S.6 Ep.9: River Trees

Restoring and reforesting floodplain forests is no small feat—these ecosystems are as fascinating as they are complex. While they face many of the same disturbances as upland forests, bottomland ecosystems are uniquely shaped by water. Adding to this challenge of hydrology are the profound impacts of levies, agriculture, dams, and other disturbances. In this episode of SilviCast, we dive deep into the world of bottomland forest restoration with insights from national experts at the 2025 Northeastern and Southern Forest and Conservation Nursery Meeting. Join us for an engaging panel discussion featuring Dan Dey (recently retired, USFS Northern Research Station), Andy Meier (Lead Forester, US Army Corps of Engineers – St. Paul District), and James Shelton (Manager, Arkansas Baucum State Nursery). 

To earn CEU/CFE credits, learn more, or interact with SilviCast, visit the uwsp.edu/SilviCast.

Transcript

[Greg Edge]

Welcome to Silvicast, the podcast about all things silviculture. My name is Greg Edge. 

[Brad Hutnik]

And I'm Brad Hutnick.

[Greg Edge]

And we are both silviculturists with the Wisconsin DNR division of forestry and your host for today's show. Good morning, Mr. Hutnick.

[Brad Hutnik]

Young master Edge.

[Greg Edge]

So what's happening in the old spring green be gone today. Any of those great stories about your neighbors?

[Brad Hutnik]

Green be gone? Is that like a new herbicide that you've kind of quietly come up with at your place?

[Greg Edge]

It would be a good name for a glyphosate brand. No, no. I was going for, you know, Lake Wobegon. I was kind of trying to do the garrison Keeler thing. Spring Green be gone.

[Brad Hutnik]

Oh yeah.

[Greg Edge]

Get it. Yeah. Well, anyway. It didn't, it didn't work, but I've been looking a little bit into some things here, Brad, about your hometown. And so do you know how Spring Green got its name? 

[Brad Hutnik]

Well, I could make something up, but why don't you tell me what you think?

[Greg Edge]

You live there and you've never heard any stories about how spring green got its name.

[Brad Hutnik]

Oh, I've heard stories, but I have not done research on it. So I have to say that you should educate me on this one.

[Greg Edge]

I should let you tell some of those stories. Okay. So yeah, I did a little research and interestingly, the name is disputed.

Some say it's named for the way the South facing Hills turn green early in the spring. 

[Brad Hutnik]

Makes sense. 

[Greg Edge]

Which I don't really get because you're in that big Wisconsin river Valley and the South facing Hills are quite a ways away aren't they?

[Brad Hutnik]

No. Well in Spring Green here, they're not, you can see them from town. 

[Greg Edge]

Okay.

[Brad Hutnik]

So they're not that far away, but I guess that's possible. That's plausible.

[Greg Edge]

Well others say the town was named for a sinkhole. I like this one that would green up earlier than the rest of the land around it that was still in snow. Do you know anything about any sinkholes in town?

[Brad Hutnik]

Well, you know, that feels to me like a string I could pull on and then have a couple of jokes about, anyways, we won't go there. And no, it's, that's not how I got a basement. So that's, that's good news.

[Greg Edge]

If you, it’d be kind of wet,

[Brad Hutnik]

But here in the driftless, we do have Karst topography. So yeah, I don't know of one here, but sinkholes elsewhere wouldn't be that uncommon.

[Greg Edge]

Yeah, that's true. We get a lot of limestone sinkholes in the driftless. Anyway, just, I thought that was kind of an interesting story. While doing my research and Spring Green, I always liked Spring Green. It is a really cool town. So what else would you say Spring Green is known for?

[Brad Hutnik]

Oh, well, let's see. It's known for a, well, first the one that probably the thing that everybody knows Frank Lloyd Wright. So his home, he, he had his, his home here, Taliesin, which is just outside of town, which is really cool.

A lot of people, if you're in Wisconsin, you may have, or even in Illinois or surrounding States may have come to American Players Theater. So basically you can come here for great Shakespeare and lots of other plays, like you've mentioned before. And actually my daughter works in concessions there this summer. Very good gummy bears as well.

[Greg Edge]

I was going to mention those if you didn't, because they are really good gummy bears. So you sit there pounding gummy bears while you're watching Shakespeare. Outdoors, people should know that this theater is outdoors.

So it's pretty cool.

[Brad Hutnik]

And oddly, if people say that gummy bears are good, I usually assume something else. 

[Greg Edge]

Oh, no, no, these are just like…

[Brad Hutnik]

Oh, Greg, you're into gummies, huh? Okay, cool. Cool.

[Greg Edge]

Just the straight gummy candy.

[Brad Hutnik]

We're changing the nature of this show. 

[Greg Edge]

No, I don't think they would have those. 

[Brad Hutnik]

Well, and actually we're along the Wisconsin river.

[Greg Edge]

There you go. 

[Brad Hutnik]

So we're right on the Wisconsin river. There's some really, really cool stuff, but you know, we've got large tracks of floodplain forest, which are near and dear to my heart.

[Greg Edge]

Okay. So that's where I was hoping you'd be going since you used to be the lower Wisconsin state riverway forester. So you worked on those forests.

And I was shooting for a transition here, Brad. And so, as you know, today on Silvicast, we have a recording of a special event. Wisconsin recently hosted the joint 2025 Northeastern and Southern Forest and Conservation Nursery meeting.

And that meeting had a theme of restoring bottomland forests. And so you and I talked with all the folks hosting that. It was a great opportunity to pick the brains of some national experts on this subject.

