Jack pines -- not happy

The land I live on in Wisconsin is forested, but has been denuded of all valuable species (oak, maple, etc). There are no maple trees older than 10-15 years old, so I can presume that the last cutting was around a decade ago.

There are a lot of jack pines on the Southern end of the land. Jack pines are a succession species that only grow in the presence of fire. They have a life cycle of around 60-80 years.

The jack pines are all in the process of dying now at around the same time -- I'm losing around 2-3 per season in the Spring, Summer and Fall. I might be losing some more this weekend with an April snowstorm that's putting a lot of weight on the branches. I can assume that there has been no fire on this land since the 1920s-1940s, so the jack pines have not been able to propagate their seedlings since then.






I'll be planting additional trees in the coming years, much like Rick did, but the forest canopy is going to be a bit sparse once all the jack pines fall over.