2024 Year in Review for the Cloquet Forestry Center & Hubachek Wilderness Research Center
Overview
Greetings from the Director’s desk,
Thank you for being a part of the University of Minnesota (UMN) Cloquet Forestry Center and Hubachek Wilderness Research Center (HWRC) community and for caring about what’s going on with our two Research and Outreach Centers. In the View From the Woods annual newsletter below, you’ll find a few thoughts from me on what I’ll remember from 2024, what I know regarding the relationship between the University of Minnesota (UMN) and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (FDL), a look into a few things on my radar for 2025, and group-specific highlights from 2024 for each of our program areas.
2024 In Review
When I sit down to reflect on what will be most memorable from 2024 for the University of Minnesota (UMN) Cloquet Forestry Center (CFC) and Hubachek Wilderness Research Center (HWRC) community, the incredible people on our team and personnel change rise to the top of the list. We said thank you for your service and best wishes on your next adventure to Director Andy David, Research and Stewardship Technician Rachael Olesiak, and CFC Mechanic Simon Thill. These departures created opportunities for shifts from within the team and to bring on a couple of new folks. I stepped into the Director of Operations role while maintaining forest stewardship oversight duties; Lane Johnson stepped into our research and projects coordinator role; and Chad Korby moved into the CFC Senior General Mechanic role. We had successful searches for two new folks. Amanda Preston joined the FMR team as a Forest Research and Stewardship Technician and Hunter Williams joined the CFC Buildings & Grounds team. Fortunately, we still have Eli Sagor and Lane Moser for SFEC, Beckie Prange and Matt Fetterer at HWRC, and Denise Volk, Steph Oberg, and Mark Hagen at CFC remaining in their positions and doing great work. Our team also benefited from the summer seasonal work of Elliott Feldman and Penelope Farrington. I have been incredibly grateful to the entire staff for being willing to maintain their present roles while filling gaps caused by departures and shifts. I feel like we’ve been able to keep providing top notch service to everyone who utilizes the CFC and HWRC. We have an incredible team!
Two other changes of note in our community are in regards to Rebecca Montgomery and Artur Stefanski. Rebecca is a Professor in the Forest Resources Department who’s now become the F.B. Hubachek, Sr. Endowed Chair in Forestry. Artur, a scientist and operational guru for the B4WarmED project since 2008, has now taken on a faculty role in forestry at UW Stevens Point; he’ll continue to be involved with B4WarmED’s research. Best wishes to them both in these new ventures.
Another memorable part of 2024 has been getting the chance to be the lead of the CFC and HWRC Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station project. This required writing a funding proposal that summarized what I see as our overall program of work. I summarized it as “Ecocultural community wellness and vitality”. Whether it is restoring fire-resilience in our forests, creating place-based experiential learning opportunities, or researching potential forest adaptability to climate change, I see everything we do as tied into supporting wellness and vitality. I want these for both the diverse human communities that rely on the CFC and HWRC landbases and also for the landbases themselves because I see us all as intertwined, interconnected, and reliant on reciprocal relationships.
University and Fond du Lac Relationship
A lot of you will be interested in what is or is not happening with the relationship between the University and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (FDL). I’ll summarize a few highlights from 2024 here but the background intentions and FAQ pages should continue to be the first place you go for updates. Please note that President Cunningham and other UMN leaders continue to view returning ownership of the land to FDL as a priority.
At central leadership levels, UMN and FDL leaders worked in 2024 to get legislative action passed that is required for the transfer. Unfortunately, that action did not move forward. UMN public relations informed me that since the upcoming legislative session is not considered a traditional bonding year (which was news to me!), it’s not clear how the needed legislative actions might fit into this spring's session. However, UMN leaders and FDL leaders continue to look at options for pursuing our mutual goal in this work.
