Hartwick Pines Drama

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 This weeks adventure on the Integration Day consisted of a visit to the Hartwick Pines, the Au Sable River foot trail, and an abandoned oil drill setup. The main purpose of this experience was to identify the anthropogenic effects that humans have on an environment. At Hartwick Pines, we learned about the history of the place. The woods were once in numbers of several hundred acres, but 80 acres of it were left unlogged once the railroad tracks were pulled up and it was too expensive to finish the logging. It started as a roughly 80 acre forest, but was soon shortened to a 49 acre national park. The reason for the depletion of acreage is partially due to logging, as well as natural events that occured since the end of the logging period. The national park is set aside as a place where visitors can learn more about the methods of logging that occured in this part of the world. The national park is the largest of its kind in the lower peninsula of Michigan.


Photo by Author

After the logging had stopped, the land was attempted to use as farm ground for farmers who wanted to make it big in the world of agriculture. After the farming attempt was failed, the land was sold to the state, and the Manistee Forest was formed. The group designated the land a national park in 1927, when the land was acquired from Karen Hartwick (http://www.nativetreesociety.org/fieldtrips/michigan/hartwick.html). Once the land became a state park, all was well in the world until a new avenue of revenue was observed in the park. That being oil.


After the Hartwick Pines, we went on a small hike at the Au Sable River foot trail. The purpose for this adventure is unknown, but was able to provide the group with the opportunity to spend more time in nature. The hike that we went on lasted about an hour, covering around 2 miles. The distance traveled and time spent on the hike are estimates, since a lack of a watch was present when completing the field notebook. After the hike at the Au Sable River trail, we went to the abandoned oil drilling site off of Pflum Road. The site has since been discarded as an oil site. Conservation attempts have been made to replenish the timber that was removed in order to create the oil drilling setup. A large section of trees were removed in order to prepare the land for the oil setup. A study was done in order to determine what type of trees would grow best in an environment where oil drilling was once done (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rec.13658). The work showed that Jack Pine trees were quite possibly the best trees to grow in that situation, with Red Pine almost tying with them for first.


Photo taken from Google Earth
Now is where the drama begins to form with the Hartwick Pines. There was oil that was found underneath the trees, and multiple people thought that it was in the best interest of the park if the oil was drawn out from under the trees. It was a large debate until about the middle of 2014. The DNR director then announced that no drilling was going to be done at the site. About 20 percent of the land rights were going to be auctioned off, but the land would not include the old growth pines (https://www.bridgemi.com/quality-life/dnr-yields-public-and-will-not-allow-drilling-under-prized-land-hartwick-pines). This result came after multiple comments from the Hartwick family, who expressed their concern and did not want the land that they share a last name with to be drilled for oil. If the oil drilling were allowed, there would be large gaps where the trees would be cut down for logging.





Works Cited:

https://www.bridgemi.com/quality-life/dnr-yields-public-and-will-not-allow-drilling-under-prized-land-hartwick-pines

https://www.michigan.org/property/hartwick-pines-state-park-visitors-center-logging-museum

https://grayling-mi.com/attractions/hartwick-pines-state-park

http://www.nativetreesociety.org/fieldtrips/michigan/hartwick.html






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