- An ice storm in late March damaged forests across a 12 county area in the northern part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
- Fallen trees and limbs have been cleared for campgrounds and roads, but some hiking and ORV trails are closed.
- Foresters face a decade or two of salvaging timber and planting new trees.
Many people head north to Michigan state parks and state forests for camping and hiking during the Fourth of July holiday. This year, there are some things to know if you plan to spend some time in the woods up north.
Pigeon River Country State Forest near Gaylord is approximately 110,000 acres of hardwood, aspen, and pine. Like a lot of state forests and parks in the 12 counties in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan, many of those trees were hit hard by an ice storm in late March.
It seems everywhere you look, you can see limbs that have snapped off, or tops of trees broken off, or whole trees dropped to the ground.
Pigeon River Country is a popular place to go fishing in its many lakes. That’s exactly what Phil Morse was doing a couple of weeks ago, camping at one of the state forest campgrounds next to a small lake. He’s started visiting the Pigeon River Country State Forest a while back.
“Oh, early ‘80s. Long time.”
Back in April, Morse had seen some of the news reports about the damage to parks and forests, but he was still a bit surprised when he arrived at Pigeon River Country State Forest.
“Oh, it was sad; incredibly damaging to all the trees and I just couldn’t believe some of the tree tops that were broke off and there were so many stumps that were sticking up. Some of those stumps were 40, 50 feet high.”
Nineteen Michigan Department of Natural Resources state parks and 54 state forest campgrounds were closed in the aftermath of the ice storm. The DNR reports that 3,400 miles of state forest roads and 3,290 miles of state-managed trails, including ORV trails, were affected by trees and limbs blocking the way.
The Michigan DNR, the National Guard, and the State Police Emergency Management team worked to clear roads, campgrounds and some of the trails of downed trees and limbs.
Despite the three-month effort, the DNR said roughly 60% of its trails in the 12-county region remain closed.
Regardless of remaining issues due to the ice storm, people are expected in significant numbers at the parks and state forests, particularly at the popular and rugged Pigeon River Country State Forest.
“If you really want to get that experience of kind of being what we consider ‘The Big Wild,’ that is the nickname of the Pigeon River Country State Forest; the big unique animal that is in the Pigeon River Country is the Michigan elk herd,” said Mark Monroe, Unit Manager for the Forest Resources Division of the DNR.
There are an estimated 1,200 elk in Michigan.
While clearing roads, campgrounds, and trails for visitors is the short-term effort, the job ahead for foresters could last a decade or two.
The ice storm did more damage to the trees in higher elevation areas of "The Big Wild," hitting the hardwoods, aspen, and especially the red pine stands.
For the foresters, taking down those damaged trees is a high priority in their plans.
“And so, we really did concentrate on working on harvesting and salvaging those tree species first because bark beetle will come in and invade those stands,” Monroe explained.
Some of the hardwood trees are moderately damaged, but they’ll likely still have to be cut to salvage them in about five years because of disease and rot. Oaks are especially vulnerable because of the spread of the fungus that causes oak wilt, which will eventually kill the trees.
Monroe and I jumped in a truck because he wanted to show me something you can’t see from the road.
We turned off a road onto a gated trail. Monroe had been down this trail since the ice storm, but more trees had fallen, which shows how the forest is still losing trees to the ice storm three months later.
He grabbed an axe and made quick work of a small downed tree we dragged out of the way so we could get to the aspen grove he wanted me to see.
The amount of damage we saw throughout the drive was astounding. One person told Monroe he thought it looked like someone took a giant lawnmower with a dull blade and hacked off the tops of the trees.
Aspen forest management is planned around a 50 to 60 year cycle where mature aspen are clear-cut so that new aspens grow from shoots from the roots.
“And a lot of our wildlife species utilize that young (aspen) forest, whether it’s ruffed grouse, American woodcock, and our priority species in the Pigeon River Country, elk, which utilize it for browse,” Monroe said, adding, “If we didn’t have young aspen on the landscape, we wouldn't be able to sustain our elk population here in northern Michigan.”
With so many aspens damaged, the harvest and growth cycle will likely be disrupted.
And it’s not just the aspens.
This week, the Michigan DNR said the 10-year State Forest Management Plan will be delayed by at least a year as foresters try to assess the damage across about one million acres of state forests. At this point, the DNR doesn’t have a clear estimate of the percentage of the trees downed or damaged on state public lands.
Private landowners and the federal government are dealing with another two million acres of forest damage.
At his camping site, Phil Morse was wondering about another problem.
“One of the things that bothers me a lot, I guess, would be the debris that’s on the ground. It poses a good problem for fire danger,” he said.
Monroe agreed that’s a concern.
“You have a lot of downed, woody debris on the forest floor that will be consumable by fire once it dries out. For this year, the concern was access to be able to fight fire. We couldn’t get our fire equipment into an interior area to actually suppress a fire.”
For the foresters and the parks and recreation part of the DNR, dealing with the aftermath of the ice storm damage is a juggling act that will be going on for some time.
In anticipation of more people fishing and camping because of the 4th of July holiday, the DNR issued a news release that warns people to be aware of lingering hazards from the ice storm.
Downed limbs can trip you up as you walk through the forest. Trails for hikers and off-road-vehicles could be blocked. Downed trees and branches could be blocking streams where people want to canoe or kayak.
The other risk is wind. A storm or high winds can dislodge trees that are leaning against others, falling to the ground. It doesn’t happen often, but people are killed by falling trees in Michigan.
Being aware of your surroundings and being just a little more cautious in Michigan’s forests up north is a wise precaution.
The Pigeon River Country State Forest, The Big Wild, is especially wild right now.
