The Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board heard a presentation from Department of Natural Resources Riverway Forester Brad Hutnik regarding forest management strategies for public lands in the Riverway at the board’s July 9th meeting held in Gotham. The presentation was the seventh installment in a series of special features at monthly board meetings to celebrate the Year of the Riverway.

Hutnik described management objectives for DNR managed properties including enhancing the vigor of the forest, improving wildlife habitat, restoring native plant communities and maintaining quality aesthetics. Hutnik said the influence of the dams and impoundments on the Wisconsin River has changed the hydrology of the river and also has affected the bottomland forest. The suite of species found in the bottomlands is changing with very little regeneration of cottonwood, willow, river birch, elm and silver maple.

Unlike other areas in the Upper Midwest where the amount of bottomland forests is decreasing, the actual acres of bottomland forest in the Riverway is increasing. A challenge for DNR foresters and researchers is to discover methods for replicating flood regimes, as would have existed prior to dam construction, to maintain a quality bottomland forest with diverse species and a variety of age classes of trees.

Hutnik said the absence of fire on the landscape has changed the amount of oak regeneration seen in the Riverway. He said fires once burned 4-7 million acres per year in Wisconsin, mostly in southern Wisconsin, and the lack of fire on the landscape is unnatural. The result has been a proliferation of non-native invasive species and a conversion from oak woodlands to maple dominated northern hardwood forests. Hutnik said DNR will utilize fire and other management techniques to assure an oak component is retained in local woodlands. He said the overall management objective for forested lands in the Riverway is to assure excellent forestry is practiced to benefit wildlife, retain biodiversity, maintain high quality aesthetics and produce timber.