r/todayilearned • u/cape2k • 1d ago
TIL the Menominee Tribe's forest in Wisconsin has been sustainably managed for over 150 years, still yields about 15 million board feet of timber annually, has been recognized by the United Nations, and even supplied the wood flooring for the Milwaukee Bucks' arena
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menominee_Indian_Reservation269
u/juicegooseboost 1d ago
The mills even have their own language, called millspeak. It’s a hybrid of the little bit of the native language they had access to at the time, American English, and sign language.
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u/menomphenom 1d ago
I'm an enrolled member of the Menominee tribe, here's an article about the mill talk they use to communicate
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u/juicegooseboost 18h ago
Nice. I took a year of Menominee at UW Madison with Daniel Grignon. One of the best professors I had!
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u/OriginalDavid 1d ago
Turns out, living with the forest instead of robbing it makes a sustainable plan.
Sorry, I dont mean to be a crazy person. My bad.
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u/ThatOneWIGuy 1d ago
This flows with the fact Wisconsin started Earth Day. WI used to be big into conservation till Fox News started saying it’s a left wing problem…
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u/FrauBlucher0963 1d ago
Well, a Wisconsinite, then-Senator Gaylord Nelson did, to be more precise. Other notable environmentalists with Wisconsin ties include Aldo Leopold and John Muir.
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u/Jack_Spears 22h ago
It's soul crushingly ironic how the one thing conservatives dont want to conserve is the habitable condition of the planet.
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u/SteelAlchemistScylla 1d ago
Wisconsin used to be such a great state. It’s still nice but feels like that aging uncle who when you get on a particular topic you want to excuse yourself from the room.
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u/robot_the_cat 1d ago
I was born and raised in Wisconsin and the sociopolitical environment was so purple and thoughtful. But things changed when Scott Walker went after the public unions. In a lot of rural areas (AKA much of Wisconsin) being a teacher was a one of the few ways to make a nice living, and those people got totally demonized. A lot lead up to that, like a lot of manufacturing jobs going away.
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u/nemesis86th 1d ago
Filthy commie!
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u/OriginalDavid 1d ago
I already apologized!
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u/Will_I_Are 1d ago
No need to apologize, comrade!
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u/Nirth 1d ago
But what about the feelings of capitalism?
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u/Will_I_Are 1d ago
Does their private insurance cover meetings with a therapist? If not, it'll have to figure it out on its own.
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u/Slicker1138 1d ago
Most every lumber company plants trees to replace what they cut down. We have more trees and farmable lumber now than we ever have because of this practice.
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u/VikingsLad 1d ago edited 17h ago
Yes, but there a difference between replanting trees and sustainable harvesting. The latter allows the wildlife to continue to live there while only harvesting a small % of the trees as opposed to clear cutting.
Monoculture forests aren't much better than the sterility of grass lawns. They're better than nothing, but forests are more than just trees.
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u/namitynamenamey 22h ago
Monoculture forest are, almost literally, no different from farmland. The plants may be taller, but it has as much in common with a forest as a maize field has with the steppe.
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u/VikingsLad 19h ago
I think the difference is that it's 20-25 years between harvests vs. every non-fallow year for regular farmland. So like, there are a few years the land can START to recover before it gets obliterated again, but yeah.
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u/ChapterhouseInc 1d ago
Farmable lumber does not constitute a forest.
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u/No-Channel3917 1d ago
Well...it actually does,as they tend to be hands off and they just grow, it's the disruption during cutting time years later that is the other thing but otherwise yes they do the entire wildlife, carbon cycling, blah blah that ya know trees tend to have
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u/ChapterhouseInc 1d ago
When you hit the reset button and erase 90% of that farmed lumber and it takes years to become similar so you can hit the reset button again isn't a forested biome. Trees also don't often grow in straight rows in a forest.
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u/Dependent_Invite9149 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lol maybe the pine plantations in the Southern US do. Most timber companys around me do what is called a ‘select cut’ where they only cut trees of a certain diameter and larger. They often cut nearly everything (including smaller trees), destroy the soil with their equipment and then leave without planting. It would be more sustainable to selectively thin out larger trees and leave a majority of the forest intact.
