braided with Wisconsin conservation. In that sense, we walked the same territory, literally.
We talked about many things, among them conservation. We agreed with the Leopold principle that you need to act within a land ethic, but then apply specific actions to specific goals. There is never an end to it; we are always learning, trying and adapting.
Mr. Huffaker shared some projects that Aldo Leopold Center was doing involving other landowners along the Wisconsin River to improve the larger ecosystem, something like the Landscape Management Plans being developed by Tree Farm.
Healing the Muir-Pinchot split We talked a little about the difference between conservation and preservation, the old Muir- Pinchot split. Meine thought that Aldo Leopold had done a good job of melding those two disparate thoughts and that there need be no conflict, at least on almost all conservation issues. Unfortunately, lots of people have not yet got that word. We need to be careful with our language, since the wrong word might set off the more enthusiastic proponents on either side.
New Portuguese translation A new Portuguese translation of “Sand County Almanac” just became available. Buddy Huffaker shared a copy with me, along with a new compilation of Aldo Leopold’s writing specifically on forestry.
I will incorporate these ideas and impressions into my thinking and my own land management. It is good to talk to people who know so much, that helps me know a little more.
My first picture shows the three of us outside the Aldo Leopold Center. Next is part of the center and last is a poster show about Aldo Leopold’s essay “Axe in Hand.” I am not sure if that was the essay the affected most my thinking, but it is the one I think of most often when I am out in my forest, thinking, doing, observing, reflecting and thinking again.
From death comes new life. I know that is true and amply demonstrated on the ecology of the land, but I am still upset by the near total death of the ash trees (Fraxinus).
Ash trees The ash were among my favorite trees, with their glad grace, dark green leaves and fast growth. Ash quickly formed groves. They were among the first to leaf out in spring and in fall turned a beautiful golden, not yellow but really more golden color. Except the white ash. They could turn a beautiful maroon. Beyond those things, I liked ash because they seemed almost impervious to disease. You could plant ash, or more commonly just let ash plant themselves, with reasonable certainty that they would cover the area w/o problems. This last part proved not to be true.
Ash were very common in southeastern Wisconsin. That and their tendency to form groves of almost purely ash has made their rapid demise because of the emerald ash borer more painful. You can see the destruction easily just driving down the roads. That was exacerbated by another of the ash characteristics. They were a pioneer species, quickly filling in disturbed areas, like areas near roads.
Kettle Moraine again I drove up to Kettle Moraine State Forest (Northern Unit) along Highways 41 and 43 and the Götterdämmerung of the ash as particularly noticeable. By the time I arrived at Mauthe Lake I was in a profoundly sad mood and I was uncharacteristically pessimistic. The weather conspired in this. It was overcasts and gray. I thought for sure it would rain, but I needed to do my walk around the lake, as I have been doing for than fifty years.
Mauthe Lake is a gift of the glaciers. It is pretty, but not remarkable. The lake is much more prominent in my personal landscape of memory than on the ground. It was carved out during the most recent ice age and is the headwater of the Milwaukee River. The Milwaukee River does not start here, but flows through early on. Mauthe Lake is important to me because it was where I first learned about conservation, where I came to appreciate the Ice Age and where I saw how landforms interact with biotic communities. I took part in a nature camp there when I was in 5th Grade. It made a lasting impression. In HS, I rode to Mauthe Lake on my bike. In college, I hitchhiked down. I have driven up here dozens of times. The visits bring back memories and I can see the changes that have been taking place over the decades. I expected the dead ash. I had approached the visit with trepidation last year. They were mostly dead by then.
The old trail The walk around the lake is two miles. As usual, parts of the trail were flooded. This is not a problem. Once your feet get wet, they cannot get any wetter, so you just trudge on. You start off in a cedar swamp, with white cedar, tamarack and – until recently – lots of ash. It was on this leg that I felt the deepest discontent and rehearsed the narrative of loss. As I walked, however, I got more cheerful. Maybe it is the stages of grief. I was moving on to acceptance. More likely it was a prosaic combination of seeing more of nature and an improvement in the weather. The sun started to come out and that makes your disposition sunnier.
The turning point came as I crossed the Milwaukee River and started into the mixed and pine forest on the other side. There are a lot of big oak trees there, mostly bur oak. We had the big old oaks surrounded by lot of small and newly deceased ash trees. This reminded me of the impermanence of … it all. At some time in the not very distant past, this ground was probably sedge savanna, with a few big oak trees, some still extant. The oak savanna was almost certainly the result of fires set by Native Americans. I speculate that settlers grazed cattle there. After that, when the land because State Forest, the ash moved in. In other words, the ash were part of the cycle, not the beginning nor the end. This does not take the sting out of their loss, but it does put it into perspective.
