NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/725550
28 NEBRASKAland • OCTOBER 2016 would have outcompeted aspens for sunlight. After settlement, with fires controlled, pines expanded. In the shade of those pines, cottonwood, green ash, American elm, hackberry, willow, boxelder and other deciduous trees replaced aspens in the creekbottoms. Where they weren't outcompeted by other trees, grazing of suckers by cattle, deer and elk has limited regeneration. Today, scattered stands of aspens are found throughout the Pine Ridge in Sioux, Dawes and Sheridan counties. Buffalo Bruce McIntosh, an ecologist with the Western Nebraska Resources Council, has been working for many years to map and preserve aspens in Nebraska. He believes there are about 40 native aspen stands in the region, including one on land he manages in West Ash Creek. Others are found on public land in the Pine Ridge Ranger District of the Nebraska National Forest, in places like East Ash and Bordeaux creeks. Still more are known to exist on private land. There are also several stands of aspens in the region that were planted from cuttings taken from a native clone on the Ponderosa Wildlife Management Area (WMA) near Crawford. Lon Lemmon, who spent 40 years as a biologist with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission on the area before retiring 10 years ago, grew up on the area, where his father and partner ran cattle before selling it to the Commission in 1966. At that time, the aspen stand, located in a draw in the southern portion of the area, contained only five or six mature trees. Lemmon said once cattle were removed, a flourish of suckers sprouted. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he and others started digging them and moving them to other locations on the Pine Ridge in what he called a "seat of the pants" operation. At least two of those planted stands persist on the Ponderosa WMA, one on Gilbert Baker WMA north of Harrison and one on Metcalf WMA north of Hay Springs. The native stand has also spread from the bottom of the draw more than 50 yards up the north-facing slope, and now contains numerous stems that cover a half acre. "They can do it pretty good if something don't eat them up," Lemmon said. Another planted stand is growing on the banks of Soldier Creek on the west edge of Fort Robinson State Park. McIntosh and a team of college students helped the Commission plant about 300 aspens in the drainage following the wildfire that burned through the area in 1989. Only these survived a flood that followed in 1991. A small native stand is also found on Gilbert Baker WMA, but is suffering from encroachment by pines and other trees. Greg Schenbeck, a biologist with the Commission, said they are making plans to thin competing trees to rejuvenate the stand. At Metcalf, Schenbeck said staff recently found another aspen tree that may be native A relict stand of quaking aspens grows on the edge of Dewey Marsh on the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in the Sandhills.