During the wildfire, the community came together to help evacuated residents and feed hundreds of firefighters. As a continuation of this help, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, Sand County Foundation, and Wisconsin Woodland Owners Association are helping fire affected landowners with unique solutions for cleaning up their land as a result of the fire. On Thursday May 26, a salvage logging and wildlife habitat restoration demonstration project was held for local residents and the news media.

The salvage logging will harvest the charred timber planted by Nancy Livingston and her family in the 1950's. In one hour the wildfire changed Nancy's sustainable forestry plans. ?Instead of selectively cutting trees on a five year rotation, I have to cut all of them now. In one minute the harvester can cut and delimb a tree that needed 50 years to grow,? Nancy reflects. Now by working with the local community and governmental agencies she will be starting over. While this certainly is a personal and financial difficulty, it is also an opportunity to begin anew, maintaining knowledge of the past ? a chance for renewal with the better vision of hindsight.

In the areas where trees are too small to be salvaged for construction lumber, poles, or chips; a forestry mulcher is used to grind the standing charred trees. The forestry mulcher will reduce the standing dead trees to loosely spread wood chips. The area will then be allowed to naturally grow providing habitat for turkeys, deer, blue birds, and the Karner blue butterfly.