White pine in the northern forests: An ecological and management history of white pine on the Bad River reservation of Wisconsin

Environmental History

Volumn 12, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 614-648

  Steen Adams, Michelle M ^a   Langston, Nancy ^b   Mladenoff, David J ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND   (Australia)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONIFEROUS TREE; ECOLOGICAL APPROACH; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING; FOREST MANAGEMENT; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH;

GREAT LAKES; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES; WISCONSIN;

CONIFEROPHYTA; PINUS STROBUS;

EID: 34548709014     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/envhis/12.3.614     Document Type: Article

References (158)

1. For an overview of ecological and social change in the Great Lakes forests, see Susan Flader, The Great Lakes Forest: An Environmental and Social History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
2. See, also, Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
3. and Gordon G. Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: A History of Environmental Change in Temperate North America from 1500 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
4. For a comprehensive review of white pine history and ecology, see Marc D. Abrams, "Eastern White Pine Versatility in the Presettlement Forest," Bioscience 51 (November 2001): 967-79.
5. For a review of forest composition in relation to soil type and disturbance regime, see Forest W. Stearns, "History of the Great Lakes Forests: Natural and Human Impacts," in Lake States Regional Forest Resources Assessment: Technical Papers, ed. J. Michael Vasievich and Henry H. Webster, USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Report NC- 189 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office: 1997), 8-29;
6. Gordon G. Whitney, "Relation of Michigan's Presettlement Pine Forests to Substrate and Disturbance History," Ecology 67 (1986): 2548-59;
7. and Gordon G. Whitney, "An Ecological History of the Great Lakes Forest of Michigan," Journal of Ecology 75 (1987): 667-84;
8. Forest Stearns, "The Composition of the Sugar Maple-Hemlock-Yellow Birch Association in Northern Wisconsin," Ecology 32 (April 1951): 245-65.
9. Forest Stearns, "The Composition of a Remnant White Pine Forest in the Lake States," Ecology 31 (April 1950): 290-92;
10. Stearns, "Sugar Maple-Hemlock-Yellow Birch Association," 245-65. Although fire and wind both introduce ecological disturbances, these two processes create different kinds of stands. Fire, which opens up a large area, promotes pine stands of a common age: an even-aged stand. Blowdowns, which create a small gap opening for sunlight, encourage pines to establish in scattered places amidst older, existing trees: an uneven-aged stand.
11. When characterizing the composition of the Great Lakes forests, one should bear in mind that the pre-Euro-American settlement forest communities were diverse and thus not easy to generalize. In northern Wisconsin and Michigan's upper peninsula, communities of hemlock and northern hardwoods, especially yellow birch, sugar maple, and basswood, were the predominant vegetative type. Studies of pre-Euro-American settlement composition typically employ the Public Land Survey notes as the baseline to their descriptions. See Steams, "Remnant of White Pine Forest";
12. John T. Curtis, The Vegetation of Wisconsin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959);
13. David J. Mladenoff and John T. Pastor, "Sustainable Forest Ecosystems in the Northern Hardwood and Conifer Forest Region: Concepts and Management," in Defining Sustainable Forestry, ed. Gregory H. Aplet et al.,(Washington DC: Island Press, 1993), 145-80;
14. Mark A. White and David J. Mladenoff, "Old-growth Forest Landscape Transitions from Pre-European Settlement to Present," Landscape Ecology 9 (1994): 191-205;
15. and Lisa A. Schulte, David J. Mladenoff, and Erik V. Nordheim, "Quantitative Classification of a Historic Northern Wisconsin (U.S.A.) Landscape: Mapping Forests at Regional Scales," Canadian Journal of Forest Research 32 (2002): 1616-38.
16. For discussions of the primacy of white pine in the midwestern lumber trade, see Robert F. Fries, Empire in Pine: The Story of Lumberingin Wisconsin, 1830-1900 (1951; reprint, Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1989).
17. Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain, 182. Details of timber production history are available by species and at state, regional, and national scales for the years 1869 to 1944 in Henry B. Steer, Lumber Production in the United States, 1799-1948, USDA Forest Service Misc. Publication 669, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, October 1948). Our investigation of Steer's compilation of national lumber statistics attests to the economic importance of white pine in the Great Lakes region. We examined these records to estimate white pine as a proportion of total Lake States timber production. According to these records, the importance of white pine peaked in 1879 for the Lakes States region, when it accounted for 82.5 percent of the tetal timber production. Between the mid-1870s and the mid-1890s, annual white pine lumber production in the Lake States surged from less than four billion board feet to over nine billion board feet. Williams, Americans and Their Forests, 222-23.
18. William J. Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), 151-58, 169-206. The physiological characteristics of white pine help to explain its structural properties. Mature white pine trees grow tall because they are able to emerge above the forest canopy into the supercanopy. Travelers of pre-Euro-American settlement forests reported white pine trees growing to heights of 250 feet or more with diameters of six to seven feet. For details,
19. see Whitney, Freto Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain, 179. Another desirable trait of pine as a building material is its clear, knot-free wood, which develops because trees drop their lower branches as they grow.
20. Abrams, "Eastern White Pine Versatility"; Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain; Forest W. Steams, "Ecological Characteristics of White Pine," in White Pine Symposium Proceedings: History, Ecology, Policy, and Management, ed. Robert A. Stine and Melvin J. Baughman (St. Paul: Department of Forest Resources, College of Natural Resources and Minnesota Extension Service, 1992), 10-18;
21. Lee E. Frelich, "Old Forest in the Lake States Today and Before European Settlement," Natural Areas Journal 15 (1995): 157-67.
