The truth is, nature has never been stagnant.

The woods, like we see here at the Lost 40, the big trees, the understory like it is.

That hasn't always been that way.

It might not always be that way.

we do think of when we're managing a site, what are we managing it for?

And we're trying to in the Scientific and Natural Areas program, think about those features Why was the site designated to start with?

The Lost 40, for example We're thinking about what do we need to perpetuate that old growth forest?

Is that fire?

Is that reducing fuels?

Is it planting?

I'm AmberBeth VanNingen, I'm the regional specialist for the Minnesota DNR Scientific and Natural Areas program.

And today we're at the Lost 40.

The Lost 40 is a site within the Chippewa National Forest and Big Fork State Forest in northern Itasca County, northern Minnesota, The state part of the Lost 40 is a Scientific and Natural Area, or a S N A for short.

SNA is part of the DNR’s public lands.

People are probably familiar with state parks really visible.

They're there to be used and to be recreated in.

We also have state forests, wildlife management areas, Scientific and Natural Areas or SNAs are another one of those designations that state land can have.

And we are open to the public.

We focus on research and education and SNAs are designated for rare features.

Think of things like rare species in their habitat, native plant communities, maybe rare geologic features that represent the best of Minnesota's natural heritage.

We have SNAs across the state.

There are 170 sites and they, like I said, represent the best of Minnesota's natural heritage.

We have old growth forests.

We have remnant prairies.

We have all sorts of different wetlands.

We have one of the largest peatlands left in the Lower 48 states is part of a scientific and natural area.

There are woods and forests of all different types.

There are shorelines on rivers and lakes and ponds and pretty much anything of Minnesota's naturalness, you can imagine, there's probably an SNA that represents that.

The Lost 40 is considered one of the most significant old growth pine forests left in Minnesota, along with the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and parts of Itasca State Park.

So there are white and red pine trees here, over 250 years old, amongst the oldest in the state.

Also, there is an esker here, which is kind of a more little known fact of why the Lost 40 is an interesting place.

An esker is leftover from the glacial period of Minnesota.

It's a line of leftover deposits and sand and gravel, as you probably know, is useful to humans.

And so they get mined.

And so the big trees are here, sitting on top of this other unique resource, which is an esker.

So people can come here, see the big trees, walk on an esker.

And that's another thing that makes the Lost 40 unique, is it's fairly accessible.

You can drive right up to it.

There's a nice parking area, a little picnic area as well, and you can walk on the trails and walk right up to the old trees and walk right on the esker.

So the name Lost 40 is a bit of a misnomer.

We call it lost because at one time it was sort of lost to history.

In the 1880s when the public land survey came through Minnesota, they were mapping out the lands, the different, land cover types and putting in dissections and townships and those sorts of things.

We don't know why but in 1882, when this was mapped, it was mapped as part of nearby Coddington Lake.

So when the land was divided up and timber industry was coming in and people were getting interested in the resources here, It wasn’t known that this part was a forest, especially pine forest, which was of special interest at that time, especially white pine.

And they were left and just the same reason the esker was left.

So it was never mined.

So it kind of got lost in that way.

So obviously it's not lost.

We're here today.

We know where it is now.

It got remapped and corrected in 1960 as part of a reevaluation of the area.

But that lost part is what has preserved it in that state.

It's also not 40, 40 is kind of just a, when the public land survey came through, they put 40 acre squares on to everything on the land.

And so that's just kind of having the 40 is one of those measurements of land.

It's actually bigger than that.

The whole site is over 100 acres.

The old growth forest that's left is closer to about 35 acres, but I guess just lost 40, had sort of a magic to it.

And that's how the name came to be, far as we know.

Lost 40 because of that history of the incorrect land survey.

The land boundaries here aren't nice, neat squares like you might see in other places.

It looks like the edge of an old lake where the land boundary between the Forest Service and the DNR is.

So where you come into the Lost 40, where you're going to drive in, where you park and where the trails start.

That's all on Forest Service land.

But as you keep walking along that esker and in that old growth forest and go beyond the old growth forest, that's DNR site and that's the Scientific and Natural Area.

Trying to take the time to slow down and really appreciate what what's here.

You can drive past something 50 million times and not realize what's going on there.

Sometimes you really have to take a minute to just stand still.

My name is Arika McGraw.

I am the regional naturalist for the Scientific and Natural Areas program in the DNR.

my mission is to try to help encourage people and facilitate the slowing down and really appreciating what's going out here, because the more you, the more you look, the more you realize what's happening Naturalist is kind of a vague term.

Most people, when they think of a naturalist, they think of visiting a state park.

