White Pine in the Northern Forests: An Ecological and Management History of White Pine on the Bad River Reservation of Wisconsin
Steen-Adams MM, Langston N, Mladenoff DJ. 2007. White Pine in the Northern Forests: An Ecological and Management History of White Pine on the Bad River Reservation of Wisconsin. Environmental History. 12:595-629
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.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Steen-Adams, Michelle; Langston, Nancy; Mladenoff, David
- Units
- APIS
- Keywords
- cut-over, Great Lakes, Lake Superior, Pinus strobus, reservation, white pine