Hardwood Hills Subsection

FInal Hardwood Hills Subsections Forest Resource Management Plan

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' (DNR) Commissioner Tom Landwehr announced the signing of the final Hardwood Hills Subsection Forest Resource Management Plan (HH SFRMP) on April 9, 2012. The HH SFRMP will guide resource management decisions for State administered lands in the Hardwood Hills Subsection. The Hardwood Hills is an ecological subsection in Central Minnesota that includes approximately 46,099 acres of state forestlands with 16,231 managed acres that are capable of producing timber administered by the DNR Division of Forestry and Section of Wildlife. The Subsection covers approximately 3.5 million acres in an area from near Mentor in the northwest to near Clearbrook in the northeast, and from near Paynesville in the southwest to near Clearwater in the southeast.

The final HH SFRMP takes into consideration a broad range of factors that affect forest management including: increasing forest health and productivity; managing vegetation for rare species and habitat; balancing timber age classes over time; identifying stands to be managed as older forest to accommodate diverse wildlife and ecological resources; and limiting impacts to cultural, visual and water resources – all balanced to provide sustainable forest resources. Sustainable forest management is the underlying goal of the SFRMP planning process.

The Final HH SFRMP consists of two primary products: The resource management plan and a 10-year stand exam list. The resource management plan outlines the planning process; forest vegetation management goals and directions; and implementation strategies for State administered lands in the Subsection as well as the stand selection criteria used to identify the forest stands to be site visited by foresters, and possibly treated over the next ten year period: 2011 through 2020. The 10-year stand exam list includes physical descriptions of the 210 stands totaling 3,787 acres that will be site visited during the plan's implementation phase as well as locations for each stand on the list.

Questions or comments on the final SFRMP may be submitted to:

Pat Matuseski, DNR
2115 Birchmont Drive N.E.
Bemidji, MN 56601
(218) 308-2381

Printed copies of the draft Hardwood Hills SFRMP and 10-year stand exam list are available on request from the contact listed above.