Technician Tales | May 2024

    

    For the Month of May I have been doing mostly surveys for invasive and native phragmites in the EUP. From the Munuscong area to Strongs Corners, to all the way down in St. Ignace I have covered a large amount of area looking for these plants. If you don’t know already, phragmites is a tall plant that grows in clusters, however the invasive version of phragmites grows even taller and denser than native phragmites. One day, when I was surveying Horseshoe Bay Wilderness along Lake Huron, I got to see just what that meant. To put the picture below into perspective I am 5’10” and these plants were way over my head.

    My favorite location I have been able to survey for phragmites so far has been along Lake Superior Shoreline just off of the Curley Lewis Memorial Highway. The shoreline of Lake Superior is very diverse, it can go from rocky, to sandy, to clifflike just by turning a corner. The picture below was one of the cooler shorelines I was able to see, but due to high waters and wind I was unable to travel. 

                                                                                                           In between all of the phragmites surveys, I have also been able to assist one of our partners in the EUP, that being Three Shores Cisma (TSC). TSC does lots of invasive species work, and when I went out with them twice this month, we pulled the invasive plant called Garlic Mustard. Other than not being native and being able to outcompete native vegetation, I didn’t know a whole lot about it. Lizzy, with TSC, explained that one of the bigger issues about Garlic Mustard is that deer have been known to travel a mile out of their way just to avoid the plant! Just in the two days I went out with TSC, we had pulled over 100lbs of Garlic Mustard.

Another project I worked on in May was doing Sharp-tailed grouse habitat work near Raco, MI. Working with The United States Forest Service, I have been tasked with planting native wild grasses where the Forest Service had a controlled burn in 2019. In the last week of May, I had planted 800 Big Bluestem plant plugs covering around 19 acres. This has been a super cool experience and area to work within but also to see, because it is unlike any other place I’ve seen in the EUP. Just the vastness of open land with little to know trees and then surrounded by pine forest is truly astounding. Using an auger bit, a Dewalt Drill, and plenty of grass plugs, provided by Northern Natives Erosion Control Nursery, lots of good work has been done in this area to make it suitable for Sharp-tailed Grouse.

May has been a great first month for me at UPRC&D, while it started off a little slow with lots and lots of phragmites surveys, the hands on field work with TSC and grass planting are definitely some highlights. I am excited for the other projects I will begin working on in June, and for the rest of the experiences I will be fortunate to have throughout the rest of the summer.

-Ryan Wood