Echo

Weather, staffing fuel forest fire fears in Michigan

By |

By Jon Gaskell

Capital News Service

LANSING — Michigan can expect more wildfires this year, officials warn. The state’s Department of Natural Resources is predicting a greater number of forest fires and more acres burned as a result of an unusually warm winter. To make matters worse, long-term shrinking of firefighting resources has reduced the state’s capacity to quell blazes, according to department Director Rodney Stokes. The department’s fire supervisor Scott Heather said Michigan is already seeing blazes much earlier than usual. “Usually for the Lower Peninsula, the season for fires begins around the third week of March,” Heather said.

Land

Michigan boosts wood exports

By |

By Caitlin Costello
Dec. 12, 2009
LANSING, Mich. – A 40-foot crate is packed with northern Michigan white cedar panels and siding ready to be shipped to Korea by Boyne Falls-based Town & Country Cedar Products. The company started exporting a year ago to expand its customer base after economic downturns forced the industry to “look at changing the way they do business in order to survive,” said national sales manager Mike Rathbun. Strong personal business relationships are important for international marketing.

Land

Tree-trimmers subject of gripes

By |

(IN) The Post-Tribune – Stories of mangled trees, inadequate notice and little communication from NIPSCO peppered testimony on tree-trimming practices at a public field hearing on Wednesday night at Merrillville High School. The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission is conducting a series of hearings across the state on the tree-trimming practices of electrical utilities. More

Land

Ann Arbor residents question removal of massive maple tree

By |

(MI) Ann Arbor News – Several residents on Ann Arbor’s west side are angry a massive silver maple tree they believe was healthy was cut down by city foresters. More distressing, they say, is that the 4-foot diameter tree on Charlton Street in the Virginia Park neighborhood was a casualty in a larger pattern. The group believes trees are being removed by default, rather than after efforts to save them. More

Wildlife

Crews in St. Paul cut down trees infested with ash borers

By |

(MN) Minneapolis Star-Tribune – Chain saws and experts are converging in the Twin Cities in the fight against the emerald ash borer. In St. Paul, foresters identified eight more infested trees Tuesday as workers continued to remove dozens of others fatally damaged by the bug that, first found in St. Paul May 13, threatens the state’s 900 million ash trees. So far, 67 trees have been either taken down this week or targeted for removal in an effort officials hope will thwart the insect that has killed tens of millions of trees across the Midwest and southern Canada in the past seven years.

Echo

Early prevention urged to defeat emerald ash borer’s new larvae

By |

(OH) The Toledo Blade – Now’s the time to apply insecticide to ash trees you might be trying to save from a new crop of emerald ash borers.  

The sooner, the better. If you fail to spray ash trees by the end of June, you should wait until fall or the spring of 2010, said Amy Stone, Ohio State University extension agent in Toledo. More

Echo

Timber management company plants 550,000 seedlings

By |

(MI) Booth Newspapers – Some 550,000 seedlings have been planted in three areas of the Upper Peninsula, courtesy of Plum Creek Timber Co. The Seattle-based company, which owns and manages about 7 million acres of timberlands nationwide, planted nearly 263,000 seedlings in the Escanaba area, about 174,000 seedlings in the L’Anse area and nearly 120,000 jack pine seedlings northwest of Marquette. More