News photo by Grace Walker Trees overlook the trail at North Eastern State Trail on Wednesday.

Michigan foresters say Michigan’s forests are in good health, and a big concern in Northeast Michigan is oak wilt infections.

“The health of the forests are good, except for specific areas that are or were dealing with issues,” Cheryl Nelson, a forester for Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR), said.

The “Forest Health Highlights” is an annual report put together by foresters statewide that takes a look at the health of Michigan’s four million acres of state owned forests. The biggest issues highlighted in the report were pests, diseases, and the damage from ice storms.

As the forests in Northeast Michigan are still healing from the two major ice storms that hit the region this year and last, Ben Nowakowski, a forester and logger based in Alpena, said his biggest concern is oak wilt.

Nowakowski said trees that lost a lot of limbs and their tops from the high winds and ice during the storms are more susceptible to oak wilt.

“As the wind works (the trees), it keeps that wound open during oak wilt season,” Nowakowski said. “We could see a lot more oak wilt infections than we have seen in the past.”

Oak wilt is a tree disease with a high risk infection period between mid April to mid-July, according to the forest health report. Beetles carry spores of the fungus that causes oak wilt to new wounds.

“During this high risk infection period, it’s recommended to not prune or wound your trees,” Nelson said. “If you do need to prune or wound your tree, please try and apply tree wound dressing, latex based paint, anything immediately afterwards.”

Last year, Nelson said her team of four foresters and two invasive species wildlife biologists treated 23 different sites for oak wilt across Michigan. She said her team also looked at invasive species, pests, and diseases affecting forests across Michigan including hemlock and balsam woolly adelgid and white pine needle diseases.

This year, Nelson said her team will be looking at treating areas of hemlock woolly adelgid, monitoring past oak wilt treatments and surveying and monitoring invasive plant species.

Going into this summer, Nelson also said to be wary of transporting firewood to different areas as wood from places with oak wilt could carry over to new forests.

Nowakowski also said to report oak wilt if someone sees it in the area.

“That’s (new oak wilt infections) something that if you address them promptly while it’s small, it’s only a few trees. If you ignore it for five years, it’s many acres,” he said. “If you have one oak tree in a forest that wilts and loses its leaves in the summertime, you can call a conservation district forester and they can come out and take a look at it for you.”

Other things to watch out for this summer are broken limbs hanging from the forest canopy from the ice storm damage.

Grace Walker can be reached at walke1ge@cmich.edu. This story was produced by the Michigan News Group Internship Program, a collaboration between WCMU Public Radio and local newspapers in central and northern Michigan. The program’s mission is to train the next generation of journalists and combat the rise of rural news deserts.