Loggers and Logging Sites
Loggers and The Logging Sites They Don't Like
Sometimes the public puts a negative spin on loggers. I want to express my opinion that they are just normal persons filling a demand or finding a job. You have good and bad loggers, good and bad doctors, good and bad lawyers, good and bad ministers, good and bad real estate brokers, good and bad foresters, just for the sake of example. That being said, I admit some occupations certainly have poorer reputations (used car dealers) than others, while other jobs command respect and admiration (astronauts).
Today’s forest may seem to the public just a simple forest, but to the forester and his timber company each forest presents a unique opportunity. UP logging sites are determined by the quality of soils present, which in turn determines tree growth in the long run. Lack of rainfall is not an issue.
Here in the UP we have no deserts. We are right at the border between the boreal forest and the hardwood forests. We are a mixture of both We have sandy areas and then rocky areas. We have two named very old mountain ranges, now reduced to hills. We have huge swamps, we have farm lands. To top it off, we have a huge lake called Lake Superior that affects our weather all the time.
Regarding soil quality, rocks can be found mixed in the soil, or sand and swamp stuff mixed. This results in poor growth. In higher elevations, the soil is also poorer. Just like a farmer does not want to farm a swale or a gully because his corn production is low, timber companies don’t prefer the slow-growing, smaller trees found in these windswept places. Non-roaded areas also influence matters.
These poor growing sites have come to be know as recreational land. Timber companies have this land, and have had it for a long long time-- it fell into their laps, so to speak due to the past. Remember, (read my history section) these companies owned large swaths of land across the UP, thousand and thousands of acres. Now because of changing times, this non-productive recreational land is costing him money.
Why is this important, you ask. Answer: If these poor sites did not exist, this project would be impossible because the timber companies would not want to get rid of them. As it is, these
poor logging sites are being fragmented.
Let me put it another way, another point of view. About twenty years ago I saw this coming, a time when the timber companies would not want to hold poor logging sites. You see, I knew the American way of life in the fast lane, which means to me that humans want the most out of everything. We want the most bang for our BUCK. It’s the law of competition–we think we are the best and therefore deserve the most. It is a driving, plowing kind of existence.
But within the forest are quiet peaceful low-quality types of places.... poor growing sites. These sites just do not belong in today’s logging world, as they just do not produce, therefore not matching the profit gain the timber company requires. I could see the pressure building to sell off this recreational land, make some money that way.
In addition, in the late 1970s I was working for a company which at that time had a timber contract with Mead Timber company. My company seemed to argue with Mead continually. The two companies settled on not cutting a few acres within a given forty. But they would butcher all the rest, maybe 37 out of 40 acres. Mead would aim to skip over the worst growing 3 acres. They would then cut the best timber on the 37 acres, leaving the worst stuff. But we could deal with this leftover junk, because the buying public hardly ever understood the difference. All of this helped focus my mind on the more-or-less abandoned three acres of poorest site recreational type land.
In sum, there are poor growing sites everywhere. Some of these poor sites can be huge, but with small good sites within (maybe 15% of the total). Others tend to the opposite: huge good growing sites containing small poor growing sites within (maybe 10% of the total). This little paragraph is the key. The timber companies will dump unwanted logging sites, if they can acquire the reverse. The FOUR PARKS will be large poor growing sites containing small good growing sites.
Increased values are pushing them, taxes are pushing them, the rising demand for private recreational land is pushing them, production is pushing them, greed is pushing them, the American way is pushing them,. “Them” are the timber companies, and their vision has increased in the last couple years. Due to all these pressures, they now perceive and have perceived in the past a need to get rid of low productions areas, etc, sites. I want to trade with them, and so acquire the large recreational sites before they are sold off in pieces and fragmented forever.
Deep snow and other Effects of Lake Superior.
Most people do not understand the effects of Lake Superior; even local underestimate its influences sometimes. I myself do not understand its entire dynamics. Whereas the forests of Northern Wisconsin and Northern Lower Michigan and southern UP can have a foot or so of snow, nearer Lake Superior, you get twice this. And areas of the south shore can get more than 5 feet of snow each winter.
The weather people refer to it as the snow pack. In the spring it just does not thaw very quickly, rather, nature exerts a thaw/re-freeze process upon it, resulting in the fascinating ability to walk on snow without sinking in. You see, the warm daylight wets the snow pack, melting the top of it. But then at night the air freezes. In the morning the snow pack possesses a marvelous sheet of ice, quite firm to walk upon. But it takes much heat to thaw this. So the air remains cooler, what with all this ice sitting around in the woods.
Well, how does this affect the Four Parks? The traits of Lake Superior, including the impressive snow pack, make logging more difficult and therefore expensive here, and thus timber companies don’t want the land as much. Second, the Superior watershed is different than what most tourists could expect, one example being this snow pack, with its interesting quality of thaw/re-freeze.
All four parks are in the Lake Superior watershed, except part of the Hurons, and that exception is interesting in itself.