HNF Volunteer Steve Baker established Amerorchis monitoring station

In order to begining monitoring impacts to one of our rarest orchids, volunteer Steve Baker, established a monitoring station including mapping and counts of the rare Amerorchis.

Hiawatha National Forest volunteer, Steve Baker, travels from his home in northern lower Michigan near Houghton Lake (below the bridge) to the West Unit of the Hiawatha National Forest in central Upper Peninsula of Michigan in his quest to help protect one of the last known populations of Amerorchis rotundifolia. Steve spends nearly 6 hours one way in his hybrid car just to get to the Munising area. Steve, who also volunteers on the East Unit providing rare plant monitoring assistance there too, is an exceptional field botanist/ecologist who has noted over the past few years dramatic changes in orchid populations.

Steve approached the HNF during the winter of 2008 to offer his services to document and establish a monitoring station around our last known population of Amerorchis. Reduced budgets and loss of botanical personnel have placed a high burden on the two remaining botanical staff on the Forest, so having someone with so much experience and desire to help with rare plant monitoring was an early Christmas present for Forest botanical staff that very cold winter day in 2008 when Steve called to offer his services.

During the summer of 2008 Forest botany staff met with Steve and acquainted him with the last known population that is still on the Forest and worked with him to come up with a monitoring plan. Steve spent nearly 3 days in the field on the West Unit of the Forest mapping with GPS during the height of the U.P.'s "bug season", documenting with photography populations and habitat, and counting all flowering and non-flowering plants. While sloshing through the wetlands, he drew boundaries on aerial photos, documented habitat characteristics and noted impacts to this rare orchis ecosystem. On his return home he spent more time writing his field notes and ultimately provided an indepth survey of his findings. Steve stated he couldn't wait unti the summer of 2009 to do it all over again. Now that is dedication!

During the summer of 2008, Steve noted human impacts were very evident, as he saw increased trampling and creating of foot paths into some of the Amerorchis populations. He even had the pleasure of meeting one of the State's most reknowned botanist who first documented Amerorchis in the U.P who was out trying to find an Amerorchis, hoping to see the species just one last time.

Of particular interest to Forest management at Munising Ranger District, Steve noted recent OHV impacts within the fen ecosystem just outside of one population. The OHV impacts were very severe to this rare ecosystem and likely will be lasting impacts for years to come.

With Steve's work we were finally able to map out the current boundary for the Amerorchis population and document the number of individuals within that boundary. Comparing Steve's work with an informal documentation of the boundary done three years ago we found a dramatic decrease in flowering individuals, nearly half the number counted in 2006. We also compared Steve's 2008 monitoring with the original monitoring that was done more than 25 years ago by the botanist he ran into while he was there. Although they were difficult to detect, we discovered the orginal blazed trees and were able to locate nearly all of them; But we found no evidence of the original plants that were first documented there. The new populations had moved to likely the last strong hold for this species.

Steve also documented other associated plants in order to measure the full range of impacts. Because this species is so dependent on the slightest hyrdological and climatic change, we hope to gain valuable information and a better understanding of the impacts from climatic fluctuations.