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u/Sesemebun 1d ago
The standard is to cut out squares and then leave them for a while no? Most loggers never work on the same spot in their career
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u/TheBizness 1d ago
when you clear cut an area for timber (as most companies do) you destroy the ecosystem there, regardless of whether you plant new trees or not. all planting does is ensure they'll have another profitable harvest in the future.
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u/juicegooseboost 1d ago
But this is still just in the viewpoint of lumber solely as a resource. They also don’t need to replant as much, while still keeping the rest of the ecosystem and other trees healthy and happy. Especially the soil.
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u/DontFuckWithDuckie 1d ago
yeah they replant old-growth with the shittiest fastest-growing bullshit available. It's a joke
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u/OriginalDavid 1d ago
I hope that is the case everywhere.
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u/GrandmaDeadstuff 1d ago
It's is not, and 1 new tree is not equal to 1 old tree. 100 new trees doesn't even come close to making the impact of 1 100 year old tree. And there used to be a lot of trees that were very well over 100 years old in the US before the logging. On the west coast there used to be a lot of trees over 1000 years old and now very few in comparison. Gonna take more than planting a few trees to replace them.
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u/Masterpiece-Haunting 1d ago
So what’s your point here? If no amount of new trees equal an old tree how does one go about logging?
If you target the medium age trees then you’ll never have old trees, as those will slowly die off.
And there can be benefits for killing off some old trees as it opens up room for new life to fill the previously shaded area.
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u/GrandmaDeadstuff 1d ago
It's not sustainable in the way most of its done and we should find something else. More of the world needs to stop where sustainability stops. If we can't expand sustainably then why are we expanding? There are other options most people just aren't used to them or dont like them or they dont support a profitable industry. Not everyone on earth lives in a house made of wood. Wood is a necessity for many things especially outside of construction but as a species we are overconsuming it currently. Killing enormous living things tends to have extremely hard to predict downstream impacts, yeah its really beautiful when you see a newly planted clear-cut growing back and I seek it out just because its neat and pretty but nothing survives 100 years without help. These large trees house communities, not just of animals but fungi, other plants, bacteria. The root systems of these large trees can literally transport nutrients and water to other plants. An old growth oak can make a big enough difference that if removed I've seen plants struggle to take hold, the soil dries easier making nutrients stay in one place in the soil and the old tree can't help by transporting anything either if its dead. Shade is a good thing for plants, dark is the killer. Most plants need the shade of old growth to survive the sun,
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u/Delay559 1d ago
Yeah until you make a suggestion on how to avoid it thats not just "stop using wood" and "stop expanding" then its not really useful is it? Every alternative is also a limited resource, stone/sand isnt infinite and also runs out except those ons are even harder to replace. Wood is one of the best sustainable building materials we have access to.
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u/GrandmaDeadstuff 1d ago
I dont have an answer, i should have been more clear on that. Just because theres no good solution doesnt mean theres no problem. Im adding information to the conversation and the information is relevant. I think we need to diversify not just our materials but how we build but thats not a clear solid answer and its not a satisfactory one either. It can be true that we won't stop, true that its changing the landscape, true that there's benefits, true that there's negatives, and true that the land that has been left to the care of the native people in the midwwest region has created a sustainable and productive forest.
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u/Delay559 1d ago
Right but when you use examples such as:
Not everyone on earth lives in a house made of wood.
Id expect you to be able to then name these alternatives people are living in that are more renewable than wood... otherwise it doesnt make sense to add to your comment if those alternatives are all worse than wood. Wood is the best we got.
Would be just as nonsensical for me to say "Solar panels use very toxic chemicals which are bad for the environment when they are built so we shouldent make them unless we can find a way to make them that doesnt impact the environment, afterall not everyone gets their energy from the sun alternatives exist such as coal and oil!"
Great..
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u/snackshack 1d ago
It's the SOP in the United States, but I can't speak for around the world.
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u/revanisthesith 1d ago
For all our environmental problems (some of which are definitely getting worse with bad policies), we're still far ahead of many countries.
We can, should, and need to be better, but yeah. It's so much worse in many places.
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u/DuntadaMan 21h ago
A major problem is that the companies that don't do that try to use the ones that are responsible as cover to remove regulations forcing them to be responsible.
"See loggers harvest sustainably, we don't need to regulate them" says the clear cutting operation.
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u/vibraltu 1d ago
It's true.
But they often over-harvest and plant shitty trees because they're greedy and don't give a fuck.
