A Northwoods Almanac for 1/30 – 2/ 12/2026

 A Northwoods Almanac for 1/30 – 2/ 12/2026  

 

Cold! There’s An Upside

            Last week brought some serious cold weather, with lows reaching minus 41° on 1/24. Cold like that always tests the quality of our winter clothing, with cold fingers and feet proving their insufficiency. I suspect outdoor clothing retailers had a very good week, as did the utility companies (a hot bath when you’re really cold? – How wonderful is that!)

            A strange thing to say, I know, but I celebrate cold like this, admittedly while inside sitting near our woodstove. I’m happy when it’s bitter cold because overall it has positive environmental impacts. Why? Cold kills. 

            That may be a strange thing to say because it swings both ways – it depends, of course, on who is doing the dying. The “good” dying occurs on some invasive insects – intense cold helps to keep them at bay. Take, for instance, hemlock wooly adelgids, spongy moths (aka gypsy moths), and emerald ash borers. All three species have killed tens of millions of trees, and will kill millions more well into the future. But all of them begin dying at -5°,  and once temperatures reach -30°, up to 99% die.

            Unfortunately, some individuals always survive because of microhabitats that insulate them, thus the populations eventually rebound. But the overall population gets knocked back every year as long as winter temperatures regularly reach those intense lows, and thus the insects cause far less harm.  

            Beech trees also approve of intense cold. Though beech trees don’t grow in our part of the state, they’re common in northeastern Wisconsin counties, and dominant throughout New England. Beech trees have been dying by the millions due to several issues, one being beech scale insects which lead to beech bark disease.

            The good news? Extreme cold also kills beech scale insects.            

            There are many more examples, some positive, some not so much. But while extreme cold has some limitations on killing invasive organisms, without it, we’ll be in a lot more trouble from invasive species.

 

Does This Cold Snap Prove Climate Change Is A Hoax?

            For those folks who want to immediately say this intense cold proves climate change is a crock, I always compare how our climate is changing to a serious, and often fatal, illness. There will be good days when the illness appears to be in remission, days that are a blessing. But the course of the illness continues unremitting and unforgiving. That’s climate change. Just as the warm thaw we had earlier this month doesn’t prove climate change exists, neither does a cold spell prove it doesn’t exist. That’s weather, short term and temporary, not climate, which is long term and far more permanent.                     

            BTW, this was a cold, very cold spell, but not as cold as some of the truly bitter weather we’ve had in the past. The winter of 1995-96 was the worst by far in my experience. For five days straight, Jan. 31 to Feb. 4, real temperatures, not wind chills, were at -45° or lower. The record cold for the state at -55° was set in Couderay, Sawyer County, on Feb. 4, 1996. We had    -50° at our house in Manitowish that same day.

            The winter of 2013-14  was substantially more severe than this, too – we had 5 days in a row of -30° from Jan. 5-9. The term “polar vortex” came into its own that winter. 

 

Pileated Woodpeckers

            Bird numbers continue to be down at our feeders this winter, an observation I’ve heard from many other people, though there are pockets of birds being seen in some areas. We have zero pine siskins, American goldfinches, purple finches, evening grosbeaks, pine grosbeaks, and bohemian waxwings, along with just one redpoll. It’s quiet!!

            But we do have a pair of pileated woodpeckers working on some of our dying black ash trees, and occasionally one lands on our suet feeder about 5 feet away from our breakfast table, and that sure wakes everyone up no matter how many times we see it!

photo by Bev Engstrom

            Crow-sized, pileateds rank as the largest woodpecker in North America, and the third largest in the world, so they make an impression when flying by one’s window. 

            They also make the largest feeding holes in trees of any North American woodpecker, holes that are almost always rectangular and can easily measure more than a foot in length. Pileateds predominately eat carpenter ants and woodboring beetle larvae, so the hole size is commensurate with how many ants and beetles are present. They use their long, extensible, pointed and barbed tongue along with sticky saliva to catch and extract the ants and beetles from their tunnels within the trees.

photo by John Bates

            They forage in dead trees, dying trees, downed logs, and live trees, wherever the insects are most plentiful. I remember when we first moved here in 1984 cutting down an old, large white spruce that had a pileated feeding hole near its base. The tree was next to our house, and had to come down so we could build an addition. Well, after admiring how the tree fell the direction I wanted it to (a rarity), I looked down at the stump and about a gazillion carpenter ants were streaming out and heading at a full ant sprint for our house. I must have stomped hundreds of ants in a frenzy of fear for what they might do our already very old house, and so I quickly gained an appreciation for just how many ants a large old tree might harbor.