And that person who's there to answer your questions or lead you on a hike.

And my job is definitely similar to that.

We don't have really nature centers or places like that where I'm just hanging out at a SNA, but I do a lot of public programing, leading hikes.

I'm going to lead fall color hikes, I lead snowshoes in the winter, lead short kayak trips, those sorts of things.

I also do a few, school programs with and talk to children about, the SNA program and why it's important.

I also do some volunteer events where, I lead people doing work on SNAs, whether that's invasive species, polls or garbage pickups.

But then where I kind of differ from your average naturalist is a good chunk of my job is also doing, field monitoring.

So that would be like surveys.

I've done some different plant surveys.

I've helped with people doing bat surveys and bee surveys.

And essentially it's just an excuse to like tag along with other people doing cool things, on our SNAs in my region.

So what makes an old growth forest an old growth forest it's not just big old trees the Lost 40 definitely has those there's other elements to the forest that we're looking for and we call it an old growth forest, for example there has to be dead down wood.

Are there evidence that there's been big old trees there before and they've fallen over, or maybe they're still standing, we call those snags if they're standing, dead, fallen wood if they're there.

So those are other elements we look for in addition to the big trees that probably think of classically as an old growth forest.

We also think about recruitment.

So does the next generation of trees coming up.

And that's where the disturbance really comes in.

The disturbance in this forest would be fire.

Is it cleaning out some of those old downed wood and some of the competing species, like balsam fir, to make room for other species like white pine or red pine to come up?

Maybe they need gaps in that tree canopy where the sunlight comes in.

Some species, like jack pine especially need, their cones need fire or heat to open up.

And so fire is a really important part of the lifecycle of an old growth pine forest.

The Lost 40 is a white pine, red pine forest.

And when we classify forests across the landscape, one of the big buckets that we can put a forest into is fire dependent.

And it is exactly what it sounds like, that forest is dependent on fire for the way it is.

And the Lost 40, as far as we know, hasn't seen fire in about 100 years.

So is it really still a fire dependent forest if it hasn't had fire to regenerate it?

So one of the things we're interested in, to keep perpetuating this forest and keep these pine and this native plant community, or white pine red pine forest, is reintroducing fire back to the landscape.

This is a really popular place.

It's a really beloved place So there's education we have to do.

There’s management that we're going to have to do.

So fuels are pretty much anything that could burn, but it's the downed logs.

It's the old branches that are up the side of the trees.

It's the vegetation that's growing, all the needles that are on the ground, that's all fuel.

We need to manage that to make sure that the fires don't destroy the big old trees, and that we're perpetuating keeping that forest going instead of converting it to a different forest type.

We have a couple different SNAs that have some pretty good strong planning already in the works to bring back prescribed fire.

the Lost 40 is one of those sites.

And I figured while I'm here, might as well do some looking at what it looks like before the fire and then comparing it to after the fire.

I have what's called a transect, different transects, which essentially just means a line that we put out and look at what plants and different things occur.

So here at Lost 40 we look at what plants are currently occurring there, both like the low to the ground stuff as well as the, the shrub layer and the, tree layer.

But then also since we're doing fire, also looking at things like fuel loads.

How many sticks are this size.

How many sticks logs this size in this site.

And also fire has an impact on what's going on on the ground level.

So on the the litter layer or the duff, that stuff that occurs before you get to mineral soil, the decomposing leaves and needles, also measuring the depth of that.

So I’ve got four transects that I've set up here.

I've got the before picture.

And then once we were able to actually bring fire on the site, I'll be coming back out and doing right away another survey.

What does this look like shortly after fire.

And then every few years.

And after that, how is this changing every, you know, few years after a fire.

What is this, what does this look like?

There's more work to be done here before we can bring fire, there's a lot of what's called ladder fuels and so red and white pine are very well adapted to fire if you were to look at them, their bark looks like armor.

So it's really well adapted to preventing fire from getting into those living parts of the tree.

And they also self prune.

So a few of these bigger trees, if you look at them, the lowest branch on the tree is really high up, there's nothing for the fire to grab onto.

Whereas we've got a lot of, balsam fir that have kind of moved in here and they have a lot of ladder fuel.

they're very flammable.

we've got a lot of stuff like that.

We have other, shrubs in here that would just work against the forest type and would take fire all the way up to where those branches are on these trees.

So we have a bit of work to do where we'll try to reduce some of that fuel so that the fire doesn't become a catastrophic fire.

Because SNAs are statewide.

We have partnerships everywhere.

Sometimes that's what the federal government like we have here at the U.S.

Forest Service.

In other parts of the state.

The U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service has more of a presence.

