 The American love affair with trees brought about the planting of millions of trees across the Great Plains for protection, food, lumber, and beauty. A view of the countryside shows thousands of miles of windbreaks which were planted all across the plains. Although many of these trees were initially planted to control the severe erosion of the dirty thirties, windbreaks have also provided increased snow harvest, helped keep snow off roads, provided habitat for wildlife, and protected homes, and millions of acres of crops from extreme temperatures and winds. Decades have gone by and windbreaks have aged. Trees have died and benefits from these old windbreaks have declined. Many of the field windbreaks in northern plains states are in need of renovation, about half of which have declined to the point where they are currently ineffective. What are the reasons for this marked decline in windbreak quality? Grasses and other weeds compete with trees for precious moisture. Some trees were planted too close together and others were poorly maintained. Some have been damaged by herbicides, insects, equipment, and livestock. Many of the trees planted 30 to 40 years ago were Siberian Elm with the windbreak lifespan of about 40 years. Others were planted to American Elm, many of which have been lost to Dutch Elm disease over the last 30 years. These two examples demonstrate the need for planting a diversity of species which match the particular site conditions. That leaves us at the present time with fewer trees going in and more trees coming out. Many windbreaks have reached the end of their expected life. Our renovation needs of today are as great as our planting needs of yesterday and if done properly can be as successful. From here forward, a concerted, creative, and effective renovation effort is needed. What is renovation and how is it done? Windbreak renovation is done to maintain the effectiveness and health of an entire windbreak. Oftentimes, this means that we have to cut live, healthy trees. We do this in order to maintain the function and sustainability of that windbreak over time. Windbreak renovation begins with the creation of a plan. Some renovation techniques have been used in many parts of the Great Plains. Some renovation techniques such as sod release, coppicing, thinning, pruning, supplemental planting, and root pruning can be easily done with existing skills and available equipment. However, complete removal of a tree row is most often done with large, specialized equipment. For years, traditional windbreak renovation methods have used construction equipment to remove tree tops, stumps, and roots instead of forest and tree management equipment. After the wood has been removed, the sites have usually been leveled, and new tree rows have been established using traditional site preparation and tree planting equipment. End loaders, back hose, and farm tractors have also been used to remove old tree rows. With patience and a skilled operator, these machines can do a good job. End loaders are perhaps better equipped to stack a tall, reasonably clean brush pile than our dozers. Equipment modifications, such as construction rock buckets, provide a means of sifting out soil during removal. Depending upon the size of the machine and the size of the tree, loaders are effective at taking out trees and stumps. Within the forest industry, there are many machines, such as feller bunchers, that are capable of renovating prairie windbreaks quickly and efficiently. Initial cost, transportation limits, and distances between renovation sites have limited the use of these machines. Feller bunchers are expensive and inaccessible in some areas. Less expensive alternatives to feller bunchers are hydraulic saws. Row removal with these saws has been demonstrated in North Dakota with good results. As with feller bunchers, these saws can be used to remove the top growth while leaving the stumps and roots in place. This method has worked well where new trees are planted in and around the old tree row. In the hands of a skilled operator, a half-mile-long single-row windbreak can be clipped off in a day. If producers wish to farm the area of the old tree row, a hydraulic saw should not be used. Using chainsaws to remove trees is a method that has been around for many years. It is effective, affordable, available, and a lot of hard work. For certain sites, it is an appropriate method for removing trees. For safety and efficiency, only skilled chainsaw users should undertake the removal of large, dead trees. Personal protective equipment such as a helmet, hearing protection, eye and face protection, safety gloves, safety chaps or pants, and protective footwear must be used whenever operating a chainsaw. If re-sprouting from tree and shrub stumps is not desirable, herbicides may be applied to the inner bark. Now the inner bark is located right between the outer bark and the cambium layer, which is the actual growing part of the tree. I've added a chemical dye so you can see it better where I'm showing you, but also it'll let you know which trees you've treated and which ones you haven't if you're doing a lot of them. By putting the chemical in the inner bark or flow them, it'll transport downward, and it'll help prevent the sprouting and kill the roots