So we did a little panel discussion with a group of experts there, and that included our old friend, Dan Dey, U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station, recently retired. Also, aka a free man. Andy Meier, our friend and your fellow grape horticulturists, who's the lead forester for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul district, and James Shelton. And James was really, really interesting and knowledgeable, a longtime manager for the Arkansas Bockham State Nursery with the Arkansas Department of Agriculture.

It's a really great panel and a really great discussion.

[Brad Hutnik]

I think people should really know that this group of individuals, I hadn't met them, or at least I knew two of them. I didn't know James, but he knew other people. But when you sit down and think about it, just based on this discussion, they've got literally decades of experience in research, field practice, this growing bottomland forest species from here at, you know, up in the, at the upper end of the Mississippi and Wisconsin, all the way down to Louisiana.

And I, you know, the older I get, I really appreciate these opportunities to gather and pass along experience from maybe older people who've been in this for a long time to maybe some of us that haven't.

[Greg Edge]

So let's listen to what they had to say.

[Brad Hutnik]

This season of Silvicast is brought to you by the Nelson Paint Company, McCoy Construction and Forestry, and the Family Forest Carbon Program. You make the Silvicast world go round. So thank you.

[Greg Edge]

We are at the 2025 Northeastern and Southern Forest and Conservation Nursery Meeting, and we thought this would be a good opportunity to pick the brains of some of our guests about the theme of this meeting, which is the restoration of bottomland hardwood. So welcome to our esteemed panelists here today. We're going to spend some time sort of picking your brains about bottomland hardwood, reforestation, and restoration.

So I say both of those words purposely, but we're probably a little more on the reforestation side of it, because of course, this is a nursery meeting here today. Not early childhood education nurseries. That makes a lot more sense that we're talking about seedlings.

[Brad Hutnik]

Okay. 

[Greg Edge]

See, I told you that was a not a very good idea. 

[Brad Hutnik]

I know.

[Greg Edge]

I tried. That's all you got to do is throw them up, but someone's going to swing. 

Okay. So anyway, before we get started, Brad, and to all of you panelists, could you just introduce who you are and where you work? And I laugh at that.

So I'm going to ask you, Dan, first, to introduce yourself. 

[Dan Dey]

Hi, I'm Dan Dey. 

[Greg Edge]

Where do you work, Dan?

[Dan Dey]

I don't work anywhere. I don't go anywhere.

Because I'm recently retired from the U.S. Water Service, the Northern Research Station, and I've worked for them since 1998. I just recently retired, but I still like remaining professionally active, and I love conferences with these types of managers. It's so much fun, and I'm really happy to be here.

So I guess I'll leave the introduction at that, other than when I hold this sign-up, you should applaud.

[Greg Edge]

And it said on your presentation this morning, you're also a free man.

[Dan Dey]

So yeah, so I'm a free man, and what that means is I no longer work for the man, because I am my man. And I think those of you who have worked for any organization understands what I'm talking about. No more Teams calls, no more company policies, no more, you can't do that, you're violating the rules.

No more, we don't have money for that, or whatever. I think sometimes people wake up in the morning, and they think about how they can keep me from doing my job. But we're a resourceful and dedicated and passionate people.

We can outlive anybody.

[Greg Edge]

Andy?

[Andy Meier]

All right, I'm Andy Meyer. I'm the lead forester for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers St. Paul District on the Mississippi River Project, based out of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Unlike my co-panelists here, I am not a free man. Probably another 20 years before I get to make that claim. I've been working on the Mississippi River since about 2015, and out of the three of us, I think I'm based the farthest north, so I work between St. Paul, Minnesota and Guttenberg, Iowa on the Mississippi River. 

[Brad Hutnik]

Little known fact, Greg terrorizes me with pictures of your grapes, proving to me that my grapes are inferior. 

[Greg Edge]

Yeah, Andy's a much better grower, actually. 

[Andy Meier]

Of many things, Brad, of many things. Many things.

[Greg Edge]

We'll get into that later. And James, how about you? 

[James Shelton]

James Shelton. I work for the Arkansas Department of Agriculture Forestry Division.

I've been there since 1992. In three months, I could be a free man if I choose. I manage about a 220-acre farm, and our primary goal is reforestation.

So we plant, or I send a lot of trees to the Mississippi Delta down in the area.

[Brad Hutnik]

Excellent. Interesting fact that we always look up things about our guests. James, you're perhaps one of the only people in the room that's a minister.

[Andy Meier]

Yes. 

[Brad Hutnik]

So you've got God on the side of your seat. 

[Andy Meier]

Yes, absolutely. 

[Dan Dey]

And I'm going to clean my social media account. You didn't know that. 

[Greg Edge]

And also, if you will, could you say a little bit about where your work and Dan, your work over the last number of years sort of intersects with bottomland hardwoods, which we're talking about.

[Dan Dey]

Yeah, my whole career in research. I had other forestry positions before I got into research. But in research, I've spent most of my time with everything oak, and primarily oak regeneration in the uplands and in the bottomlands, and in existing forests and in abandoned agricultural fields.

So my work in artificial regeneration spans that gamut probably since the early 1990s. I've had work with that and worked with a lot of people like you see sitting here at this conference, the nursery managers, and then the foresters and wildlife people and other biologists who have been using artificial regeneration to achieve their goals in management.

[Andy Meier]

Yeah, so where I work on the Mississippi River, I actually kind of have an interesting background getting here. Before I started here, I spent seven years at Purdue University working with the Hardwood Tree Improvement Regeneration Center there and did a lot of hardwood plantings and managing hardwood plantings. And so I thought I was very well qualified to come to this job where a primary goal of my work is hardwood reforestation.