We partner with other state entities within the DNR, whether that's our divisions of Fish and Wildlife, forestry or enforcement.

We have partnerships with that.

We have partnerships with research institutions.

Think like the University of Minnesota or the Natural Research Institute in Duluth.

They do research on our sites, or they use our information that come off of our sites in their research.

We partner with nonprofits like the Minnesota Land Trust, The Nature Conservancy.

There are local interest groups.

Lake associations are a great partner for us.

We partner with counties, municipalities, pretty much anybody who shares our vision or who our neighbors we are willing to partner with.

We don't track visitation here, so we don't really have numbers or hard data to put on usership at a place like the Lost 40.

Just in general, especially since the Covid 19 pandemic, interest in usership of outdoor recreation areas has skyrocketed.

People wanted to get out because they couldn't do anything else or felt like they couldn't do anything else.

And it really hasn't slowed a whole lot.

People have discovered these places, and thought, I like being outside.

This is a new recreation, a new hobby I've taken up.

So we've just in general, seen an increase in the number of people visiting, whether it's a SNA, state parks, recreation areas, things like that.

SNAs along with state parks, wildlife Management area, state forest are part of the outdoor recreation system and housed under the Outdoor Recreation Act and state statute.

That sets them all up.

So we do have somewhat of a public use at least focus.

Most SNAs, the grand majority of them, are open to the public.

we do have a few sites that are sanctuaries that are closed to the public, or closed for certain parts of the year, but most sites are open to the public.

We think of them for low impact recreation or compatible with the reasons why SNAs are here, so compatible with having rare species habitat, compatible with being a rare wetland, for example, and compatible without having trails or facilities.

So often people, if they come to an SNA, they might be hiking or snowshoeing in the winter.

They're great places for nature viewing, birdwatching, nature photography, places like that.

A lot of people, their first introduction to state lands is probably a state park.

Think of our iconic ones like Itasca State Park, St.

Croix State Park, Whitewater State Park.

We have big chunks of land that are designated as state parks, and those have recreation focus to them.

Certainly a natural resource focus as well.

Those parks are there because they're in beautiful, interesting places, but they are also there for recreation.

So they typically have established trails and trails of different types.

They might have bike trails, hiking trails, they have campgrounds, picnic grounds, those sorts of things people come there and they can recreate, they can enjoy those natural features.

SNAs, because our focus is on those natural features and on education and research instead, we typically don't have a lot for development within our sites.

The Lost 40 is a special place, not just because of the trees and the esker, but because we do have those facilities here for people to enjoy them.

Some of our sites are out in the middle of nowhere.

You can't drive up to them.

There are no trails, the nearest bathroom is going to be miles and miles away.

But that's still valuable in terms of protecting those natural resources and providing those places for education and research.

It all comes down to people visitorship.

And as a naturalist, I have kind of this back and forth war of wanting to protect.

And honestly, sometimes the easiest way to protect is to not have people walking through it, right, but if you don't have people walking through it, you don't have people loving it.

You don't have people wanting to support it.

So having kind of walking the fine line of, of helping people love a place and enjoy a place without over loving it.

Like leading an orchid walk through a bog, bogs are really cool places with really cool plants that live in them, but they're very sensitive.

They're very sensitive, just walking on them.

So, like, big bog, there's caribou trails are still visible there, and the caribou haven't been there in like, in any great number in over 100 years.

I mean, just walking through the forest.

We were at a site the other day that had a we found this clearly old road or driveway that went through it, but there's trees growing up in the middle of it, but we could still see that road.

So compaction has a huge impact, on what can grow there and on the environment.

we don't have trails at a lot of our sites, the Lost 40 is kind of special that way.

But when you are visiting the Lost 40 and lots of people do, the trail is a disruption.

But trying to keep that disruption just to what's here already.

you know, when you visit a site, keeping in mind every footprint matters, makes a difference.

There are definitely SNAs out there that I'm going to assume have zero people that ever come to them, that some of them that I've been working for the program for almost 16 years that I've never been to in my very own region, a lot of those sites are going to be our peatland SNAs.

So Minnesota, northern and north central Minnesota have some of the largest left peatlands in the lower 48 states, any place in the US outside of Alaska, pretty much.

And those are remote, true wilderness areas that don't have roads to them that are waterlogged and very hard to get into.

And I'm gonna assume that because of that, they probably don't get any visitors.

Because SNAs have that recreation and research and kind of quiet recreation focus.

There are a lot of things that you can't do on SNAs, and unfortunately that sometimes becomes the focus of them.

They are seen as restrictive, but we hope instead of being seen as restrictive, it's seen as protective.