22. G. J. Nowaki, Mark D. Abrams and Craig G. Lorimer, "Composition, Structure, and Historical Development of Northern Red Oak Stands along an Edaphic Gradient in Northcentral Wisconsin," Forest Science 36 (1990): 276-92.
23. For discussions of the vegetative communities that reforested cutover sites in the Great Lakes region, see Filibert Roth, On the Forestry Conditions of Northern Wisconsin, Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey Bulletin number 1, (Madison: State of Wisconsin, 1898), 12-20;
24. Curtis, The Vegetation of Wisconsin, 469-71;
25. White and Mladenoff, "Old-growth Forest Landscape Transitions"; Susan Snetsinger and Steve J. Ventura, "Land Cover Change In The Great Lakes Region From Mid-Nineteenth Century To Present," U.S. Forest Service Great Lakes Assessment, http:/ /www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/gla/reports/ LandCoverChange.htm, 2000;
26. Forest Stearns and Gene Likens, "One Hundred Years of Recovery of a Pine Forest in Northern Wisconsin," American Midland Naturalist 148 (2002): 2-19;
27. John Kotar, Joseph A. Kovach, and Tim L. Burger, A Guide to Forest Communities and Habitat Types of Northern Wisconsin (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Forest Ecology and Management, 2002).
28. Lisa A. Schulte et al., "Homogenization of Northern U.S. Great Lakes Forests as a Result of Land Use," in press, Landscape Ecology;, David T. Cleland, Larry A. Leefers, and Donald I. Dickman, "Ecology and Management of Aspen: A Lake States Perspective," in Sustaining Aspen in Western Landscapes, Symposium Proceedings, comp. W. B. Shepperd et al., USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station RMRS-P-18 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001), 81-99.
29. In his comprehensive report to the Wisconsin legislature, Filibert Roth, special agent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture observed, "[a]ll [white pine] logging is extremely close" typically including anything that would "make a 2 × 4." Roth, Forestry Conditions, 18. Roth reported of the areas that had been repeatedly burned: "Here are large tracts of bare wastes, 'stump prairies,' where the ground is sparsely covered with weeds and grass, sweet fern, and a few scattering runty bushes of scrub oak, aspen, and white birch." Roth, Forestry Conditions, 13.
30. Research on the loss of white pine typically highlights the logging era. Cleland, Leefers, and Dickman note, in Michigan "extensive areas were converted from pine to aspen" because of slash fires of the logging era; Gleland, Leefers, and Dickman, "Ecology and Management of Aspen," 81-99. Other related studies include T. J. Karamanski, Deep Woods Frontier: A History of Logging in Northern Michigan (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1989);
31. Q. Zhang, K. S. Pregitzer, and D. D. Reed, "Historical Changes in the Forests of the Luce District of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan," American Midland Naturalist 143 (2000): 94-110;
32. Abrams, "Eastern White Pine Versatility";
33. Steven K. Friedman and Peter B. Reich, "Regional Legacies of Logging: Departures from Presettlement Forest Conditions in Northern Minnesota," Ecological Applications 15 (2005): 726-44;
34. Michael J. Leahy and Kurt S. Pregitzer, "A Comparison of Presettlement and Present-day Forests in Northeastern Michigan, American Midland Naturalist 149 (2003): 71-89;
35. and I. D. Thompson, J. H. Simard, and R. D. Titman, "Historical Changes in White Pine (Pinus strobus L.) Density in Algonquin Park, Ontario, During the 19th Century," Natural Areas Journal 26 (January 2006): 61-71.
36. For details on the adverse effects of blister rust on white pine reforestation, see S. A. Katovich et al., "Restoration and Management of Eastern White Pine within High Blister Rust Hazard Zones in the Lake States," USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-34 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2004). For details on the adverse effects of fire suppression,
37. see Brian J. Palik and Kurt S. Pregitzer, "A Comparison of Presettlement and Present Day Forests on Two Bigtooth Aspen-dominated Landscapes in Northern Lower Michigan," American Midland Naturalist 127 (April 1992): 327-38;
38. Abrams "Eastern White Pine Versatility"; and Thompson, Simard, and Titman, "Historical Changes in White Pine," 61-71. For details on the adverse effects of herbivore browsing,
39. see William S. Alverson et al., "Forests Too Deer: Edge Effects in Northern Wisconsin," Conservation Biology 2 [December 1988): 348-58;
40. and Chel E. Anderson et al., "Effects of Browsing Control on Establishment and Recruitment of Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus L.) at Cathedral Grove, Lake Superior Highlands, Minnesota, USA," Natural Areas Journal 22 (2002): 202-10.
41. We restricted our study area to a subportion of a single Land Type Association (LTA) to meet our research criteria for uniform soil and landform characteristics and thereby control for sources of ecological variation. Because of this research design specification, we limited the study area to 72 percent of the reservation and excluded an ecologically dissimilar part. Scientists consider an LTA to be an ecological unit because of its ecological uniformity. Details available at Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (hereafter WDNR), Wisconsin Land Type Associations (LTAs) (Madison, Wisconsin: Department of Natural Resources, 1999).
42. Lee Clayton, Pleistocene Geology of the Superior Region, Wisconsin. Geological and Natural History Survey, Information Circular, No. 46, (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Extension, 1985);
43. W. G. Batten and S. M. Hindail, Sediment Deposition in the White River Reservoir, Northwestern Wisconsin, U.S. Geological Survey Water Supply Paper 2069 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980), 8-9.
44. A comparison of the landscape histories of the reservation and off-reservation subregions can be found in Michelle M. Steen-Adams, "Change on a Northern Wisconsin Landscape: Legacies of Human History" (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2005).
45. For a discussion of the impact of the La Pointe Treaty on the Ojibwe, see Edmund Danziger, Jr., The Chippewas of Lake Superior (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979), 89-90.
46. Kotar, Kovach, and Burger, A Guide to Forest Communities. For details on soil conditions in other parts of the cutover region, see A. R. Whitson, T. J. Dunnewald, and Carl Thompson, The Soils of Northern Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 306 Madison: April 1919). For details on relationships between vegetative communities and microclimate, see Curtis, The Vegetation of Wisconsin, 40-41.
47. Ashland Land Use Planning Committee, Ashland County Intensive Land Use Planning Report (Ashland, Wisconsin, May 1, 1940), 8, Steenbock Library Government Documents, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bayfield Land Use Planning Committee, Bayfield County Intensive Land Use Planning Report (Washburn, Wisconsin, July 1941), 10, Steenbock Library Government Documents, University of Wisconsin-Madison. On average, thirty inches of precipitation fall per year. Hill and Smith cite a 110-160 day growing season:
48. See George W. Hill and Ronald A. Smith, "Man in the 'Cut-over': A Study of Family-farm Resources in Northern Wisconsin," Research Bulletin 139. Agricultural Experiment Station (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1941), 7. Other sources, for instance, the Bayfield County Land Use Planning Committee, cite a minimum 90-day growing season.
49. Helen H. Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman, Oklahoma, and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 146;
50. Thomas E. Pearson, "The Wild Rice Harvest at Bad River," in Wisconsin Land and Life, ed. Robert C. Ostergren and Thomas R. Vale (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997);
51. Madeline Mathews, "The History of the Ojibwe Indians in the Chequamegon Bay Region to 1763," (History Thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1920). Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bibon Marsh-White River Project Proposal, 1971.
52. A GIS is an especially powerful tool for historians because it enables investigators to systematically examine questions that rely on complex geographic data, especially of geographic change. Examples of integrative environmental history-landscape ecology research using a GIS include Lynne Heasley, A Thousand Pieces of Paradise: Landscape and Property in the Kickapoo Valley (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005);
53. Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005);
54. and Gregory Cunfer, "Causes of the Dust Bowl," in Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History, ed. Anne Kelly Knowles (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2002), 93-104.
55. Ecologists also have used a GIS to develop histories of landscape change, including White and Mladenoff, "Old-growth Forest Landscape Transitions,"; Matthias Burgi and Monica G. Turner, "Factors and Processes Shaping Land Cover and Land Cover Changes along the Wisconsin River," Ecosystems 5 (2002): 184-201.
56. For a discussion of methods and theories of integrating GIS into historical research, see Anne Kelly Knowles, "Introducing Historical GIS," in Past Time, Past Place, ed. Knowles, xi-xx; Ian N. Gregory, A Place in History: Using GIS in Historical Research (Oxford, Oxbow Books, 2003);
57. and Lynne Heasley, "Shifting Boundaries on a Wisconsin Landscape: Can GIS Help Historians Tell a Complicated Story?," Human Ecology 31 (2003): 83-211. Many other investigators have carried out integrative historical-ecological work without the use of a GIS. For example, see Joan Iverson Nassauer, ed. Placing Nature: Culture and Landscape Ecology (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997);
58. Emily W. B. Russell, People and the Land through Time: Linking Ecology and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997);
59. David R. Foster, G. Motzkin and B. Slater, "Land Use History as Long-term Broad-Scale Disturbance: Regional Forest Dynamics in Central New England," Ecosystems 1 (1998): 96-119;
60. Nancy Langston, Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003);
61. and David R. Foster and John Aber, Forest In Time: Ecosystem Structure and Function as a Consequence of 1000 Years of Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
62. For further details on the methods employed in this study and companion research, see Steen-Adams, "Change on a Northern Wisconsin Landscape." Limitations of the PLS records include data ambiguity and potential sample bias; these records are not an unbiased sample of pre-European vegetation. Recent research in northern Wisconsin, however, suggests that while surveyor variability may introduce some error, "variability within data sets representing larger areas are likely to be minimized":
63. see K. L. Manies, D. J. Mladenoff, and E. V. Nordheim, "Surveyor Bias in Forest Data of the U. S. General Land Office Records for Northern Wisconsin," Canadian Journal of Forest Research 10 (2001): 1719-30. A much fuller discussion of potential bias is in Steen-Adams, "Change on a Northern Wisconsin Landscape." Several studies present guidelines to help users validly use the PLS data, including Hazel R. Delcourt and Paul A. Delcourt, "Presettlement Landscape Heterogeneity: Evaluating Grain of Resolution Using General Land Office Survey Data," Landscape Ecology 11 (1996): 363-81.
64. Such research directed our methods, including scale of analysis. To make valid conclusions about landscape change, we applied the same scale of investigation to all datasets. Thus, all maps in our GIS represent land cover at the quarter-section scale. Using a classification scheme, we categorized land cover of all quarter-sections, then developed a land cover map for each of the three dates in this study. These maps enabled us to measure the proportion of various land covers in the Bad River Reservation and thus to quantify change in each vegetative class, including white pine.