But the bottomland sites that we work on on the Mississippi River are just a completely different ballgame than the sites that you work in in areas where you don't have a big river that floods the entire area that you're working in on a regular basis. And so I came with a strong background in kind of understanding the biology and how artificial regeneration works, which was really helpful for trying to apply that to a different system. And I can say that I've got about 10 percent of the system figured out at this point.

So making fun. 

[Greg Edge]

We're working on it. James, how about you? Where does your work intersect with bottomland reforestation?

[James Shelton]

I work a lot with DNC, Depth Unlimited, U.S. Forest Service, Corp of Engineers, Arkansas Game and Fish, U.S. Game and Fish. I send trees from Illinois all the way down to the Gulf, from eastern or southern Illinois there on the Mississippi River all the way down to the Gulf and Louisiana. And we just plant millions and send them all over along the river and throughout the state.

[Greg Edge]

Excellent.

[Brad Hutnik]

I'm curious. We know where, so it's interesting to see how you intersect with it. What is reforestation?

We work in Wisconsin and I think about reforestation here. It looks a lot different in northern Wisconsin than it does in southern Wisconsin. So what does reforestation look like or what do you do when you're thinking about reforestation in a bottomland situation?

[James Shelton]

I'm looking for seed that will grow in bottoms. So like your cow oaks and your nut owls and your overcups, swamp post oak, shag bark hickories, things like that that will grow in wet areas that will thrive in wet areas. And then we will look at a few understory trees like button bush and things like that that we can plant as an understory.

But primarily seed, getting seed to reforest lands that never should have been planted anyways. See, so when you look at where the Mississippi and the Arkansas River and the White River intersects in the Delta, that's areas, that's a flood point. It never should have been planted.

So we're looking for seedlings that will go back into those areas and thrive. Most of them are open, but then a lot of them are just areas that has died out from overflooding and different things like that. So we're trying to reestablish seedlings in those areas plus plant back seedlings that was never cut, that never should have been cut.

So we're looking at, I'm looking for bottomland hardwood. That's our primary goal and I grow probably more bottomland hardwood than anybody. This year, we're behind.

So I'm only growing 6 million hardwood. Typically it would be 9 to 10 is our goal.

[Brad Hutnik]

Andy, how about you? 

[Andy Meier]

Yeah, so I think it's really interesting contrast the lower Mississippi River to the upper Mississippi River. So a lot of the bottomland hardwood work that's been done in the U.S. has been really focused in the southern Mississippi, the southeastern United States where it's a lot of egg field reclamation, like you said, areas that should never have been taken out of forests but were levied or somehow protected. Where we work up here, this is kind of the upper, a couple hundred miles of the upper Mississippi River actually was never levied. What we have up here are instead a series of locks and dams, but it's almost entirely federal ownership. And so there was agriculture on the river back in the 19th to 20th century, but we're really looking at 100 years of pretty much a system developing by itself.

And so a lot of our reforestation efforts are areas where a lot of natural processes have occurred, influenced by those locks and dams and other things to lead to the loss of forests. And so we're going into areas where it's still natural habitat and where we have a lot of issues with competing vegetation and high water. But we're not going into areas that were maybe formerly ag fields and other things like that.

And so what we deal with a lot is trying to figure out how to get trees to a site so we can plant it and then how to manage all that other vegetation that's already there rather than going into a site that we're starting from scratch. So a lot of times what we're looking for is our species that are going to grow really fast and capture the site so that we can get past that initial stage of vegetative competition. And then maybe start thinking about enhancing it with some more of the more desirable species or going into some of our existing forests that are starting to decline and supplementing what's there with some species that are going to be longer lived or more desirable.

So it's a lot more managing existing natural areas and improving them than it is bringing things back into forests that historically maybe were weak.

[Brad Hutnik]

Dan, I'm assuming yours maybe intersects with oak in that way then too? 

[Dan Dey]

I'm confused now after listening to these fellows because I go, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, they're right.

Yeah, that's right. Mainly it gets to me. I'm confused.

I forgot what I was going to say. But yeah, so I consider reforestation to be a broader term that includes what I call afforestation, where you've had decades of crop production on what were formerly forest lands, but they've been out of any kind of forest for decades often. And that would be like the work I've done on the lower Missouri River, big river flood plains, and maybe some smaller stream systems in the Ozarks where the bottom land was not crops but pasture, but pasture for decades.

And then you're bringing that starting condition back into forests compared to where you have a forest that you want to regenerate, and maybe it doesn't have the species that you desire, or they need some supplemental help in getting them regenerated, where you would want to plant trees or direct seed.

[Greg Edge]

More similar to what Andy's saying, kind of enrichment planting or in-forest reforestation. So it's just an interesting, I mean, one of the points of this question, we wanted to maybe illustrate those significant differences across that range of bottom lands. And we're talking about a wide range of reforestation types of activities.

So maybe a good thing to do is to transition a little bit. And Dan, you talked about this today, but I'd like to get all of your perspectives. But I'm curious, if I ask you this question, if you're going to give the same answer I think you gave this morning, or if it would be a different one.

[Dan Dey]

That's a good answer. It might be different. 

[Greg Edge]

So I guess from your perspective, what would you say for bottom land reforestation?

What would you identify as the biggest challenge?

[Dan Dey]

Well, I think it would be in assessing your site and knowing which species are best adapted and appropriate for that site. And I think that's like the number one step. And if you screw that up, anything else you do is for naught.

Even if it's the best practice in doing that, you're really fighting an uphill battle if you put species in the wrong place.

