Bear River Demo Forest
Exploring opportunities to enhance forest management in Minnesota
In June 2001, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources brought together representatives of Minnesota's diverse forest interests at a Forest Summit to explore opportunities to enhance forest management. From this Summit came a vision to reduce the state's reliance on aspen, clearcutting and pulpwood products by:
- a greater use of thinning and selective harvest;
- an increased presence of conifers; and
- a greater proportion of harvesting in the form of sawtimber
Benefits of this approach could be:
- increased forest health and productivity;
- a more diverse forest;
- a more diversified and resilient forest industry; and
- more visually acceptable timber harvesting.
To test these ideas, partners at the Forest Summit established Minnesota's first cooperative demonstration forest. This demonstration forest covers 280,000 acres of forestland (maps), involves eight major landowners (federal, state, two counties, and four forest industry companies) and 55,000 acres of nonindustrial private forestland (chart of landownership). The demonstration forest has a diversity of forest types and conditions for testing both traditional and alternative silvicultural practices.
Primary objectives of the demonstration forest:
- provide a working model for more cooperative and innovative forest management;
- apply a range of innovative silvicultural practices;
- monitor the effects of silvicultural practices on important forest indicators such as forest health and productivity, forest composition and structure, wildlife and biodiversity, visual quality, soil productivity and water quality;
- provide opportunities for more public education and technology transfer on alternative forest practices to forest managers and landowners acres the state and region; and
- determine the usefulness of these practices in other areas of Minnesota.
Take a tour of current management activities.