Minnesota Power on Thursday dedicated a new forest-management effort in honor of Jack Rajala, the longtime logger, mill owner and landowner who has worked tirelessly to bring back the state's big white pines.
The Duluth-based utility announced it will plant up to 3 million white pine, red pine, jack pine and spruce seedlings over the next 10 years on 3,000 acres across the region.
The effort includes parcels along the North Shore near Schroeder, where the project was unveiled Thursday, as well as at Boulder Lake near Duluth and locations near Hoyt Lakes, Cohasset, Winton, Royalton and Pillager.
Rajala, the patriarch of an Itasca County family that has managed and milled pine lumber for decades, also is a former board member of Allete, Minnesota Power's parent company.
The utility said its new "Rajala Woods initiative" is a $1.4 million effort to "restore and enhance white pine and other conifer tree species through management practices that will ensure the sustainable use of the forest, improve biodiversity, conserve aquatic resources and enhance wildlife habitat and recreation."
The effort follows Rajala's lead; he has planted more than 3.5 million white pines in recent decades in addition to 1.5 million red pines. Rajala literally wrote the book - 1998's "Bringing Back the White Pine" - on how to restore the conifer that was nearly extirpated from Minnesota by 1800s logging, the northern movement of hungry white tailed deer into the area and the invasive blister rust fungus that is deadly to the big pines.
"One of the interesting things with the forest is you don't deal with any one life," Rajala said in a statement Thursday. "You deal with all the trees in the forest. We plant more trees ... nature itself is always replacing, too. What Allete is doing is guaranteeing that this will work by putting trees in the ground. Nature is complicated, and right now it's compromised. It's our responsibility to help it along."
Al Hodnik, Allete's chief executive officer, said the forestry effort is hoped to be an example for other land managers as well as continue the utility's move to sustainability.
"We hope our leadership, modeled after Jack's efforts, will encourage others in the region who share a similar environmental stewardship vision for our forests to take similar action to improve the health and quality of our forests," Hodnik said in a statement.
Minnesota Power manages about 30,000 acres of land across the region, mostly around reservoir lakes and rivers where the utility stores water for hydroelectric power.
Rajala is a lifelong resident of Itasca County and chief executive of the Rajala Companies of Deer River, family businesses that produce lumber for furniture, homes, cabinetry, veneers and other wood products. He also has been active in the Minnesota Timber Producers Association, the American Forest Council, American Lumber Standards Committee and the National Forest Products Association.