[Andy Meier]

I'd echo that and kind of play on it a little bit. I think one of the real challenges with assessing sites is that a lot of the factors that are influencing what's going on at the site may be something that happens once every 10 years, or it happens in the fall, and you're looking at the site in the spring. And so any bottom land floodplain site, one of the biggest drivers of what's going on is flooding.

It's going to be flooding. And sometimes you may not see that flood that is going to impact the site for 10 years. And so you go out, you think you've done a really good job in assessing the site, and you maybe missed one indicator, or you just don't have that indicator available.

And then you do something that five years later, you get a massive flood that wipes out everything that you did. And there's really no way around that, other than to put your head in your pillow and cry a little bit, and then get back up again and plant something in the site again. 

[Greg Edge]

See, that's the answer I thought Dan was going to give, was hydrology.

[Dan Dey]

Well, that's part of assessing your site.

[Greg Edge]

Okay, I see. Yeah, you're good at this, Dan. You've been doing this a lot.

[Dan Dey]

No, he makes a really good point. And this is not, I mean, it's a super challenge why I guess I mentioned it, is because it's really hard to have that kind of information. And a lot of times it's, you went out in a season and the site was dry, so you don't know it floods in January, or you don't know that every five years you get a certain kind of flood, because we don't have that longevity of knowledge and awareness of our sites.

So there's a lot of unknowns we have, even when we're doing a really good job of trying to assess the site. And you have to plan for uncertainty. And the only way I know how to do that is to build diversity into your actions, so you have buffer in the system for uncertainty.

[Greg Edge]

And James, too, I think I would expand this to say challenges in growing as well, given what you're focused on.

[James Shelton]

There's several factors for me. Number one, making sure that the planters have the site prep done, being able to get into the area that they need to plant seed from that area, just getting the right species in the right area.

And then size of seedling. That's the other thing that I have to deal with on my end, is making sure that I can grow a seedling that will grow in Illinois, or the size of seedling that will grow in the Mississippi and Illinois, all the way down to the Gulf. Because, you know, once you get past a certain point, there is no system to control the flood.

So, lower Mississippi may be flooded to where upper Mississippi is perfectly fine, so I have to grow a seedling big enough to go on this site that can tolerate the water. And I have to do that for so many different areas, I just can't, you know, pick out, well this one will grow here just fine. So I have to try to do that for the whole entire crop, making sure that I have the right size, and then the species that will grow on those areas.

So the challenge, those challenges is, you know, never ending. And I've already started that challenge for next year.

[Brad Hutnik]

Is it difficult for you to get the diversity of species that you need, or that, you know.

[James Shelton]

Diversity of species is number one. Getting what they need to plant in the areas that they need to plant the food. Because I have to have a northern source plus a southern source, because they're going in so many different areas.

[Brad Hutnik]

Right. So assuming we get that assessment right, we get everything else, we still have issues that foresters run into, like competing vegetation. What do you guys think, is that a big problem where you are?

[Andy Meier]

I know we deal with reed canary grass, we deal with all sorts of things, but I'm curious how big an issue that is where you're working. I mean, for us, I think it's definitely the most important management issue. What I'd say, though, is that if we get the site assessment right, we should have a good understanding of what that competing vegetation is and can kind of plan for it.

And so, you know, if we get the site assessment right, most of the competing vegetation that we have, we have a good handle on how to deal with it. Now, it's not cheap. So that's another big part of it, is if we want to do the right thing, it's going to cost, it's going to cost some money to be able to do that.

So we a lot of times have to limit the size of the plantings that we can do and think about, you know, when I started, I was really excited about planting really high density plantings where, you know, six by six spacing. And then I quickly realized that when we pay for spot spraying around those trees, and when we pay for that for a couple of years in order to get them big enough, that's a lot of money that goes down the pipe. And so you start then thinking about, well, maybe we reduce the number of trees so that we can put more effort into maintaining the trees that we have.

I think for most of our sites, if you don't deal with competing vegetation, unless you've got a really, really robust stock, you're almost certainly going to lose the pipe with competing vegetation. But on the flip side, once you get trees established, most of the floodplain species grow really fast. So you can have a site where it's five foot tall reed canary grass, you go in, you spray it for a couple of years, you get your trees going.

And by year three or year four, those trees are five feet above the reed canary grass and they're off and running. So you can walk away from that site. And then a flood comes three years later with some beaver and they knock it all down again and start to scratch.

But you feel successful because you've got a little window of time to feel successful.

[Dan Dey]

I mean, I'd agree competing vegetation is very important, but it's also something we probably know more about. It's easier to assess. It's more predictable.

If we do this, what's it going to do? And so I think it's easier, therefore, to manage. And so then it becomes not so much that we're limited by knowledge of biology and ecology, competitive dynamics.

It's going to be more, can I afford all the things I know I need to do? Can I sequence the timing of treatments? You know, organizationally, sometimes that's a challenge.

Are you going to be able to plant soon after your site prep? Or is there years that go by because of budget or organizational planning, work schedules where you lose the site prep? There's just a lot of practical operational challenges, too, that can get in the way.

And it's less about the biology and ecology. We know what we need to do with these species that are competing with our desired trees.

[Brad Hutnik]

Looking for continuing education credits? Check out the SilviCast webpage for more information. And now, back to our show.

[Greg Edge]

I got to ask this of you, Dan. Fire in the bottoms. Can we use it?

[Dan Dey]

Yeah, there were some good speakers today. Somebody brought that up. I forget who, but you know, you often think, oh, wetlands or, you know, floodplains, it's wet, you know, it never burned.

