Donna VanBuecken
At last I’m seeing some blooming plants in our yard. Thank goodness for Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis), and bless its determination to grow in competition with the invasive Goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria). At least there is some forage material available to some of our insects.
See also Another Sign of Spring 2018.
See also Invasive Goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria).
March is Women’s History Month. Women have been celebrated nationally since 1981 when Congress passed a law creating “Women’s History Week.” That week was celebrated in March annually until 1987 when Congress began passing “Women’s History Month.” And then finally in 1995, Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama issued annual proclamations designating March as “Women’s History Month.”
So I thought it would be fitting to mention this year the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame will be inducting on May 13, 2019, a woman infamous for her stand on sustainable forestry. Her name was Aroline Schmitt.
Aroline Schmitt feared no one. She took the message of sustainable forestry to industrial foresters, a group that didn’t see eye-to-eye with her. “She was up against clear-cutting,” her daughter Maxine Schmitt Roberts said. “They couldn’t intimidate her. She was short, but she’d stand there and tell them off. My dad would sweat those out, but he was very proud of her.”
Aroline was a pioneering woman and citizen conservationist, who worked in a man’s world during the 1930-1960s. She advanced sustainable forestry and promoted fledgling conservation organizations and initiatives in Wisconsin and the nation. She helped organize and led the Citizens Natural Resources Association, which was the leading organization involved with banning DDT in Wisconsin. She was involved with the Wisconsin Garden Club Federation in many capacities, including chairing the conservation committee and directing Junior Garden Clubs.
Gifford Pinchot, the Father of Forestry, persuaded Aroline to go to work for the US Forest Service as a timber cruiser during Word War II. “She traveled all over the country, and Alaska, and cruised timber. She worked in the woods. It was her job to help set aside forests for the war. She was all over the country, all the time,” said her daughter.
Roberts also recalled stories of confrontations during those timber cruising days. “A number of times, she would run into people with guns. They weren’t going to let her in. Much of the time, she’d be with one of the forest rangers in that area, however.”
The travel also took its toll on Schmitt’s health. “She used to travel on troop trains during the war. Only the soldiers could sit down. She would stand up all the way home, a lot of times through the night and into the day,” her daughter said.
She continued to work for the US Forest Service in various capacities after the war, Roberts said. Newspaper clippings in the Wisconsin Historical Society collection note Schmitt was called upon to help set up conservation departments in various states and formulate plans for forest management and control. She was involved in this professional activity even though she had no formal training or degree in forestry.
Trained as a nurse, she got her love of forestry from her lumber baron grandfather and her mother. Her mother was a botanist, and Aroline learned a basic appreciation and love of the fields and forests from her as a child growing up in the forests of Maine.
A persuasive speaker and writer, Aroline advocated for strong natural resources policy and traveled the State to participant in important meetings and legislative hearings. She worked arm-in-arm with other Wisconsin conservation heroes including Aldo Leopold, William Aberg, and Wilhelmine La Budde.
Schmitt played a pivotal role in protecting the Flambeau River State Forest and its old growth hemlock-hardwood forests, and in the transfer of forested lands to the Wisconsin Conservation Commission (now WDNR). She also helped protect the Menominee Tribal Forest by lobbying for the rights of the Menominee Indians during a tense battle over termination of the tribe’s reservation status in the 1950s and 60s, and served as a consultant to the tribe until 1971.
She helped establish several conservation facilities in Wisconsin, including the educational program Trees for Tomorrow and the US Forest Service’s Rhinelander Experimental Forest-Northern Research Center. She also taught correspondence forestry classes on school forestry for the Michigan Extension Service.
Aroline received awards and recognition for her knowledge, tenacity and dedication. Despite health challenges for much of her life, Aroline Schmitt fought with determination and charisma to advance major conservation policies affecting Wisconsin’s natural heritage and America’s sustainable forestry practices.
Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame Monograph
Other Wisconsin heroes to be inducted with Aroline are UW-Madison Professor Scott Craven who is a frequent Wisconsin Public Radio guest on wildlife and Don L Johnson who was a prolific outdoors writer for the Milwaukee-Sentinel for a variety of environmental causes. The ceremony and all activities related to the induction will be held on April 13, 2019 at the Atrium in SentryWorld in Stevens Point. The public is invited.
A coffee reception will be held at 12:30 p.m. prior to the 2:oo p.m. Induction Ceremony. Following the ceremony, there will be a dinner at 4:30 p.m. The Induction Ceremony and Coffee Reception are free and open to the public.
Reservations for dinner ($25 per person) may be made online or by calling Schmeeckle Reserve at 715-346-4992.
As we all know, winter is the only time to prune some of our most beloved trees, namely, the oaks and elms.
But winter is also the best time to remove unwanted trees and brush — native or non-native — to “tidy up” our woodlands. This is the time when plants are dormant so there is less disturbance to the soil.
I think we all know why we need to remove invasive non-native trees and shrubs, but why should we remove non-invasive trees and brush? Reference my recent post on Daylighting. It’s important to get light through the canopy down to the ground where the flowers and other groundcover live. The only way to do that is to remove unwanted trees and brush and their seedlings.
You’ll be amazed by how quickly wildflowers will return once dense shade is removed. Or how struggling saplings will thrive from the increase in sunlight. As we’ve learned from the “circle of life,” sunlight powers the plants, plants feed the pollinators, pollinators feed the bird babies, and on and on.
Before setting about haphazardly pulling or cutting and painting (with herbicide) unwanted trees and brush, consider the ecology of the woodland. Then begin thinning to enhance the remaining vegetation and create the biodiversified community you hope to achieve.
See also Can Your Woods be Too Tidy? It’s a great little article on woodscaping.
Even though we all may not have read the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report on climate change, we have all heard the dismal findings. Humans must act now to decrease global warming or we’ll continue to suffer through more extreme weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, below freezing temperatures and above normal heat waves.
Advocates for change tend to focus on reducing fossil fuel consumption through the use of natural energy resources such as solar and wind. But doing so is a slow process and one not so easily achieved through change. Technology advances and policy changes will need to be implemented in order to affect a change, but every day on the news, we see how even the discussions result in more fighting and partisanship than mutual advancement.
There are other natural resources, however, which may be used to affect change in a less partisan manner. They are the natural resources of native plants and natural landscapes. Thanks to their carbon sequestering and storage capabilities, forests and prairies/grasslands should be absolutely essential in mitigating climate change. And thanks to their sponge-like processes, wetlands should be absolutely essential for mitigating flooding. Natural climate solutions can help us achieve 37 percent of our climate target.
According to the EPA, the Average US resident emits about 20 tons of CO2 a year. Research tells us carbon absorption by American forests is more than 227.6 million tons per year, and the grasslands of the American West absorb about 190 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.
Forests store CO2 mostly in woody biomass and leaves, and grasslands sequester CO2 underground mostly in their roots and in the soil. This means when wildfires cause trees to go up in flames, the burned carbon they formerly stored is released back to the atmosphere. When fire burns grasslands, thankfully, the carbon stored underground tends to stay in the roots and soil. With our climate becoming increasingly unstable, this means grasslands will tend to be more adaptive to global warming.
Wetlands need to be included also in this discussion because of their ability to protect against flooding. Acting like a large sponge, they store snow melt and rainwater and slowly release it over time, removing the energy and pollution from the initial downfall. As we add more and more impervious surfaces and fill in more and more marshes, there is no where for the water to go so flooding occurs. By allowing our wetlands to flourish, we should reduce the impacts of drought and the impact of large surges of water.
As I end this post, I am so very grateful I am able to do my small part to affect climate change in a positive way. I know it’s not enough, but if we all do our part “to promote environmentally sound landscaping practices to preserve biodiversity through the preservation, restoration and establishment of native plant communities” we’ll get there.
Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius.