Superior National Forest
| Superior National Forest | |
|---|---|
| IUCN Category VI (Managed Resource Protected Area) | |
  | |
| Location: | St. Louis, Lake, and Cook counties, Minnesota, USA |
| Nearest city: | Several |
| Area: | 3,900,000 acres (6,100 mi² or 16,000 km²) |
| Established: | 1909 |
| Governing body: | U.S. Forest Service |
Superior National Forest, part of the United States National Forest system, is located in the Arrowhead Region of the state of Minnesota between the Canada–United States border and the north shore of Lake Superior. The area is part of the greater Boundary Waters region along the border of Minnesota and the Canadian province of Ontario, a historic and important thoroughfare in the fur trading and exploring days of British North America.
The Superior National Forest comprises over 3,900,000 acres (6,100 mi² or 16,000 km²) of woods and waters. The majority of the forest is multiple-use, including both logging and recreational activities such as camping, boating, and fishing. Slightly over a quarter of the forest however, is set aside as a wilderness reserve known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), where canoers can travel along interconnected lakes and rivers and over historic portages once used by the Native Americans and later by European explorers and traders.
Geography
The National Forest is headquartered in Duluth, which is approximately 150 miles from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, but the forest actually begins about 50 miles (80 km) north of Duluth. The forest service office at Ely is the most centrally located station within the forest; Ely is about 240 miles (385 km) from the Twin Cities and 110 miles (175 km) from Duluth.
Landforms
The forest has over 445,000 acres (1,800 km²) of water,[1] which include some two thousand lakes and rivers,[2] more than 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of cold water streams, and 950 miles (1,530 km) of warm water streams.[3] Many of the lakes are located in depressions formed by the erosion of tilted layers of bedded rock; these depressions were given their final form by glacial scouring during recent ice ages.[4]
The forest is located on part of the Canadian Shield. The area is on a low plateau that is part of the Superior Upland. High points include the Sawtooth Mountains, a range of hills along the shore of Lake Superior, the Misquah Hills including Eagle Mountain, the state's highest point, and other uplands along the Laurentian Divide separating the watershed of the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean from that of Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean. Despite the presence of dramatic cliffs and other local differences in elevation, the area is essentially flat, as it is part of an old peneplain eroded by weathering, water, and especially glaciers.
The principal result of recent glaciation is not the deposition of glacial drift (unlike most of the rest of the state), but the remodeling of the landscape by the scraping away of softer surfaces down to bare hard rock. The land therefore is raw, with many outcroppings of ancient bedrock, overlain in places by thin layers of gravelly soil and, in the west, silts deposited by glacial Lake Agassiz.[4]
Life forms
Flora
The forest contains both true boreal forest (taiga), and a mixed conifer-hardwood forest known as the North Woods, a transition province between the northern boreal forest and deciduous forests to the south.[5] Conifers include several varieties of pine, fir, and spruce trees; principal deciduous species are mountain ash, maple, aspen, oak, and paper [[birch].[6] Characteristic aquatic plants include water lilies and wild rice.
Fauna
Fish species such as walleye, northern pike, smallmouth bass, several species of trout (lake, brook, rainbow, and brown) can be found in abundance in the forest's waters. Larger wildlife species include white-tailed deer, moose, Canadian lynx, American black bear, and the gray or timber wolf. Northern Minnesota has the largest population of gray wolves in the lower 48 states, with approximately 300-400 wolves within the boundaries of the Superior National Forest.[7] Located at the northern edge of the range of the hummingbird and near the southern edge of the range of the Canada jay, the forest has 163 nesting species of birds, the largest number of any national forest.[2] Species include the bald eagle and other raptors, the ubiquitous common loon, and northern waterfowl.
History
People have been living within the current boundaries of the Superior National Forest for more than ten thousand years, since shortly after the glacier retreated from the region, approximately 11,000 to 12,000 years ago.
Archaeologically, the prehistory of northeastern Minnesota is subdivided into three cultural time periods: the Paleo Indian Period, the Archaic Period, and the Woodland Period. Throughout prehistory, the Assiniboine, the Eastern Sioux, the Cree, and the Ojibwe occupied portions of the Superior National Forest and adapted to the harsh winter climates and ecological zones. The Paleo Indian people entered this land in search of big game, but left few reminders behind.
As the climate warmed, the forest offered a home to an abundance of plant and animal species, providing for increased exploitation of valuable resources by the Archaic people, who were characterized by adaptation to a changing ecosystem. Native copper was an important source of a wide variety of tools during this period.
The Woodland Period was a time of great cultural and social diversity, with a complex toolkit and exploitation/collection of an immense variety of plants and animals. Regional influences in pottery and point styles took hold and raw stone material variety increased. The Woodland people exploited resources in small groups, foraging over wide areas in a seasonal round of hunting and gathering. The early Woodland people were especially noted for the use of pottery, burial mounds, dugout canoes, and the use of wild rice as a dietary staple. Later Woodland people adopted the use of the bow and arrow and shifted to birch bark canoes.
The voyageurs of the fur-trade era traveled the water highway of the forest's current border with Canada in large canoes.
French Fur Trade (c. 1680-1761)
Initial contact between Europeans and Native Americans occurred with the French, who reached the west shore of Lake Superior during the mid-seventeenth century. Tribal groups existing at this time were: Dakota, Cree, Assiniboine, and Ojibwe. Other tribes in adjacent areas that took part in the contact and subsequent fur trade were the Ottowa, Monsoni, Potawatomie, Menominee, and the Fox.
The Ojibwe provided animal pelts, winter food supplies, equipment such as canoes, and snowshoes; the French, in exchange, provided them with manufactured and specialty items, such as guns, cloth, clothing, copper kettles, tobacco, and many other products.
British Fur Trade (1765-1860)
After France was defeated in the Seven Years' War, which ended with the Treaty of Paris, 1763, three fur trade companies became prominent in the region: the North West Company, XY Company, and the Hudson's Bay Company. North West and Hudson's Bay merged in 1821.
The British-American fur trade began after the War of 1812 and ended around 1870. For a time, both British and American posts were operating on the border lakes. In addition to the British companies, the American Fur Company and the Northern Lake Company were active. As the fur trade declined, fishing, mining, shipping, and lumbering assumed prominence in the region.
The contact period between American Indians and European fur traders led to both a reduction in the indigenous population and the drastic reorganization of the existing socio-political system.
By the early nineteenth century, various bands of Ojibwe occupied areas within, and adjacent to, the current boundaries of the Superior National Forest. In 1854 and 1866, these bands ceded large tracts of land to the U.S. government in exchange for reservation allotments and the retention of off-reservation hunting and gathering rights. Attempts to assimilate American Indians into the dominant socio-economic system followed in the late nineteenth century with passage of the Dawes Act and the forced removal of children to boarding schools. Despite these attempts, the Ojibwe of northern Minnesota continued to exercise their autonomy by congregating both on and off reservation at traditional resource-gathering locations.
The industrial period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drastically changed the landscape, infrastructure, and economy of northern Minnesota. Within this changing world, some Ojibwe found opportunities for wage labor in the burgeoning mining, logging, and tourism industry. Ojibwe women found seasonal employment in the resorts and garnered extra wages by selling traditional foodstuffs such as wild rice, blueberries, and maple syrup to tourists.
The twenty-first century finds the Bois Forte and Grand Portage Bands of Chippewa and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa actively engaged in the management and use of their ancestral lands. The Grand Portage and Bois Forte Bands participate in many cooperative projects through the 1854 Treaty Authority, an inter-tribal natural resource management agency that manages off-reservation hunting, fishing, and gathering rights within the 1854 Treaty area. Currently, the Superior National Forest and 1854 Treaty Authority are working on species distribution studies of moose and lake sturgeon within the ceded territory.
Homesteading
From 1869-1900, the building of railroads, mineral exploration (especially the discovery of iron ore), and lumbering attracted people to the area. While there was a rush of immigrants settling lands, many of the claims were fraudulently claimed to acquire timbered lands for the big lumber companies or were soon abandoned by legitimate settlers due to poor farming conditions in northeastern Minnesota. Those who stayed were miners or loggers and their families.
Logging
Big pine timber logging began on the Superior National Forest in the 1890s and continued into the 1920s. The border lakes region presented numerous challenges to logging companies in accessing and harvesting timbered stands, which effectively left much of it untouched until the 1890s, when vast extents of the border lakes' forests had been stripped away in Michigan and Wisconsin. Early logging was accomplished by means of river driving of logs. As timber near rivers became depleted, railroad logging became the primary method of getting the wood to the mill. Frozen ground conditions in the winter steered the logging industry to build ice roads, providing greater access to timber stands. Logging after 1929 focused more and more on pulp species and the wood products industry.
Mining
Mining came early to northeastern Minnesota. By the 1870s, exploration parties were on the Vermilion Range. In 1882, Charlemagne Tower and Samuel Munson incorporated the Minnesota Iron Company. The town of Tower was soon formed and became the first mining town on the range. A rail line was built from Two Harbors to Tower in 1884, formally connecting the iron range to Lake Superior's north shore. By 1888, mining had expanded to Ely, Minnesota.
Early prospecting was also ongoing on the eastern side of the Forest. One of the best known and shortest-lived was the Paulson Mine, which was located just west of Gunflint Lake and the modern Gunflint Trail. Exploration activities commenced around 1886 and, by 1892, a savvy group of investors had managed to connect the mine site by railroad to the city of Port Arthur in adjacent Ontario. The investors had hoped to connect the Port Arthur, Duluth and Western Railroad to the bustling port city of Duluth, Minnesota; however, these aspirations would never be realized. A nation-wide economic depression known as the Panic of 1893 led to the retraction of financing and to the collapse of the Paulson Mine enterprise in that year. The Port Arthur, Duluth and Western Railroad became financially irrelevant soon thereafter and was completely abandoned by 1914 after hauling only a single load of ore.
Boundary Designation 1916 – International Boundary Commission; joint effort to delineate US/Canada Boundary.
On February 13, 1909, Theodore Roosevelt signed a Presidential Proclamation officially creating the Superior National Forest. Thus began an era of early forest administration. Original acreage on the Superior NF was 644,114 acres, much of which was of cut-over and/or burned over lands, “lands that nobody wanted.” A 1924 Forest map shows 20 Ranger Stations scattered about the forest with an additional 5 residences to house lookouts. These small one room cabins were used by Forest guards, providing overnight housing as they traveled and worked around the Forest. Today, the Forest has nearly quadrupled in size. Forest personnel work out five ranger district offices, one work center, four guard stations, and the Supervisor's Office in Duluth, MN.
An increasingly mobile and affluent public during the teens and twenties of the 20th century stimulated a nationwide call for recreatation on Forest lands. Encouraged by the Forest Service, summer home groups and resorts began to populate forest lands under permit to the US Forest Service. During the 1920's through the mid 1970's, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area was a remote roadless area providing ample camping opportunities. Resort owners capitalized on this, providing motor boat and airplane access into remote forest areas to hunt and fish. Effective 1951, an air space reservation was placed over the BWCA, effectively ending airplane service into these locations.
NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps)
A predecessor to the CCC, the National Industrial Recovery Act was designed to provide employment and complete a variety of conservation work. There were 8 NIRA camps on the Superior National Forest. The Timber Survey poem aptly captures the nature of timber survey in the northern lakes region (date and author unknown).
The Emergency Conservation Work Bill of 1933 formally established the Civilian Conservation Corps. to provide relief for the country's economic plunge resulting from the Great Depression. The CCC were tasked with numerous conservation projects on public lands. The great accomplishments of the CCC are still visible on the Superior National Forest today in the form of pine plantations, FS administrative buildings, and miles of Forest trails. There were 30 CCC camps on the Superior National Forest during its tenure.
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is enjoyed for its beauty and solitude where the traveler feels closer to nature. The BWCAW elicits an exceptional recreational experience over land and over water by canoe travel, unique to this region of the country. Originally designated a Roadless Area in 1926, it would be nearly 40 years before it was designated a wilderness area in 1964. A major wilderness destination, the BWCAW has withstood a turbulent history of controversy and conflict that continues to this day. Still, the peacefulness, the grandness, and beauty of the Boundary Waters continue to beckon the wilderness traveler.
1964: Passage of the national Wilderness Act with special provision regarding the BWCA, allowing some motorized use and logging within the Boundary Water's wilderness boundaries.
1978: Passage of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act. Specific to the BWCAW, this legislation eliminated logging and snowmobiling, restricted mining and allowed motorboats on 1/4 of the water area.
Looking to the future
In June 2008, legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives to sell 6,700 acres (27 km²) of land in the forest to a mining company; the company wants the land to mine deposits of "copper, nickel, platinum and palladium". Usually, the Forest Service will trade land with property owners, but an exchange of this size would be difficult. Under the bill, proceeds from the sale would be used to buy private land in or near the Superior National Forest.
The land sale would be exempt from a separate environmental review, although an environmental review of the mining project is under way.
A spokesman for Oberstar says the bill was introduced at the request of the Forest Service and PolyMet. [8]
Mineral rights vs. land ownership
Sanders said the Forest Service purchased the land from U.S. Steel in the 1930s but has never owned the mineral rights below the surface. Polymet controls those mineral rights.
Polymet officials say they had been moving ahead with mining plans, assuming their mineral rights "superseded" surface ownership, Gietzen said. Regional U.S. Forest Service officials last year informed the company that they didn' t hold the same legal opinion.
Rather than battle it out, the two sides agreed on the legislation to sell the land, Gietzen said. But if that fails, the company still could try to sue the government to gain access to the minerals.
"We certainly can challenge their opinion. . But nobody wants to go that route," Gietzen said.
