Current and Past LIP Projects
Marquette County

Observatory Hill

Project and Site Description:
The goal off this project is to restore 25 acres of oak savanna. LIP is funding the work needed to prepare the site for prescribed burning, including the removal and stump treatment of encroaching maple, black cherry, elm, thinning of red oaks (oak wilt), and the creation of a firebreak along an existing dirt road at the base of the hill. The landowner is contributing a 30% match, primarily in-kind of the on-the-ground work. This project will primarily benefit grassland birds found on site and expand habitat for adjacent populations. The project includes an emphasis on future maintenance and species monitoring.

This project site is in the process of being permanently protected and becoming part of the adjoining State Natural Area, an isolated outcropping of porphyritic rhyolite rising 300 feet above the surrounding landscape. The fine-grained rhyolite, an igneous rock embedded with feldspar crystals, is highly resistant to erosion and has been dated to 1.76 billion years ago. On the exposed rocks at the summit are polished rock surfaces with grooves, striations, and chatter marks created by the passage of the glacial Cary icesheet 12,000 years ago. Recently, scientists have discovered the existence of petroglyphs on the hill's rock outcroppings, which may be part of a larger prehistoric petroform found in Marquette County. The slopes are covered with a southern dry forest community dominated by red and white oak, basswood and shagbark hickory and much of the area is now being restored to oak savanna - an imperiled vegetation community in Wisconsin. Near the top of the hill, bedrock is exposed or close to the surface creating acidic conditions where a specialized glade community has developed. Red cedar dominates the glade and the thin soils support a sparse ground cover of mosses, ferns, and lichens. The state-threatened slender bush clover (Lespedeza virginica) is also found on the site. The hill has long been known by naturalists and was a favorite childhood haunt of John Muir who lived nearby.

Hamel Oak Savanna/Prairie Restoration

Project and Site Description:
This site includes small, high-quality prairie remnants (old road right-of-ways) never grazed or plowed. A fallow field last plowed 25-30 years ago is currently becoming quality barrens and prairie habitat. Habitats at this site are recovering from the existing seed bank in remnants along perimeters, as well as through introduced forbs and grasses. The landowner has identified approximately 250 species of forbs and grasses, not including sedges, shrubs, and trees.

Need to: Keep invasives out along .5 mile township road frontage (white and yellow sweet clover, spotted knapweed, black medic, cypress spurge, leafy spurge) which would otherwise invade all the other acreage. Need to: maintain open canopy by keeping cherries, scrub oaks, jack pines small and controlled with prescribed burns and/or girdling, cutting and herbiciding. Need to: reduce 100-hr. fuels (deadfall from oak wilt) in order to conduct safer burns through savanna. Need to: collect and distribute on-site prairie seeds to improve chances of drought resistance in a continuing 8-year dry cycle. Need to: substantially reduce persistent perennial invasives such as St. John's wort, Bouncing Bet, smooth brome, hoary alyssum which reduce available resources in a drought-prone environment and quickly become dominate in sandy soil. Need to: continue to eliminate white and yellow sweet clover, spotted knapweed, mullein, honeysuckle, buckthorn, prickly ash, red cedar.