Wisconsin Champion Trees

[SonsofThunder]

Is there any one here familiar with the Wisconsin Champion Tree list that the DNR maintains? Here is a link to the website:
http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/forestry/uf/champion/index.htm

I just downloaded the current list and there are currently almost 2200 trees on the list and of these only a couple hundred have measurment dates listed in the last 20 years. The files themselves look like they have not been update for a couple of years.

I am thinking that this may be a fun and worthwhile activity to help update this list and provide coordinates of the trees to make them easier to find.

If we were to take this project on, I believe that we should maintain our own database similar the the monument list. The DNR does not currently have the staff or resources to handle the flood of updates that would be sent to them.

Anybody want to comment on this?

Kenn

[Cathunter]

Wow, I didn’t even know we had that many different species. I would love to go and check some of these out, but I would never find them without coordinates.

[Mama Fishcacher]

I would really enjoy doing something like this. I would be very happy to go out and measure (and talk to and thank) some trees, and take some coordinates, but I would be pretty much clueless when it came to the computer database part of it…. Unless it was something online like this where I can just plug in some numbers and words. (I learned computer programming in the days of DOS only…. And even that was 18 years ago!)

I’m so glad they give an easy *on the ground* way to measure the tree height as my little Geo doesn’t have a cherry picker attachment….

~Mama Fishcacher

[Mama Fishcacher]

And as I’m browsing the Champion Tree site, I see there’s a “Wisconsin Big Tree Society” that looks like they are a set up just for this situation. Here’s a link to that portion:
http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/forestry/uf/champion/bigtree.htm

[SonsofThunder]

I called Dick Rideout (who is the state of Wisconsin Urban Forestry Coordinator) today about the Wisconsin Big Tree Society. He basically said that the society has been inactive for a few years. He sounded very interested in getting help generating GPS coordinates for these trees and finding new trees to list on the registry. He gave me the name of his assistant who is in charge of maintaining the registry. I talked to him a little about geocaching and what type of people are involved with this sport/hobby. I am sending him links to the http://www.geocaching.com and http://www.wi-geochaching.com web sites.

He stated that, coincidently, he had a meeting scheduled this afternoon to discuss updating the DNR database and they were already planning to add columns for the GPS coodinates.

I expliained to him that for many of us,part of the fun of the sport is in logging our finds. We discussed briefly a way for us to log and credit tree finds but it will take some more ideas and thinking to figure out the best way to make that work.

It seems that this may well be something that can add another dimention to our hobby and I for one would actively look for these trees and forward the coordinates to the DNR even if I do not get any kind of credit for it.

I would like to hear some more thoughts from others about this.

Kenn

[This message has been edited by SonsofThunder (edited 03-05-2004).]

[Cathunter]

I think it will be interesting to see if they adopt anything we can use. I would love to see some of those trees. It’s unfortunate that so many of them have poor location listings.

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.

[Author]

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