A Northwoods Almanac for 1/18/19

A Northwoods Almanac for 1/18 – 1/31/19  

Winter Severity Index to Date? Very Mild

            As of 1/15, the 2018-19 winter severity index is “2” for our region. The index helps gauge the effects of winter weather on deer survival. It’s calculated by adding the number of days with 18 inches or more of snow on the ground to the number of days when the minimum temperatures were 0°F or below. Days when both occur are scored as a “2”. The severity of the winter is then based on the total points accumulated over the time period. A winter index less than 50 is considered mild, 51 to 79 is moderate, 80 to 99 is severe, and over 100 is very severe.

In very severe winters, up to 30% of the deer herd may be lost, dramatically affecting the overall populations. Most of us recall the winter of 2013-14 when the state hit a record 149, sharply impacting the deer herd. Conversely, in very mild winters, deer survival is excellent and reproductive success is typically high.

For the moment then, deer are doing very well, though things may, of course, change.

Historically, severe to very severe winter conditions were commonly reported across the northern forest region from the early 1960s through the late 1980s. Moderate to mild winter conditions have prevailed across the region since 1997 with the exception of the winter of 2013-14. 

To see this chart covering 1959 to 2017, see https://dnr.wi.gov/wideermetrics/DeerStats.aspx?R=WSI#background

White Pines!

            Last week I led a group of tree-lovers into a tiny remnant stand of old-growth white pines near Mercer. The site is an “island” of mostly old-growth white pines surrounded by alder swamp. Some very limited logging within it, but left behind were a number of pines with diameters at breast height over 40”, including the largest at 50”.

50" dbh white pine photo by John Bates

            The best statistics I can find for white pines in Wisconsin says that we have just over 1,000 acres of white pines left that are 150 years and older. Since white pines can live to be 400 years old, 150 years is only their middle age. Remember also that 640 acres is one square mile. So, we have less than two square miles of older white pine left in our entire state, which puts those few that are left in the category of truly rare.

            Why did we cut them so thoroughly? For farmers, the forests were a formidable obstacle to remove from the land before their crops could be sown. For settlers, the wood meant jobs in the bush camps, sawmills, and finishing factories. I’ll let a few quotes tell more of the story:

 “It is much to be regretted that the very superabundance of trees in our state should destroy, in some degree, our veneration for them. They are looked upon as cucumbers of the land; and the question is not how they shall be preserved, but how they shall be destroyed.” (Increase Lapham, The Antiquities of Wisconsin, 1855)

 “Logs less than three feet in diameter are counted ‘under size’ by many lumbermen.” (C.H. Brigham, The Lumber Region of Michigan, 1868)

            “Every new settler upon the fertile prairies means one more added to the vast army of lumber consumers, one more new house to be built, one more barn, one more 40 acres of land to be fenced, one more or perhaps a dozen corn crib needs.” (The Northwestern Lumberman, 1880)         
            “An 1888 log jam on the Menominee River is said to have backed up 500 million board feet.” (William Cronen, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West)

note the people standing on this logjam in the left of the photo

            “The longest log jam in the world took place in 1894 in Little Falls, Minnesota. 7 miles long, half a mile wide, and 60 feet high . . . It was estimated to contain over four billion board feet of lumber.” (Wisconsin Historical Society) 

 “No wood [white pine] has found greater favor or entered more fully into supplying all those wants of man.” (George Hotchkiss,History of the Lumber and Forest Industry of the Northwest, 1898)

            “The desolation of much of the pine area in the 1920’s and early 1930’s is difficult to describe to anyone who did not see it. In many places the entire landscape as far as the eye could see supported not a single tree more than a few inches in diameter. Only the gaunt stumps of the former pines, frequently with their root systems fully exposed as a result of the consumption of the topsoil by fire, remained to indicate that the area was once a forest rather than a perpetual barren.” (John Curtis, Vegetation of Wisconsin, 1959)

photo from Wisconsin Historical Society, in Our Living Ancestors by John Bates

             What we didn’t cut, we burned, often purposely: “Some 42% of the historic wildfires in the Northeast and the Midwest are estimated to have been due to land-clearing operations of settlers.” (C.S. Sargent, 1880, quoted in From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain, Gordon Whitney).

