Thursday Morning -- Mead Tours

On Thursday morning, we toured the Paper Mill and Nursery of the Mead company in Escanaba and then visited the Sampo Sportsman's Club land, a non-industrial, private forest near Gwinn, for a tour and Lunch.

Paper Mill and Nursery Tour

The Mead corporation owns 667,000 acres of and is the largest private landowner of forestland in Michigan. We visited their facility in Escanaba including their paper mill and nursery and to learn about how they apply the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) to their forestry practices. We will also learned how they utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in their work.

Mead's pulp mill uses 1,800,000 tons of wood annually. Mead's Michigan operations also plants 2.9 million seedlings (3,200 acres) annually.

Your Mead tour hosts (from left to right): Bradley Homeier, Bill Cook, Karin Van Dyke, and Eva Rice

Your hosts (from left to right): Bill Cook, Eva Rice, and Robert Aschbacher

Some Red Pine Seedlings

Sampo Club Tour and Lunch

The Sampo Club is a sportsmans' club that owns approximately 1200 acre of forestland near Gwinn, Michigan. They are a non-profit organization whose current members are third generation owners with a strong ethic to improve the property for future generations. The Club participates in the MeadWestvaco Cooperative Forest Management Program (CFM) which means they receive expert management assistance and at-cost practices, when needed.

At the Sampo Club, tour participants toured and learned about the management of: Red pine plantations, Northern hardwood, and Aspen as well as learning about forest habitat diversity.

Unlike industrial forests where revenue is a goal, the Sampo Club manages mainly for habitat diversity to encourage game species - they are a hunting club, which is a common reason to own land in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The property is home to a healthy population of whitetail deer, ruffed grouse, and black bear - and mosquitos (at least one third of the property is wetland). The land is also home to a very diverse forest - growing just about every kind of tree which grows in the northern lake states: sugar maple, red maple, quaking and big tooth aspen, northern red oak, balm of gilead, northern white cedar, balsam fir, black and white spruce, jack pine, red pine, white pine, tamarack, european larch, pin cherry, black cherry, ironwood, tag alder, etc. This patchwork of tree species requires management methods just as diverse: even-aged management (for pines and larch) and uneven-aged management (for hardwood stands). Timber management and habitat enhancement are very complementary, the various methods producing a diversity of habitat. Income generated from timber sales returns to the property. The Sampo Club takes pride in having a well managed forest.

A picnic lunch was provided by MeadWestVaco at the Gwinn Pavillion.

(Photos below courtesy of Bill Cook)

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