Poking around at Pine Valley

Add "college classroom" to the list of activities at Cloquet's Pine Valley Recreation Area, known for its ski jumping, Nordic skiing, mountain biking, hiking, trail running, snowshoeing, hockey games, picnics and social gatherings.

University of Minnesota students completing the Forest Ecosystem Management and Conservation track within the Forest and Natural Resource Management major are required to attend an advanced session held during the spring term at the university's Cloquet Forestry Center. Three courses make up the advanced session, with an intensive, hands-on forest management plan developed with a local landowner.

That's where Pine Valley came in.

Charlie Blinn, a professor and Extension specialist at the university, described the advanced session as basically a "lab," a way to take what's been reviewed in class and apply it to the real world.

"Students use that knowledge to collect and process data that is used to develop stewardship and harvest plans on an assigned parcel," Blinn said.

The students prepared three reports, each about 45 pages long. They covered forest inventory, including soils, botany, mammals and birds, recreational uses, wildfire risks, cultural and native uses, neighboring landowners, historical harvesting and fires, and invasive species. The reports addressed expectations for the forest in years to come, including aging-out of trees, managing invasive species, and maintaining a healthy forest ecosystem within the parcels.

Some notable data the students found during their college classroom in Pine Valley include measuring and date-aging several species of trees. They aged a tamarack at 126 years, a red pine at 133 years. Many white pines and red pines are estimated to be more than 100 years old. It's interesting because all of those trees would be survivors of the 1918 fires.

"We want this park to look like this for a long time," said University of Minnesota student Sam Nelson, a senior from Champlin, who will graduate after the fall semester. "It's called Pine Valley, it needs to have pines."

Because the University of Minnesota students developed the Pine Valley forest management plan as part of a classroom exercise, it is not a certified plan. Still, it contains comprehensive information and data that will be useful to city staff and others researching the largest park in Cloquet.

"We had an introductory meeting with the students, answered their questions, and showed them around their parcels," said Caleb Peterson, Cloquet public works director. "Each of the three student groups put together a report on their plot of land, following recommendations made after their field visits and working with their professors and city staff. We received copies of those reports to use as a reference in the future as we consider plans for those parcels."

The days were long, starting at 8 a.m. and ending only when the work was done, Blinn said. It can mean working into the night. There are no days off during the 14-day session, which is an extension beyond the 15-week spring semester in the Twin Cities.

The project requires working in groups. Each group needs to find the balance among group members so that they can complete their work, Blinn said.

Pine Valley was a good location because it is close to the forestry center, Blinn said, cutting down on travel time.

The city's goals and objectives didn't fit nicely with the three course requirements. Blinn said students were required to design a timber sale within their parcel even though the city wasn't interested in a timber harvest.

Students also had to keep aware of users of Pine Valley, literally and figuratively, when it comes to managing the area.