(upbeat music) - [Melina] To many, the ecology of West Michigan is incredibly special.

(upbeat music continues) Where 300 miles of gorgeous lakefront line the fifth largest lake in the world.

This region kindly lends its beauty to residents and visitors.

(upbeat music continues) The sandbanks in Saugatuck Dunes State Park are a unique spectacle amongst the many natural wonders of West Michigan.

- So Saugatuck Dunes is really cool because it does have a kind of rustic feel.

It's still very connected.

It's accessible, but you get an off-the-beaten-path feel to it.

Saugatuck Dunes is a coastal state park.

I think we're about a thousand acres thereabouts of wooded, publicly accessible lake frontage.

There's trails to hike and a really nice, high-quality beech-maple forest, some hemlock in there as well.

- [Melina] An integral piece of these forests, the eastern hemlock is a foundation tree.

Its structure helps hold together the critical dune that lay below.

- What we see in the habit of hemlock is that it does grow in a distributed fashion a little bit, but we find it really concentrated, at least in this part of the state along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

And it likes to grow in dense clumps on the north faces of dunes.

We don't have a lotta hemlock in this part of the state, but where we find it is really important.

Those stands and those forests are high priority because they're holding the sand dune in place.

They provide habitat for migratory birds, and they're really cool to look at.

They're a long-lived species, and they're one that, you know, as a part of the forest component, they're more of a what we call foundational species.

So one of these long-lived species that's really a key element of that forest type.

What makes ecology here so cool, it's because of the sand dunes and the sand itself, and we have what's called critical dune.

So critical dune is a protected landscape.

They're some of the most spectacular dunes along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

So as you walk the landscape, you've probably noticed it's a little hilly.

Those are giant mounds of sand essentially.

And so the forest grows in top of that.

It's roots hold those sand dunes in place.

- [Melina] This forest to dune partnership is just one in a series of similar symbiotic relationships throughout West Michigan state parks.

- P.J.

Hoffmaster's also another state park along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

That park has a high proportion of critical dune as well that's protected.

P.J.

Hoffmaster is one of, you know, a series of parks along Lake Michigan that have really exemplary forest types.

So forests that are protected because, you know, they're on top of that critical dune, but also because they represent a high-quality intact forest of that type.

Beech-maple forest, that includes red oak, hemlock.

Some of these other species that make up that forest are nice, intact, and support species of conservation need.

- [Melina] Conservation efforts are currently underway as a silent threat poses a danger to the delicate balance of the biodiversity in this area.

- Hemlock at this time, they are threatened by an invasive pest called hemlock woolly adelgid.

Hemlock woolly adelgid is not native to the state.

It was brought to the country in the 1950s, and it's slowly spread from the East Coast to neighboring states, and you know, we have HWA now in Michigan.

What that is, is it's a tiny insect, and it fixes itself on the hemlock branch.

And it has a long piercing-sucking mouth part, and it taps into the tree's vascular system.

And so it feeds off of that tree.

So it slowly robs the tree of everything the tree needs to grow.

- [Melina] While hemlock woolly adelgid is fairly new to West Michigan, we have seen the devastating impact it has had elsewhere as many as 80% of the hemlock trees in Shenandoah National Park have died since 1980.

The effect appears as just a white trail on the tree.

Seemingly harmless, but as it spreads, it is quietly contributing to the destruction of the ecosystem that surrounds it.

- You know, when those populations grow, that's when trees really start to suffer.

So without the management of this invasive pest, what we would find in about, you know, 5, 6, 7 years or so without any intervention is that we would have dead hemlock trees throughout the park, you know, in those areas where it's scattered, but also in those really dense areas that are on the critical dune landscape.

Hemlock woolly adelgid has been identified at Michigan State Park since 2017.

Our first detection was at P.J.

Hoffmaster.

And in the time since, we have found hemlock woolly adelgid at eight state parks, including Saugatuck Dunes.

What we're doing to manage it is quite extensive effort.

The first of that is to survey.

You know, we've got thousands of acres that we manage where we know we have hemlock, and then that leads into our management strategy.

So the management is an application that we apply targeted to the tree.

What we do is we apply that on the trunk of the tree, and it basically taps into the tree's vascular system.

So the tree carries that compound through its vascular system.

The insect, as it's feeding, takes in some small amount of that insecticide, and then the adelgids die instead of the tree.

With the chemicals that we use, these are things that go directly to the nervous system of these insects.

So they're targeting that insect specifically.

These treatments do have a lifespan though.

Part of our efforts are coming back, surveying, finding out, you know, is it time to retreat to do these actions again?

It's really more continuous survey, continuous management for many, many years down the road.

(soft music) To me and to many others that come and enjoy the park, the ecology of the system is critical.

It's protecting that species.

When we lose a species from a forest type, you know, like losing all of the hemlock, that has consequences.

So that could impact our migratory birds.

That could have impacts down the road on erosion.

So there are those impacts ecologically.

(inspiring music) As far as, you know, supporting this work is to go and visit those parks.

That supports all the work that we do.

You know, the stewardship of these lands is funded directly by participation in recreation passports, camping.

All those activities support the work that goes into invasive species management within state parks.

Saugatuck Dunes, P.J.

Hoffmaster, Ludington State Park, Muskegon State Park, these other parks where we have hemlock woolly adelgid.

The forest type is really something that people come to enjoy.

That's a key part of, you know, tourism in the state.

It's a key part of the culture and supporting that recreation.

Folks enjoy coming to the park.

That also contributes to the local economy as well.

So folks that are coming here on vacation are bringing in their dollars to this region to come and enjoy the forest here at Saugatuck Dunes and along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

(water gushing) (birds chirping) (upbeat music) - Celebrating vibrant people, captivating places, and remarkable things.

This is "Living West Michigan."

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