            An ecology professor of mine used to say that pileateds were nature’s best insecticide –  by eating so many ants and insect larvae over the winter, they reduce the insect hatch in the spring. The prof’s little ditty went like this: “Eat one in winter a day, kill a thousand in May.”

            I have often thought of them as surgeons, taking out the invasive organisms attacking a living tree. But a case can be made that their holes make a tree more vulnerable to species of fungi that can kill the tree, so perhaps it’s a wash. 

            Pileateds also eat fruits when they’re available. I’ve seen them ingesting highbush cranberries below our house, and the list of other fruits that they consume is long, including blackberry, raspberry, woodbine, sumac, elderberry, American holly, various dogwoods, and even poison ivy.

            That same prof I mentioned above also believed pileateds were the most ecologically beneficial birds we have, and I agree with him. Their excavations are used for nesting or roosting by at least 38 other bird species, and sometimes even as den sites for smaller mammals like American martens and bats. 

            These birds can live a long time – the oldest known male was at least 12 years, 11 months old when he was recaptured and rereleased during banding operations in Maryland. So, if you have a pair on your property, they may have been there up to a decade, and their young may have followed them onto the territory upon their death, making your property their family homestead, too. 

pileated range map

            

The Economics of Bicycling in the Northwoods

            The Heart of Vilas paved bike trail runs for 52 miles connecting St. Germain, Sayner, Boulder Junction, Manitowish Waters and Mercer. The trail was designated a National Recreation Trail in 2022 in recognition of its exceptional quality and value to our communities.

            Mary and I have ridden portions of the trail countless times over the years, sometimes seeing so many riders, riders of all shapes and sizes and ages, that it feels crowded. Well, that occasional sense of “crowdedness” is borne out by a recent report summarizing the use of the trail in 2025. More than 162,500 cyclists rode the trail from May through September of 2025 (October data, prime fall color season, was not yet available), with over 45,000 of those users in August alone.

            Let that sink in for a minute: 45,000 riders in August alone, and over 160,000 over a five-month period, just on this trail.

            In a detailed survey of riders, on average, trail users spent $188 per day, generating an estimated $25.7 million in economic activity for the area. Lodging was the highest spending category, followed by food and beverages and souvenirs

            Overnight visitors spent more, approximately $287 per day, while day trippers spent $43 per day. Their overnight stays varied in length, with almost half (47%) staying one to three days, and more than a third (37%) staying seven days or longer, while another 16% stayed 4 to 6 days.

            More than three quarters of the trail users came from out of town, their spending injecting revenue into the five local economies along the trail. The economic study estimates the trail supports 141 jobs and generates almost $2 million in local and state tax revenues.

            We tend too often to measure the value of things via the money they generate, but not only does the trail system draw people to the area, it allows residents and visitors alike to travel safely on two wheels to and from campgrounds, resorts, hotels, dining, shopping and even other trails. We see a whole lot of smiling going on from most of the riders. Need I add that biking contributes to one’s health as well.

            The future expansion of the trail looks exciting, too. The Great Headwaters Trails Foundation is fundraising for an expansion to link Eagle River to St. Germain and the Heart of Vilas Bike Trail System. Additionally, ICORE (Iron County Outdoor Recreation Enthusiasts) in Mercer plans to create a new trail segment to connect existing trails to the WinMan Trails, an off-road biking and hiking destination that already generates $4.3 million annually in economic impact. 

            Future expansion plans also include a connection to Arbor Vitae and Minocqua. Not incidentally, that addition will hopefully connect to the 21.5 mile-long Bearskin Trail, which is estimated by the DNR to have drawn over 80,000 users in 2024.

            When we first moved here in 1984, folks used to say hikers, bikers, canoeists and skiers came with a $20 bill and a pair of socks, and didn’t change either. There was no truth to it then, but it clearly is nonsense now. Non-motorized recreation is, in fact, a major economic driver.

 

Celestial Events

            Look tomorrow night, 1/30, after dusk, for Jupiter four degrees south of the waxing gibbous moon. 

            February’s full moon (the “Snow Moon”/“Hunger Moon”/“Sucker Moon”) occurs on the first of the month.

            The midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox take place on 2/3.

            We hit 10 hours of sunlight as of 2/7. The sun will now be setting an hour later than the earliest sunsets in December.

            For planet watching in February, the action is all after dusk. Look for Saturn in the west, Jupiter in the east, and Venus after mid-month in the west-southwest.