But when there are published reports, John Nelson with the Illinois Natural History Survey, you know, these are older publications, used general land office surveys and has mapped and recorded, you know, large prairies in the Mississippi floodplains, you know, south of St. Louis. And the upper part of the Missouri River floodplain in Missouri had large grassland prairies in there. And then we have big cane breaks.

Those are all fire-driven ecosystems and floodplains. And oaks, you know, are often, and others, not all oak species are the same, but they have a lot of adaptations to fire. And, you know, I dare say that the history of most oak forests that we have, there was fire somewhere in the background in that history, either in indigenous periods or early European settler periods.

And so it's very much to be considered, and it has a lot of benefits for controlling competing vegetations.

[Andy Meier]

I'd add, too, John Curtis in Vegetational Wisconsin references a PhD dissertation by a guy named Ware in the late 50s. And we just happened to have a new hire who I could hand that PhD dissertation to to let him read it because I didn't have the time or energy to. And he found some really nice references within that 1955 document where the author was actually referencing anecdotal stories of people who had documentation of swamp white oak being at an interface between highly flammable marsh areas.

So the fires would come in across those marshes, hit the edge of the forest. Swamp white oak was the only thing that could handle it. And then the fire would kind of die out as it got into the floodplain, and you'd see more of a transition towards the less fire-tolerant species within the floodplain.

And we don't have a lot of actual quantitative documentation for that, but it's almost certain that that was a driving factor of oak distribution to some extent within the floodplain.

[Dan Dey]

I have a humorous story about vegetation control. So I'm down in the boothill of Missouri, and we're on site on private land, and the landowner's there. He's an old man now.

But he grew up on that land as a kid. And the forest we're looking at are 80-, 90-year-old pin oaks, and the pin oaks are dying, and we want their pin oaks back. So we're talking to the guy, like, how could these pin oaks get here to begin with?

Like, something happened where they were successful to give us these pin oak forests. So what's the deal? And he said, well, when I was a kid and me and my brother were bad, my dad would send us down here to cut brush and release the oak.

And he said, we were bad a lot. So sometimes there's very local history as to why you have oak somewhere.

[Brad Hutnik]

I don't know if it would be a Silvicast episode if we didn't mention deer. And I'm just curious, maybe just as a really quick one, do deer play a role for you guys in any way, shape, or name? Maybe if the nursery, you guys get to control it so you don't have to worry about it.

[James Shelton]

I could control it, but I don't because I can't do anything with the meat. Shoot them, I have to leave them like, and I'm not going to do it. I have to make sure that I just get enough seed so they'll have their share.

And we can move on. But in the forest, yes, deer play a gigantic part if they're not nipping at the tips of the seedlings or rubbing them. Yeah, a gigantic part.

So from the nursery bed to the forest, absolutely. And then it plays into the site prep as well. I mean, if you get rid of all the vegetation, they don't have anything to eat on.

So the only thing there is, there is the trees. So we have to be strategic in even our site prep and how we lay that out. So we keep them affected, the wildlife.

[Andy Meier]

We get a lot of questions about, well, you're working on islands, there can't be deer out there. You know, when a deer runs across the road in front of your car and flips up its tail, looks really casual, like, yeah, I'm in control. You should see a deer swimming in front of a boat.

They're scared to death. But they swim across those channels. They get out to the islands.

We have island projects where they're newly built islands where we plant trees. Within a week, there are deer tracks going across those islands. But a lot of the areas we work in are public lands.

So they're hunted. And I don't know if the, I have no idea what the deer populations are, but they don't seem to be as much of a driver of regeneration as they are in more upland areas. I think part of that may be because the tree species that we're dealing with are adapted to living in a floodplain where they're getting beat up by logs coming in the winter and flooding and ice.

And they're beaver and all sorts of other things. And so they've spent millennia adapting to being just beat to death. And so they've got strategies, I think, for dealing with a bittery that maybe more upland species aren't as well adapted to.

That's always been my theory as to why in some places we don't seem to, the deer browns, but it doesn't necessarily always seem to knock back the trees. Now, that's not to say that they don't in some places. But I think that also has to do with the site selection question.

And do we have the right trees in the right place? Are they growing vigorously? I tend to worry a lot less about deer than I do about all the other big problems and challenges that we have.

[Dan Dey]

Deer is a big problem in many places. The populations are extremely high. About the only way to control them is through hunting.

And some states do that more aggressively than others. So the deer browsing problem varies depending on where you're at. And it could be very bad locally.

And it's especially bad with planted stock, because those are ice cream can targets. They're highly nutritious. They're very palatable due to all the good work you do in the nursery.

And you put that out in a field somewhere, and the critters find that thing in a day. So it's even got a higher probability of being browsed than a natural regeneration.

[Greg Edge]

Brad, I think this would be a good time to transition to the quick hitter questions. You're raising your hand, Susan? 

[Andy Meier]

I was just going to point out that Dan's had his applause card up like half way.

[Dan Dey]

I don't think I've said anything worth applause. 

[Andy Meier]

You need a bigger cue card. 

[Dan Dey]

I thought I could get it naturally, but I guess I'm going to have to invoke the size.

[Greg Edge]

So this is a quick hitter. This kind of brought your impressions of an answer to these questions Brad and I put together.

And then we can tell you whether you're right or wrong.

And yeah, there is a right answer usually. I know this first one is probably a dangerous question to ask at a nursery conference. But for bottomland reforestation, bare root or companionized?

Which would you pick? 

[James Shelton]

Bare root. 

[Andrew Meier]

I can't say it depends, you know?

