Superior weighs tradition to tackle climate resiliency

Sep. 1—SUPERIOR — The city of Superior and Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa could be partnering on a new management plan for Wisconsin Point steeped in thousands of years of tradition.

The plan would use controlled burning to help regenerate the pine forests and create more resilient vegetation on Wisconsin Point.

"Using preventative fire is vital to protecting our point, our harbor and our community," said Superior Fire Chief Camron Vollbrecht, during a presentation about the management partnership Tuesday, Aug. 29.

Local officials and Fond du Lac Band members presented the idea of creating climate resiliency with controlled fire to the Wisconsin insurance commissioner and Minnesota commerce commissioner.

"We know our climate is changing," Wisconsin Insurance Commissioner Nathan Houdek said. "We know our weather events are more severe, so it's important people are thinking about what they can do to protect themselves against those more severe weather events."

Houdek said he came to Superior, which has the third largest urban forest in the nation, to learn more about what the city is doing to create resiliency to the changing climate.

"You're building resiliency by eliminating a lot of the fuels that are there and spacing everything out," said Damon Panek, Fond du Lac Wildland Fire operations specialist. "It's a risk to this whole space ... the no-action alternative here is we don't do anything — then we're going to lose this."

For thousands of years, people around the world have used fire to manage their environment, said Vern Northrup, a member of the Fond du Lac Band and a retired wildland fire operations specialist. When modern man came along in the 1800s, he said all fire became bad because they couldn't control it.

Fire suppression became the norm.

"You couldn't control it; just let it do its thing," Northrup said. "Get up and move out of its way. That's what the Anishinaabe did. When big fire came, they got up and moved out of the way. Then they moved back."

Like his predecessors who have cared a great deal about Wisconsin Point, Mayor Jim Paine said the management practice has been to leave it alone and recognize it was a wild place. One of the things he's learned from Fond du Lac Band leaders is that people are part of the landscape and necessary in managing landscapes. Fire is not inherently destructive to the land and can be restorative and a way to defend a place, he said.

Controlled fires can decrease the danger and intensity of naturally occurring fires, but Panek said he recognizes that the technique may not be easily embraced by people conditioned to believe fire is destructive.

Controlled burning prevents the buildup of fuels that cause catastrophic fires, Vollbrecht said.

"One of the biggest issues we have is public opinion about fire," Panek said. "The narrative about fire has been skewed for so long ... so it's hard to get people thinking that fire is a solution."

The last time fire was used on Wisconsin Point as a management tool was in the early 1900s, Panek said. The first step to use fire again would be to thin the existing vegetation mechanically by removing trees and ladder fuels that would allow fire to reach the canopies of the remaining trees. He said they would use the wind too, so if a lake wind was blowing, the work would start near Allouez Bay to slow the fire.

"We did a burn in the Cloquet Forestry Center last spring," Panek said. "And we literally pre-treated every single red pine in that forest by going up to it with a tool and scraping the needle cast away from the base of the tree ... one of the risks is not the whole tree burning but the roots getting torched. If you have a lot of duff and that's smoldering, it will kill the roots and the tree will die from that. So we scrape away the base and that will help to prevent that heat from getting in there."

He said they also use water to spray scars to prevent the fire from getting into the tree.

Wisconsin Point has an advantage because it is surrounded by water, so creating fire breaks is easy, allowing for protection of infrastructure, Panek said.

There has been research on the use of fire to manage land and vegetation, including a study currently underway by Evan Larson, a professor of environmental sciences and society at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Larson is working with a team to study the use of cultural fires by the Anishinaabe on Wisconsin Point.

"We've got fires going back 7,000 years on one of these (Apostle) Islands ... little peaks," Panek said. "There's no way for lightning to account for that so it has to be anthropogenic."

Using a slice of a tree trunk, called a cookie, from a tree established in 1776, Panek said there is evidence of human use visible in the rings. In 1804, someone peeled the tree to get pitch from it to seal a canoe and there is evidence of fires in 1829 and 1843, he said.

City officials will need to have a plan before reintroducing fire to Wisconsin Point, Panek said, and they will need to educate the public before moving ahead with any plans to use controlled burn.

Managing the infrastructure and natural environment are ways to build resiliency, said Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Grace Arnold.

"When we think about the need for resilience in our environment, we need to think about — as traditional knowledge does — that we are part of the environment," said Jodi Slick of Ecolibrium3. "We need to be thinking about our communities and actions that each of us can take to support good management of places like this."