 

Thought for the Week (Perhaps the Year)

            “Here is what I believe: that the natural world – the stuff of our lives, the world we plod through, hardly hearing, the world we burn and poke and stuff and conquer and irradiate – that THIS WORLD (not another world on another plane) is irreplaceable, astonishing, contingent, eternal and changing, beautiful and fearsome, beyond human understanding, worthy of reverence and awe, worthy of celebration and protection.

            “If the good English word for this combination of qualities is ‘sacred,’ then so be it..” – Kathleen Dean Moore, Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 1/16-29/ 2026

 A Northwoods Almanac for 1/16-29/ 2026  

 

Adult Painted Turtles Extreme Responses to Winter

            Cold-blooded animals (better referred to as “ectotherms”) like reptiles and amphibians have to go to great extremes to survive northern winters. Even mild freezing temperatures will cause the water inside their bodies to expand and freeze, the sharp ice crystals potentially shredding cell membranes and rupturing the cells, leading to a quick death.

            Thus, every species of ectotherm has had to evolve a strategy to make it to spring, and sometimes even within a given species, the strategy may differ. Take, for instance, painted turtles. Adult painted turtles can’t survive below-freezing temperatures, and adapt by typically ensconcing themselves onto lake or river sediments prior to ice-up and waiting out the winter.

            The minor problem with this strategy is that turtles breathe via their lungs, and lungs, if you haven’t noticed for yourself, don’t work underwater. To survive, painted turtles drop their internal body temperatures to the same as the water, usually a few degrees above 32°F, and their

metabolic rate drops by about 95%. This reduces their oxygen demand so much that they usually can get all the oxygen they need by respiring through their skin, especially the skin inside and around their mouth as well as their cloaca (less scientifically called “butt breathing”).

Turtles under ice

            But oxygen levels in shallow lakes often crash as the winter progresses (a process called “anoxia”), which can kill fish, reptiles, and amphibians. At this point, painted turtles are unable to get any oxygen via “butt breathing” and compensate by dropping their metabolism to just 1% that of summer levels. Now with no oxygen available whatsoever, they start burning glycogen from muscle tissue to produce enough ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate, the fundamental energy currency for all cellular activities) to power their cells. 

            Now, however, a new problem arises. Lactic acid is produced as a byproduct and steadily rises during periods of anoxia, eventually leading to a condition called anoxic acidosis, which leads to an eventual death. Of all the turtle species in North America, painted turtles have the greatest tolerance to anoxia and the resulting acid buildup. They balance out the lactic acid by precipitating calcium and potassium from their skeleton and shell into their blood stream, which buffers the acidity and staves off the symptoms of acidosis. 

            Remarkably, they can survive without food or oxygen for 100 days. One study found that painted turtles can reduce their heart rate to 8 beats per hour, or 1 beat every 7 ½ minutes.

            Even so, some adult painted turtles die after prolonged periods in anoxic conditions. The best solution for defeating anoxia is to have an early ice-off so atmospheric oxygen can mix with the water. So, while early ice-off is great for anglers, or for those of us starved to see open water, it can be crucial for adult painted turtle survival.

            

Hatchling Painted Turtles Do Something Different, But Equally Extreme

            Painted turtle hatchlings offer a different story. Painted turtle eggs typically hatch in the early fall and the tiny hatchlings head immediately for open water. But some hatchlings remain in their shallow underground nest all winter, and are regularly exposed to freezing temperatures that kill adults. 

            To survive, the hatchlings have evolved two methods of coping with the freezing temperatures. They can “supercool,” a process by which liquids in the turtle’s body drop

to well below their normal freezing points without actually freezing. It’s basically like using an antifreeze, but in this case using high concentrations of glucose and other cryoprotectants

(compounds that protect tissue from freezing conditions). High glucose concentrations can allow the hatchlings to remain unfrozen down to an average of 14°F. 

            There are variables, however. The moisture in the soils and the type of soils surrounding the nests impact the temperature to which the turtles can supercool. In wet sandy soils,

turtles can only supercool to about  28°F before freezing, but in clay soils they can chill to 9°F, the difference being with how ice crystals form in the different substrates. 

            The second strategy they use is extra-cellular freezing whereby water is drawn out of the cells and into the spaces between the cells where it can freeze and expand without rupturing the cells. All but the liver and other vital organs freeze solid and can remain so for several days without causing harm to the hatchlings. 

            Bottom line: For most of the winter, the hatchlings utilize supercooling because they can’t tolerate long periods of being frozen.

            Come spring, the hatchlings will emerge and head for the nearest water.

            Amazing!