At our local level, we continue to develop meaningful working relationships and build respecting FDL sovereignty into our operations and approach to working on land reserved in the 1854 treaty. Part of this included having all staff engage with the UMN-Tribal Relations training, offered through the Office of Native American Affairs to increase our understanding of both local and broader facts and issues of US and Minnesota relations with tribal nations. I encourage everyone who has a chance to engage in such training to do so. On the facilities side of things, we are grateful that many FDL-based programs continue to see us as a key spot to conduct their meetings, education, and host community gatherings. On the research and land stewardship side, we continue to work with the FDL Resource Management team on a number of fronts, especially for restoration of ecocultural fire. Importantly in 2024, we worked to adjust our projects Standard Operating Procedure to explicitly include review from FDL resource management. This is now a key part of making sure that open and honest communication is at the heart of our working relationship.
Looking Forward to 2025
Looking forward to 2025, I expect we’ll continue to do a lot of what we’ve been doing for the past 116 years: connecting people and ideas related to northern US forest ecosystems through place-based research, education, and outreach. For facilities users, be aware that we’re looking into raising meeting room and lodging rates. These haven’t been updated since 2010, though costs for absolutely everything related to making them available for use have gone way up. We’ll do our best to be up front with the changes and timing of implementation. We’ll continue to develop our relationships with FDL on local and higher levels while also building respect of sovereignty into daily operations. And we’ll also stop to smell the sweetfern, listen to the ravens, and pick some blueberries while out in the woods - I encourage you to do the same.
If you’d like to support the continuation of our work, please use our facilities for your research and educational needs, donate funds via our CFC or HWRC giving pages, and speak with your local elected officials about supporting the University through legislative action, especially through passing a bonding bill in 2025.
Sincerely,
Kyle Gill
CFC & HWRC Director of Operations and Forest Stewardship
CFC Facilities and Users
Our land and facilities supported knowledge gain and exchange for a large number of local and national groups in 2024. We had a total of 10,070 user days at CFC from a total of 191 groups. Some of these users and groups were repeat users through the year but many are here for just one day or program. Our biggest single day user group was the 2024 Conservation Education days program at 290 users for a full day. In addition to day use, we had 5000 user nights - a measure of overnight lodging in support of people’s on-site or regional education or research activities. Incredibly, we had a group on site for day or night usage for 80% of the days of 2024 (293 of the 366 days). Our facilities team does a great job of coordinating the use and cleaning and maintaining the infrastructure on which the use relies.
On top of cleaning and maintenance duties, the Buildings & Grounds team also found time to do a few staining, painting, and power-washing projects in 2024. The gable-end of the front entrance to the Classroom Administration Building, the Maintenance building, and the White House were the beneficiaries of these efforts.
Forest Management, Research, & Education
In 2024, we had a total of 103 projects, 41 of which were research focused, with in-field or reporting activity across the Experimental Forests landbase. At CFC, there were a total of 93 projects and a total of 18 projects had activity at HWRC; 10 of these projects were conducted at both sites; two projects utilized other sites - Boone and Elstad. On top of the 41 research-focused projects, 21 were focused on teaching or outreach, 29 were demonstration, case-study, or monitoring focused, eight were land stewardship focused, and four had a primary purpose of “Other”, which means they did not fit well into any of the prior categories. Projects had 50 different project leaders from 16 different institutions or groups. The University of Minnesota, one of those 16, had project leadership from 13 different departments or centers.
Below are a few highlights from specific projects or project areas.
Ecocultural Prescribed Fire Restoration
Ecocultural prescribed fire restoration unit preparation, data collection, and burning took place across 162 acres of forested ecological communities. This work relied on collaboration with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (FDL), Bureau of Indian Affairs, The Nature Conservancy, and University of Minnesota (UMN) Silviculture research lab group. In addition, the FMR team was able to host the UMN Forestry Club for a learn and burn pile burning event in the fall.
Continuous Forest Inventory,1959–2024
A resample of Continuous Forest Inventory plots across the CFC and HWRC landbases was led by Drs. John Zobel and Tyler Gifford in 2024. This was a remeasurement of a systematically placed plot network with approximately 400 plots at CFC and 41 plots at HWRC. The 2024 objective was to extend the time series of measurements (1959, 1964, 1969, 1976, 1982, 1990, 2000, and 2014 - first measurement at HWRC), including collecting data to facilitate carbon estimation and provide unique longitudinal data for modeling and validating forest productivity and wildlife habitat.