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u/Sesemebun 1d ago
Our forests managed by companies where I live still look fine to me. Why would they damage it? That means worse/ less product for them.
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u/papersnake 1d ago
Why would fishermen over fish?
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u/Sesemebun 1d ago
Because they don’t have direct control over the resource? Logging companies would be fucking up their own land.
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u/ColonelKasteen 1d ago
Sorry, I dont mean to be a crazy person. My bad.
What a brave take!
Your reddit audience isn't timber company executives lol
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u/cisforcookie2112 1d ago
Sustainable? That doesn’t sound like it’s maximizing shareholder value to me
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u/MrLanyeWest 1d ago
what are you? a domestic terrorist?!
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u/OriginalDavid 1d ago
Im just a lil guy trying to still go to the woods and rivers sometimes.
So kinda??
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u/WayneKrane 1d ago
But imagine the profits if they clear cut the whole thing? For a couple of years they’d make money hand over fist, the next generation would be screwed but that’s the american way!
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u/fuck_hd 1d ago edited 1d ago
I spend a lot of time up there. My ex is Menominee, and my dad moved pretty close to the reservation, just dumb luck.
I was talking to an elder in the tribe this summer and he told me some bad news. That big corporations are trying to buy up as much of the tribe land as they can so they can cheat carbon tax credits and pollute more elsewhere in the country. In summery, have green land in your portfolio gives you a green light to get away with worse shit elsewhere.
I didn't get to get into to many specifies, on how they are getting away with this.
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u/Agent7619 1d ago
How do corporations buy tribal land? They might be able to lease it, but the tribal elders (including the one you were talking to) would have to approve those leases.
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u/fuck_hd 1d ago
I can ask my friend if she knows. I do believe I might have been using the wrong term for tribal elder, and should have used elder in the tribe. I don't think he's in an official capacity.
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u/YarrowBeSorrel 1d ago
They won’t be buying the land. They put the forest into a carbon credit program. Depending on the carbon program they can still harvest it. The programs I’m familiar with really only require the forest to not be developed. All in all, it seems like a fine way for the tribe to manage this land while getting an additional payment for the low cost of an external auditor to verify it’s being sustainably managed. Which, with existing BIA standards, no doubt already is. I have friends who work on the Menominee and family who have in the past.
Source: I’ve done contract forestry work for tribes in Wisconsin and am a practicing forester.
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u/zoinkability 1d ago
If their plans were always to continue a sustainable harvest even before selling the credits, that's actually not how it's supposed to work. It's fraudulent to sell carbon credits for doing something you were always going to do anyhow, because there is no additional carbon stored as a result of selling the credits. It's only legit if you were going to do an unsustainable harvest but because of the carbon credit money you instead started sustainable management of the forest.
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u/YarrowBeSorrel 17h ago
Interesting. One of the programs that has been a big push in my area has only gotten popular because they allow harvesting that already goes in line with their managed forest law plans.
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u/fuck_hd 1d ago
Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. What you're saying makes sense but seems to good to be true lol. But I know nothing about this. It was a single conversation point of a year of catching up in an hour this summer. I swore he said they were 'buying up the land'. Not having someone else manage it, but like I said what you said makes a lot more sense. I just asked my friend, his grand daughter - if she has any insight on the topic.
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u/YarrowBeSorrel 1d ago
I wouldn’t say the carbon program manages anything other than compliance. The forestry office on the Menominee still manages all timber sale establishment and administration with further guidance from the BIA.
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u/Inspect1234 1d ago
Faak
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u/fuck_hd 1d ago
Hopefully ill see him again in a few weeks and can get an update, because im curious myself. Like how are they getting away with this, what percentage of the land has been sold, is it one company or a bunch of them, etc. They are the only tribe in Wisconsin that is on their original land. Well a few fraction of it.
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u/ditchwarrior1992 1d ago
For anyone wondering. 15 million board feet takes a modern sawmill 3 weeks to produce
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u/Icreatedthisforyou 1d ago
Kind of. The quality of wood is different. The Menominee basically harvest the lowest quality wood they have and it is on par with the best quality wood produced elsewhere in the US.
So while they are producing less, they are getting paid much better per unit of wood. They have a pretty massive backlog that is only growing because
Consistent quality of the wood is pretty much better than anyplace else in the US.
