Seventh-Generation Forestry
Wisconsin's Menominee Indians
set the standard for sustainable forest management
BY SCOTT LANDIS
(Originally published in Harrowsmith Country Life, November, 1992)
A Web of Blacktop stretches across central Wisconsin. From the Mississippi River in the west to Green Bay and Lake Michigan in the east, the roads are laid out in a surveyor's grid and named with letters of the alphabet. When the planners ran out of letters, they simply doubled them up. The towns and counties these roads stitch together bear the Indian and French names of an earlier era: Oshkosh and Winnebago, Eau Claire and Marinette. East of Wausau, the nineteenth-century logging capital of central Wisconsin, county road N slices a furrow through the countryside like the blade of a plow. A short transit to the north on county road D, a jog to the east, and the road leaves behind the tidy barns, painted silos and rolling fields of Wisconsin dairy country. Descending a gentle grade, the two-lane highway rounds a curve and is swallowed up in a wall of trees.
This is the western boundary of the Menominee Indian Reservation, a 234,000-acre tract of forested land that from the air, at least - appears to be as linear as any county road. In the winter, its green border is so crisply defined against the surrounding snow fields that, I have been told, it has been used to focus the lenses of satellite cameras.
The reservation, home to about 4,000 Menominee, is the first -and so far the only - commercial timberland in the country to be certified as a sustainably managed forest. I first visited the reservation with forester Bob Simeone, who manages his own maple sugar bush in Land O'Lakes. He has admired these woods for 20 years. Last winter, he led the team that evaluated Menominee forestry practices for Scientific Certification Systems, a California-based company specializing in environmental analysis. As the farmland slipped away behind us, Simeone grew restless. "Sometimes I think I build this place up in my mind," he confided. "Until I come down here. Then I find it's much better than I remembered."
Turning off the main highway onto a gravel access road, Simeone and I stop to look at a stand of timber that has been marked for cutting. The branches of one stout red oak tree overhang the road. Its trunk measures almost two feet across at breast height and has little taper, but the tree has been spared by the markers. "That tree is worth $500 right now, but it's still healthy," Simeone says, pointing to the broad crown and the room around it. If it is left alone for another cycle of cutting, or 15 years, it will be worth twice as much. "Besides the big diameter," Simeone notes, "the grade is super. That, to me, is the indicator."
Size and quality of individual trees do not tell the whole story. Diversity of species is increasingly recognized as a yardstick of forest vitality. Single-species plantations have played an important role in wood-fiber production, but they can support only a limited variety of plants and animals, and they are highly susceptible to disease. The Menominee reservation contains 11 of the 16 major types of forest habitat in Wisconsin and more than 25 species of timber. All the timber species originally found in this forest still flourish here, with the single exception of elm.
"I've never seen a stand like this," Simeone says, ushering me next through a cathedral of mature white pine, perhaps 120 to 140 years old. This delicate species has defied regeneration efforts. "Until now," Simeone observes, kneeling to fondle the two-inch- high pine sprouts that are scattered throughout the duff. The sprouts are a result of the Menominee's' shelter wood management program, which permits a new generation of pine to grow under the canopy of mature trees.
As lush as the Menominee forests are, they are hardly pristine. Every road leads to skidder tracks and stumps. The reservation is managed intensively for both hardwood and softwood saw timber and pulp. The Menominee harvest about 30 million board feet of timber every year - more than 2 billion board feet since cutting began in 1865. What's more, the most recent forest inventory indicates a higher volume and quality of saw timber now than when the land was first surveyed.
The Nicolet National Forest, which abuts the northern border of the reservation, includes similar terrain, soils and timber species, but it was cut over and burnt to sod in the last century. Although its commercial forest is more than twice the size of the reservation, Nicolet is not nearly as rich or diverse. A 1984 report revealed that the Nicolet forest produces only slightly more sawn timber and pulpwood than the Menominee forest and about half the volume of high-quality saw logs. The author of that report, Kenneth Sloan, who is now the area forestry supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, calls the reservation "a gold mine, a laboratory" for sophisticated forest- management techniques. "They're about 50 years ahead of everyone else," he told me recently. ''When we're planting, they're thinning. When we're thinning, they're worried about regeneration." The Menominee forest may be the antithesis of wilderness - land left alone to take care of itself but it is one of the most impressive examples of sustainable woodland development to be found in this country.
