New Trees: Dramatic Midwest Comeback : Landowners, with federal aid and concerns for nature, reforest a million acres.

Bulldozers roved the thick woods near Butlerville in the early 1970s, pushing majestic trees into tangled piles.

Then tractors rolled across the cleared land, plowing soil for crops and pasture grass.

The scene was repeated throughout the Midwest until, in less than a decade, private landowners had cleared trees from millions of acres for the sake of more valuable cattle, corn and soybeans.

But today, trees are making a dramatic comeback in the Midwest, sprouting on hills and in the plow lines of abandoned cornfields. Landowners, from farmers to investors, are restoring the woods at an unprecedented rate by planting or simply leaving the land alone.

“Our goal is to change this land back to what it should be,” said Jack Seifert, an investor who planted 7,000 chestnut, oak and cherry trees on fields near Butlerville last year. He’ll plant twice as many this year.

State and federal foresters consider the Midwest a brightening patch of green in an increasingly urban nation that has plowed or paved 25 million acres of woods in the past four decades.

“In many of our (Midwest) states, the main trend has been a reversion back to timber,” said Jack Spencer, an analyst for the U.S. Forest Service in St. Paul, Minn.

Not long ago, the prevailing attitude among Midwest landowners was “whack down the trees and grow soybeans,” Spencer said.

But since the late 1970s, Forest Service surveys show that wooded acreage increased by more than 1 million acres in the Midwest. Some states recorded declines, but timberland grew 8% in Missouri, 14% in Kansas, 16% in Indiana and 33% in Iowa. Smaller gains were recorded in Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Nearly all Midwest land is privately owned, so most of the growth occurred outside national forests and other public tracts.

Spencer and other officials say a coincidental mix of factors contributed to the tree rebound. They include government incentives for conservation, the declining farm economy, changes in livestock production and a heightened regard for coming generations.

Some trees are naturally reclaiming fields that fell idle after the farm foreclosure crisis of the early 1980s.

Seifert said he has planted his stands mainly as an investment for his young son and to benefit wildlife along the Muscatatuck River, which snakes past the gentle hills of southeast Indiana.

But he also said he is earning money through the Conservation Reserve Program, one of several federal projects that encourages tree planting. The program pays him $85 an acre annually to plant and maintain trees, about half of what he could earn growing corn.

State agencies have also pushed tree planting, giving away nursery-grown seedlings and teaching farmers to maximize the value of timber stands. Some states offer to take woodland off property tax rolls.

By 1974, Iowa Department of Natural Resources foresters say, woodlands had disappeared from all but 4% of the state. But then Iowa foresters took action. Now they now run education and finance programs for thousands of farmers.

Illinois officials see trees as a boost to rural economies. State foresters walk with farmers through their woods, showing them how to grow walnuts and oaks for the timber market.

In Missouri, as farmers joined the movement toward raising livestock in feedlots, pastures were abandoned and trees replaced the cattle that used to graze on steep hillsides.

There is even evidence that big investors such as pension funds have helped the forest comeback, said W.L. Mills, an associate forestry professor at Purdue University. He said some investors are buying and selling wooded tracts like stocks, counting on their value to increase with time.

Still, the future is not all rosy for trees in the Midwest. Dam projects in the Dakotas and continued farmland expansion in Nebraska have cut wooded acres in those states.

“You probably won’t see this kind of thing again in the future,” Spencer said. “What’s cropland now will stay cropland, and lands that were taken for parking lots, power lines and roads aren’t going to revert at all.”

A Rebirth in the Heartland

Since the late 1970s, Forest Service surveys show that wooded acreage increased by more than 1 million acres in the Midwest. Most growth has occurred outside national forests and other public tracts.

Acres of timberland counted by U.S. Forest Service in various years since 1978 (Percent increase/decrease since 1977) NORTH DAKOTA: 338,000 Acres (-16%) SOUTH DAKOTA: 1,447,000 acres (-1%) NEBRASKA: 537,000 acres (-9%) KANSAS: 1,358,000 acres (+14%) MINNESOTA: 14,773,000 Acres (+7%) IOWA: 1,943,000 acres (+33%) MISSOURI: 13,370,000 (+8%) WISCONSIN: 15,351,000 acres (+7%) ILLINOIS: 4,030,000 acres (-1%) MICHIGAN: 17,364,000 acres (-4%) INDIANA: 4,439,000 acres (+16%) OHIO: 7,141,000 acres (+3%) KENTUCKY: 11,909,000 acres (0%) Source: U.S. Forest Service