Hit the Dirt; Woodlot Management

Good morning this is David Weigel for hit the dirt Today I'd like to talk about woodlot management. I've learned a lot recently about how the woods tend to grow up in our coastal Maine area. Many of the woods that we like to walk through and enjoy of were fields not so very long ago and we've noticed that a lot of things grow up the trees tend to grow old together much more closely than they would really prefer to grow up to be healthy trees by good timber by shade and wildlife habitat. So what I've come to realize is that even though a lot of people think the best thing to do in working with nature is to do nothing at all and just leave it up to Mother Nature to reclaim the land and do as she pleases. That this always is not the best approach at all because we've already gone in and change the natural cycle from what the land was to begin with. We've cut over the field to the woods and made them in the productive fields that the entire coastal area of Maine was mostly field a

hundred years ago. So all the trees the eco system that we're working with right now is very young and we have a lot of trees that are in a great deal of stress if we look in the woods they're growing much too closely together there's a lot of disease. There are a lot of problems in our wood lots that we as people can help to manage. If we make a thoughtful contribution and study our woods instead of just letting nature have her will and our own backyard we need to go out and explore and look see which trees are dad and while the dead trees are very productive wildlife habitats they provide food for many. For woodpeckers and other types of birds and animals. At the same time they can have a disease ing effect on our healthy tree the live trees that we want to grow and see become much larger and grow into nice straight trees for lumber for Paul or for any number of uses we can should be think that of harvesting

our woodland resources over time if we've got a large wood lot instead of just letting nature do what it wants and and not utilize the resource realize that it is renewable and participate with it. We can just stand back and watch and do nothing in the woods seemed to rot themselves in many cases. Old growth ecosystems take a long long time to develop and there are still a very few of those left in our area and and certainly other areas of the country they're very much disputed about how much of them can be preserved. But if we want to move towards recreating a system where nature is better able to keep things intact and balance by ourselves we need to participate. And I advocate going through and fanning the dead wood at least leaving some special trees that might look as attractive to woodpeckers and other animals some fallen trees or good wildlife

habitat. I don't recommend going through and pulling and manicuring the woods and make it look like some sort of suburban part because that's not natural and it doesn't contribute to the illusion that everything has been left in what you see is actually the work of nature instead of me and interacting with nature. So if we take out a lot of the dead wood and then we thin around some of the nicer trees. I'm not saying they can cut down all the small trees around the big trees because if you do that in the big trees going to catch a lot more wind and be much more likely to fall over that go through. And as you see young areas of your forest beginning to grow. Look around for the good strong vigorous trees trees that look like they have a lot of energy and save those and pull out right down near as close to the ground as possible all the invaders the. If you decide you want to grow pine and spruce mostly weed out the fur let

stand of Woods is not going to grow in healthy and happy without some help nature doesn't necessarily go in and cut all the trees out like we have in the past so the healing cycle that we're trying to participate in is also going to require a lot of help from me in kind and I recommend selectively harvesting the diseased trees protein in particular there are a lot of problems in Maine was approved but with hemlock Looper. I mean there are whole sections of forests that are very unhealthy. And it's important as woodlot owners to go in and look at your wood to figure out what's going on there consult the forester and take action instead of living letting the woods go through inaction for the rest of time without any productive use. This is David Weigel for at the dirt. I'll talk to you next week. Bye.