65. Blister rust program documents have served as information sources for other historic studies of white pine. Some researchers consider blister rust records to be the foremost archival source on the twentieth-century history of this species, especially of management history, because of their accuracy and comprehensiveness. David B. King, Carl H. Stoltenberg, and R. J. Marty, The Economics of White Pine Blister Rust Control in the Lake States, USDA Forest Service Technical Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1960);
66. Warren V. Benedict, History of White Pine Blister Rust Control - A Personal Account, USDA Forest Service Publication 355 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1981).
67. Steen-Adams, "Change on a Northern Wisconsin Landscape."
68. Archival records show that some sites at Bad River supported dense stands of white pine. For example, a 1913 timber cruise estimated that an eighty-two-acre allotment contained thirty thousand feet of white pine which was "standing but dead about 3 or 4 years." Louis Schlecht. June 20, 1913. Scaler's Inventory of Section 7, SW, NE and SW, NW. T. 46, R.2. Estimates of Timber [for Bad River Agency], RG 75, National Archives and Records Administration - Great Lakes Region (Chicago) (hereafter NARA-GLR (Chicago)). Likewise, a 1925 study found that large volumes of pine grew on some Bad River parcels. The scale inspector, who made field measurements of stumps left over after logging operations, concluded that over 5-5 million board feet of white and red pine had been harvested from a single six hundred-acre section. The scaler calculated that the total harvest was "a total of 5,551,789 feet or an average of 346,987 feet to each forty which is a fair cut considering that four of the forties ⋯ [are] mostly river bottom on which no white or red pine ever grew." Mark L. Burns, January 15, 1925. Report to Commissioner of Indian Affairs. File 339.5, Bad River Timber Sales Correspondence-General. Box 25, General Correspondence Files, Accession 65 A, 198, RG 75. NARA-GLR (Chicago).
69. For additional details on the landscape history of the Lake Superior clay plain, see Steen-Adams, "Change on a Northern Wisconsin Landscape."
70. Seventeen percent of the reservation study area comprised minor land cover classes or lacked available data for analysis.
71. Michael Williams describes the history of the white pine harvest, including its 1892 peak. Williams, Americans and Their Forests, 222.
72. Godfrey presents annual data for harvest on the Wisconsin reservations. Anthony Godfrey, A Forestty Histoty of Ten Wisconsin Indian Reservations under the Great Lakes Agency: Precontact to Present (Salt Lake City, UT: U.S. West Research, Inc., 1996). Although timber production rose to a high in 1907-1908,
73. Danziger, The Chippewas of Lake Superior, 102, notes that the pine harvest at Bad River skyrocketed to a yet higher volume (over 190 million board feet) in 1888, up from 31 million board feet in 1887-1888
74. (also, Godfrey, A Forestry History of Ten Wisconsin Indian Reservations, 33). The rapid, corrupt liquidation of tribal timber alarmed senators, leading to an 1888 Senate investigation (U.S. Congress. Senate. 1888. Chippewa Allotment of Land and Timber Contracts. 50th Cong., 2nd sess., S. Rep. 2710,) and a harvest moratorium at all reservations governed by the La Pointe Agency. In 1893, a new contracting system, known as the La Pointe Plan, allowed harvesting to recommence, this time under closer oversight and at a more measured pace.
75. Although federal officials directed that forest harvest should occur in a systematic way, in fact, Indian agents frequently flouted this directive in favor of local pressures and personal gain; for example, see the cases of agents James T. Gregory and of Samuel W. Campbell, discussed in Alan S. Newell, Richmond L. Clow, and Richard N. Ellis, A Forest in Trust: Three-quarters of a Century of Indian Forestry (Missoula, MT: Historical Research Associates, 1986), chap 1., 20-24;
76. and in Patty Loew, "Newspapers and the Lake Superior Chippewa in the 'UnProgressive' Era," (PhD Diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998), 29-32. The goal to manage forests in a scientific manner emerged from the federal trust relationship with the tribes, which required the Indian Agency to manage forests responsibly for the benefit of present and future generations. Simultaneously, the treaty, which connoted the right of ownership, including the right to sell property, introduced a competing set of demands to Indian Agency officials. Many allottees ardently petitioned agents for permission to sell their timber in exchange for badly needed currency. Newell, Clow, and Ellis, A Forest in Trust; Danziger, The Chippewas of Lake Superior. For discussions of the devastating effects of the cutover across much of the American Midwest, see Williams, Americans and Their Forests, 233-37;
77. and Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain, 156-64, 172-208; Chippewa Allotment of Land and Timber Contracts, S. Rep. 2710, i-vi, xiii-xxiii.
78. The Act of June 27, 1902, directed foresters to reserve timber on the tribal land that subsequently became the Chippewa National Forest (in Minnesota). The Act of May 23, 1908, increased the amount of "timber left standing for reforestation purposes" to a 0 percent of total volume. W. M. Wooster, chairman, Chippewa Investigation Committee. Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. November 14, 1922, 8; File 307.3 Part 1-A, Special Series A, Drawer 11. This report is located in Timber Report, Bad River Reservation, 1932, General Records, 1907-1939. E-126, PI 163, RG 75-National Archives and Records Administration Building, Washington, DC. For further description of contemporaneous understanding the Morris Act, see Jenks Cameron, The Development of Governmental Forest Control in the United States (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1928), 228-32. The act required contractors to limit harvest to "no other timber except such as might be absolutely necessary in the economical conduct of logging operations ⋯ [and] remove ⋯ debris ⋯ to minimize the fire hazard for the remaining and growing forest.";
79. Raphael Zon, "Results of Cuttings on the Minnesota National Forest under the Morris Act of 1902," Proceedings of the Society of American Foresters 7 (1912): 100-105;
80. Newell, Clow, and Ellis, A Forest in Trust, 2.1-2.11.
81. Newell, Clow, and Ellis, A Forest in Trust, 2.1-2.11.
82. J. C. Cavill, superintendent of Great Lakes Agency, to Walter V. Wolhlke, commissioner of Indian Affairs. December 17, 1943. Forest Management Plans. Field Office Records, Great Lakes Agency. Ashland, Wisconsin (hereafter FOR-GLA).
