Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals

Click HERE for PDF version.

Restoring the Forest with Climate Adapted Trees
Oak wilt, a deadly fungus common throughout forests in the eastern United States, can only be eradicated by cutting down the affected trees and removing or treating their stumps with herbicide. The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, located on a heavily wooded area in northeastern Wisconsin, had oak wilt introduced to their land in the 1980’s. Hundreds of small clearings now dot the landscape. The tribe has typically allowed these pockets to revegetate naturally. However, in 2013 the tribe partnered with the Climate Change Response Framework (CCRF), a group that helps managers incorporate climate change considerations into natural resource management. Together they created a plan to repopulate a portion of these areas with trees adapted to a warmer climate. Using a combination of regional data and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), the tribe is seeing successful regrowth in these experimental plots which are now tailored to future conditions.

150 Years of Sustainable Forestry
The Menominee reservation sits on 235,000 acres of lushly forested land. The forest is unique in that it spans multiple forest cover types and is therefore more diverse than adjacent forests to the north and south. The Menominee Tribe has sustainably managed these lands over the past 150 years. They have nurtured a vital ecosystem while at the same time developing the Menominee Tribal Enterprises (MTE), a profitable timber business owned by the tribe. The tribe has been so successful in cultivating the land that from 1870 to now, standing board feet of timber has increased from 1.3 billion to 1.7 billion. During the intervening years, the tribe has harvested more than 2.25 billion board feet – almost the entire forest twice. The Climate Change Response Framework notes that, “These lands are often held up as a model of forest stewardship because of the long history of sustainable and pioneering forest management.”

In the 1980’s, however, the tribe began to see outbreaks of oak wilt. Tony Waupochick has worked with MTE for almost 25 years. As the Silviculturist Forester, he describes that, “oak wilt is a fungus carried by beetles. Beetles enter a tree when a tree is injured. An injured tree creates a sap shield over the cut which beetles are attracted too. Once a tree is infected with oak wilt, the fungus spreads to its roots and transfers to surrounding trees through the roots. So you then have an expanding pocket of dying trees.”

Once infected, a tree will quickly drop its leaves and die in about two weeks. While climate change does not seem to directly affect the oak wilt fungus, stronger and more frequent storms associated with climate change have accelerated damage to the forest. Over the past ten years, Waupochick says MTE Forest Managers have observed an increase in broken tree limbs due to high winds. This creates inroads for beetles and results in more trees becoming vulnerable to oak wilt.

To stop the spread of oak wilt, the infected tree(s) must be cut down and the stump(s) removed or treated with herbicide. Adjacent trees are treated in the same manner. Waupochick says that the size of the treatment radius depends on the diameter at breast height of the trees; sometimes the tribe has had to remove over an acre of trees stemming from a single infection. Fortunately, much of the time the timber can be salvaged. However, the problem is ramping up and between 2008-2018 almost 1,000 pockets resulting from oak wilt are now scattered across the Menominee land.