[Greg Edge]

Yeah, you can say whatever you want.

[Dan Dey]

It depends for me. Yeah. Yeah.

There's pros and cons to both of them.

[Greg Edge]

So certain situations, you would go with the bare root. Others, you'd go with the companionized if you had your brothers.

[Dan Dey]

Yeah. I don't know if you want examples or not. 

[Greg Edge]

Well, yeah.

[Dan Dey]

I'm trying to make them one up here real quick. Well, for one thing, we talked about deer. And there are studies that show deer, they're kind of lazy like humans.

And they'll only reach so far unless they're just starving to get at our tree limbs. And so if the terminal shoot is five feet, six feet or higher, then it's kind of safe from deer browsing. They may nip on the lateral branches, but the terminal shoot is safe and a tree can keep growing taller.

And so, of course, Keeling Nursery produces the RPM three, five-gallon, you know, one, two-year-old seedlings. And they're often, you know, in that height range, five, six, seven feet, depending on the species. And so if you're anticipating deer browsing problems, you know, the taller seedling would be better, especially if it exceeds the threshold, that five-foot threshold of deer that deer browse on.

You know, the other thing would be height of competing vegetation. You know, if reed canary grass is five foot and you can get a five-foot, six-foot seedling out there, and its canopy is above anything the reed canary grass can do to it, you know, that's an advantage to a taller seedling. And you're generally not going to get that with bare-root seedlings.

[Andy Meier]

One scenario that we've found that bare roots are really good for, and we really like larger bare roots. So, you know, two-oh, three-eighths of an inch to half an inch root collar diameter for the oaks is really what we're, you know, what we're shooting for. But a lot of sites that we have, you've got to walk a half mile back.

So you can't get containerized seedlings back to those sites. And so we've got some sites where it's 500 acres that we want to just scatter under plant to get, you know, to get an occasional tree established for a seed source, you know, 40 years down the road. If we have 10% survival, so be it, as long as we get, you know, 10% of those trees to go.

And so we've got a few sites where we've just gone through a large area and just plopped in a bunch of bare-root trees under, you know, kind of a broken canopy where the competing vegetation is being somewhat kept under control by the shade, and just, you know, put them out there and walk away. And we come back and, you know, we often times find a handful of those seedlings, and we've accomplished the objective. But we're not, you know, we're not trying to force them into an area where they're really competing against really heavy vegetation and a lot of sunlight.

[Dan Dey]

You know, another thing I thought of where tree height would be important is in the depth of flooding. Because if a flood covers the canopy of a tree long enough, it kills those leaves, and then it has to refoliate. And that just really saps its energy and puts it at a loss with competing vegetation.

You can gain that with a taller container stock, or you can look for, you know, little rises, mounds, or whatever to plant your bare-root to give them that six inches extra foot in elevation to hopefully keep their crowns above any floodwaters.

[Brad Hutnik]

So, it sounds like bare-root or containerized, it depends. But maybe bigger is better for stock size? What about, and this is just kind of outside of that, what about direct seeding in the bottoms for planting or for restoration?

[James Shelton]

That's tough. Because seed costs today versus 15 years ago now, seed costs is up probably 50%. And the vegetation chance of survival with direct seeding is really, really tough unless you can get your equipment in there and clean everything up and just have bare ground and get your seed planted and then even maintain it until the seedlings are well established and growing.

Direct seeding is very, very tough. Probably wouldn't recommend it, but a lot of people do it. But it's very tough.

[Dan Dey]

I know there's some studies, and you have to fact check me on this, but I think there were some successful direct seeding in Iowa, some studies somewhere, they were putting 40 or 50,000 seed per the acre out there. So, the expenses, you know, it's like you can't afford that. And then one other anecdotal story, one time I was planting some acorns and walnuts and hickory nuts I picked up on my own property.

And I was carrying my five-gallon bucket, my little Johnny Dibble stick, and I turned around and looked and there was a squirrel coming behind me, digging him up.

[Andy Meier]

We've actually got kind of a good comparison. We've got some sites that are on tributaries of the Mississippi that were old ag, that we, that the Corps acquired as mitigation land and it was ag row crops beforehand. We direct seeded a couple hundred acres there and it was, there were spots that were really successful.

We've got some other areas that we direct seeded more in the floodplain, and those wetter sites seem to not be as effective with direct seeding. And even the higher elevation sites, you could almost tell the areas that were sandier, coarser soils seem to do better with seeding than areas that are finer textured, more poorly drained soils. And my suspicion is that especially for the, you know, the hard mass species, that they may, they may just be rotting in the soil before they have a chance to actually germinate or grow into a seedling.

And so, but what we ended up seeing on a lot of those sites that we direct seeded in the lower elevations, as long as we did good site prep, we get a lot of natural regeneration because we've created bare mineral soil. And so it almost feels like in those lower elevation sites, you know, if you, you can get forest with natural regeneration from light seeded species, and then maybe you come back in and supplement with, with planted heavier hard mass stock later. 

[Greg Edge]

Question you talked about, or you showed a slide this morning, Dan, blood tolerance. 

I got a wet site. What species would you be looking at? Of course, it depends on the site assessment. I know. 

[Dan Dey]

And what is wet? 

[Greg Edge]

Well, that's up to you.

[Dan Dey]

Well, I mean, some of the more tolerance, the willows, the cottonwood, the sycamore, I mean, you know, these species, if you're on the wetter end of wet, you know, if you're, if you can consider oak species among the oak, and you all mentioned it, swamp white oak is like right on the top of the list. We've done flood tolerance studies on bare root seedlings in a flood laboratory in Missouri, and swamp white oak was as flood tolerant as cottonwood, as we had cottonwood cuttings versus 1-0 swamp white oak bare root. But there was positive survival and growth after three and five week growing season floods in May and June.

