Wisconsin Forestry Center

This month on Wood & Iron, we head to Northern California to talk with logger Delbert Gannon of Creekside Logging and professional forester Ted James of Battle Creek Timber. Delbert and Ted share how they got into the industry, how their decades-long friendship grew into a working partnership, and what it is like logging under California’s extensive forest practice regulations. They talk about professional logger and forester requirements, certification, workforce development, public education, and the importance of telling the story of modern logging. They also share what they have learned from bringing people into the woods, working within a complex regulatory system, and building strong relationships between loggers, foresters, and landowners. 

Join fellow foresters and natural resource professionals for a field workshop exploring climate-adapted forest management in northern Wisconsin. Participants will learn about approaches for increasing forest resilience and come away with practical ideas they can apply to support resiilient, sustainable forests.

The workshop will feature visits to two forest field sites. Participants will begin at The Nature Conservancy’s Caroline Lake Preserve, where we will discuss efforts to develop more diverse age structure and species composition to increase forest resiliency. The tour will highlight management objectives, implementation challenges, and lessons learned from applying climate-informed silviculture on the ground. 

The second stop will be the USFS’s Great Divide assisted migration site, part of the Dynamic Response of Ecosystems and Management to climate change (DREAM) experiment. Participants will learn about ongoing research evaluating assisted migration and other adaptive management approaches aimed at maintaining healthy, productive forests.   

Join fellow foresters and natural resource professionals for a field workshop exploring climate-adapted forest management in Wisconsin’s driftless region. As a companion to the Adaptation in Action: Forest Management Strategies for a Changing Climate webinar series, this workshop provides an opportunity to see adaptation strategies applied on the ground and hear directly from the practitioners putting them into practice. Participants will learn about approaches for increasing forest resilience and come away with practical ideas they can apply to support healthy, sustainable forests in a changing climate.  

Black locust doesn’t have many fans among foresters in North America. It’s often criticized for growing crooked, spreading aggressively, and producing poor-quality stems. But is the problem really the tree, or is it how we’ve been growing it? In this episode, Zsolt Keserű, Ph.D., Head of the Department of Plantation Forestry and Senior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Forest Research Institute, University of Sopron, shares how decades of European research and silvicultural innovation have made it possible to grow straight, high-quality black locust timber. Join us for this episode of SilviCast as we talk about the genetics and management practices behind successful black locust plantations, why the species has become such an important hardwood in parts of Europe, and what North American foresters can learn from that experience. If you’ve written off black locust, this conversation might make you take a second look.