in the tree. Since the roots of similar adjacent trees may grow together, any stump treatments are made after considering the effects of the chemical on the nearby trees that remain. Windbreaks of larger diameter trees of ash, basswood, cottonwood, or elm may have marketable quantities of saw timber, which could be logged and sold to help defray some of the removal costs. In North Dakota, many of the windbreaks in the eastern part of the state were cut to salvage usable American elm logs as Dutch elm disease swept through the area during the late 70s and early 1980s. Trees which have no salvageable lumber may be burned. Burning is difficult when soil is pushed into the pile. Normally when you're trying to burn up a green trees or freshly removed windbreak, the difficulty is getting the fine fuels and a proper fuel mix so that you get a good burn. On this one you can see where we've kind of pushed some of the windbreak together. We have a lot of large diameter stock that's, in this particular case, it's a live one yet, so it's still green. We'd have to burn for a long time to even get it dry enough so this particular piece would ignite. Now if we were to come in here and try to get some fuel underneath it, even if we have fine fuels, paper, and some diesel fuel, we still don't have much that's going to dry this out and get it burning. That's why you'll see a lot of these windbreaks around the state that have big round bales that are trying to put in there to get them burning. So what we'll demonstrate then is how to start the pile as you start pushing the material on it and then that gives you a cleaner burn and it should, in theory, be burned up by the end of the evening. Proper placement of trees on the burned pile while the pile is burning allows for a complete burn. Repositioning of material as needed is possible as long as a machine is in the area. The machine does not have to be a feller buncher. A farm tractor, loader, or hydraulic saw work just fine. Before starting a fire, consider any local and state laws that require permits or other approval prior to burning. In most cases, final cleanup can be completed in the evening or the next morning with hand tools if proper attention has been paid to the stacking of the pile and monitoring of the burn. Yet after stumps are removed and burned, there is still a root ball of baked dirt and unburned wood that is often buried. Row removal and replacement is not the only type of renovation that could help the wind breaks of the Great Plains. Sod release, compassing, thinning, pruning, supplemental planting, and root pruning are all effective renovation methods depending on the need of a particular windbreak. Many of these methods are labor intensive, maybe hard work, and often require training to be done effectively. A practice with much potential to improve windbreak conditions and effectiveness is sod release. Introduced grasses, such as bro, have caused many otherwise healthy windbreaks to essentially stop growing. In drier areas, dense sod has added stress and help to kill windbreak trees. A directed application of glyphosate can effectively release some windbreaks from the negative effects of sod competition. However, some species of trees do not respond to sod release if they have been suppressed for too many years. Copacing is the removal of top growth on woody plants and allowing them to regrow from the base. While copacing is very effective for some woody species, certain trees and shrubs do not respond well to the practice. It is especially effective on shrubs that have become tall with thin foliage or have broken down. Care must be taken to not damage the root or root collar. Better regeneration is often seen when copacing is done during the dormant season rather than the growing season. Pole pruning chainsaws can improve efficiency when copacing shrub rows by providing quicker access to the base of plants than standard chainsaws. When completed, a properly-copiced shrub is invigorated and regains the ability to effectively slow the wind and trap snow. Thinning reduces competition between trees. This may be done to manage natural regeneration of trees within windbreaks or to remove trees in windbreaks which were originally planted with the trees too close together. Over-mature trees or those subject to extreme competition may not respond to thinning. We often do not think of selection as a process of windbreak renovation. Before accepting natural regeneration management as a windbreak renovation practice, one must understand that a windbreak can be effective even if the trees are not growing in perfectly straight rows. And one must also understand that the entire renovation does not need to be done in one grueling renovation effort. If done in stages, these windbreaks are fun to renovate. The protection of the windbreak is never lost and the work can be spread over a period of years as time and energy permit. In some cases, a windbreak row may be removed in a multi-row windbreak and no trees are planted, allowing the remaining rows to flourish. Sometimes only certain branches need to be removed from trees. Pruning has been done in field windbreaks to allow better snow distribution on crop fields and to remove broken limbs after storms. In multiple-row windbreaks, it is