You come into a red pine forest as you gain a few feet of elevation. These pines were planted in 1941 and thinned four times. This forest now looks a lot like an open southern pine forests, with a lot of sunlight hitting the ground allowing for diversity. My loblolly on Brodnax look very similar. The red pines are a little bigger than mine, but surprisingly not that much. The Wisconsin trees are nearly 80 years old; mine are just over 30. Trees grow faster in Virginia. Of course, all trees grow faster in their exuberant youth and then plateau. My loblolly will not end up bigger.
I remember the changes in this forest, as least I think I do. I remember my childhood hike in these woods and how I was impressed with hot deep and dark it was. The pine needles formed a thick carpet and there was not much growing under the trees. This was how they did forestry in those days. These days, they like to let in more light. It sacrifices some timber value, but creates a lot more wildlife habitat and species diversity.
What next? All of this made me ask the “what’s next?” questions. The ash trees are gone. We shall not soon see their like again. What is going to come up instead. Something will benefit from this. I observed tamarack, black willow, alder, maples, birch and – surprising to me on the damp land, bur oak. In some places the cattails had become more profuse. Maybe the treed swamp will in some places become a marsh or a sedge meadow. The trees suck up water. Absent the ash, maybe more water will stand.
I observed last time and still now that in some isolated places the ash were still standing and healthy. Sometimes dead ash were standing next to lives ones. What happened? I understand that ash trees in Asia resist the ash borers. Ash borers in Asia are endemic, but not as decisive. Some American ash likely also do not taste as good to the borers or maybe have some characteristic making the less attractive. In this maybe we have the seeds of recovery. I have a picture of the live ash near the dead one with the backdrop of a beautiful sedge meadow. The future?
We think the environment we first saw is THE proper environment, that the forests and fields of our youth was the way it was supposed to be. Nature, in fact, is dynamic and impermanent. Our nature was just one short and changing scene in the endless drama. As I described with the big oaks, it was not what had been or what had to be.
Along the trail, I passed some kids with their parents and a group of what looked like high school kids. They were looking at each other, the boys paying attention to the girls and the reverse. They were not paying particular attention to the forests around them, but they were drinking it in unawares. This is their baseline. Maybe the next generation will think that the cattail marsh next to the river is the way it is “supposed to be.” If sometime the ash recover and recolonize the fenland, these old people of the future will decry that mess and invasion, the trees sucking up water and shading out the cattails.
I know I should more joyfully embrace impermance. I know that intellectually. I know that future generations will not feel that way and maybe even I will not long into the future. From death comes new life. The environment endures and adapts. But I still miss my ash trees.
Bryce Canyon is very nice, but more a theme park than a wild place. Alex and I went down into the canyon for a short hike. It was pretty easy until the last part.
It reminded me of some kind of science fiction movie, with people trudging up to some high goal. You can see this on the first picture. Next shows some big trees in the narrows. You wonder how they got their starts, but they are impressive. Next two are Alex and me. Last is Alex with some big old ponderosa pines.
Stopped off in Chicago to have a couple beers with my old Iraq colleague Michael W. Fox. Actually, he had wine.
Like many big cities, maybe more than many, Chicago has undergone a renaissance, becoming more pleasant and more diverse.
Michael is very proud of his home city and showed me lots of the architecture. Not sure what the typical Chicago food would be, but ribs would be on the short list, so we went to a ribs place.
Mass timber and McDonald’s The architecture I was most interested in seeing was not the most magnificent. I wanted to see the new McDonald’s finished last year using mass timber, cross laminated timber (CLT) and gluelam. I don’t love the ultra modern outside look, but I love the material. Wood is good.
Greater use of mass timber to renew and rebuild our cities is an ecological imperative. Using concrete and steel too much will be more than our environment can bear. CLT can do the job. Wood is the most benign building material and we can grow it regeneratively. I am sure my friend Susan Jones is familiar with this building, but let me provide a few more pictures and the personal experience.
It is great that McDonald’s is building with CLT. They have the market power and the ubiquity to make a difference. Michael and I enjoyed some McDonald’s food. You can park for free for 30 minutes, enough to eat the fast food. If you stay longer it costs you $12 an hour.
I am on a kind of conservation pilgrimage up to Wisconsin, where I will meet people at Aldo Leopold Foundation, hike around the kettle moraines, where I first came to appreciate conservation. On the way there, I have stopped in Chicago to see the new CLT McDonald’s and on the way back I will be stopping off at Hoosier National Forest to talk to people doing prescribed burns for oak regeneration.