            “Perhaps more good pine timber was burned than ever reached the sawmills.” (Robert Fries, Empire of Pine, 1951)

            So, white pines were felled as fast as they could be found, and the history is remarkable to read – recommended resources include: White Pine: American History and the Tree That Made a Nationby Andrew Vietze; Empire in Pine: The Story of Lumbering in Wisconsinby Robert Fries; Caulked Boots and Cant Hooks: One Man’s Story of Logging the Northby George Corrigan; The White Pine Industry in Minnesota: A History by Agnes Larson; Deep Woods Frontier: A History of Logging in Northern Michigan by Theodore Karamanski; The Great Lakes Forest: An Environmental and Social Historyby Susan Flador, editor; and The Vegetation of Wisconsinby John Curtis.

            Standing among remnant white pines has a certain magic to it. Thoreau wrote that the sound of white pines was “like great harps on which the wind makes music” (from 1/16/1857).

Sigurd Olson wrote in his book Listening Point, “As I stood there, I could hear the soft moaning of the wind in the high dark tops and feel the permanence and agelessness of the primeval. In among those tall swaying trees was more than beauty, more than great boles reaching toward the sky. Silence was there and a sense of finality and benediction that comes only when nature has completed a cycle and reached the crowning achievement of a climax, when all of the inter-relationships of the centuries have come at last to a final glory.”

John Eastman said of the wind in pines, “Pine is the larynx of the wind. No other trees unravel, comb, and disperse moving air so thoroughly. Yet they also seem to concentrate the winds, wringing mosaics of sound from gale weather – voice echoes, cries, sobs, conversations, maniacal calls.  With the help of only slight imagination, they are the receiving stations to which all winds check in, filtering out their loads of B-flats, and F minors, processing auditory debris swept from all corners of the sound-bearing world.”

            Finally, John Curtis noted in his seminal book Vegetation of Wisconsin, “Most of the big pines cut in the heyday of lumbering business were about 400 years old . . . The occasional giants were 7 to 10 feet d.b.h. reported by the surveyors must have been still older. Results from modern studies, therefore, cannot give a true picture of the actual magnitude and majesty of a mature pine forest at its optimum.”

            True enough. My hope is that someday, long from now certainly, we will again have forests with trees of this size and age.

DNR Secretary Preston Cole

            Along with virtually everyone I know, I am excited that Preston Cole has been named as the new Secretary of the DNR. As a member of the Natural Resources Board since 2007 and as a professional forester, he’s bringing much needed long-term experience to an exceedingly challenging job. His pledge to return science-based management to the DNR, as well as a return to far greater transparency, is profoundly welcome. Hopefully we’ll return as much as possible to objective, apolitical decision-making by people trained in the sciences following the mission statement of the DNR: “To protect and enhance our natural resources: our air, land, and water; our wildlife, fish and forests and the ecosystems that sustain all life. To provide a healthy, sustainable environment and a full range of outdoor opportunities.”

Sightings

            Bev Engstrom photographed a partial albino, or possibly leucistic, black-capped chickadee in Rhinelander. 

photo by Bev Engstrom

            Bruce Bacon in Mercer wondered why his bird seed was going down so much every night and suspected flying squirrels. He set up his trail cam at the feeders and his suspicions were quickly confirmed. We, too, feed flying squirrels every night, and they’re fun to watch.

photo by Bruce Bacon

Lunar Eclipse!

            A total lunar eclipse will occur on 1/20 and last into the early morning of 1/21. The potentially copper-colored moon – a “blood moon” – will be visible throughout North America (a little sunlight gets bent around the edges of the Earth causing the reddish tint).

Since this full moon will appear to be one of the largest of 2019, the eclipse's full moon is called a “super” moon. And given that the January full moon is sometimes referred to as the “wolf moon,” we’ll be having a “super blood wolf moon eclipse.” Say that fast five times.

The moon won’t disappear, but becomes 10,000 or so times dimmer than usual.

The eclipse begins at 9:33 p.m.in Minocqua and reaches total eclipse at 10:41, which then lasts for 62 minutes until it begins to fade. Look for stars during the eclipse that ordinarily would be washed out by the bright light of the full moon!

Celestial Events

            On 1/22, look before dawn for Venus about 2 degrees above the waning gibbous moon. By 1/27 we’ll be up to 9 ½ hours of daylight – our days will soon be growing longer by 3 minutes per day. On 1/29, look before dawn for Jupiter 3 degrees below the crescent moon. 

Thought for the Week

            “I’ve often thought of the forest as a living cathedral, but this might diminish what it truly is.” – Richard Nelson