Green Fire Ecology

04/23/2025

Round-lobed Hepatitca (Hepatitca americana) unfurled its delicately elegant flowers this morning, quietly announcing that Spring has arrived in this woodland understory.

03/25/2025

Here is a little before and after of this section of woody invasive control on a Lake Michigan bluff site from this morning.

Unfortunately, it didn't have to be this bad because almost everything you don't see anymore were resprouts from untreated stumps from a previous landscaping contractor. They turned each stem into 25-40 more, and left all the slash piled up off the ground, that the resprouts grew up through.

This woody debris is great habitat for native birds, mammals, and herptiles.... Unfortunately you can see what many species of woody invasive plants do to the native plant populations....bare soil conditions under the buckthorn and honeysuckle means very little food in the form of insects for all the neotropical migrators that are showing up in waves now.

11/11/2024

Now is a great to be tackling woody invasive species. Most things that are still hanging onto their green leaves this late into Fall are invasives.

This site has a dense understory of Bush honeysuckle and some Buckthorn and Autumn olive sprinkled in. We had already removed a wall of these to get to this spot where the pictures were taken.

04/18/2023

"Measure Twice, Cut Once" - An axiom that encourages careful first steps in order to avoid extra work later on. This certainly applies to a lot of the work we do!

Black Locust trees have an extension suckering response to being cut down or sustaining damage. This is one species you definitely want to kill well before getting the chainsaw out!

Cutting Black Locusts first is a surefire way to turn each single stem into dozens or more (which all grow back with stout thorns to protect the tender shoots from browsing animals).

Watch below to see how to prevent this extra work in your future.

Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is a deciduous tree species native to the southeastern United States, ranging from Pennsylvania and Ohio in the north to ...

03/09/2023

Teddy Roosevelt once said, "Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

I'm proud to stand alongside this group of dedicated and passionate conservationists, and to be a small part of that hard work worth doing.

Larry Doebert received the Lifetime Achievement Award this evening at the Sheboygan County Conservation Associations awards banquet and we were awarded the Water Conservationists Of The Year award.
There was a room full of hard working conservationists who all want to work together to make our area of the state the best it can be for hunting, fishing and all other outdoors activities. It was a great evening and we are honored to be recognized for everything we do in our chapter.

01/22/2023

January 21st, and not even a hint of frost in the ground.

We easily hand-dug and popped out this Bur oak we planted in this spot as an acorn. The city is extending a bike path along the river here, on an easement across our property. We moved it to another parcel we own on the same river.

He fits in well with the other Bur Oaks, Swamp whites, Hemlock, and White Cedar, adjacent to this small remnant Sedge Meadow community I've been restoring.

12/30/2022

45°F on December 29th, t-shirt weather and a perfect day to plant native seed mixes. This is an Oak savanna and wet meadow restoration site that I've been site-prepping all season. Put down a mesic shortgrass, wet meadow, and emergent wetland mix, totaling about 1.4 acres.

11/21/2022

Smokey the Bear is an ecological disaster.

11/16/2022

We got the Truax drill all cleaned out this morning and returned to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Snow and freezing ground has shortened the seed drilling season, so we're moving on to broadcast seeding now....about 16 more acres of prairies and savanna projects to go.

11/10/2022

One last holdout. This Annual Fleabane has gone through three freezes and is facing highs in the 30's for the next week.

11/09/2022

I've been busy all season on this site treating mature Common Buckthorn stems using the hack-n-squirt method. Each color is a recorded track on a GPS unit (red being the initial survey to assess the site). I use these tracks to map out progress for the property owner, but also keep track of where I've been and what needs to be covered yet.

We plan to go in after the hunting season and use a forestry mulcher to cut down and grind up the dead shrubs, continue cut-stem treatments on smaller buckthorn through winter and spring..... Then formulate a plan to tackle seedlings and new sprouts.

11/08/2022

Suburban forests, often lacking hunting and predation pressure, see high deer abundance and invasive plant encroachment from local ornamental landscapes. When these plants are Japanese Barberry, which deer do not browse, you not only get destruction of the forest ecosystem, you can also expect to see higher numbers of ticks and increased risks of tick-borne diseases.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17162946/