Because the 6,700 acres is surrounded by mining-related activities - a railroad to the south and an active taconite mine to the north - Sanders said it makes sense to sell the land and use the proceeds to buy other, more environmentally sensitive land closer to the heart of the forest.
The forest covers more than 3 million acres; about 2 million of that is owned by the federal government. There are hundreds of tracts of private, state and county-owned land within the forest boundaries.
Sanders said he is eying private land in the Kawishiwi River area, near Trout Lake, the Fernberg corridor and near Mud Lake, where landowners are willing to sell and where "it makes sense to consolidate our holdings."
But critics of copper mining in the north woods say the legislation seems to offer a special deal to the mining company.
The land in question includes undeveloped forest and 1,200 acres of wetlands, said John Doberstein of Duluth, chairman of the Mining Without Harm committee of the Minnesota Sierra Club. The bill was introduced in December with no announcement.
"Not only does the bill exempt them from doing an Environmental Impact Statement [on the sale], it also sets a dangerous precedent of taking public land and transferring it to a private company for their profit without any public input," Doberstein said. "This really seems to fast-track the land sale for the convenience of the company, without any regard whether this is the right thing to do with the forest."
Critics say that copper mines in other areas of the world have almost always brought extreme environmental problems.
John Schadl, an Oberstar spokesman, said the bill was introduced at the request of the Forest Service and Polymet to speed the company toward mining operations.
"It's an effort to expedite the process but still do it in an environmentally sound way," Schadl said. "And the bill as it is now [will] not be the same bill that moves. . There will be some changes."
No Senate version has been introduced yet.
Congressional action to sell national forest land to private parties is not unheard of, Sanders said. About a dozen such bills have been passed in the past decade, he said.
Polymet would be Minnesota's first copper-nickel mine. But Polymet is only one of several companies eyeing rich deposits of copper, nickel, platinum and palladium under northern Minnesota forests and lakes. The interest is being sparked by record-breaking prices for those minerals and new technology that make it easier to separate copper from other rock.
Polymet is the farthest along toward developing those minerals and has purchased land, processing equipment and buildings from the former LTV Mining site near Hoyt Lakes. The company's proposed open pit mine on federal property is several miles away toward Babbitt and would be connected by railroad to the processing plant.[9]
This bill never became law. This bill was proposed in a previous session of Congress. Sessions of Congress last two years, and at the end of each session all proposed bills and resolutions that haven't passed are cleared from the books. Members often reintroduce bills that did not come up for debate under a new number in the next session.
In December 2008, the Superior National Forest issued a decision regarding use of its roads and trails by off-highway vehicles. As an result, the routes for such vehicles will increase by 285 miles and long-distance riding opportunities will increase by more than 300 miles. In order to connect existing trails at various locations, a total of 2.5 miles of new trail will be constructed. In addition, a total of 154 miles of unclassified road will be decommissioned.
There will be very little overall change in the total miles currently available (1,600 miles) on the Forest for off-highway vehicle use. This is because existing roads and trails are being utilized to designate loop and long distance routes where riding opportunities previously were fragmented and not coordinated with other land managers. Consolidating OHV use is expected to, over the long run, result in lower road maintenance costs, cleaner water, improved wildlife and fish habitat, and fewer conflicts between motorized and non-motorized recreationists.[10]
Notes
- ↑ America's 10 Most Endangered National Forests. Report. National Forest Protection Alliance. Retrieved 2007-03-07.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Superior National Forest recreation. USDA Forest Service (2007-01-16). Retrieved 2007-03-07.
- ↑ Superior National Forest: About Us. USDA Forest Service (2007-02-20). Retrieved 2007-03-07.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Ojakangas, Richard & Charles Matsch (1982), Minnesota's Geology, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 0-8166-0953-5
- ↑ Gibbon, Guy E.; Johnson, Craig M., and Hobbes, Elizabeth (2000). Chapter 3: Minnesota's Environment and Native American Culture History. A Predictive Model of Precontact Archaeological Site Location for The State of Minnesota. Minnesota Department of Transportation. Retrieved 2007-07-08.
- ↑ Heinselman, Miron (1996), The Boundary Waters Wilderness ecosystem, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 0-8166-2804-1 .
- ↑ Superior National Forest wildlife. USDA Forest Service (2007-01-16). Retrieved 2007-03-07.
- ↑ Oberstar offers bill to sell Superior Nat'l Forest land to mining company. Report. The Associated Press (2008-06-06). Retrieved 2008-06-06.
- ↑ [1] Save the Wild Up. Retrieved January 30, 2009
- ↑ [2] USDA Forest Service. Retrieved January 30, 2009
External Links
Parts of this article were taken from the Forest Service website. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the text is in the public domain.
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