 

Garter Snakes Can Freeze, Too!

            Well, turtles don’t have the market cornered on freeze tolerance. Common garter snakes typically swarm together in an underground site called a hibernacula where they can freeze, too (they are known to also spend the winter underwater). They, too, are capable of supercooling to about 23°F, though this apparently isn’t an adaptation to winter freezing, but rather to freezing in the spring when they have emerged from their hibernacula and there’s an overnight frost. They can only freeze for a short period, around 10 hours, but that’s enough to get them by, and explains why garter snakes range so much farther north than other snake species – as far north as the southernmost tip of the Northwest Territories in Canada. 

Common garter snake range map

 

Some Species of Northern Frogs Also Freeze!

            Four out of our nine native species of frogs in the Northwoods – spring peepers, wood frogs, Eastern gray tree frogs, and boreal chorus frogs – also freeze over the winter. They freeze via a very similar mechanism to that of hatchling turtles, drawing water out of their cells so that freezing occurs outside of cells rather than within. 

            These frogs appear from the outside to be entirely frozen, their skin and eyes rock hard and most of their bodies solid – about 60% frozen. Their liver and heart, however, remain in a super-cooled state, though the heart ceases to beat and no breath is drawn. Basically, they’re in a state of suspended animation, appearing totally dead to the world.

Frozen wood frog

            Then in mid-April, they begin to thaw, and something yet more remarkable happens. In the fall, they freeze from the outside to the inside, but if the frog’s tissues and organs thawed in that same order, the frog would die. The skin, limbs, and eyes would thaw out without being connected to a beating heart, and tissue on the frog’s exterior would become necrotic – dying due to no blood flow.

            Instead, the frogs thaw from the core outward, starting with the heart beginning to beat. As each subsequent layer of tissue thaws, blood flows to the tissue until the skin and eyes soften, a process that only takes a couple hours. And then they can begin calling. and the

frogs can resume normal body function immediately afterward.

            Winners of the award for the most frozen of all organisms, wood frogs in Alaska were found to survive freezing to temperatures as low as zero and remained frozen for upwards of 200 consecutive days. Those Alaskan frogs concentrated ten times the amount of glucose in their musculature compared to Wood Frogs studied farther south.

            It should be noted that these four species of frogs overwinter in upland forests under leaf litter, logs and tree roots while air temperatures regularly fall way below that  in which the frogs can survive. But the frogs survive because of the snow cover that insulates them those microhabitats, providing yet another reason why having good snow depth beyond skiing and snowmobiling is important in the North country.

            BTW, where do our other five species of frogs overwinter (mink frogs, leopard frogs, green frogs, bullfrogs, and American toads)? Except for toads, underwater. Toads dig down into loose soil to below the frost line and spend the winter underground.

             

Sightings – Leucistic Black-capped Chickadee and Northern Shrike

            Zach Wilson sent me a photo of a leucistic black-capped chickadee that is coming to a feeder on the Turtle Flambeau Flowage. If you’re not familiar with leucism, it’s a partial loss of pigmentation in animals, causing patchy coloration.  

Leucistic black-capped chickadee, photo by Amanda Griggs

            We continue to have a northern shrike perching atop a large silver maple and overlooking our bird feeders. Our songbird numbers have been low so far this winter, and I suspect the shrike’s predilection for eating songbirds is partially responsible for that.

 

Great Lakes Ice Cover

            Great Lakes ice coverage stands at 14.43% as of January 05, 2026. What the future holds for ice formation depends entirely on the weather. Prolonged periods of below freezing temperatures and calm winds enhance ice formation. High winds, warmer temps, and wavy surfaces inhibit ice formation.

 

Celestial Events

            Our days are growing longer now by more than two minutes per day.

            The new moon occurs on 1/18.

            The year’s coldest days on average occur between 1/20 and 1/29, though the first week of February has a history of also being pretty brutal.

            On 1/23, look after dusk for Saturn about 4° below the waxing crescent moon. 

            Best planet watching for the rest of January? Jupiter rises in the east at dusk at -2.7 magnitude, so it’s the brightest star in the night sky these days. And Saturn (1.1 magnitude) is high in the south at dusk, then setting in the west.

 

Thought for the Week

            “ In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.” –  John Burroughs, "The Snow-Walkers," 1866

 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at johnbates2828@gmail.com, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com

 

 A Northwoods Almanac for 1/2-15/2026  

 

Christmas Bird Counts

            I participated in two Audubon Christmas Bird Counts – the 126^th year of the counts – beginning on 12/18 with the Minocqua count. Here the group tallied 24 species, a typical number, despite the mist and rain that morning. Most counters, however, felt the woods were abnormally quiet – the abundance of birds was well down.          