IN HIS ENVIRONMENTAL CLASSIC, A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold observed that the best definition of a conservationist "is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop." A forester at the University of Wisconsin and a father of modern conservation, Leopold was concerned with restoring ecological integrity and maintaining the fragile balance of diversity where human beings had intruded. In short, he was describing the kind of stewardship that is practiced on the Menominee reservation. But in the Menominee forest, such decisions are not left to the man who wields the chain saw. Modern forestry is more complicated than that.
The metaphorical axe is honed in Marshall Pecore's office at the forestry center in Keshena. Pecore is forest manager of Menominee Tribal Enterprises (MTE), the business arm of the tribe that oversees its woodlands and sawmill operations. An affable and disarmingly modest administrator, Pecore is widely respected for his ability to mediate the often divergent interests of the community, tribal officers, MTE foresters and their counterparts in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Together, these parties share responsibility for feeding the Menominee Sawmill, observing the allowable cut and ensuring that the quality and diversity of the forest is preserved. MTE operations are supervised by a 12-member board of directors elected by the tribe. Between the sawmill and the woods, the enterprise employs about 300 people.
The bulk of the reservation, Pecore explains, is blanketed with northern hardwoods in an abundance of species. Along with white pine and hemlock, these so-called "tolerant" hardwoods are able to regenerate in their own shade but do poorly in direct sunlight. They are managed in stands of mixed species and ages. Roughly 20 percent of the reservation is managed for aspen and jack pine under an even-aged (clear-cut) prescription. These shade-intolerant species thrive in full sunlight, and the clear-cut areas regenerate naturally. Less than 5 percent of the forest area is held in plantations, where nursery-grown red and white pine seedlings are planted in the wake of a clear-cut.
Clear-cuts are no less controversial on the Menominee reservation than elsewhere. They are ugly to look at, and when conducted on a grand scale, they have been rightly condemned for their destruction of plant diversity and animal habitat. But according to Pecore, clear-cutting is not a black-and-white issue in the natural succession of the Menominee forest, he explains, pioneer species like aspen and jack pine mature in 50 to 80 years. As they begin to deteriorate, they give way to maple, the dominant climax species, which grows up in their shade. Protected from fire, which has played a major role in Wisconsin forest succession for thousands of years, the reservation would be overrun by maple if the forest were left to its own devices.
There's nothing wrong with maple, but to maintain softwood-fiber production and to reap the ecological benefits of a diverse mix of native trees, the Menominee manage shade-intolerant species in clear-cuts no larger than 30 acres. Such clear-cuts are not contiguous, and they're permitted only on high ground, well away from streams or lakes. This minimizes environmental damage and offers good cover for wildlife. Unlike clear-cuts I've seen elsewhere, reservation clear-cuts are not screened from public view by cosmetic buffer strips. As Pecore says, the Menominee have nothing to hide.
Roughly 1,000 acres of white pine are managed under a two-step shelter wood program. In natural conditions, white pine regenerates in the wake of catastrophe. Windstorms and intense fire eliminate competing species and prepare the mineral soil for germination of pine seedlings. Neither selective cutting nor clear-cutting provides the right combination of sunlight and soil disturbance, and a fire of sufficient intensity would be impossible to control. The shelter wood program mimics the fire-succession sequence by artificially manipulating the balance of sunlight, competition and soil disturbance. First the pine canopy is thinned to provide the right amount of sunlight and seed sources; then the soil is scarified by tractors dragging heavy chains in preparation for the natural seed fall. In the second stage, the over story is removed gradually - and carefully - to release the young timber.
