Evaluating trees to find the sick or dying

We decided that as part of our stewardship duties, that we would also cull sick trees from the bush as well as the dead.  But in order for us to do that, we needed a way to make an evaluation to see if the tree was in fact sick or not.  With a little research and mostly observation, we found a few obvious signs to look for.

With the spruce trees, we found that the tree will often have it's core die, but the outside ring still be alive.  Especially when they hit over 100 years old.  That is when the ants and / or termites invade the tree.  It is easy to find these as they usually leave a pile of wood dust at the bottom of the tree.

Like I said in a previous post, I leave three foot stumps as I want the bugs to be around in order to feed the woodpeckers.  After all, as steward, it is my responsibility to ensure ALL life prospers, not just mine or the stuff that I want.  We have lots of ants, so we leave them alone and do our best to provide for them as well.  We found one ant hill on the land we steward that was the largest I've ever seen.  It was about 2 1/2 feet tall and at least 6-7 feet in diameter.  We call it K-2!

My dear friend Sweetgrass Sitting Bear teaches me a lot and I teach him as well.  We learn from one another as we both work hard to return to the land to be proper stewards.  

The poplar trees don't struggle with ants or termites that much, but the mushrooms love these trees.  So when we get very large trees infested with mushrooms, we decide to take them down.  These trees are weakened by the mushrooms and will fall down in a wind.  

The mushrooms run their roots deep into the trunk of the tree and start to decompose the tree, even when it is still alive.  So these are targeted for harvest to minimize trees falling and hurting somebody.  We leave some of the poplar trees on the ground as this is where a lot of the edible mushrooms can be found!  

Sometimes it does not matter how good we are, trees fall over.  We get really strong winds and heavy snow and it will cause all kinds of damage to trees.  Sometimes they spring back, while other times they are done.  So we clean them up.  It helps wild life move through the bush easier and it also helps us too.  

This tree just fell down today in the snow storm that we are still experiencing.  It will be harvested right away as it is blocking our trails.  A lot of these pictures I took today while I did a walk about to check up on how everyone did during the snow storm.  Some casualties have been found!