RC Council: Won’t harvest lumber on city parks
ROGERS CITY — Rogers City Mayor Thomas Sobeck said the City Council has no plans to forest any city park property.
The council discussed the matter at the regular board meeting Tuesday with a large audience in attendance.
“Before we start I want to preface this we have a forester we’re going to ask to speak for a minute. What I would like to say first and foremost; this was never, ever about money,” Sobeck said. “I want to make that perfectly clear. We were approached by the DPW with an option to clean up some property. That’s where this started.”
Sobeck said the council asked them to engage with a forester, to view the properties and tell the council what their options could be, should they decide to do anything.
“They came back with the four properties in question with suggestions,” Sobeck said. “That wasn’t a mandate that we were going to do anything. We don’t intend to do anything with the two properties. We did want to know what condition they were in. There’s no better way to do that, than with a professional forester to find that out.”
The four properties examined were Trout River Park, Seagull Point, forestry land north of Rogers City and 40 acres near the Rogers City landfill.
Tulgestka and Sons forester Mike Hummel presented his findings to the board. Hummel has a Bachelor of Science from Michigan Tech and Forestry and Bachelor of Science in Timber Management from Northland College in Wisconsin.
Hummel first lumped the two city parks together to discuss. He said he found a mixed bag of tree species including, white pine, red pine, jack pine, birch, oak, aspen and more.
“What I propose to do is cut out the early successional species, and make room for later successional species,” Hummel said.
He added he would suggest a select cut, which means leaving the trees in healthy condition and cutting the ones in poor condition.
“So we’re leaving a good solid healthy forest with appropriate spacing,” he added.
After the cut there would be some re-generation, he said.
“I proposed a 40 percent removal and that was mostly early successional species,” he said. “Timber harvest in there does open things up, but it keeps things healthy. And in the past few years we have a lot of oddball bugs coming. We deal with the ash borer and deal with the beech bark.”
The other two pieces he said (forestry land, and land near the landfill) had some trees to be harvested.
“It’s an old stand some of the areas of Aspen have blown down and are in rotten shape and wouldn’t be salvageable.”
He proposed a total Aspen harvest of property near the landfill for a total of an 11 acre harvest.
For the forestry land he suggested a 39 acre harvest of the 40 acre property.
Mayor Pro-Tem Gary Nowak asked what would happen if the properties weren’t forested. Hummel said many of the trees would start to die.
“Slowly over time (they would die),” Hummel said. “Trees don’t live forever.”
After Hummel’s presentation residents stated their concern over the foresting possibilities.
Resident Frank Krist said he was adamantly against the properties being forested and said “Don’t touch those parks.”
Other residents discussed concerns about migratory birds, other wildlife, habitats and watersheds.
Sobeck said they weren’t out to forest the parks.
“We’re obligated to maintain our assets,” he said. “I agree with just about everything you said. Like I said a council can come back in 10 years and say something different. There are a number of trees that could be harvested properly to maintain a healthy forest. We didn’t set out with an agenda to do that. It’s about managing the assets we have. We do want public input at every level.”
Resident Mary Ann Heidemann said she was glad in one sense the board assured people nothing would be done about those properties.
“Forty percent removal is of great concern of me,” she said.”By 40 percent removal that buffer would be severely impacted. I think it will be ill advised to do that.”
She said she would also like the board to make a motion stating they wouldn’t forest the park lands.
At the end of the meeting the board decided they would work between now and the next meeting to have a couple of resolutions.
Jordan Spence can be reached via email at jspence@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5687.