83. J. C. Cavill, superintendent of Great Lakes Agency, to Walter V. Wolhlke, commissioner of Indian Affairs. December 17, 1943, Forest Management Plans, FOR-GLA; R. W. Hayes to J. P. Kinney. October 7, 1915. Records of Forester, Correspondence, 1914-1917. Bureau of Indian Affairs Field Office Records, Red Cliff Agency, Bayfield, Wisconsin, Annual Reports, Correspondence regarding accounts. RG 75. NARA-GLR (Chicago).
84. J. C. Cavill to Walter V. Wolhlke, December 17, 1943, Forest Management Plans, FOR-GLA. In addition, a 1907 letter reported this observation of a Bad River allotment: "some time ago the Forest Service marked forty-five white pine trees ⋯ to be preserved for seed." C. F. Larrabee to S. W. Campbell, U.S. Indian Agent. December 21, 1907. "La Pointe" Box 98 (70842-08-339 to 3387-08-339), RG 75. National Archives and Records Administration Building, Washington, D.C.E.B. Meritt, assistant commissioner, to P. S. Everest, superintendent of Great Lakes Agency, January 22, 1917, NARA-GLR (Chicago).
85. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, expansive fires ignited repeatedly on the reservation. They broke out several times between 1890 and 1893, in 1896, and in 1900. Godfrey, A Forestry History of Ten Wisconsin Indian Reservations. Two major fires broke out during the decadelong interval when the seed tree retention policy was implemented (1908 and 1910). Indian Agency officials described the 1908 fire, which "swept over a considerable portion of the reservation damaging much timber," as especially severe. Consequently, loggers removed 163 million board feet of fire-damaged timber. J. C. Cavill to Walter V. Wolhlke, December 17, 1943. Forest Management Plans, FOR-GLA.
86. J. C. Cavill to Walter V. Wolhlke, December 17, 1943. Forest Management Plans, FOR-GLA. For a discussion of the susceptibility of white pine to fire, see Abrams, "Eastern White Pine Versatility."
87. Great Lakes Agency, Fire Control Plans, 1938 and 1942, FOR-GLA. The Marengo Burn of 1932, which encompassed about twenty-five square miles, greatly exceeded the size of the 1938-1942 fires, however; Great Lakes Agency, 1942.
88. Palik and Pregitzer, "A Comparison of Presettlement and Present Day"; Abrams, "Eastern White Pine Versatility," 977;
89. Thompson, Simard, and Titman, "Historical Changes in White Pine," 61-71.
90. See, also, the discussion of Stearns and Likens, "One Hundred Years of,": "Balsam fir ⋯ sugar maple, and white spruce ⋯ are now ⋯ predominant in the understory ⋯ In the absence of fire ⋯ the pines would eventually give way to balsam fir, sugar maple, and white spruce."
91. Steen-Adams, "Change on a Northern Wisconsin Landscape."
92. Zon, "Results of Cuttings on the Minnesota National Forest," 100-105. Zon was the first director of the USDA Forest Service Lake States Forest Experiment Station (1923-1944), During the initial stage of his career, Zon was a protégé of Gifford Pinchot.
93. Zon, "Results of Cuttings on the Minnesota National Forest," 103.
94. William West Morris, 1934 (probable date), "Description of Timber on the Odanah Indian Reservation," File of Bad River Timber Cruise and Forestry Reports, FOR-GLA, 4. Morris reported that pine grew as an understory species on 48,000 acres of the 79,000 acres that supported aspen (about 50 percent of the 96,000 acres of timber species on the reservation at the time of the survey).
95. Theodore Young, scale inspector, to S. W. Campbell, U.S. Indian Agent, January 17, 1908, "La Pointe" Box 98 (0842-08-339 to 3387-08-339), RG 75, National Archives and Records Administration Building, Washington, DC. For details of pine resistance to fire, see Abrams, "Eastern White Pine Versatility," 977.
96. The difference in the density of pine seedlings at Bad River depended on soil type. Well-drained soils supported good reestablishment, whereas poorly drained soils often supported just one tree per acre. On average, just one white pine seedling (of the three-to six-inch diameter class) grew per acre, according to Morris' survey of eight plots. Morris, "Timber on the Odanah Indian Reservation."
97. King, Stoltenberg, and Marty, Economics of White Pine Blister Rust Control.
98. S. R. Gevorkiantz and R. Zon, Second-growth White Pine in Wisconsin: Its Growth, Yield, and Commercial Possibilities, Wisconsin Agricultural Research Bulletin 98 (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison Agricultural Experiment Station, 1930),
99. 6. See, also, E. L. Chambers and T. F. Kouba, White Pine Blister Rust in Wisconsin, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Bulletin 222 (Madison, Wisconsin: June, 1941). Wisconsin forest scientists continued to investigate the feasibility of growing conifers, including white pine, into the 1960s. Systematic field studies led to them to cite the importance of management on forest growth: Highly productive soils "do not guarantee a rapid growth without meticulous management of plantations." S. A. Wilde et al., Growth of Wisconsin Coniferous Plantations in Relation of Soils, Wisconsin Agricultural Research Bulletin 262 (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison Agricultural Experiment Station, August 1965), 50.
