MPR’s Lorna Benson talks with nature photographer Jim Brandenburg about the the Boundary Waters after the massive blowdown. Brandenburg discusses the unknown long-term effects to the forest and animals.

Brandenburg has spent the summer touring damaged areas of the Boundary Waters. He is pledging five percent of the proceeds from his book "Chased By The Light" to the Boundary Waters Wilderness Foundation, to help with the continued recovery effort. Most of the pictures in the book were captured in and around the wilderness area. He says the proceeds will help pay for materials used by the Park Service to educate the public about the long-term impact of the windstorm.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) It's a fascinating story is traumatic as it is for some of us that really love that place. It's a wonderful story of changing ecology. And hopefully we can Enlighten a little bit by education and the more you know about things through a scientific. This isn't necessarily political agenda situation. It's more of the scientific situation that has developed what will happen ecologically no to the forest after this amazingly gargantuan and kind of an anomaly of a storm passed through well what will happen the scientists are baffled. Fold a little bit they were shocked at first, but there is a little bit of mystery because this has never really happened before this area The Boundary Waters a million and a half acres has evolved with with profound fire influence. It's a fire ecology textbook case of what happens when you let nature do its thing much like the Prairie is evolve with fire. We've suppress Fires for a hundred years now and it's changed the ecology in the forest make up. Romantically up there not to the good and of course logging is a major influence in northern Minnesota and a good part of the Boundary Waters has been logged and can take the place of fire somewhat, but nothing quite like a fire through millions of years of evolution having the woods dealing with that and that's a interesting story that will tell so this will be a Tinderbox down the road and will likely start on fire at at some point with a lightning strike. Whatever and they're going to let it go. They're going to let it burn right? Yes, the fuel load up there is in proportions that that are hard to Fathom. There's one thing that all scientists and nearly anyone that lives up there as agreed upon in that there will be quite dramatic
(00:01:59) Fires
(00:02:01) at best. They'll be interesting at worst. They'll be catastrophic. I heard something recently.
(00:02:11) From a
(00:02:11) person that I think is a fire scientist at four times. It's a fire starts. It'll burn for times hotter and will move four times faster than a typical fired fire would happen in a forest like that and The Boundary Waters has a very thin soil the near 10,000 years since the last Glacier was there, you know many places. There isn't more than a foot. Of soil and it's known to happen that a forest fire that burns that intensely will burn literally burn the soil up. That's something I haven't heard a lot about but it's conceivable the landscape will chafe. We have a deep forest fire up. Their the landscape will will change dramatically and that will lose top soil and will take many generations to see a forest again like it was now it's interesting along. The Lakeshore is it isn't quite so bad. So if you canoe along the rivers and lakes Shores, they're much more depressed in the landscape there at the lowest possible level the trees along the Lakes aren't quite so bad. It's just up over the Hold his words really amazingly. Affected you can only see that from the airplane. How do you think the coming winter will affect the
(00:03:27) area?
(00:03:29) Well, I think about the animals first the first animals that were greatly affected were the bald eagles their nests and their trees blew down. I saw dead Eagles beneath some of the trees that they nested in. Just going through that country is nearly impossible for a human. There are certain animals that are benefited the first animal I thought of those benefits was the beaver all the trees that went down there they can eat now and that will affect them this winter. They will have great food supplies to work off of I think of animals like the Moose imagine great numbers of moose were killed, but they'll benefit in the long term by having browse fresh browse. It will grow up. I think of the Wolves they can probably travel through the country little bit easier than some animals, but I'm sure it affects their routes. I've noticed during my my own property the travel patterns of the animals have changed a lot. I don't see nearly the number of wolves that I've seen the last two three years. This winter those of us who like to do bushwhacking go through the country off of the trails, which you can only do in the winter. That is those are the good old days that will never happen again. You cannot travel across the country up in that country anymore. It is it is it is an incredible impossible tangle of downed trees and so we'll have to stay on the trails. Winter will bring more trees down. There are a lot of trees that are kind of hanging there when the snow load gets on their semi horizontal stance. It'll drive them down. It'll be a whole new effort to Spring of cleaning the trails in the portage's. It's going to be interesting to watch the evolution of it. I have a feeling this could have been one of the greatest natural events in Minnesota History since we've been documenting it we had the Hinckley fire. We've had some big floods, but in terms of moving biomass around and Wrecking it and knocking it down and this might be the greatest natural event that we've had in the history of our documenting it. Are you still contemplating putting together a book that would document the destruction? I'm really struggling with that. I've been out a lot and I fight back tears literally grown man like me going out and it's very emotional for me and I cannot come to grips with going out there and seeing all these trees down places for my latest book Chase below light these precious. Little almost a little little altars of mine have been totally destroyed and it into a chaotic visual. I can't make sense of it. It's something that I have a hard time making pictures of so then there's some other interesting little analogies that I've been thinking about here the last couple of days talking about it in my book signings is is the gods were angry with all of us perhaps for fighting over this Turf and Raymond said I'll show you I'll just take charge and knock it all down. I think that's kind of an interesting way of looking at it. We have to look at it with a much bigger bigger picture. I have to anyway because it's I'm still all wrapped up around the axle. I can't come to grips. I can't even go on with my career. I've been preoccupied with the storm all summer long. I was working on another book and stop doing that. And so I have to get on with it and I have to look at the big picture Mother Nature rules. Nature's very chaotic. We have no control over it you live with it.