            For me, the keynote of this count was the finding of nine brown creepers, a species we struggle to find even one of on most count years (see more on brown creepers below).

            The second count took place on 12/20 in the Manitowish Waters area, and we also tallied 24 species (the average over 33 years for us), though again the woods overall were quiet. The strong winds may have had a lot to do with that – high winds push birds into cover and away from searching eyes and ears.

            The keynote of this count was the sighting of three predators: a northern shrike, a northern goshawk, and a merlin. The shrike appeared at our feeders in Manitowish, and he/she (the genders are identical) is still around, now perched at the top of a silver maple outside my office window as I’m writing this (12/26). Shrikes are masterful predators of small songbirds, so the large birds at our feeders, like blue jays and mourning doves, pay the shrike no mind. But the chickadees and nuthatches and goldfinches, well, I sure wouldn’t like to know something is perched nearby that is very capable of eating me, and there’s very little I can do about it other than be eternally vigilant.

northern shrike capturing a pine siskin, photo by Bev Engstrom

            To date this winter has produced only small numbers of Canadian migrants. Evening and pine grosbeaks are visiting some feeders, but darn few. Bohemian waxwing flocks have frequented some crabapple trees, but again not many. Very small numbers of redpolls and pine siskins are scattered here and there, and there aren’t any purple finches or crossbills to be found. 

            This can change as the winter progresses and food sources deplete north of us. We’ll see what January brings us!

            

Brown Creepers

            This quote describes perfectly the physical character of the tiny brown creeper: “The brown creeper, as he hitches along the bole of a tree, looks like a fragment of detached bark that is defying the law of gravitation by moving upward over the trunk, and as he flies off to another tree he resembles a little dry leaf blown about by the wind.” – W.M. Tyler, 1948. 

            “Inconspicuous” and “cryptic” serve also as descriptors. The creeper has no interest, no ego whatsoever, in preening out in the open, wearing brilliant colors to attract attention, or singing anything other than a high-pitched song that is hard to detect. 

            Nor does its behavior draw attention. Creepers are in endless pursuit of bark-dwelling invertebrates, doing so by beginning at the base of a tree trunk, climbing slowly upwards, and often spiralling around the trunk until they near the top. Their slow progress up a tree draws almost no notice, and then they fly to the base of a nearby tree and start over again. The creeper's short legs, long stiff tail, and long curved claws and toes are perfect adaptations to climbing nearly always upward. 

            I wonder if brown creepers are really quite numerous in the Northwoods but simply don’t register on our perceptual radars. They’re pretty much everywhere throughout North America, widely distributed in coniferous, mixed, and deciduous forests, from Alaska and Canada south to northern Nicaragua. They just don’t demand much attention.

brown creeper range map

            It wasn’t until 1879 that naturalists discovered the creeper’s unique habit of building its hammock-like nest behind a loosened flap of bark on a dead or dying tree. In fact, creepers almost always build their nests between the trunk and a loose piece of bark on a large, typically dead or dying tree. Thus, they favor forest stands with an abundance of dead or dying trees for nesting. But large live trees for foraging also are desired because creepers may be able to increase their energy intake by foraging on one large tree instead of numerous small ones. For example, in one study on douglas-fir forests in Washington, a creeper was determined to need to fly to 13 young trees or 3.3 mature trees to obtain the same number of spiders as are available on 1 old-growth tree.

            They’re a year-round resident for us in the Northwoods, and we hadn’t seen one on our Manitowish Waters count until we were eating lunch in town and one of our participants spotted a creeper working its slow way up a red pine right out the restaurant’s window. In winter, they eat a variety of insects and larvae, spiders and their eggs, and ants, but rarely has one has been observed caching sunflower seeds. I’ve never seen one come to our sunflower feeders.

 

Bird Feeding

            Northern winters are the greatest limiting factor for our bird populations. Among all of Wisconsin’s resident and overwintering bird species, winter mortality typically ranges from 10% to 50%, depending on species, age, and weather severity. However, that last factor – winter severity – is key for up here. The clearest example of this is to compare average Christmas bird counts from the southern part of the state to here. Over the last 33 years, we’ve averaged 24 species in our Manitowish Water count, while counts in the south typically exceed 50 species with sometimes as many as 97 species, and they tally a far greater abundance of birds.

