Audio New plan for national forests (story audio) Photos The Forest Service is asking for public comment on its new management plan. Jerry Birchem Superior National Forest View full slideshow (5 images) Resources Plan summary, with maps Public meetings Sierra Club report Your Voice Join the conversation with other MPR listeners in the News Forum.

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New plan for national forests
by Stephanie Hemphill, Minnesota Public Radio
June 4, 2003

Minnesotans love the north woods. The National Forest Service is devising new management plans for the Superior and Chippewa National Forests. (MPR Photo/Stephanie Hemphill)

The U.S. Forest Service is planning to change how it manages the national forests in the northern part of Minnesota. The federal agency has designed a new plan, and it's asking the public for reaction. The plan calls for a greater diversity of tree types and ages, and habitats for a wider variety of native animals. But critics say it emphasizes motorized recreation and logging at the expense of the wilderness.

Duluth, Minn. — Jerry Birchem is a logger. He's visiting one of his harvest sites on county land, 45 minutes north of Duluth. A stack of birch logs sits near the road. The bigger logs are off to one side.

"We're sorting out these birch bolts for a dowel manufacturer," he explains. The smaller logs are for pulpwood. Jerry Birchem can't afford to waste any trees. He says in the last ten years, the price of trees has tripled.

"We have to pay more for timber and the mills want to pay less, and we're caught in the middle of trying to survive in this business climate," he says.

	Jerry Birchem

Birchem hardly ever cuts trees from the national forest anymore. He'd like to, but the Forest Service doesn't make much of its land available for logging. The agency would like to sell more stumpage, but it doesn't have enough staff to do the environmental studies required before trees can be cut on federal land.

Jerry Birchem says loggers want the Forest Service to change that.

"There need to be processes set in place so it doesn't take so long to set up these timber sales," he says. "They've got to go through so many analyses and so many appeals processes."

Birchem says Forest Service managers know what's best for the woods, and the rules should be changed to make it harder for environmental groups to get in the way of timber sales.

	Superior National Forest

But, like the sign says when you drive into a national forest, it's a "land of many uses." And some of the people using the forest disagree with Birchem.

Clyde Hanson is a marketing consultant who lives in Grand Marais. He's an active member of the Sierra Club. He wanted the new plan to designate wilderness areas in special places. Like Hog Creek, up the Sawbill Trail off the North Shore of Lake Superior.

Looking at the trees in the area, Hanson says it's a unique mixture.

"We might be right at the transition between two types of forest," he says.

Red pine thrive here, along with jackpine and tamarack. Wild iris are blooming, and yellow cowslips. If you follow Hog Creek for a mile or so through swampy clumps of rough grass and alder brush, you get to Hog Lake. Hanson says so far, loggers have left these trees alone.

"Some of the oldest forests up here are in these bog countries, in the swamps and stuff," he says. "People ignored them. They're very old trees; they're not very big. It takes a long time to grow in such a place."

But with the value of trees skyrocketing, Hanson says the place will be logged eventually. Forest Service planners made note of the fact that the area is relatively untouched by humans, and they could have protected it by declaring it a wilderness. But they didn't.

	Clyde Hanson

"And we think that's a mistake," Hanson says. "Because this is our last chance to protect wilderness and provide more wilderness for future generations. If we don't do it now, eventually there'll be enough roads or enough logging going on in these places that by the next forest plan it'll be too late."

The plan doesn't designate any new areas for protection as wilderness in the Superior Forest, and only one in the Chippewa.

But the Forest Service says it is moving to create more diversity in the woods.

Until now, the agency has managed the land mostly to produce aspen. That's what loggers and paper companies wanted, and aspen woods also provide ideal habitat for deer and grouse, popular with hunters. Every 30 to 50 years loggers would cut the aspen down and more aspen would sprout up. So the forest is mostly young trees.

Now, the Forest Service wants to create other kinds of habitat, to provide homes for other species of plants and animals. And planners want not just young trees, but lots of different ages. That's more like what would happen naturally in the woods.

But how to get the forest from here to there, is the problem.

Duane Lula is one of the Forest Service planners. He says fires and windstorms are nature's way of producing diverse forests. They sweep the woods periodically, killing big stands of older trees. And fires make the soil ready for conifer seedlings. Jackpines and other conifers were once common in the forest. Lula says the only practical way for man to mimic nature is by cutting trees down.

	Duane Lula

"We can't have those fires anymore just because people live here," he says. "There's no way we could replicate those fires. Timber management is one way of regenerating those jackpine stands in lieu of having major fires."

But Lula says the main point of timber cutting in the new plan is to move the forest toward the diversity the agency wants, not to produce wood.

Jerry Birchem the logger, and Clyde Hanson the environmentalist both say the planning process is too political. Birchem says the Forest Service is knuckling under to environmental interests, and Hanson says Bush administration appointees are pressuring the planners to allow more logging.

Other people worry about the emphasis on motorized recreation in the new plan. It calls for as many as 90 miles of new trails for all-terrain vehicles in each of the two national forests. Some say it'll be hard to find the peace and quiet they're used to in the woods.

Duane Lula says he and his colleagues have worked for six years to develop the proposed plan, and he says it'll work.

"It's a big forest out there. There's lots of opportunities, and we think we can provide for the needs of most people, for the needs of the wildlife that need habitat out there, and that's ultimately what we're trying to do," he says.

Lula says the Forest Service is open to public input, and the plan will certainly change as a result of a series of public meetings around the state. He doesn't expect a final version to be submitted to the Regional Forester in Milwaukee until the first of the year.

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