Last Saturday morning, June 21, in the aftermath of a storm that ripped through the Bemidji area with straight-line winds up to 120 mph, leaving a path of destruction in its wake, Blane Klemek stepped outside for a firsthand look at the damage.
Birds were singing, and the swans were swimming in the small, shallow lake behind his house, said Klemek, Northwest Region wildlife manager for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in Bemidji.
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Just like any other summer morning.
“They were there, just like they always are,” said Klemek, who lives near Becida, Minnesota, about 12 miles northeast of Itasca State Park. “And I thought, ‘How the hell did you guys make it through the night like that?’ ”
No doubt, the June 20-21 storms that cut a swath of devastation from western North Dakota to northern Minnesota affected thousands of people’s lives. But what about wildlife such as birds, deer and other critters?
How do they manage to escape – and hopefully survive – Mother Nature’s wrath when such events occur?
“Animals feel that pressure ahead of time and in some cases, they might have a better warning system than we do,” said Doug Leier, outreach biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in West Fargo. “But at the same time, when (people’s) houses are getting completely destroyed, so are theirs.
“So, there’s going to be specific mortality.”
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Inevitable casualties
Nestlings are especially susceptible, Klemek says.
“There will be a lot of nestlings that didn’t survive this onslaught, no doubt about it,” Klemek said. “Just walking around my own property assessing damage, I’d come across a robin nest here and there and those sorts of things laying on the ground. When you think about it, that’s played out across a vast landscape so lots of birds don’t make it.
“Lots of birds do, though – most survive.”
Wildlife such as deer also likely fared OK in the storm-ravaged areas near Bemidji, Klemek says.
“There’s going to be no doubt an unfortunate one that happens to get crushed by a fallen tree,” he said. “That certainly is possible, but I think it’s rare for things like that to happen.”
As the storm approached, wildlife likely headed for low areas, “the leeward side of things,” just like humans would do to escape the elements, Klemek says.
The swans on the small lake by his yard, probably “just went into the thick cattails and waited the storm out,” he said.
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“I don’t know if this is the case with all wildlife, but they do seem to have a sense that gives them the ability to maybe anticipate impending weather events and begin preparing for that,” Klemek said. “So, I think they’ve got a one-up on us in some respects.”
Widespread tree damage
The damage to trees is perhaps the most obvious sign of the storm’s wrath and its impact on natural resources in the Bemidji area, Klemek says. Thousands of massive, stately red pine and white pine trees were wiped out, snapped like giant matchsticks or uprooted completely.
Photos don’t do justice to the devastation, Klemek says.
“Bemidji will never look the same,” he said. “I don’t have any giant white pine and red pine (in my yard). I have a lot of young white pine and red pine, but none of them sustained damage. But some of the big ash, big oak and lots of aspen were just completely uprooted and came crashing down.
“It’s shocking, when you walk about and drive around and see the carnage. It’s just hard to comprehend until you see the scope of the damage plus the expanse of it.
“It’s heartbreaking.”
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Assessing the aftermath
In a Tuesday phone interview, Adam Munstenteiger, regional forestry manager for the DNR’s Northwest Region in Bemidji, said the immediate priority was getting service restored to DNR offices and clearing forest roads and trails affected by the storms, both in Bemidji and surrounding areas, and north of Fourtown, Minnesota, where a tornado touched down Sunday night, affecting access to some forest roads and trails in Beltrami Island State Forest.
“Folks that are recreating out in those areas can expect to encounter either roads that are closed or impassable,” Munstenteiger said. “It will just take us some time to get things opened back up again.”
State forest road closures at dnr.state.mn.us/trailconditions/listing.html.
DNR staff were scheduled to fly the storm-affected areas Friday, June 27, to assess forest lands affected by the storm and where timber can be salvaged, Munstenteiger said.
“Once we have some data to make decisions from, we kind of start to triage things,” he said. “We try and figure out: How big were the trees? Were they merchantable? Were they mature? Is everything down, or is it just a scattered tree here and there? Is it a big enough blowdown that it would make sense for a logger to move equipment into? It’s got to be a couple of acres, typically, to make sense for somebody to move equipment in there.”
There’s also the question of access, and whether the sites are reachable in the summer or only in the winter when the ground is frozen.
In the case of pine trees, time is of the essence, Munstenteiger said. Once they’re down, they’re susceptible to “blue stain,” a fungus-driven discoloration that makes the logs less marketable. Blue stain can set in within a month or less, depending on weather conditions, Munstenteiger said.
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“In my experience, loggers and mills, being stewards of the forest, they will reprioritize whatever they’re doing to come in and assist when there’s salvage sales in the forest, so they’re really good partners that way,” Munstenteiger said.
Even so, he says, the DNR won’t be able to salvage more than “a fraction of the acres” of trees affected by the storm.
“It’s over such a broad landscape, and we’ve got to focus on larger areas that are blown down, where it makes sense for loggers to work,” Munstenteiger said. “There’s always going to be those patches of (downed trees) on the landscape. We just can’t recover it all.”
Forestry also will work with DNR wildlife personnel and staff at Lake Bemidji State Park to assess how downed trees on wildlife management areas and state park lands will be managed, he said. Each DNR division has its own playbook, be it state, policy or unit plans for how to address affected areas.
Meanwhile, life goes on in the natural world, said Klemek, the DNR regional wildlife manager.
“It doesn’t look normal around here, but wildlife, they’re still doing their thing,” Klemek said. “And I imagine, in their way, they’re assessing damage, too.”
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