Memorial Day
Memorial Day is the day we set aside to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. It was in those ultimate acts of giving back that we are reminded that freedom has two faces. Far too many worship one of her faces while ignoring or even deying the other. The rightws wer enjoy are paid for by the obligations we fulfill.
These are not just the right to vote and the obligation to pay taxes. As landowners, we hold a basket of property rights, including those to develop and encumber our land. That basket includes the right to enjoy and use the land; control access and allow or restrict hunting.
For that land to survive and thrive, it too imposes obligations. As landowners, we have the obligation to protect and act as wise stewards of the property to which we hold title. While we are required to give the last full measure of our devotion, we are called upon to give back to the land we hold in trust. Memorial Day is a good time to reflect on how we can give back.
Giving Back
We have an obligation first to learn what the land needs to be successful and productive. That includes understanding the natural communities that grew and evolved with our property. By looking up the Wisconsin Public Land Survey Records for Town, Range, and Sections where my property is located. They tell me that my property characterized by white and black (red) oak. Using the Early Vegetation of Wisconsin map, my property was part of the state’s oak savanna.
Next, I needed to spend time walking my land and getting to know it. When we arrived six years ago, our property could best be described as a highly degraded hardwood forest. Often referred to as an asbestos forest because the land was a choked tangle of buckthorn and honeysuckle whose canopy was dominated by dying green ash, cherry, boxelder and bitternut hickory. Looking back into its history, I pulled down areal photos from the 1930s using the Wisconsin Historic Aerial Imagery Finder which showed my property as open pasture. That information was confirmed several years later when a neighbor, whose parents used to farm this land, told me our property was pastured until 1970 when his parents sold it for development. This information confirmed my field observations. Scattered through my woodland were a small number of mature white oaks most likely began their lives around the time of that original land survey in the 1850s. They survived because the early farmers used them as fence posts.
Understanding the natural history of my property helped me better understand what the land needed and wanted. My stewardship obligations became clear. The overwhelming majority of trees and shrubs did not belong here. What little vegetation survived under its dense shroud survived as ephemeral spring wildflowers that could complete their annual growing season during the short months before the over-story cut off all sunlight. Giving my land what it wanted and needed was going to require major commitment from us.
Six years of commitment resulted in a canopy cover reduction of 50%. With sunlight now reaching the ground across the land, sedges, grasses and wildflowers are returning. The increased variety of vegetation has brought with it a much wider variety of birds who call our land home. Wild turkey are abundant. Deer are still abundant, however, their number are less and with that browse impact is reduced. White oak planted during the second spring are tall enough to be released from the cages that protected them. A second planting, this one composing 100 second year seedlings should complete stocking the woodland. As they grow, additional thinning and natural aging out of the current short lived hardwoods should allow restoration of the land to something closer to its pre-settlement character.
The secret sauce for successfully maintaining this restored oak opening will be prescribed fire. Just as indigenous people used fire to create the oak savanna that dominated the east Baraboo Range, prescribed fire will be the management tool that will keep this restoration on track.
By Example
On this Memorial Day, it is my sincere hope that my neighbors will see what I have done and feel a similar obligation to give back to their land. None of us are asked to make the ultimate sacrifice, but we all have an obligation to balance the rights we enjoy as landowners with the obligation to five back to the land we are entrusted to manage.