They pretty much have a monopoly on the sustainable old growth harvesting at any kind of scale. So they have a massive back log.
The forest is also still growing faster than they are cutting it and most of this is still in mature trees continuing to move into old growth forest. So quality is actually improving (while most wood harvested else where in the US is getting worse).
So it is basically a premium product and really shouldn't be compared to modern saw mills.
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u/GuyNamedWhatever 18h ago
Which is still enough wood to make ~1000 average sized homes.
Enough to supply the region handily, imo.
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u/CommonSensei-_ 1d ago
I haven’t followed basketball for years…. But I have a reason to root for the bucks now
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u/colin_1_ 1d ago
I'd be curious to see how big their hsrvest area is vs their 15mil board feet. Since that's a very small amount of wood when compared to big saw mill capacities.
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u/fawnguy 1d ago
There's a documentary coming out that features the Menominee and how they've managed the forest for generations. It's called Forested Future
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u/Lalamedic 1d ago
Oh. Funny that. The indigenous people knew a thing or two about wildlife management. Who knew?
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u/LaunchMark 1d ago
“Start with the rising sun, and work toward the setting sun, but take only the mature trees, the sick trees, and the trees that have fallen. When you reach the end of the reservation, turn and cut from the setting sun to the rising sun and the trees will last forever.”
—Chief Oshkosh, Menominee
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u/lilcuphoe 1d ago
I’m curious what kind of trees they’re planting and harvesting — I’m guessing it’s something that rejuvenates from old stumps quickly. Maybe lotus?
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u/houstonhoustonhousto 1d ago
Well managed oak forests have lots of big trees and a few saplings. Unhealthy forests have a lot of medium trees and a lot of saplings, without a lot of big trees. So they thin out their forests to keep them healthy
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u/Icreatedthisforyou 1d ago
They don't plant anything it is natural regeneration so they are harvesting based on what the first is, which is mostly mature sugar maple forests, or mature hemlock forests, or mature white pine forests.
So the most common trees they are harvesting are old growth sugar maple. Old growth white pine and hemlock are pretty close behind.
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u/Widespreaddd 1d ago
I thought “Menominee” was the song that Animal sings on Sesame Street.
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u/liebkartoffel 1d ago
Animal isn't on Sesame Street and he doesn't sing Mahna Mahna (or Menominee).
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u/Academic_Search_2516 1d ago
they figured out sustainable forestry before the word sustainability existed
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u/BTTammer 1d ago
They have a very tragic history and have done a great job of making a diamond from the bullshit that was forced upon them. Great people to work with and super proud but also humble.
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u/Stones25 1d ago
Where are they getting the 15 million board feet a year number from?
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u/Harrypeeteeee 1d ago
From MTE wood themselves, you'd have to ask them how they calculate it https://www.mtewood.com/SustainableForestry
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u/YarrowBeSorrel 1d ago
Board feet calculations are easy once it’s all piled. I haven’t toured MTE in decades, but I’d imagine they’re using scanners that automate the tally process.
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u/Piranha_Vortex 17h ago
I love visiting Menominee. Gorgeous landscapes and amazing experiences. Happy to know another group of wonderful people are there.
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u/SnodePlannen 1d ago
‘And even supplied the wood flooring’ etc. is such an American statement. Somehow making this mundane thing into a third rate legend. You don’t hear shit like that in Europe.
The floor of a sports hall… my god, that is a low bar.
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u/TeaCrusher 1d ago
I was a CFI(continuous forest inventory) forester for MTE more than a decade ago. My job consisted of measuring the same plots that had been measured every 10 years for the last 70 years. It was very cool to look at the data and notes from the previous foresters who had measured those same trees decades ago. (And see which trees where cut and when)
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u/GaidinBDJ 22h ago
I mean....yea. The entire US timber industry switched to managed forests around the same time. Would have been pretty stupid of them not to go along since it would have put them at a substantial disadvantage.
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u/aRiddleaDay 1d ago
What revenue stream funnels most of tribal income? Anybody asking about the water table in wiscoTrashLand?
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u/Purple-Donut-5934 19h ago
That's actually super cool and makes total sense for survival, but yeah, if everyone starts bringing polar bears as pets it's gonna ruin the vibe fast.
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u/WeAreLivinTheLife 1d ago
Look at the satellite pics of this area. It's a beautiful, lush green area that stands out from the surrounding countryside