Thursday Afternoon -- Louisiana-Pacific Tour
On Thursday Afternoon we toured Louisana-Pacific's Gwinn Sawmill and Hybrid Tamarack County Forest. We finished the day with dinner at the Northwoods Supper Club in Marquette.
Gwinn Sawmill
Your guide and hosts (from left to right): David Slater, Eva Rice, and Bill Cook
Louisiana-Pacific's mill in Gwinn, Michigan is a high tech, small log mill capable of processing logs up to 20" in diameter. From this mill they produce 500,000 bd. ft. of studs daily.
The tour illustrated how efficiently lumber is utilized in modern mills, minimizing waste. Wood chips from this mill go to the Mead paper mill (which we visited Thursday morning) as well as Domtar in Nekoosa, WI and International Paper in Kaukauna, WI. Sawdust from the mill is utilized at the GP Flakeboard plant in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Marquette County Forest
The 14,000 acre Marquette County Forest consists largely of dry, sandy soils of a glacial outwash plain. Jack pine is about the only tree species that can thrive on these soil types and management helps the pines to thrive while controlling fire and establishing diverse wildlife habitat.
Natural regeneration of jack pines is tied to wildfire. The pines are a shade-intolerant tree species, meaning it requires full sunlight to regenerate. Their serotinous cones open only after reaching temperatures of about 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Fire also creates open clearings and prepares the soil so that jack pine seedlings could thrive.
Jack pine is similar to lodgepole pine in the West. Both have fire-adapted ecologies that are often difficult to reconcile with human elements in the landscape. In a natural state, million-acre fires like the ones we see now in the West would create single age class pine forests. But that natural fire would threatens homes and people who live, work, and play nearby. So to approximate these same conditions, management of county jack pine consists of clearcutting and planting stands on a staggered schedule to establish a diversity of age classes over the forest as a whole. In doing so, this benefits diverse wildlife by creating a wide range of habitat. The younger stands also serve as wildfire buffers, should fire enter the forest.
Monies from timber sales go back to the county to help with regeneration and other management costs.
Sponsored Dinner at the Northwoods Supper Club
Thursday evening's dinner, sponsored by MeadWestvaco, was at the Northwoods Supper Club in Marquette, MI., a fine dining establishment that specializes in fresh steaks, fish, and seafood. Dinner will be buffet style: beef, turkey, fresh vegetables, baked beans, sage dressing, scalloped potatoes, baked cod fillets, tossed salad, coleslaw, and three bean salad.
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