So at least those types of floods, stagnant or flowing water, didn't matter. You know, swamp white oak was on the top of the list for oaks. And the walnuts are very flood intolerant.

You know, so among your hard mass species, there's a range. And it just depends on where you are if, as to what's the native diversity you have to choose from. We know a fair amount of information on, you know, the flood tolerance of reproduction of different major forest species.

So I think you can make good decisions there. And plan a diversity, you know. Just say one of your species choices doesn't pan out.

[Greg Edge]

Andy, what was the rule of thumb you said you went by with days of inundation? 

[Andy Meier]

Yeah, so this part of the upper Mississippi River, we kind of look at areas that are classified as 20 days or less of inundation as being those sort of sites. And so that's annual growing season days of inundation as being sites where you can get a little bit more diverse mix of species.

Now, up here, in comparison to what James has, we've got like five or six species that we're working with. So it's not super high diversity. It's hackberry and bitternut hickory and cottonwood and river birch and silver maple, even still in those higher diversity sites.

But then once you get past that, about 20 to 30 days, you still have a few species that hang on to there. But after that, it's kind of silver maple and swamp boy oak and cottonwood. But I don't know if the point is, oh, I think you might have made the point in your presentation today too, Dan, that, you know, mature trigger flood tolerance is different from seedling flood tolerance.

And so, like, I'd echo what Dan says. Plant a diverse mix of species because what we see in a lot of cases is that because it's hard to interpret the site in advance and know what's going on there, a lot of places will plant four or five species. Only two or three would do really well.

But it's not always the same two or three species that do really well. And so by having that diversity of species, really, I think it really hedges your bets a little bit on what's going to happen, something there in the end.

[Dan Dey]

And you know where that plays well too is you have variability in your flooding regime. And so for the first five years, if it's a light flood year, you know, your species may be doing well. And then every five or ten years, you get the flood that knocks it out.

And so you need species, you know, the diversity of species helps to buffer that.

[Andy Meier]

Not to belabor this point too much, but I'm going to. So there's also different species also seem to be more adapted to different kinds of flooding. So like swamp white oak really seems to be able to handle long periods of soil inundation, but it doesn't seem to do as well with high velocity flows, whereas we have things like cottonwood or silver maple that seem to do a lot better in those really high flows that we have on the main Mississippi River channel.

So a lot of times you'll see the swamp white oak farther back off the channel where it's wet all the time, but it's not that high velocity flow. And they seem to be more tolerant of kind of that more stagnant water condition than maybe the silver maple is doing. So there's a lot of nuance that you can just tell the different trees can change.

[James Shelton]

And down in our area, swamp chestnut oak, overgrowth, tupelo gum, cypress, swamp white oak, all of those species we can plant well. Not all will tolerate a little bit. But I always look at when it's flooding, is your trees actively growing?

Are they dormant when it's flooding? Or is the flood occurring when the trees are actively growing? So that's one of the first things I'm going to ask the customers when it's fine season.

When it's flooding, is it April, May, June, July? When is it flooding? So because if the trees are actively growing and it's flooding and they're underwater for three weeks, you're playing a dead tree.

See, so you want to know when the flood is actually occurring and then look at what's surviving in your area when the water goes down. Because that'll give you a pretty good idea of what you need to be planting in your area, you know, when the water goes down. If you got, you know, not all surviving after the flood goes, you know, the water comes down, you know, that's one of the species that you probably need to be looking at is the overcup.

We know Tupelo gum does well. Cypress does well. So those species does well in water anyway.

So but if you're looking on the oak side, swamp chestnut oak, overcup oak, swamp white oak, species like that, they do well.

[Greg Edge]

Kind of like you said, Andy, there's a lot of nuances to this that you need to consider. 

[Brad Hutnik]

Yeah, and you know, it strikes me that we could keep this conversation going forever. You know, silviculture nerds, we'd be here till midnight.

[Greg Edge]

Yeah, I'm sure you guys don't want to be. These are these kind of recordings actually go really well if we're drinking beers.

[Brad Hutnik]

We got our alcohol in. 

[Greg Edge]

But maybe we should maybe we should wrap up with just the closing question that we had. 

[Brad Hutnik]

Yeah, so a question for you guys. I think we can all get something out of this.

People here and our listeners, what's your one best piece of advice for foresters or land managers trying to restore bottomland hardwood forests?

So like from your experience, is there one thing that you would say this is the thing you should really think about or do or something along that line? And you may be restating what you've already said. It doesn't matter.

[Andrew Meier]

For me, the biggest thing is don't quit just because you failed, because I think pretty much every planting that I've participated in, there's been some level of failure and you go back to the same site and recalibrate. Maybe you don't have the resources to keep on going back to the same site, but you have to be able to accept failure in these floodplain systems. Otherwise, you're never going to get anything done.

[Brad Hutnik]

Sounds like good life advice. 

[Greg Edge]

We don't want to go there, Brad.

We don't need to go there. But follow-up question, what would you consider success, like a survival rate, on these plantings given they are tougher plantings to do?

[Andrew Meier]

If we get 50% survival on a planting, we're feeling pretty good.

We're feeling very good. If we walk out to a site and we see three living trees, we're like, okay, that's not a complete failure.

[Dan Dey]

For me, it would be to know that it's not a one and done. You're not going to plant your trees and walk away. For all the challenges that we've talked about in this episode, the flooding, the deer, the competing vegetation, and on and on, it's a commitment to reforestation.