And I have been studying on the subject. I am finishing a biography of Aldo Leopold and will meet the author in Baraboo. I recently read a joint biography of Gifford Pinchot and John Muir. And just today I finished the audio biography of George Grinnell. I had not heard of him, but he personally knew Muir, Leopold, Pinchot, Theodore Roosevelt, Fredrick Law Olmsted, Stephen Mather and John Wesley Powell. Grinnell was a true connector, if less famous than those he connected. Among his achievements was the creation of Glacier National Park. A glacier, a mountain and a lake there are named for him. He was both an active explorer and an intellectual. He wrote many articles about nature as well as a series of boys’ adventure books.
Grinnell was also a sort of anthopologist, writing about the Blackfeet, the Cheyenne and others. He was with Custer on the exploration of the Black Hills and was almost with him at Little Bighorn.
The man was active.
I have been thinking a lot about conservation and preservation. Grinnell was a hunter and believed in the need to hunt, but he leaned toward preservation, more like Muir than Pinchot. But I think the whole preservation-conservation division has been overtaken by events. I will write more about that when I get back from the pilgrimage.
Ash tree Armageddon.
I drove through Indiana and Ohio today and I had a lump in my throat the whole way that gave me a little sore throat and stress. The cause was all those dead ash trees. Ash were especially common in those states and especially along roads. The emerald ash borer killed almost all of them. It made me profoundly sad to see all that. I take some solace in that some ash are resistant and maybe biotech can help, but I will not see the restoration in my lifetime.
Ash are beautiful trees. I loved to see them in early fall. Their leaves turned golden earlier than many other species and now so many are lost. When I go up to kettle moraines, I will check the ash there and see what is coming up under them.
Members of the Virginia Tree Farm Foundation and other stakeholders received a briefing on Landscape Management Plans, which will be developed and implemented in Virginia in with a year. Annica McGuirk for ATFS lead the briefing followed by Leigh Peters, who developed and implemented a successful plan in Alabama.
These are my notes/takeaways from the briefings. The basis of ecology, and why it is so endlessly fascinating, is the study of relationships. As a landowner, I am interested in the relationships in the biotic communities on my land and their relationship with the physical forces and topography. It is holistic, but not holistic enough if I do not also consider my land’s connection with the rest of the ecology. What I do makes a big difference to those around me and what those around me do affects me.
Looking at the bigger picture Landscape management plans (LMP) by the American Tree Farm System looks at this bigger picture and create plans by which landowners can know what to do with their land to make sure it is in harmony with the environment in general and with land of other owners in particular. This is the part I like the best. I can also appreciate the practical aspects. LMPs have been successfully deployed in Florida & Alabama.
Most conservation done on private lands Most conservation is done on private lands, especially in Virginia. In Virginia 57% of our forest lands are “family owned,” i.e. relatively small tracts of land in private hands, not owned by large corporations of timber investment management organizations. Family forest owners face a set of challenges different from the big land owners, corporate land owners or people who just have a suburban lot with some trees. They are too small to justify the expense and auditing requirements of a big forest certification plan, like those offered by Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Most family owners are interested in their the beauty of their land, the wildlife it supports or they just treasure it as a place where they live or have a cabin, but they also want to know that they are caring for their property in sustainable and regenerative ways and most do an occasional timber sale. The only thing practically available to small owners who want to certify their forests is through the American Tree Farm System.
Even ATFS can be a challenge. Writing a forest plan is easy for those who know how to do and fun for those who like it, but ordinary people tend not to like or be able to do it well. They just do not do it often enough. An analogy is doing your taxes, assuming they are more complicated than one income and the short form or writing a will. You can do it yourself, but it is not something most people feel fully competent doing or do for fun. A landscape management plan will simplify the planning process.
LMP makes it simple to do it right As I understand it, once the LMP is in place, all tree farmers need do is consider the factors and sign onto them. The LMP obviates the need for a specific plan for the tree farmer’s land. Another big plus is that LMP takes into account the bigger picture, as above, and it is easier to perceive needed changes and adapt to them. This latter consideration also has an admin advantage. The LMP can change w/o requiring editing of hundreds or thousands of individual plans.
