News
View From the Woods 2024
Check out the 2024 recap newsletter from the Cloquet Forestry and Hubachek Wilderness Research Centers.
Members of the Board of Regents visit U of M research and outreach sites in northeast Minnesota
On October 21 and 22, Board of Regents Chair Janie Mayeron and Regents Mike Kenyanya, James Farnsworth, and Tadd Johnson visited several University of Minnesota Research and Outreach Centers in northeast Minnesota to get a better sense of the U of M’s presence and programming in the region.
Meet the Director - Kyle Gill
Read more to learn about the new Director of Operations & Forest Stewardship for the Cloquet Forestry Center (CFC) and Hubachek Wilderness Research Center (HWRC). Kyle Gill started in this role in April of 2024. Prior to this, Kyle served as the Forest Manager and Research Coordinator for the UMN Experimental Forests since 2015.
December 2024
Today the site manager watched a wolf walk by, less than 10 yards from her office window. She was too excited to take a decent video or dig out the airhorn to scare it back into the woods. The best choice of action would be to scare the wolf to keep it from getting too comfortable around humans - primarily for its own good. Wolves pass through the HWRC campus regularly. Usually, we see only tracks and camera trap photos. In the site manager's 10 years at HWRC, she has never encountered a wolf on the property while on foot in spite of regularly seeing tracks and occasionally spotting wolves from a vehicle.
In 2024, the Hubachek Wilderness Research Center provided lodging, indoor and outdoor classroom, research, writing, meeting, and/or exploration space for:
A group from the University’s Board of Regents
U of MN College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS)
- Department of Forest Resources
- Park and Protected Area Management Field Studies course
- Forest Ecology Lab B4WarmED climate change project
- Silva Lab
- Eastern Hemlock project to develop planting guidelines for Minnesota’s only endangered tree species
- Forest Resources and Natural Resources Research Institute project, Removing Barriers to Carbon Market Entry
- Department of Entomology
- Aukema Forest Insect Ecology Lab
- Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology
- Hansen Fisheries Systems Ecology Lab
- Minnesota Invasive Terrestrial Plants and Pests Center
U of MN College of Science and Engineering
- Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences
- Advanced Field Geology course
- Structure, Tectonics, and Metamorphic Petrology students
- U of MN Honors Program geology cohort
- U of MN Geological Society (GeoClub)
U of MN College of Biological Sciences
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior
- Xu Evolution and Genomics of Mating Behaviors Lab
The Superior National Forest
- US Forest Service collaboration with Institute of Bird Populations, Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship project
- Superior National Forest Leadership Team meeting
Dovetail, Inc. and The Nature Conservancy
- A "Learn and Burn" pile-burning workshop for woodland homeowners.
Facilities improvements continue at the HWRC. A site-wide water system upgrade, from the wells through the distribution system, was completed in October, connecting the old and new wells for improved water supply. A deteriorating waterfront log retaining wall was replaced with boulders and cobbles. The Lodge kitchen has a beautiful new floor. Additional Lodge flooring work is planned for winter.