            Most Wisconsin birds are well adapted to the cold, but food availability creates a very thin margin of error for our northern birds. More than half of all birds born last spring won't survive to next spring. They’re inefficient foragers and take too long to open seeds or find shelter during storms.

            Lots of factors conspire against adult survival, too. Ice storms coat seeds, extended severe cold snaps require greater calorie intake to stay warm, deep snow covers seeds and buds, short winter days and long winter nights constrict feeding times, and predators know where the action is – household feeders.

            What to do? Supplemental feeding helps. Research shows that during severe weather, survival rates for birds with access to feeders are nearly double the rates of those without.

            To maximize the help you can offer birds, feed sunflower seeds because they’re high in fat and protein (don’t bother with bags of mixed seed that have fillers like red milo that most birds ignore). Put out suet – just about every bird visits suet cakes, even chickadees. If you can provide a water source via a heated bird bath, well, you’ll be consider the best B and B in town (bird and bath). And if you grow low conifers near your feeders that provide cover from storms and predators, altogether you’ll have the best chance of attracting birds and helping them make it to spring.

 

Marge Gibson Wins Lifetime Achievement Award 

            If you’re not familiar with the work of Marge Gibson, you really should be because she’s one of a kind. Her work with raptors, particularly bald eagles, gained national recognition during

the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. As the leader of the Eagle Capture and Assessment Team there, Marge conducted groundbreaking work in assessing and treating affected eagles, helping set the foundation for future oil spill wildlife response efforts. 

            Her training as a medical technologist, her understanding of each species’ biological history, plus her prioritization of low-stress handling – honestly, she’s a bird whisperer – has resulted in remarkable success in the rehabilitation of injured birds and their successful release back into the wild.

            She has served as the President of the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council (IWRC), and her dedication to education has taken her across the world, bringing the IWRC Basic Skills course to Turkey and Greece, where she trained both veterinarians and rehabilitators.            

            Marge’s legacy also extends well beyond the animals she has saved – she has shaped the

careers of countless rehabilitators worldwide.

            She and her husband Don founded the Raptor Education Group, Inc. (REGI) in Antigo in 1990, which specializes in the rehabilitation of injured and orphaned native bird species, particularly raptors. REGI takes in anywhere from 800 to over 1,000 patients each year and provides educational programs to hundreds of people.

            In 2025, Marge was awarded the highest honor in her profession, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Rehabilitation Association. In 2020, she received the National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation for her extraordinary contributions to conservation and wildlife.

            I’ve been remiss in mentioning her awards in my column. Marge deserves all her accolades and more, and all of us in the Northwoods should applaud and support her work.

 

The Economic Value of Outdoor Recreation

            From a recent analysis by the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR): “The single largest, most beneficial economic engine on federal land is not oil, not gas, not mining, and not timber. It’s outdoor recreation.” 

            ORR pulled together federal data from every major land management agency and found that Americans recreating on their federal public lands generate more wealth, more jobs, more wages, and more tax revenue than all extractive industries on federal lands combined. 

·      Outdoor recreation on federal public lands generates $128.5 billion every single year. 

·      It supports over 900,000 jobs and provides over $43.5 billion in wages.

·      It pours nearly $6 billion in tax revenue straight into the Treasury annually. 

            Comparatively in a typical year, the entire market value of onshore federal oil and gas production hovers around $20 to 25 billion dollars. Recreation dwarfs it five to one.

            The entire federal timber program yields far less – just $200 to 300 million in stumpage value each year. Million, not billion. On those same specific Forest Service lands, recreation generates $23 billion a year. 

            This is not to say extractive industries are unimportant. However, outdoor recreation produces more value, more jobs, more wages, more revenue, more long-term growth than extractive projects, is sustainable without leaving behind a clean-up, and promotes human health. It’s an economic powerhouse, anchors local small businesses, and is booming. We just have to recognize it both personally and politically, and act accordingly.

 

Thought for the Week

            “Many people think that the best stage of life is childhood or youth. But I’ll tell you something: the best stage is when you start to think clearly. When you stop complaining, stop dramatizing, and start to truly appreciate everything you have: your body, your freedom, your loved ones, the simple fact of being alive. That’s when true happiness begins. And the best part is that it doesn't depend on age.” – Rafael Santandreu

 

 

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 12/19/25 – 1/1/ 26

 A Northwoods Almanac for 12/19/25 – 1/1/ 26

 

Ice-Up!

            Woody Hagge has been keeping ice-up and ice-off dates for 50 years on 39-acre Foster Lake in Hazelhurst. This year, Foster Lake iced-up on November 29, two days later than the 50 year average of November 27. 