So there's going to be a repetition of treatments. The key is in the timing and sequencing of those. You need to be monitoring your sites so you can be adaptive and make the necessary changes depending on how the system is responding.

It may be responding how you think, but a lot of times something comes up you never anticipated. But that's not a defeat. You learn from it.

And because you are monitoring, you know about it, and you can make adjustments in your management. So most importantly, have a really rich friend who can fund everything you need to do, and you'll be successful. The final thing is, you can always change your management objective to be in alignment with whatever you've got.

[Greg Edge]

Dan, I think you gave me the same advice about growing oak, that it's a process and not an event, and you better be in it for the long haul. 

[Dan Dey]

That's right.

[Greg Edge]

What about you, James? 

[James Shelton]

Proper land management. That, everything that they said is true.

Don't be afraid to go back in and replant. But you just have to manage your property, making sure that you're not allowing invasive species to come in and take over. You can mow, but you've got to have a rich friend or something to make sure that you can keep it mowed.

If you have to spray, spray, look out for insects and diseases. Dan, just trying to keep it clear of the stuff that's going to destroy your seedlings. Beavers, in our neck of the woods, beavers do more damage than anything else.

So if you just manage your property and making sure that they're not setting up home on your land, that's going to help with a lot. Because if there's beavers there, there's waters there, there's water there, there's other critters coming in. So just proper land management, I would say.

[Greg Edge]

So be a good manager. Be a good manager. Be present with your land.

[Dan Dey]

You know, I'd like to add one more thing, too.

Don't worry about being the crazy person on your district. Because you should be willing to take chances. You're probably the most thoughtful person on your district.

And you're coming up with some wild ideas that aren't traditional management. And all your workmates are calling you crazy. More than once in my career, I've gone out on a site visit with a forester to look at his crazy idea.

And he was on the right track. What he was trying, and I didn't even know the results of what he was going to get. But I knew his thought process was reasonable.

That led him to want to do what he was wanting to do. And everybody around him was saying he was crazy. And I know that because they told me.

People on my district say I'm crazy. And they were subdued by that peer pressure. And we need those kinds of pioneers, those thinkers, those people who are pushing the envelope.

So don't ever try to, you know, not pursue one of your good ideas. Because I'll tell you, it's probably good. 

[Brad Hutnik]

That's really good. So if I got this right for you guys, it's don't give up.

Tinkering is okay. Play the long game. Do the work.

And have a rich friend. And then we'll work on all of those.

[Dan Dey]

Et the end of the day laugh. 

[Brad Hutnik]

That's right. Enjoy the ride.

[Greg Edge]

Well, thank you all. Hopefully everybody got something out of it.

All right, Brad. That was a really great discussion.

[Brad Hutnik]

That was a good discussion.

[Greg Edge]

I heard something I think you can really appreciate. And that was Dan's final advice. Never give up on a crazy idea.

I just thought, oh yeah, Brad could relate to that one.

[Brad Hutnik]

Well, first, thank you for thinking of me when you heard about crazy ideas. 

[Greg Edge]

You're welcome.

[Brad Hutnik]

That's heartwarming.

But that is pretty deep, right? I think of so many things that are accepted now that in the past were like, who would have ever considered that idea? And just being open to those kinds of things, I think is really cool.

Maybe it doesn't span our entire careers, Greg. But I think of foresters before us, maybe not embracing prescribed fire. Why would you burn a woods?

Because it would be detrimental to things. But now I think that seems to me like that was a crazy idea.

[Greg Edge]

Now it's mainstream. 

[Brad Hutnik]

Right. That's come around.

[Greg Edge]

It's also a lot like what we've talked about lots in silviculture, about the creativity aspect of it. You always run into foresters that really think a lot and they come up with ideas like, what if we tried this?

And sometimes you go, well, that's interesting. And then other times, but it might be a great idea. You know, I don't know until they actually try it.

I think it's what Dan's saying is that's the kind of thinking you got to have is trying to figure out new ways to do things. 

[Brad Hutnik]

Yeah, you know, think about all the people. I mean, I know people who wouldn't do something simply because it would be too odd or they would be maybe what are people going to think? Because when they see this and they associate it with me, but I think as long as you're thoughtful, whether it appears crazy or not, as long as it's thoughtful and maybe it does show, you know, there is some reason behind it.

I would say, you know, the world's your oyster. We should be embracing a lot of crazy ideas. And then maybe that helps us sort out what isn't truly crazy from what it just only appears to be crazy.

[Greg Edge]

It sounds like that sounds like your life. 

[Brad Hutnik]

Oh, Greg. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

[Greg Edge]

You just laid it out there. 

[Brad Hutnik]

I did

[Greg Edge]

But too easy.

[Brad Hutnik]

But it's out there. There it is. So in any event, thanks for listening to today's episode of Silvercast. If you have ideas for future episodes or a question for the Dropbox, please let us know.

In fact, if you have any crazy ideas, right, we'll embrace it. We'll talk about it and just let us know. You can reach us at UW-Stevens Point's Wisconsin Forestry Center by emailing wfc at uwsp.edu. Feel free to include a sound file of your question, you know, so we could actually hear you ask the question or just send it along as an email or comment or whatever you want to do. And always remember, we learn best when we wrestle with questions. So please keep them coming.

[Greg Edge]

As always, thanks to our team. Susan Barrett, our Editor-in-Chief. Joe Rogers, our IT Master.

Theme music by Paul Frater and UW-Stevens Point's Wisconsin Forestry Center.