While the pine seedlings are establishing themselves, they may be protected from competition by cutting out competing growth or by what MTE silviculturist Steve Heckman calls the "prudent" application of herbicides. In the absence of fire, Heckman says, "We do not have the methodology to regenerate white pine without chemicals." But, like clear-cuts and prescribed burns, the herbicide program remains controversial within the community Pecore acknowledges the risk of using herbicides, but adds, "There's risk in everything you do."
Pecore's job - indeed the primary mission of his entire forest-management team - is to identify the areas best suited to each species and then to prescribe the most appropriate silvicultural treatment. Perhaps the most important tool at his disposal is the Continuous Forest Inventory which is conducted every 10 years on more than 800 permanent forest plots. The inventory provides a base of information against which MTE foresters can measure the long-term effects of growth, disease and cutting on timber volume and quality, as well as on species diversity.
Guiding me through a warren of offices in the basement of the MTE forestry center, Pecore arrives at a ganglion of computers, printers and plotters. This is the heart of a new database with which the Menominee tailor their management system to suit specific soil types and wildlife habitats. The reservation is divided into 109 compartments, or cutting units, but there may be as many as l 5,000 stands of trees or "micro sites," in the forest. Where foresters once treated whole compartments under a single prescription, they can now begin to treat each stand individually.
Sophisticated software notwithstanding, Pecore admits that good forestry still boils down to "walking out in the field, identifying what you want to do and making judgment calls based on biological reality." Pecore's staff can do everything right on paper, but as Heckman says, "Once a tree is cut you can't stick it back. It's not like a crop of corn. You screw it up this year, maybe you fix it in 60, 80 or 100 years."
AT SEVEN O'CLOCK ON A WINTER MORNING, I JOIN Menominee forester Steve Arnold in search of a marking crew and the loggers who would be following it. Bouncing along a snow-packed logging road in an MTE jeep, Arnold explains that two four-man Menominee marking crews spend all year in the bush, measuring and marking timber stands in advance of the cuts. The trees they select can make or break the quality of the forest.
Marking timber in deep snow is good exercise, as I quickly discover wallowing hip- deep behind a crew with my camera. Outfitted in blaze-orange vests and armed with measuring gauges, notebooks and spray paint, the markers easily stay afloat on snowshoes. In fact, as Arnold points out, a hardwood forest can be easier to navigate in winter than at the height of summer. When the leaves drop in the fall, he says, "It's like the roof's been rolled back."
The crew fans out in the forest, each marker in search of a dense cluster of trees. Planted in the center of a hardwood stand, the marker inspects the trees in all directions to determine if there is a large enough volume of timber to warrant a cut. If so, he selects trees for harvest and marks each trunk with a slash of red paint at breast height.
The selection process used by Menominee marking crews is the opposite of high- grading, the common practice of mining a forest for its most valuable timber. "Instead of cutting the best," Arnold says, "we cut the worst." The process may be closer to art than science. Craning his neck to inspect the crown, the marker looks first for high-risk trees - those with damaged tops, for example - which are unlikely to survive to the next harvest. Next the marker targets slow-growing trees, stunted by disease or competition. Finally, he identifies trees whose removal will improve the spacing within a stand, leaving room for the most promising specimens. Only if all the inferior trees have been marked and the stand is still too dense will he select the beefy saw timber that would make any logger start counting his paycheck.
Cutting trees is not a surgical process; collateral damage is as much a part of logging as it is of war. Loggers are paid by the piece, so they tend to work fast. With about 50 two-man logging crews operating at any time, things are bound to get messy. Falling timber lands on other trees. Skidders compact the soil, crush seedlings and rip the bark off healthy unmarked trees.
"Our goal is one thing, and what our guys are doing in the woods is another," Pecore admits. In a perfect world, crews would log only in the winter, when the ground is frozen and protected by a thick cover of snow. But loggers and mill workers have to eat all year. They operate in summer, fall and winter, with a lengthy shutdown during spring breakup, when the snow melts and the ground thaws. The Menominee allow only small skidders with rubber tires in their woods. To minimize damage, tree-length skidding is prohibited and loggers are required to use permanent skid trails, a rarity in production forests.
