Keith Karnes, representing the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, recently hosted a tour of forest management sites on the Chippewa National Forest for Pete Aube, Chair, and Eric Schenck, Executive Director, of the Minnesota Forest Resources Council (MFRC).  According to Karnes, the sites were selected to demonstrate forest management prescriptions for achieving specific ecological, wildlife and cultural objectives.  

Steve Mortensen and Tanya Roerick, Wildlife Biologists for the Leech Lake Band and Cory Mlodik from the Chippewa National Forest identified forested sites for the tour. Included among these was a commercial “group selection” thinning of red pine to mimic blowdown openings where logging slash also was used to create small brush piles for snowshoe hare.  The openings were expected to grow back to a variety of hardwoods creating a mixed wood stand.   

Other red pine sites featured the use of prescribed burning following traditional stand thinning prescriptions.  In these examples, attention was given to post-burn tree survival and damage, and to the resulting effect on understory species.  In one such stand, a rich crop of blueberries, raspberries and other culturally significant plants were noted.