Reforestation starts following windstorm

Cleanup from a devastating windstorm that blew through a portion of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest three years ago recently switched from a salvage operation to reforestation.

Forest officials reported the heaviest damage from the storm, which has since been confirmed as a derecho, in northern Oconto County.

“In the three years since the storm, we’ve sold about 145 salvage sales on about 28,000 acres for a total of just under 300 million board feet of timber,” said John Lampereur, a silviculturist with the C-NNF forest’s Lakewood-Laona Ranger District.

“That would be the equivalent of 59,600 loaded logging trucks and if you parked them bumper to bumper, they would extend for a distance of 847 miles or the approximate distance from Lakewood, Wisconsin, to Decatur, Alabama, on U.S. Highway 41.

“We couldn’t have done it by ourselves. Our friends in the DNR have been a huge help. Under the Good Neighbor Authority, DNR foresters have helped the (U.S.) Forest Service manage more of its land base and, without our partners in the forest products industry, none of the recovery would have been possible. We prepare the sales, but all those loggers are the ones that move the wood.”

Timber sales as a result of the storm continue, Lampereur said.

“We still have a lot of active sales going on, but they’re gradually starting to close,” he said. “The heaviest-hit portions of the storm area are going to be regenerated naturally. They’re going to resprout or reseed the tree species that were present before the storm. There’ll be tens of thousands of acres of young aspen, northern hardwood and oak and that’ll be welcome news to grouse and deer hunters.”

Meanwhile, pine plantations destroyed by the storm have been salvaged.

“They’ll be site-prepared and planted over the next few years,” Lampereur said. “This past spring, we began planting the first 425 acres with red pine, white pine and tamarack seedlings. Most of the areas are being planted with red pine, but they’re going to have a scattering of white pine and tamarack for increased biodiversity. We’ll be planting similar numbers in the spring of 2023 and 2024. Over the next 10 years, we’ll need to remove competing vegetation from the plantings several times so they’ll be free to grow.”

The storm left large trees that blocked roads and trails in the forest. Lampereur said the Forest Service identified areas near private properties and first focused on areas with conifers, the biggest fire hazard. He noted that pine species are soft woods that deteriorate rapidly, so they were hit first before going into areas that were less of a concern about fuel for fire and more of a concern for timber value.

“Other areas – campgrounds and other facilities – we wanted to get those areas cleaned up,” Lampereur said. “It was a constant reassessment of those areas. We really didn’t anticipate being able to sell as many as we did for as long as we did. We pretty much thought 18 months was all we had, and it actually ended up being about twice that. We’ve done a pretty good job of cleaning things up out there. It’s in recovery, and we have large expanses of young forest coming in. It’s definitely a change in the landscape.”