Loggers can be fined for excessive damage - as much as $250 for cutting a green, unmarked tree. Pecore reports that logging contractors are fined regularly for a variety of infractions, from lost logs to hauling too fast. "It keeps the boys honest," he says. Arnold and other foresters visit cutting sites at least twice a week to check on operations, and they spend more time, if necessary, breaking in new loggers. All contractors are required to attend training sessions during the spring shutdown.
Vyron Dixon has logged the Menominee forest for more than two-thirds of his 61 years, and he proudly counts himself among the last of the old "Menoms." "I've been through every kind of cut there is," Dixon says. He began with a single skidder and, during one year in the early 1970s, his 15 two-man crews cut 7 million board feet of timber, working mainly in big pine. Dixon has seen a lot of young foresters come and go and is diplomatically skeptical of some of their efforts. In the pine shelter wood, for example, he has to work slowly to avoid damaging the young stock, and most of the really big timber is off limits. Still, he allows, "It's a long-range program. I guess they know what they're talking about."
Despite the regulations, which are among the tightest in business, non-Menominee loggers compete for the chance to work on the reservation. In Bob Simeone's report on Menominee forestry, a nonnative logger from neighboring Shawano is quoted as saying, "The Indians are more restrictive [than other-timberland managers] . . . but I suppose I'd do it the same way if I owned that forest."
Wheeling his jeep through canyons of maple and pine saw logs in the MTE mill yard in Neopit. Arnold points to the gleanings of a winter harvest. The mill is the linchpin in the Menominee operation. It is where timber gets turned into money. Roughly half of the total annual harvest is sawed in Neopit, while veneer logs and pulp are shipped to mills off the reservation.
"When it comes to forest management, nobody holds a candle to these people," Bob Simeone says, "but their industry [processing and production] is Cro-Magnon." Easy access to the Wisconsin pulp market has provided a secure outlet for low-grade pulpwood. But there has been little incentive to develop more valuable wood products. Like a lot of resource-based industries, the Menominee mill reflects a heavy investment in primary processing (saws, planers and kilns) but almost nothing in secondary, value-added products (plywood, veneer, furniture and so on).
"If the Menominee have any fault," Simeone continues, "it's that they're too intense in their management." On the land he oversees in northern Wisconsin, Simeone strives for about 70 percent utilization of the upland forests. The Menominee, he figures, use 98 percent. "They could probably turn twice the profit with half the land under management if they used more secondary processing."
It costs more to harvest a forest sustainably, but timber prices are set by nationwide economic trends that are virtually blind to good management. And the Menominee, who are constrained to sell whatever species and volumes their forest can sustainably yield, are less flexible than others in responding to changing demands in the timber market. This makes it harder to turn a profit. Despite recent mill renovations and reductions in manpower, Menominee Tribal Enterprises has been operating in the red in recent years. Their certification as a sustainable timber operation may help them to tap the growing consumer interest in "green" wood products. But MTE management is also investigating specialty markets in plywood, veneer and other value-added products, as well as lumber milled in metric dimensions for the Japanese.
In the short term, Marshall Pecore points out, the enterprise could have a positive cash flow again simply by boosting the cut. "Tribal members could be really happy if we liquidated red oak probably - 'til I went in the grave," he says. "But the next generation would pay." There is no end to the debate over forest-management practices, but most of the Menominee urge Pecore to improve the resource, not to cut more timber.
Whatever triumphs or abuses the forest undergoes in the future, the fact that it is owned and managed by the community seems to ensure its survival. The Menominee reservation is the only one in the state not checkered with private land holdings and the only one in the country that maintains a "trust responsibility" with Congress to manage its own forests sustainably. Other industries may come and go - a new reservation casino already employs more people than MTE - but the role of the forest in the life of the community seems secure.
As Steve Heckman explains, "We're managing this forest for the tribe forever. It's not a corporation. This is them."
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