The epic storms of 2011, one in April and another in September, took their toll on the forest here at Heckrodt. We lost over 300 trees to the wind. Due to the efforts of HWR’s maintenance staff and countless volunteers, much of the downed wood has been cleared. Unless you visited us regularly, by midsummer and again by midfall, it was hard to tell that much of the damage had occurred. Every time a tree falls in our forest (whether or not someone is there to hear it – sorry, couldn’t resist), there is great potential for it to damage the boardwalk and close it to visitors for undetermined lengths of time while it is repaired. There has been a lot of that in the last couple of years. To be more proactive, HWR hired a forester to perform a “risk tree assessment” in late winter 2011 to identify those trees that very well might take the plunge across our boardwalks causing damage. A total of 122 trees or tree limbs were identified at varying stages of risk.
Trees identified are dead or dying trees, are close enough to the boardwalk to fall on it, and are leaning toward the boardwalk. Don’t get me wrong, dead trees are really important! They provide habitat for many animals, culture food sources for birds and other critters, add a lot to the character of our forest, and in the end their decomposition makes our good, rich soil. But in a public access forest, we have to make sure to manage them so they do not do damage that prevents trails from being accessible.
Last Tuesday (December 13) students from Mid-States Technical College and their instructors spent several hours removing high risk trees along our trails. This was good for us, since the work was done as a volunteer effort, and this was good for the students, since they were able to learn in a real-life setting. I’ll admit it hurt a bit to see several of my favorite dead snags go – but I understand why they had to be removed. There are many remaining – I just have to train my eye to look a little deeper into the forest.
This effort is more evident now that vegetation has died back and winter has set in. We’re working on clearing the cut wood from the wetland, but it will take some time. Please bear with us as we get it done. What will we do with it? It will be split by our summer volunteer crew and next fall, sold by the facecord as firewood. All proceeds go toward maintenance operations here at the Reserve. In the future we hope that when a tree falls in our forest, we won’t hear that is has fallen on the boardwalk……….. Tracey Koenig, Exec. Dir.