100. Otis C. Maloy, "White Pine Blister Rust Control in North America: A Case Study," Annual Review of Phytopathology 35 (1997): 87-109.
101. Benedict, History of White Pine Blister Rust Control.
102. Charles S. Hodges, "Diseases of Eastern White Pine," in Eastern White Pine Today and Tomorrow Symnposium Proceedings, ed. David T. Funk, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report WO-51 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), 93-98.
103. Maloy, "White Pine Btister Rust Control in North America," 88; Benedict, History of White Pine Blister Rust Control, 43. From 1909 to 1967 the USDA directed the Blister Rust Control (BRC) program, which strove to protect white pine from this fungal disease. The BRC program primarily strove to control blister rust by eradicating Ribes, either through mechanical or chemical means. Nevertheless, blister rust continued to cause substantial timber losses. In 1952, for example, over 650 million board feet were lost to blister rust infection. Alan C. Jones, "The Problem with White Pine," in White Pine Symposium Proceedings, ed. Stine and Baughman, 64-72. For review of foundational plant pathological research to the blister rust control program, see E. P. Van Arsdel, "Climatic Factors Affecting the Distribution of White Pine Blister Rust in Wisconsin," (PhD Diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1954); E. P. Van Arsdel et al., The Climatic Distribution of Blister Rust on White Pine in Wisconsin, Lake States Experiment Station Paper Number 87 (Madison, Wisconsin: 1961);
104. Richard C. Staples, "Research on the Rust Fungi During the Twentieth Century, Annual Review of Phytopathology, 38 (2000): 49-69.
105. For details of the administrative structure for blister rust control work in Wisconsin, see T. F. Kouba, "Annual Report of Blister Rust Control in Wisconsin," 1948, Blister Rust Control Files (hereafter BRC Files), FOR-GLA, 5.
106. Statewide, whereas an average of eighty-three Ribes per acre grew on initial treatment sites, an average of just twenty-four bushes grew on follow-up treatment sites. Blister rust control workers made substantial progress, eradicating an average of 243 bushes per day. Annual Report of White Pine Blister Rust Control in Wisconsin, 1944, BRC Files, FOR-GLA.
107. Earl R. Nielson, "Blister Rust Control on the Bad River Indian Reservation of Wisconsin," 1935, BRC Files, FOR-GLA," 18.
108. "Annual Report of White Pine Blister Rust Control in Wisconsin," 1944, BRC Files, FOR-GLA.
109. Kouba, "Annual Report," 1948.
110. Benedict, History of White Pine Blister Rust Control, 18.
111. The 1935 Blister Rust Control survey map shows that a sizeable
112. Kouba, "Annual Report," 1948.
113. Work at one site, located eighteen miles from the Bad River settlement of Odanah, exemplifies confidence that ample labor resources were available for this trade-off: "truck travel and walking to and from work consumed from two to three hours per day, thus cutting down the actual productive working day to five or six hours." Despite the inefficiency of reaching this remote site, the quality of the white pine resource merited the project. In this treatment area, "white pine [was] very good, averaging from 15-25 feet in height and at least 200 trees per acre ⋯ [with as much as] 500 trees per acre [in some areas]." Gordon P. Mitchell to J. C. Cavill, superintendent of Great Lakes Indian Agency, Blister Rust Control Report, October 31, 1939, FOR-GLA.
114. Benedict, History of White Pine Blister Rust Control; Theodore F. Kouba, "Blister Rust Control [on the] Bad River Reservation," 1943, 1. Kouba's sub-report is located within E. W. Cleasby, Assistant Pathologist, Bureau of Pathology and Plant Quarantine, "Annual Report of Blister Rust Control on the Bad River Indian Reservation," BRC Files, FOR-GLA.
115. Nielson, "Blister Rust Control on the Bad River Indian Reservation of Wisconsin;" Warren L. Smith, BRC supervisor, and E. J. Riley, Great Lakes Consolidated Agency chief clerk, "Annual Report of White Pine Blister Rust Control on the Bad River ⋯ Indian Reservations," 1951, BRC Files, FOR-GLA.
116. Definition of a "control area" in Chambers and Kouba, White Pine Blister Rust in Wisconsin, 9. Many stands were well stocked, averaging two hundred to five hundred trees per acre, with an average height of twenty to twenty-five feet. Gordon P. Mitchell, Indian Emergency Conservation Service spotter, to 1. C. Cavill, Great Lakes Indian Agency superintendent, October 11, 1937, BRC Files, Bad River Reservation. FOR-GLA.
117. See, also, Gordon P. Mitchell to J. C. Cavill, Superintendent of Great Lakes Indian Agency, Blister Rust Control Report, October 31, 1939, BRC Files, FOR-GLA; see Kouba, "Blister Rust Control."
118. E. J. Riley to Don C. Foster, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Annual Forestry Report, January 24, 1952, Forest Management Plans File, Great Lakes Agency Field Office, Ashland, Wisconsin.
119. Warren L. Smith and E. J. Riley, "Annual Report of White Pine Blister Rust Control on the Bad River ⋯ Indian Reservations," 1951, BRC Files, FOR-GLA; Marshall J. Hall, BRC Supervisor, and E. J. Riley, "Annual Report of White Pine Blister Rust Control on the Bad River ⋯ Indian Reservations," 1952, BRC Files, FOR-GLA; "Annual Report," 1952;
120. Andrew W. Depta, BRC Program, U.S. Forest Service, "Annual Report of White Pine Blister Rust Control on the Lac Courte Oreilles, Lac Du Flambeau, and Bad River Indian Reservations in Wisconsin," 1961, BRC Files, FOR-GLA; USDA Forest Service, "Annual Report [for] Blister Rust Control [in the] North Central Region," Reports for Calendar Years 1963 and 1964, BRC Files, FOR-GLA.
121. Andrew W. Depta and George F. Lehrer, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. Annual Report of White Pine Blister Rust Control on the Lac Courte Oreilles, Bad River, and Lac Du Flambeau Indian Reservations, 1964, BRC Files, FOR-GLA. In 1965, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture area supervisors Andrew W. Depta and George F. Lehrer reported that just 3,101 acres of white pine and a control area of 4,678 acres existed at Bad River. This constitutes a 63.7 percent decrease in white pine (8,547 acres versus 3,101 acres) and 68.9 percent decreased control area (15,023 acres versus 4,678 acres). Andrew W. Depta and George F. Lehrer, area supervisors, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. Annual Report of White Pine Blister Rust Control on the Lac Courte Oreilles, Bad River, and Lac Du Flambeau Indian Reservations, 1965, BRC Files, FOR-GLA. For details of the discontinuation of blister rust control at Bad River see, Andrew W. Depta and George F. Lehrer, area supervisors, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. Annual Report of White Pine Blister Rust Control on the Lac Courte Oreilles, Bad River, and Lac Du Flambeau Indian Reservations [for the years] 1968 and 1969, BRC Files, FOR-GLA.
122. Depta and Lehrer, Annual Report, 1965.
123. Smith and Riley, Annual Report, 1951; Depta and Lehrer, Annual Report, 1964;
124. Depta and Lehrer, Annual Report, 1965.
125. Depta and Lehrer, Annual Report, 1965.
126. Depta and Lehrer, Annual Report, 1964.
127. E. P. Van Arsdel, A. J. Riker, and R. F. Patton, demonstrated that climate influenced the likelihood of blister rust infestation: see "The Effects of Temperature and Moisture on the Spread of White Pine Blister Rust," Phytopathology 46 (1956): 307-18. Blister rust fungus is more likely to survive on sites that remain wet (100 percent humidity) and cold (less than 68 degrees Fahrenheit) over a two-day period. Van Arsdel's map of blister rust risk categorizes the Great Lakes states in moderate to high-risk zones (Regions 3 and 4).
128. In northern Wisconsin pole stands, blister rust incidence varies from 0 percent to 28 percent; S. E. Dahir and J. E. Cummings-Carlson, "Incidence of White Pine Blister Rust in a High-hazard Region of Wisconsin," Northern Journal of Applied Forestry 18 (2001): 81-86;
129. Mark A. White, Terry N. Brown, and George E. Host, "Landscape Analysis of Risk Factors for White Pine Blister Rust in the Mixed Forest Province of Minnesota, USA," Canadian Journal of Forest Research 32 (2002): 1639-50. Katovich et al., "Restoration and Management of Eastern White Pine."
130. Forest scientist Raphael Zon discussed management practices consistent with the Morris Act's goal to promote second-growth pine. Zon, "Results of Cuttings on the Minnesota National Forest." For a review of the history of aspen in the Great Lakes region, including the effects of management to promote aspen on other species, see Cleland, Leefers, and Dickman, "Ecology and Management of Aspen."
131. Morris, "Timber on the Odanah Indian Reservation." Morris observed that aspen growing on the reservation was "of much greater value than popple [aspen] found on sandy lands [in Wisconsin] being much taller, cleaner and straighter with much less defect."
132. The 1944 Bad River Reservation forest plan forecasted, "after 1955, it is quite certain that the annual increment will increase considerably as second-growth pine and young aspen stands become more mature."
133. Morris, "Timber on the Odanah Indian Reservation."
134. Curtis, The Vegetation of Wisconsin. This succession model holds especially true on nutrient poor-mesic sites, such as the Lake Superior clay plain, where hardwoods and balsam fir are less likely to establish.
135. See, also, John Kotar, "Managing White Pine: Finding the Proper Niche," in White Pine Symposium Proceedings, ed. Stine and Baughman, 150-56;
136. Kotar, Kovach, and Burger, A Guide to Forest Communities; Lee E. Frelich, "The Relationship of Natural Disturbances to White Pine Stand Development," in White Pine Symposium Proceedings, ed. Stine and Baughman, 27-37;
137. Abrams, "Eastern White Pine Versatility"; and Stearns, "Ecological Characteristics of White Pine."
138. The 1951 Forestry Annual Report noted, "We shall try to sell as large a proportion of aspen as possible." Based on new inventory data, the 1967 forest management plan called for aspen to comprise 89 percent of the annual allowable cut, aspen accounted for 62 percent of the timber land. In the 1960s, the Indian Agency attempted to push the subdominant hardwoods and pines into the canopy through an overstory harvest. For example, the 1967 Timber Operating Plan aimed for a conversion to hardwoods and pines through removal of the aspen overstory. Godfrey, A Forestry History of Ten Wisconsin Indian Reservations, 229. A review of a detailed forest history of the Bad River Reservation indicates that this objective never again appeared in management plans after 1967, suggesting a lack of management interest in promoting stands other than those comprising pulpwood species.
139. Godfrey, A Forestry History of Ten Wisconsin Indian Reservation, 162-71, 228.
140. Mastin G. White, secretary of the Interior, to Senator Herbert H. Lehman, November 9, 1952, Entry 749B, Central Classified Files, 1937-1953, GR 48, National Archives at College Park, MD.