Of course, we assume that all landowners would have plans for implementing the work on their land, but these could be in any format and more flexible. I have my own plans in a notebook, hand written, and in lots of separate maps and notes. Last time I was inspected, I a lot of work to assemble all those things. I know what I am planning to do, but it is hard to demonstrate that. No doubt tree farmers would talk about these plans with foresters, local officials and tree farm inspectors. I love to talk about my forests with anybody who has the inclination and perseverance to listen to me. But the more complicated plans they would not be a required part of the tree farm certification.
Certified wood versus certified land Speaking of certification, I think it important to make a distinction between certified wood and certified land. Strictly speaking, we do not certify wood. We certify that the land where that wood originated in managed according to sustainable principles, using best management principles in accordance with robust land ethics. Certified land can produce certified wood. The distinction not trivial. It means that the care for the land comes before and goes beyond the harvest and why we are not enthusiastic about people who want to certify their wood because they want to sell it.
Loose & tight oversight It seems to me that LMP simultaneously provides loose and tight oversight, in that key factors that affect the overall ecosystem or the bigger tree farm and certification programs are firmly set, but in a way that allows for adaptive management, while individual tree farmers are free to make all the decisions about how to implement the key factors on their land and free to set and achieve a wide variety of goals within the framework. I found everything to like in the LMP, with two caveats only tangentially related. One is that the studies for the LMP in Virginia should be conducted over the whole eastern part of the state, i.e. east of the Blue Ridge. Practically this would include all counties touched by or east of Route 29. The current plan calls for a study of this area but only those countries south of the James River. We have requested the wider study. The second is that we are very concerned the LMP be written in such a way that tree farmers can use them as stewardship plans required for many conservation or cost-share programs or things like Virginia riparian tax credit. Both these things require attention but are not difficult.
What now? One thing we need to do now is get the word out about LMPs. It is not too early. Although the Virginia plans will not be available until next year, it is good that people know what is coming. If you are a forest landowner not currently certified, I suggest you think about getting certified. It will help with lots of cost share programs, Virginia tax credits and may help you sell timber, as more and more firms are favoring or even requiring certified timber. I see only advantages to LMPs. I will sign up my land as soon as I can. I asked a lot of questions about my independent decision making. Some people think that I am stubborn and ornery when it comes to my land, and it is certainly true that I dislike being told what to do. On the other hand, I welcome general principles and good advice. It seems to me that LMP will give me both these sets, with the tight & loose factors mentioned above. Our task as Virginia Tree Farm Foundation now is to cooperate with the studies and get this done. ATFS will chose a consultant to collect data, reach out to landowners and draft a plan from September to December 2019. Review of the plan should be done by the end of January 2020. We expect to train inspectors, facilitators and foresters from February to April 2020 and implement the plan from May 2020. After that, the Virginia Tree Farm Foundation will “own” the plan and be responsible for its maintenance and promulgation.
Our goal was to burn out the area with the turpentine beetles and that we accomplished. The secondary goal of cleaning up brush up to the creek, not so much.
The ground was wet. I thought this was good, since I didn’t want to bake the roots and kill trees. Unfortunately, the vegetation did not carry the fire well. We just gave up burning one of the points we had planned. It was covered in ferns and hog peanuts that just would not cooperate.
Just as well. We plan to do burn the larger area in November or December. If the fire gets into the area we tried to burn, that will be okay. It will back down to the stream. If it does not, that is okay too.
It was interesting to watch the fire behavior. We got a patchy burn, with some places not burned at all. The most interesting visual for me was watching the fire go up the side of a tree following a poison ivy vine. I didn’t think there was much chance that it would get into the tree and that was correct. Poison ivy vines are hairy. That was what was burning. It petered out and the vine fell off.
First picture is me at the fire line. Adam Smith took it. Next is DoF starting fire in the woods. Picture #3 shows my longleaf. I just think they look really good. Next is the bald cypress. I was using my cutter around them, so that we can protect them from fire. Last shows some of the devil’s walking stick, one of my new favored plants.
Maybe I am just getting too old for all this, but I blame the heat. It got up to 94 degrees today with high humidity. It is hard to work in that. I cut paths for almost four hours and walked with Adam Smith around to check out the fire lines. And I got just exhausted. I got a new head for my cutting tool, as you can see in the picture. I saw it online. It is great. Unlike the line head, this thing can easily cut brambles and brush. Unlike my circular saw, this thing can easily cut grass and weeds. I was much more efficient. A tank of gas lasts for a little more than an hour. With my other cutting heads I was able to make maybe two complete cut paths before the gas ran out. Today I was able to push through four of them per tank. Sweet. Of course, maybe that is also why I was more tired than usual. The machine is working faster so I am too.
