Making Omelets
As the saying goes, “You have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet” – and that’s the case this summer at Wau-Ke-Na, William Erby Smith Preserve
Making Omelets
As the saying goes, “You have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet” – and that’s the case this summer at Wau-Ke-Na, William Erby Smith Preserve
Making Omelets
As the saying goes, “You have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet” – and that’s the case this summer at Wau-Ke-Na, William Erby Smith Preserve
Well, just like a nestling robin, Wau-Ke-Na W.E. Smith Preserve is going to look ugly before it becomes pretty again . . . but please bear with us!
SWMLC has gratefully received a grant (along with four other regional partners: Ottawa County Parks, The Nature Conservancy-Michigan, Chikaming Open Lands, and Shirley Heinze Land Trust) from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Climate Adaptation Fund (supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) that allows us to embark upon a long term project to improve damaged forests by trying some new approaches to keeping them healthy.
MAY 14, 2020
Step One was to remove the non-native Douglas fir trees that were blighted by disease and poorly adapted to our local climate at Wau-Ke-Na. This photo shows the dense stand of dying firs that blocked the view and created an unhealthy monoculture.
JULY 10, 2020
APPROXIMATELY SAME LOCATION
Over the next few weeks, crews cut down and chipped the trees, carefully avoiding the others that we wanted saved.
JULY 30, 2020
APPROXIMATELY SAME LOCATION
They chipped the cut trees and built enormous piles (that’s a backpack at the base of the mound for size reference).
Stewardship Director Mitch Lettow visited the site a few days after the piles were made and reported that they were really “cooking” – already decomposing into compost and so hot 4 inches under the surface that they burned his hand!
AUGUST 5, 2020
APPROXIMATELY SAME LOCATION
The work crew returned the following week to spread those piles, creating a vast “savanna” of wood chips.