141. Godfrey, A Forestry History of Ten Wisconsin Indian Reservations; Bad River Natural Resources Department, Integrated Resources Management Plan (Odanah, Wisconsin: 2001).
142. D. A. Perala, Manager's Handbook for Aspen in the North Central States, UDSA Forest Service General Technical Report NC-36 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977);
143. Cleland, Leefers, and Dickman, "Ecology and Management of Aspen."
144. An alternative hypothesis for the decrease of white pine in the understory is competitive exclusion: More shade tolerant species such as balsam fir or spruce that were present in the understory may have excluded pine over time. The Wisconsin Land Economic Inventory survey data, however, reported little spruce and fir present at Bad River in the 1930s. While factors other than pine and aspen management may have contributed to the loss of white pine, the absence of spruce and fir in the Wisconsin Land Economic Inventory data suggests that competitive exclusion was unlikely to have been the dominant factor.
145. In a companion study, we found that industrial ownership increased from 6 acres (1 percent of the reservation study area) to 15,340 acres (16 percent of the reservation study area) between 1905 and 1960; in 1988, forest products company ownership climbed to 26,469 acres (27 percent of reservation), mostly comprising paper company holdings. Steen-Adams, "Change on a Northern Wisconsin Landscape."
146. The Stearns Lumber Company held the primary logging contract at Bad River (logging occurred between 1886 and 1922). Godfrey, A Forestry History of Ten Wisconsin Indian Reservations. The Bell Lumber Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, also held a timber contract, primarily to harvest cedar. "Cedar and Other Timber Cut During the Following Fiscal Years," No Date (internal evidence suggests ca. 1924), Sales of Logs: Bad River, RG 75, NARA-GLR (Chicago).
147. John I. Moran, interview with Michelle M. Steen-Adams, February 2, 2004, Ashland, Wisconsin; Joe Timmerman, interview with Michelle M. Steen-Adams, February 19, 2004, Hayward, Wisconsin; Ralph Swanson, interview with Michelle M. Steen-Adams, June 11, 2004, Winchester, Wisconsin (tape recordings and notes of all interviews in possession of author).
148. Many ecological studies have examined why pines have declined, including Curtis, The Vegetation of Wisconsin, 469;
149. Whitney, "An Ecological History of the Great Lakes Forest of Michigan;" and Abrams, "Eastern White Pine Versatility." For a related contemporaneous discussion on the effects of the cutover on the predicted future for white pine stands, see Roth, Forestry Conditions, 12-20. In his 1987 presentation at the Great Lakes Governors' Conference on Forestry, Forest Stearns noted the importance of post-cutover management practices on aspen, which in rum displace pines: "The extensive stands of aspen and aspen/white birch, stimulated by the fites that followed early logging, are being perpetuated by clear-cutting." Forest W. Stearns, "The Changing Forests of the Lake States," in The Lake States Forests: A Resources Renaissance, The Conservation Foundation and The Lake States Forestry Alliance, ed. W. E. Shands (St. Paul, MN: The Lake States Forestry Alliance, 1987), 28.
150. Of the total 1,345,745 acres in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin where blister rust control work was carried out, 691,567 acres were private land. Benedict, History of White Pine Blister Rust Control, 17.
151. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reports an increase in the extent of white pine in Wisconsin. WDNR, Wisconsin Forests at the Millennium: An Assessment (Madison, Wisconsin: 2000). For a discussion of advancements in our knowledge of the microsite factors that control white pine blister rust, see Dahir and Cummings-Carlson, "Incidence of White Pine Blister Rust," 81-86;
152. and White, Brown, and Host, "Landscape Analysis of Risk Factors for White Pine Blister Rust," 1639-50.
153. For details of estimates of presettlement and post-cutover (ca. 1935) aspen-birch forest, see Jeanine M. Rhemtulla, David J. Mladenoff, and Murray K. Clayton, "Regional Land-cover Conversion in the U.S. Upper Midwest: Magnitude of Change and Limited Recovery (1850-1935-1993)," in press, Landscape Ecology; WDNR, Wisconsin Forests at the Millennium; WDNR, Northern Forest Communities, Ecological Landscapes of Wisconsin-Ecosystem Management Planning Handbook, 2004, HB1805.1;
154. Lisa A. Schulte, David J. Mladenoff, and Erik V. Nordheim, "Quantitative Classification of a Historic Northern Wisconsin (USA) Landscape: Mapping Regional Forest Types and Their Spatial Uncertainty," Canadian Journal of Forest Research 32 (September 2002): 1616-38;
155. Cleland, Leefers, and Dickman, "Ecology and Management of Aspen." The Public Land Survey (PLS) notes also attest to the infrequent and ephemeral presence of aspen prior to Euro-American settlement; aspen frequently represented less than 5 percent of PLS witness trees. Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain, 202, 204.
156. Paper mills had been built as early as the 1860s, when six existed in Minnesota. In Wisconsin, a mill was built in the Fox River Valley in 1872 and at Wisconsin Rapids in 1887. Stearns, "History of the Great Lakes Forests." For details on the importance of the pulp industry in Wisconsin, see "Paper Industry in Wisconsin," Dictionary of Wisconsin History, Wisconsin State Historical Society web page. http:/ /www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary. Page accessed July 21, 2006.
157. Cleland, Leefers, and Dickman, "Ecology and Management of Aspen."
158. WDNR, Wisconsin Forests at the Millennium.