Michelle M. Steen-Adams, Nancy Langston, and David J. Mladenoff

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Michelle M. Steen-Adams, Nancy Langston, and David J. Mladenoff | White Pine in the Northern Forests: An Ecological and Management History of White Pine on the Bad River Reservation of Wisconsin | Environmental History, 12.3 | The History Cooperative

white pine in the northern forests: AN ECOLOGICAL AND MANAGEMENT HISTORY OF WHITE PINE ON THE BAD RIVER RESERVATION OF WISCONSIN

ABSTRACT

This essay examines eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.) removal and recovery on the Bad River Reservation of northern Wisconsin. A key species in the environmental history of the Great Lakes region, white pine has greatly declined as a forest component since Euro-American settlement. Forests eventually did regenerate on much of the cut-over area, but their composition is quite different than the earlier forests, with aspen and other hardwoods dominating, rather than conifers. This interdisciplinary study examines biophysical, social, and political processes that influenced the loss of white pine. We find that on the Bad River Reservation, as across much of the Great Lakes region, the loss of white pine was not a result of the lumber era alone. Changing forest management goals, officials' projections of forest economic values, financial and technical resources available to managers, the political influence of paper companies, and shifts in land ownership composition all played a role in shaping the forests that returned on the reservation.

EASTERN WHITE PINE (Pinus strobus L.) played a central role in the environmental history of the Great Lakes forests, for it was the favored lumber tree during the logging era. The pineries of the Great Lakes became the cities of the Great Plains, and the depletion of the pine changed the region's ecological and human relations for generations. In 1854, when the 125,000-acre Bad River Reservation was established along Lake Superior, reservation forests contained unusually rich stands of white pine. By the 1930s, white pine had nearly disappeared on the reservation, as it had throughout the region. Recovery since then has been minimal. Today, white pine is not the dominant species on any stands at Bad River. The region is now more forested than at any time since the logging era, but the forests are very different places than they once were. The work of forest historians such as Michael Williams, Susan Flader, and Gordon Whitney has taught us a great deal about why and how the white pine was harvested, but we know much less about why it failed to recover.¹ Forests typically will recover if given a chance, so a central question in forest history should be not just "why were the forests cut?" but also "why are the forests that returned so different from those they replaced?"

This essay examines the history of white pine recovery after the lumber era on the Bad River Reservation in northern Wisconsin. Past studies have assumed that across the Great Lakes forests, the intensive harvests and slash fires of the lumber era created conditions that made it nearly impossible for white pine to regenerate, while the few that did survive were eradicated by the introduced blister rust fungus (Cronartium ribicola). Using ecological and archival records, we examine the ways ecological, social, and political processes interrelated to shape forest recovery. We find that although ecological conditions and white pine blister rust contributed to the disappearance of white pine, a series of political, economic, and social decisions actively prevented the recovery of white pine. We find that white pine had the potential to reforest a significant amount of its former extent; logging practices at the turn of the century did not predetermine the composition of the Lakes States forests today.

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