done to allow better light penetration on the edges or to allow better access so that sods and other weeds can be controlled. Although pruning can be extremely beneficial for a tree, it can also be very damaging if done improperly. Before making a pruning cut, it's important to identify the branch bark ridge and the branch collar. The branch bark ridge is an area of raised bark right between the branch and the stem at which it is attached. And also the branch collar, which is an area which is swollen right at the base of the branch. It's important to do the cut right on the outside of the branch bark ridge down to the outside, just the outside of this branch collar. So we'll start a cut. Pole pruners should be used to remove dead limbs high up in trees. It is labor-intensive, but for certain situations, it is the most appropriate method. Planting can be done without removing old stumps. Here, a modified weed badger drills the holes and trees are planted by hand. Planting only takes 10 to 15 seconds per tree, and not many difficulties are experienced while drilling the holes, even though most holes are within three feet of the old stumps. One of the easiest and most commonly used methods is supplemental planting. It is nothing more than planting a portion of a new windbreak next to an existing windbreak. Root pruning has been around for years. Even though a windbreak will generally increase crop yield over an entire field, crop plants adjacent to the windbreak may be smaller than plants farther away from the windbreak. Tree roots near the surface are cut to reduce competition with adjacent crops for moisture or nutrients. Some woody species, such as poplars, may produce new trees where the roots were cut. Root pruning should be avoided with these types of species. Some areas of the Great Plains use this method to establish additional tree rows next to species that are aggressive root sprouters. Perhaps root pruning could be an effective way to reduce stress on new tree rows planted adjacent to existing tree rows. Root pruning will stress and possibly kill mature trees if they were not root pruned during establishment. But this practice may be an option if the mature trees will be removed after the new trees are established. There are many different types of windbreaks with at least as many different options for renovating them. Here, a portion of a single row field windbreak is removed for replanting. Windbreaks are definitely important, but I don't know if we'd ever put any single rows back in again. We found out over the years that they're just a death trap for wildlife. Your pheasants, especially, they get in these North Dakota blizzards, and they just get in behind the windrows and just die. I think at least seven to 15 rows is what we probably put back in. This multi-row windbreak is being renovated to improve wildlife habitat. For the most part, it's dying out, but it still provides good wildlife habitat for the deer, for deer and some waterfall nesting. If we did the traditional method, just come in and bulldoze the whole thing out and replant it, you'd lose all your habitats. So we thought that something with underplanting where you could just keep the existing trees, plant some new trees underneath, and maybe rehabilitate the shelter about that way with several purposes. Tree shelters are used to improve height growth of some tree species, protect trees from deer, and protect trees when herbicides are applied to reduce competition from sod and other weeds. When you put them on, all we do is we come down, we space up, put the stake in the ground next to the tree, on the northwest side, the failing wind side. Usually loosen the ties up. It's got two ties on it, just to kind of gently feed the tree through. And it's easier to put them on right away when the tree doesn't leaf out yet. Just be careful if you don't get leaves caught in there. Kind of dig the tube down in the ground, because if you don't have it down in the ground, you get a chimney effect and it dries out the tree. So you want to make sure the tube's tightened to the ground, almost tighten your ties up, and put your net on top, and you're ready to go. We do find that you have to check them a couple of times a year because the deer do come rub on them and you get winds and things that lock them over. So usually once in the spring and once in the fall, we come through and check the tube straight and some up, and have to replace some stakes, things like that. So it's a little bit of maintenance, but not too bad. The Great Plains has a rich legacy of developing and nurturing an agroforestry resource. That resource is hurting. Right down this row right here, a lot of these elm trees have been dying from what really does appear to be Dutch Elm disease. The time is ripe for those charged with resource management to develop and promote effective windbreak renovation techniques for landowners and conservation partners to meet the challenges of restoring our prairie forests. Our forefathers used hard work and perseverance to establish a rich resource of windbreaks across the plains, with our current resources of capital, equipment, communications, scientific windbreak knowledge, and generations of accumulated experience. Can we sit back and let this legacy wither away?