B4Warmed
Boreal Forest Warming at an Ecotone in Danger (B4WarmED) completed its 16th consecutive year of field research at both CFC and HWRC. This project investigates how elevated temperature and reduced precipitation impacts boreal and temperate forest species. The results have been published in over 40 peer-reviewed scientific papers (which can be found in the Experimental Forests Zotero publications database.) In summary, results show that both boreal and temperate tree species have the ability to adapt to changes in temperature and precipitation though adaptability and fitness depends greatly on the specific species. So which species should you plant? A native species that is adapted to the ecological community into which it’ll be planted! Ideally, plant a diversity of species so that you and your land are not only relying on one for future vitality. Project leaders are planning to plant a new suite of individuals in spring 2025 to keep the exploration going.
Forest-Based Experiential Education
Forest-based experiential education reached approximately 2,245 users from 39 user groups in 2024. This included undergraduate courses for seven UMN Forestry and Natural Resource Management field courses entirely located at CFC (six) or HWRC (one), the 57th annual Carlton County Conservation Education Days event for 459 5th graders plus ~65 adult instructors and chaperones across the two days of the event, and many other UMN and public user groups.
Hubachek Wilderness Research Center
In 2024, the Hubachek Wilderness Research Center provided lodging, indoor and outdoor classroom, research, writing, meeting, and/or exploration space for a variety of groups. We had a total of 664 user days and 637 user nights. Users were from CFANS, the College of Science and Engineering, the College of Biological Sciences, the US Forest Service and non-profit conservation groups; we even had the opportunity to host a handful of members of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents.
We have two project notes in addition to the project highlights noted in the Forest Management, Research, and Education section above. The Parks and Protected Areas Management field course (FNRM 3206) conducted an annual crayfish survey with Lake County Soil and Water Conservation District’s Aquatic Invasive Species Coordinator. This was the first year they found invasive Rusty x native Northern Clearwater crayfish hybrids in Fall Lake. Also, about 7 times more native Calico crayfish were captured in the Hubachek “Calico Pond” than in 2023. Another cool project this year was a “Learn and Burn” pile burning workshop. This was a new education and stewardship program for local residents wanting to learn about how to reduce flammable fuel loads near their houses and on their fire-prone lands. It was led by The Nature Conservancy and Dovetail Partners, Inc. and supported by HWRC staff.
On the facilities side, we worked on water distribution, water quality protection, and a gazebo facelift. A major facilities undertaking was a Phase 1 of the water access and distribution system upgrade. This phase replaced all plumbing infrastructure from the two HWRC wells to the water distribution system in the basement of the Winter Unit and replaced all of the storage tanks and equipment that makes up the water distribution system (how we get water from there to where it is used). The project required major trenching throughout the buildings area so provided some logistical challenges for site use during construction. Phase 2, once funded, will replace the 1970s era piping and infrastructure in various buildings where potable water gets used. Another notable project was to protect water quality in Fall Lake by removing the crumbling log waterfront at Mukluk Bay. This was replaced with an installation of boulders and cobbles that are compliant with Minnesota DNR regulations. And last but not least, the gazebo that overlooks Brown’s Lake received a needed roof, siding, window, and paint facelift.
Sustainable Forests Education Cooperative
The Sustainable Forests Education Cooperative continued to gather natural resource practitioners with UMN and other researchers from across the region to build relationships and learning opportunities. SFEC’s members are public and private organizations that employ the vast majority of northern Minnesota’s foresters, wildlife managers, and other natural resources professionals. At our events, these folks come together to share what they’ve learned, to ask and answer questions about how we care for and manage our natural resources, and learn from one another. Although some of our events are off-site, the CFC provides a perfect backdrop for this kind of event.
A few highlights from 2024: In total, we had 1207 attendees to our online, in-person, and hybrid events in 2024. We started a new cohort of our Ecosystem Silviculture course, the group pictured here; our monthly webinar series averaged well over 100 attendees; we welcomed loggers, foresters, and wildlife managers to workshops on Minnesota’s voluntary site-level forest management guidelines; and, along with our UMN Extension partners, we offered a new tree seed collection workshop.
We look forward to continued learning throughout 2025 and beyond!
