Blue adjusting to new role with MDC

Rebecca Blue has been with the Missouri Department of Conservation for the past three years.
She began serving as the Perryville forester in late February.
“I’ll be covering private landowners in Ste. Genevieve County, Perry County, Cape County and Bollinger County,” she said.
In her role with the MDC, it’s about working with landowners in the region.
“We rely on landowners for our work,” she said. “We work with any private landowners in the counties we’re assigned. We try to get them signed up for cost share so we can get forest management and best management practices on the ground. We’ll work with them on the department’s cost share.”
Landowner assistance and federal cost share are a couple of issues that typically come up.
“A lot of the questions I feel come from the money side of things,” she said. “How much is this tree worth, how much money do you think I could get if I wanted to cut these amount of acreage?”
From Blue’s perspective, there is a focus on timber stand improvement as well as forest stand improvement
The improvements can be implemented even if the landowner is not wanting to harvest any trees, Blue said.
“It removes any of the trees that are undesirable,” she said. “That would be a lot of your shade tolerant species or eastern red cedar.”
In southeast Missouri, Blue said oak, hickory or short-leaf pine are the primary cover type.
“That’s the species composition that we encourage landowners to aim to shoot for on their property, (while) those undesirables are ones that are able to shade out that oak and hickory regeneration.”
Blue said the recommendation is for landowners to remove the undesirable trees as well as other species that are “poor form or suppressed.”
A few examples of this include smaller trees that are reaching for the sun, since they are “not of good genetic stock.”
There also is a focus on attracting wildlife, according to Blue.
“We kind of encourage landowners to leave any hard or soft mass species for wildlife because that’s a really big focus for landowners here, especially in the southeast, they want to improve their wildlife habitat,” Blue said.
Invasive species cause harm (can be a subhead)
“We’ve got plant invasive species and animal invasive species,” Blue said.
A few examples of the plant types are Japanese honeysuckle, winter creeper and tree of heaven while animal examples include, but are not limited to, Asian carp, feral hogs and starlings.
“On my end of things, I deal a lot more with the plant invasive species,” she said. “The minute you set foot on a landowners property and they have invasive species, that’s what you want to hit first. If you do any form of management, anything at all, you cut a tree down and put light on the ground and you disturb where that invasive species is, it loves it very much. They are very driven by disturbance of sunlight, and they’ll explode
Part of the reason the invasives can thrive is they tend to outperform better than other species more native to this portion of the state, according to Blue.

“They’re able to outcompete our native woody plants, so there’s nothing really to keep them in check, and they’re not as beneficial to wildlife,” she said.
Actions taken previously may also impact timber management now and in the future, according to Blue.
“A lot of foresters in my generation are battling previous generation forester decisions,” Blue said.
“The timber stand improvement practice, that’s our first step in trying to improve forest health and a lot of times when you start to see decline in a forest, we look at decline and stressors in two ways, a primary factor and secondary factor,” she said.
Many forests are overstocked. In this case, Blue noted, the landowner has too many trees growing in an area.
“Every tree is battling for soil, nutrients, water, sunlight and growing space,” she said.
Invasive insects, such as the southern pine beetle, are able to sense when a tree is weakened or stressed.
“I believe most of the counties are confirmed for emerald ash borer,” she said.
Public outreach efforts were conducted in the St. Louis area.
As for when the damage will occur in this area, it’s inevitable, according to Blue.
“It’s not a matter of if emerald ash borer will impact your trees, it’s when,” she said. “That’s an important tree for our wood product market. They’re not our big wildlife-heavy trees. They don’t make a hard mast or soft mast food source for wildlife. It doesn’t mean that they’re not an important tree in the forest. Their seed source is not as beneficial.
Blue described the process of the borer impacting trees.
“The infection or the impact of the insect starts from the top down,” Blue said. “By the time you’re looking at it from our level, the tree is long gone.”
Late winter and into early spring is a great time for individuals to get out and inspect their properties, Blue noted.
“We’re getting into good weather so people are out on their property, walking around,” Blue said.
“When a landowner reaches out to you, they might have an idea of what they want forest-management wise or wildlife habitat wise. It could be something as simple as, ‘I want more deer.’ We can help with forest management practices to help with deer population or turkey. We’ve got practices for open land management that our private land conservationist primarily work with.”
Typically, there is a site visit, and then an opportunity to discuss objectives and cost share options.
“The goal is sign up contiguous landowners together,” Blue said.
“For this side of the country, on the east, primarily most of the land is privately owned. If you want to make an impact on the landscape, the more contiguous landowners you can accumulate, the more of an impact you can make.”
Many of the benefits of forest management are shared through word of mouth, Blue noted.
Just by going out and marking an acre for invasive species removal or timber stand improvement, it’s a simple step to help ensure a future tree harvest is done “properly and sustainable.”