Project Area
The Hi Lo project area occurs on the Kawishiwi Ranger District of the Superior National Forest . The area is bounded on the north, east, and west sides by the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). Hi Lo is a heavily-used project area, with lots of recreational use, homes, resorts, and summer camps in Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) areas. The area spans roughly 63,000 acres, with 33,800 acres of National Forest land among many lakes, state-owned land, private land, and county land.
Management Goals
The overall purposes for the Hi Lo Project include improving and restoring existing stand conditions to promote long-term healthy, productive, diverse ecosystems with an emphasis on wildlife habitat; and reducing impacts and risks of an uncharacteristic wildfire impinging on populated and high use recreation areas. More specific vegetation objectives include:
- minimizing the effects of uncharacteristic wildfire, by reducing hazardous fuels around BWCAW boudaries and WUI areas and increasing forest complexity
- re-introducing fire into fire dependent ecosystems, including pine stands wet meadows, lowland shrubs, and oak-blueberry habitats
- diversifying red pine, white pine, and spruce stands
- creating young forest, particularly jack pine
Climate Change Impacts
Adaptation Actions
The project planning team for the Hi Lo project used the Adaptation Workbook to develop several adaptation actions for this project. They discussed many "win-win" opportunities, where responding to climate change would also help move the project in the direction intended in the Forest Plan, many of which are included in Appendix 5 of the Scoping Report (attached below). Some of these included:
8.1. Use seeds, germplasm, and other genetic material from across a greater geographic range.