A Northland College student is hiking almost three thousand miles through the California high country to British Columbia, as a way to  preserve the forest in northern Wisconsin.  The walker Bill Hogseth supports the Ashland and Madison-based Habitat Education Center.  Two years ago the Habitat Education Center filed lawsuits in federal court to stop some logging in the Cheqaumegon- Nicolet National Forest. The group argues that logging would harm pine marten and goshawk. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network reports.   Click here to hear the radio story. (5 minute "live" stream, no download necessary,)   Click Here to download a 5 minute mp3 radio story about the walk (5 minute MP3 radio story)

---

A Walk from the Heart

A Northland College student is hiking almost three thousand miles through the California high country to British Columbia, as a way to  preserve the forest in northern Wisconsin.  The walker Bill Hogseth supports the  Ashland and Madison-based Habitat Education Center.  Two years ago the Habitat Education Center filed lawsuits in federal court to stop some logging in the Cheqaumegon- Nicollet National Forest. The group argues that logging would harm pine marten and goshawk. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network reports.

 

The northwoods used to be  covered with old growth white pine timber. Some trees were more than four hundred years old, and forty stories tall.   There were also robust hemlock, sugar maple, and birch.  But the industrial logging of the late eighteen hundreds left a wake of destruction.  Some might even call it, a holocaust. 

 

Bill Hogseth is twenty four years old. He grew up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.  Everywhere in town he saw the pictures taken at the turn of the century, immense white pine timber, stacked up a hundred feet high in the river near the sawmill.

 

Since the late eighteen hundreds the forest has recovered, but many serious problems remain.

 

Hogseth explains why he’s going on the walk.

 

“I’m going on the walk for a few reasons.”

“I would like to use this to show people what’s happening on the forest, what’s happening to the plants.  I want to show people that things aren’t going so good for our forest.  I want to show people what the issues are.”

 

 The Chequamegon Nicollet Forest covers more than a million and a half acres, but less than two percent of the forest  has  old-growth characteristics. Most trees are 80 years old or less. Virgin old-growth stands makes up only a few thousand acres.  And yet, according to Hogseth, many of the older trees are targeted for logging over the next few years.

 

The forest is heavily fragmented.  There are thousand of miles of roads.  This makes it difficult for some animals, like the pine marten and goshawk, who need the big woods.

 

Species diversity is rapidly declining. According to a study by a UW conservation biologist Don Waller overabundant deer are grazing rare plant species and cedar. Invasive species, development and global climate change are also taking a toll.

 

Another reason for Hogseth going on the hike…. He’s planning on traveling light with just a tarp, a bag, and a modified soda can stove. He’s walking through some breathtaking, rugged scenery to simply leave a comfortable life behind and harden himself.

 

“Something that might be more endangered than the land is the experience of that land.”

 

“I think something that we’re losing rapidly is the experience of being outside.”

 

Hogseth is taking contributions for his walk on behalf of the Habitat Education Center. 

 

Ricardo Jomarron (Homa-wrone) leads the Habitat Education Center.  For the past twenty years in Wisconsin,. Jomarron’s been active in environmental politics and litigation.

 

His group is suing the US Forest Service about logging north of

Park Falls and east of Eagle River. The reason for the suit is the

impact logging has on pine marten.

 

Besides caring for the impact of logging on rare and endangered species, Jomarron says most industrial forests are just plain boring.

 

“You mentioned earlier with Bill the pine or the industrial forest, well when you have all the trees the same age in a row you could walk through that forest with your eyes closed.  First of all you’ve seen it all, in the first hundred yards or so, and you’re not going to bump into anything if you go through it in a straight line.”

 

Jomarron draws an analogy between the complexity and interest in an old growth forest and the urban landscape.

 

“The old forest is what down towns used to be like, a variety of different stores, different architectural structures, where maybe an urban place like Manhattan where you have tremendous architectural differences and diversity, than you have this amazing human diversity, different types of people, different languages being spoken, different cultures, and the same thing happens with the forest, the old growth forest has the sort of diversity, but when you cut it over you’re replacing it with a mall or a Wall Mart,  or a suburb where all the houses look the same, and all the people are basically the same, you go from this magic and surprise to something that is predictable, and sadly, boring.”

 

In an update to this story we asked Jomarron what’s the impact on the forest the new Bush Administration rules that came down just before Christmas.

 

Here’s what he wrote back,

 

“In a nut shell it gives the public less opportunity to intervene in forest plans and projects and it gives the forest service the license to clear cut and log our forests without checking on the health and viability of rare wildlife species.

 

 It essentially allows the blind "mining" of your national forests without ever having to check to see if the canary or indicator specie is still alive. Or one could say that it allows the Forest Service to perform radical surgery on our national forests without ever taking the pulse, blood pressure or temperature of the forest. Its pure quackery to make money for giant paper and timber corporations while ripping off the public who owns these forests. It would be like operating on an innocent child without parental consent (public comment) or checking on the health history of the child (species viability) ”

 

I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network

Click on map or here to enlarge