New district forester on job serving Cheboygan, Presque Isle counties
CHEBOYGAN — Originally from Alpena, Jacob Grochowski said Northern Michigan's landscapes are what inspired him thought his educational and professional careers, so it's only fitting he's found himself back in the Tip of the Mitt.
Now serving as the Presque Isle and Cheboygan counties' district forester, Grochowski is able to serve people in the region and help them uncover some unknowns about their own land and property.
In his role, which he's been serving in since July, Grochowski helps fill knowledge gaps — which can be anything from identifying harmful bugs on trees to helping people get resources to eliminate invasive species.
Grochowski graduated from the University of Michigan in 2017 with a degree in environmental sciences with a focus on policy and forest ecology. He got his master's degree in forestry at the University of Missouri in 2023. While conducting research throughout these programs, which brought him from Pellston to East Texas, he said his work always brought him back to Northern Michigan forests.
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"I was always relating the things I was learning back to systems in Northern Michigan, because that's just my default, that's what I go back to," he said.
Grochowski said that while Cheboygan, Presque Isle and Alpena don't always get as much love as some other parts of Northern Michigan, the people from the area have an understanding of what's so special about it.
"I really appreciate being able to share that enthusiasm with the landowners that I'm meeting with, and then, in some cases, strengthen their investment in the place by kind of pointing out things that they weren't aware of about their land," Grochowski said.
In his role, he's helped different residents find formal funding programs to help take care of their land. One example, Grochowski said, was connecting a landowner with about 15 acres of land — which was formerly his grandfather's farm — with ways to get rid of the bush honeysuckle, an invasive species, that started to take over a field on the farm.
Grochowski was able to connect the owner with a funding program from the Natural Resources Conservation Service to help him pay for a contractor to mow the shrubs down, as well as help fund herbicide to kill the plants.
He's also able to help residents reduce their property taxes by 16 mills if they participate in the Michigan Qualified Forest Program, where foresters come out to the forest, identify the species on the land, and come up with a forest management plan for landowners to abide by.
More casually, Grochowski can stop by and help identify fungi and bugs and help people learn how to take care of those issues, or even share how to properly prune an apple tree.
Grochowski can be reached at jacob.grochowski@macd.org or (989) 734-5202.
— Contact reporter Karly Graham at kgraham@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KarlyGrahamJRN.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Get to know your Presque Isle and Cheboygan counties district forester