BTW – I cut paths for two reasons. One is to make more effective for us to get around when we do prescribed fire this winter. If the fire starter needs to push through brambles, they cannot move as fast. If the cannot get going fast enough, the fires run too long and get too hot. The other reason is so I can get at and cut the competition for my pines. Often the paths function for both.
My first picture is my cutting tool. Next two are from the end of the day. The picture with the car is what I took from my chair and next is my selfie on my chair, resting. Picture #4 is a path i made last week and last is Loves from the way home. I used to post those pictures each time but I stopped. The reason I stopped was that my phone usually did not take the picture right. It was too fast. The price display move faster than the human eye detects but slow enough that the camera catches it.
Some years ago, I disparaged the “lifeless” deserts of the American Southwest, full of unpleasant lizards, venomous snakes and lots of dust. Looking back, I think I had a mental model, a hierarchy of ecosystems with dense forests and deep soils near the top and deserts with their regolith at the bottom. That was a long time ago. Since then, I have come to understand the earth’s ecosystems as a complex tangled network, not a ordered line. The wonder lies in the complexity and a person could spend a fulfilled lifetime studying details or looking to the vastness.
I have to credit my sister-in-law Lisa Sandoval with starting me on the path of loving the Southwest. Lisa chose to live in Arizona and came to the understanding way before I did. In a show of remarkable bad manners based on ignorance, I was disparaging her region. I don’t recall her exact words, but she in essence told me that I was not seeing because I didn’t know how to look. She was right. A person’s mental model determines what you can see and mine let me see only dust and reptiles, as above.
Maybe it is like that perception exercise we sometimes do, where you just sit, look and listen intensely. Soon you are seeing, hearing, feeling and tasting things you did not know were there. I started to pay attention. The first pieces to click into place were the sky islands. This was an easy one, since as you got higher up, you got more into the woods I could recognize. I remember driving up Mount Lemmon near Tucson.
The mountain features eight major biomes. As you climb the mountain, you pass from the Sonoran Desert, through scrub and open woodland, to ponderosa pine and finally to spruce and fir forests. You essentially go from Mexico to Canada in about a half hour’s drive. It was on the way back down that I really noticed the place of the desert for the first time.
The saguaro cactus forms a forest. It is not the woods of home, with leafy galleries creating shady glades, but it is a forest with the complex biotic relationships for a forest. Even the regolith is not just regolith. Like soils elsewhere, it is a living complex.
Anyway, over the years my perception had broadened, so that I see a lot more than I once did. To that end, and the reason I was thinking about the Sonoran Desert is that I am reading a book about the natural history and conservation challenges. The descriptive and prosaic title is “A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert.” It is not much beyond a beginner’s book, but I am learning a few things. There is a section on Native Americans, and I enjoyed the part about the Hohokam farmers. They irrigated the desert around what is now Phoenix. When we visited Chrissy’s sister Julie & Orris Olson we went to Case Grande to look at one of their settlements. Next time we are back, I hope to visit again and pay more attention.
While I am at it, I have also to tag my Tucson dwelling cousins Carl Hankwitz and Elise Hankwitz. They appreciate the desert. I recall the first time I visited them, we went to see saguaro cactus, but what I remember most vividly was the quiet and the desert quail murmuring.
I post a lot of pictures of my longleaf, but generally w/o a size comparison, since I am often down there by myself. A selfie would not give the proper perspective. Adam Smith took this picture of me with our longleaf planted in 2012.
The next picture is (maybe) the same tree in 2016. The next two are BOTH from 2015 and the same tree. The little one from April and the bigger one from September same year. The last picture is May 2012. I doubt that is the same tree (could be) but they were all looked the same back then anyway.Notice that the trees change, but I keep the same clothes.
Longleaf is more diverse genetically compared to loblolly. If you plant loblolly, they are all about the same height at the same age and conditions. My longleaf go from a few feet high to around 20 feet that you see in the picture (I am 6’1″ for comparison).
Some people think that is an adaptation to fire. Longleaf are fire adapted, but not all ages are the same. They are most vulnerable when they are about 6′ high. The flames pass over the smaller ones and do not reach the terminal buds on the taller ones, so having various sizes means that some survive. I don’t know that pine trees do all that much thinking, but it could be true.
This makes longleaf harder to grow than Loblolly. You just do not know what to expect from them. My longleaf are an experiment anyway. They have not been growing in the Virginia piedmont for more than 100 years, and these trees are native of North Carolina. Not sure how they will do.
More likely, I think, is that the loblolly have been bred to be commercial trees for generations. They bred out much of the variation. Who knows?
