Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By ZACHARY MARANO
Ironwood — The Gogebic Conservation District and Gogebic County Forest and Parks Commission teamed up to enhance deer habitats in the county, according to an Oct. 6 press release from the conservation district.
The conservation district and forestry and parks commission focused on areas around Little Girl’s Point and Devils Creek, which the Michigan Department of Natural Resources considers to be deer wintering complexes.
District forester Winona Grieshop said the enhancements were primarily to provide food to the deer in the spring.
“There’s not much we can do during the winter, in terms of improving deer survival. They’re kind of stuck in a very small geographic area and they don’t have as many resources as they really need. No one is advocating for supplemental feeding — that’s when people feed the deer in the winter. It’s more of a feel-good measure than a scientific response,” Grieshop said.
Grieshop said that making it through the winter is just the first hurdle that deer need to clear to survive into the summer.
“Making it through the spring is another hurdle because some of the deer are coming out of the winter in starvation mode, where they’ve sapped all their energy stores and need to get energy now,” she said.
The foresters planted food that will grow very quickly in the spring near where the deer are wintering, so they will have access to the resources they need after the end of the winter season.
The foresters needed to plant in open areas, but clearing the forest would go against the conservation district’s goal of preserving the environment. Instead, the foresters tilled the ground and planted seeds along logging roads in Gogebic County that are closed off to vehicles during the winter.
The work was made possible through a grant from the DNR’s Deer Habitat Improvement Initiative Partnership. The Gogebic Conservation District has applied for and was awarded these grants for the past six years, Grieshop said.