            There has been, of course, wild variation in these dates over the 50 years. Woody’s earliest ice-up on Foster Lake occurred on November 7, 1991, 20 days earlier than the average, while the latest ice-up date occurred on December 28, 2015, 31 days later than 50-year average.

            Foster Lake over the 50 years has averaged 140.5 days of ice cover – 20 weeks – or about 38% of the year.

            In case you’re already hankering for spring, just know that the average ice-out day on Foster is April 16. 

            But rather than anyone lament it, let’s hope that the ice stays that long, because that will mean we had an average winter, and winter is what makes the North Country what it is. 

            If you’re not familiar with the narrow band of forest that we call “The Northwoods” (also more scientifically called the Laurentian Mixed Forest Province), it only stretches north to the Canadian border and south to just below Hwy. 29 (see the map). If we moderate our winter, we quickly lose what defines us. 

The "Northwoods" or Laurentian Mixed Forest Province

            So, we need to buck up! The winter is already hard upon us, and it’s just as it should be.

With that, I’ll put on my snowshoes, share breaking trail with Mary, and try to keep up with her and our dog Pippa, smiling the whole way.

 

The Impact of Heavy Snows

            Good friend and superb photographer/writer Bob Kovar in Manitowish Waters summed up the state of many trails after the Thanksgiving snows:

            “There’s not a trail recognizable right now in the North, the tangled mess of branches, trees and heavy snow conspiring to confound our senses, turning lifelong routes that before the storm we knew so well we could proudly walk through with eyes closed into this immense, impassable, MC Escher jigsaw puzzle, into an alien drifter we have never met before, into a prison of sorts that we had to plot our escape from once the power came back on, from the inside out, one branch, one dangerously hanging tree at a time.” – 12/3/25

            A few days later, Bob further reflected on the thousands of trees and shrubs stooped with their tips bent over so far that they’re now frozen in a coiled spring in the snowpack:

            “I noticed something different this morning as I stepped onto the deck, that for the first time ever I could easily see to the river, as if the area had been clear cut, cleared out, the underbrush and smaller trees having disappeared, yielding to the onslaught of Thanksgivings’ heavy snow and ICE, their bodies crushed under the weight of something bigger, more powerful, almost sinister if you ask me, their tips imprisoned in the snowpack, the only visible trees being the elders that were old enough to know their rights and stood their ground, a spectacle of suffering, not unlike what is happening in too many tight-knit communities on a daily basis in our country these days, and I reached to gently tug at the scoliosed spine of one little white pine, pulling it free, and was surprised when it sprang right up, shaking the snow off as it stood, and then I watched it stand there dazed for a few moments, and it kept straightening almost imperceptibly, as if it was slowly stretching, and each time it blinked, a little more snow fell off, as if reclaiming its mojo, and so I did the same to another, and another, and pretty soon I was in the middle of a silent, but very powerful freedom march, and as the sunrise burned in universal indignation, I realized there is no keeping any one of us down if another is willing to help, and how even when you can’t see the forest for the trees, the forest is there, resilient, strong, bending, waiting.” – 12/6/25

            The efforts by many, many hundreds of volunteers to clear all the chaos on ski trails, bike trails, and snowmobile trails speaks to the strength and big hearts of our small northern communities. We do come together, we do help one another, when we’re called to respond to a bigger story than our politics.

 

Sightings – Gray Catbird, Evening and Pine Grosbeaks,

            12/4 - Pat Schmidt in Hazelhurst has a gray catbird in her yard that has failed to migrate, and she’s rightfully concerned about it. Catbirds typically winter in the far south of the U.S. and Central America, so, this guy or gal (they’re too similar to tell apart) shouldn’t be here. However, they are known to winter along the southeast coast of the U.S., so I suspect they can tolerate some degree of cold. 

gray catbird range map

            The issue for wintering catbirds is they rarely eat seeds – they’re a fruit and insect consumer – and we’re just a little shy on insects here in the winter. So, the question is whether there are enough fruits available for this bird to make it to spring. In one study, the percent of fruit in their diet, by volume, varied throughout year: winter 76%, spring 20%, summer 60%, fall 81%.

            If Pat wants to try and keep this catbird alive, the literature says to offer high-fat, protein-rich foods like suet, mealworms, soft fruits (raisins, chopped apples/grapes/oranges), and unsalted peanuts. But that’s a lot to ask. And one always wonders in these circumstances, it nature should instead be allowed to take its course.

            12/4 - Jean Hall in Arbor Vitae reported having many evening grosbeaks, a pine grosbeak, and a pair of cardinals at their feeders. 