We're trying to protect these areas not just because of their natural features, but they are public lands.

So we're trying to protect that public access so that people can come to them, enjoy them, do research on them and learn about them.

So typically that would exclude things like motorized use.

There are some SNAs that preexisting how like say a snowmobile trail through them.

Those are typically included in the designation of that.

So that snowmobile trail might be there.

But we're not going to build a new snowmobile trails for example.

Another common restriction is hunting.

You typically aren't going to find hunting on a SNA.

Now in northern Minnesota, we have a lot of places that have exceptions to the rules.

We can make exceptions to those rules when we designate them or through public hearing processes.

We use hunting in northern Minnesota as a management tool, especially for whitetail deer.

Whitetail deer love to eat everything.

especially thinking of the Lost 40 white pine regeneration, it's like candy to white tailed deer.

So in northern Minnesota, hunting is actually not just a recreational thing that we can offer to the public, but also really important management tool.

If you're curious about what you can do on a SNA, every single one of our 170 SNAs has its own website.

And so we'll go on there and you can look up on a map or alphabetically, you can find the SNA interested in going to.

And they'll have the rules right there on the page listed for them.

Or we have a general rules page.

That will kind of help explain those rules a little bit more.

Plus there's contact information on there.

So if you still have questions you can always contact us.

And we can help you figure out what the best type of recreation is on that site.

The future of Scientific and Natural Areas is exciting.

When you're thinking about a statewide program and statewide effort to preserve these places that have the best of Minnesota's natural heritage with increased use is something we've talked about.

How are we going to continue educating the public?

How are we going to continue to get public buy in?

Having our neighbors and having our partners on board with us is so important.

We are a pretty small staff for a statewide program, and so we rely a lot on having good relationships with other, conservation organizations and our neighbors to be able to do those sorts of things.

So continuing to do education, continuing to build relationships, management to in terms of thinking about increased use, increased invasive species, we've not slowed down invasive species, whether we're talking about a shrub like buckthorn invading our forest or an insect like the emerald ash borer, there's lots of different invasives that are coming in.

We have a changing climate.

What is that going to hold for us in terms of being able to manage these invasive species?

What does it mean for disturbance regimes like prescribed fire?

What does it mean for recreation in terms of storms and washing out of trails?

Those are a lot of questions we have that we don't have answers to, but it's things we're looking forward to.

The Scientific and Natural Areas program has a site steward program, we call it, where you can sign up to be our eyes and ears for a particular SNA.

So we have a small staff across the state and we cannot be... there are 170 sites, we do not have 170 staff.

So we cannot be keeping our eyes and ears on these sites all the time.

We have a volunteer program to do that so people can sign up to be a site steward.

We have that on our website, open sites that need site stewards.

If there's one near you or maybe near where your cabin is, or just near a place that you love to visit and would like to learn about.

You can sign up to be that site steward.

We just ask that you visit a few times a year, check out the boundary signs, maybe help with management if that's your thing.

You can help with education if that's your thing, kind of wherever you would like to help out.

We can probably find a place for you.

In addition, we have site steward events or just stewardship events that could be things anywhere from picking up garbage on sites to helping with monitoring to helping with invasive species removal.

And those are all on our website under SNA events.

And you can sign up for those and help out that way as well.

The going out there and pulling invasive species or picking up trash, that would be me.

I set up those events.

I, try to advertise those events in the different places to try to get people, and it's really interesting to see how people find out about the events.

But sometimes asking people to come and pull weeds doesn't always get a huge crowd, but it's kind of interesting to see how far people will travel who are really, really wanting to help protect.

And that's really, really great.

Tell your friends about SNAs is it's part of your public lands.

You can visit them.

So if you find an SNA that you love, tell your friends about it.

Tell your friends about our program.

One of our taglines we often use in the program is we're protecting the best of Minnesota's natural heritage.

Just like you might have a cultural heritage or geographic heritage.

As Minnesotans, we have a natural heritage too.

The Lost 40, it's just it's part of our identity as Minnesotans having these old trees on our landscape is part of who we are.

It's part of our history.

It's part of our nature.

And places like this can help people connect to those parts of their heritage that maybe they hadn't known about before or had lost contact with, or they live far away from.

They can go to places like this and connect with that part of their heritage.

That reminder that these are your public lands.

These belong to the people of Minnesota, and you are welcome to come to them and explore them.

We just ask that when you do, you remember that they're the lands of everybody, all Minnesotans.

They're not just yours.

So think about that when you visit these places, how you visit them and what you do there and what you take away, think about that.

These are for everybody.

Production costs for this program have been made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the members of Lakeland PBS.