            12/8 – We had our first bohemian waxwings appear in Manitowish, feeding on crabapples.

 

Wolf-Moose Interactions on Isle Royale

            Isle Royale National Park lies 53 miles north of Copper Harbor and 20 miles east of

Grand Portage, Minnesota in Lake Superior. The island offers something rare: a living wilderness with a remarkably simple food chain – one top predator, the gray wolf, and one main prey, the moose. 

            There’s no hunting, no forest management, very little human interference.

            Moose first arrived on the island in the early 1900s, their numbers rising and falling with weather and food supply. Then, in the late 1940s, a few wolves crossed an ice bridge from Canada, and everything changed.

            Durward Allen launched the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project in 1958, and the work has now unfolded over more than six decades – the longest continuous predator-prey study in the world.

            In January 2024, the best estimate of the wolf population was 30 wolves, which included four packs and one wolf living alone, similar to the estimate in 2023 of 31. 

            The estimated abundance of moose was 840, which is a 14 percent decline from the 2023 estimate (2025 estimates are not available due to their usual aviation resources being unexpectedly unavailable).

            Over the 66 years, moose populations have gyrated from as high as 2,455 to as low as 500, while wolves have been as high as 50 and as low as 2 (see the graph). 

            A recent article in BioScience (Vucetich JA, SR Hoy, RO Peterson, 2024) entitled “More reason for humility in our relationships with ecological communities” notes that “every five-year period in the Isle Royale history has been different from every other five-year period – even after sixty-five years of close observation. The first 25 years of the chronology were fundamentally different from the second 25 years. And the next six decades will almost certainly be different from the first six decades.”

            The article summarizes some of the ups and downs and unexpected occurrences that couldn’t be anticipated. For instance, in 1980, a mutant canine virus (canine parvovirus) swept Isle Royale, wiping out three-quarters of the wolves. 

            In 1996, the most severe winter ever recorded in the region struck. That winter coincided with the highest density of moose observed on Isle Royale, and the moose population crashed.

            A year later, 1997, a wolf emigrated to Isle Royale by crossing an ice bridge – the only way a wolf can cross the channel between Isle Royale and the mainland. This new wolf revealed that the resident wolves had been suffering from severe inbreeding. 

            With the new genetics, the wolf population bounced higher for nearly a decade, but between 2007 and 2010, the beneficial effects of the genetic rescue dissolved, inbreeding resumed, and canine parvovirus reappeared after a 17-year (four generation) absence. The wolf population crashed to two.

            As the wolf population headed towards extinction, moose abundance more than tripled to over 2,000, leading to moose severely over-browsing the island’s vegetation, particularly balsam fir. The worry now, among many, was that the moose would end up in mass starvation. 

            Those circumstances led the National  Park Service (NPS) to restore wolf predation by translocating 19 wolves to Isle Royale in 2018 and 2019. Following the translocations, wolf abundance steadily increased and thankfully, moose abundance declined.

            What about now? Well, today, male and female moose are growing smaller. The new question to try and answer is why?

            So . . . this chronology means what? Well, it shows how complicated nature can be! For the researchers, the notion of understanding nature as some sort of machine that is easily predictable and easily fixable had to be scrapped.

            Here’s the bottom line according to the researchers: “Rich, dynamic variation, not ‘balance of nature’ seems to be the force that guides nature . . . The only way we will know how [this works into the future], is to continue observing. The most important events in the history of Isle Royale wolves and moose have been essentially unpredictable events – disease, tick outbreaks, severe winters, and immigrant wolves. Natural history might be much like human history – explainable, but not predictable . . . This is the humility from which a rich relationship with Nature may be rooted.”

            For more info, see https://www.isleroyalewolf.org

 

Celestial Events

            New moon occurs tonight, 12/19.

            Winter solstice takes place on 12/21, providing us with 8 hours and 40 minutes of sunlight, our shortest day of the year. 

            On 12/22, look predawn for the Ursid Meteor Shower averaging 10 meteors per hour.

            Our latest sunrise of the year occur every morning at 7:40 from 12/27 to 1/7, when finally on 1/8, the sunrise will occur at 7:39.

 

Thought for the Week

            “Science has no capacity to save us unless we’re willing to heed what it has to say. Environmental science describes the breakdown, the species loss, the poison of the atmosphere. It’s love, both committed and fierce, which must then say, ‘Got it. We will change now.’ Science illumines our understanding; it’s love that saves our lives.” – Marianne Williamson

 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at johnbates2828@gmail.com, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com