Meet Mike Love
Meet Mike Love, Forest Specialist at Steigerwaldt. Mike is responsible for overseeing activities on clients’ land bases and ensuring logging, site prep, and reforestations are completed in a safe, effective, and timely manner. His duties include timber marking, boundary line establishment, timber sale administration, harvest planning, reforestation contracting, planting and site prep administration, rail car loading logistics, and timber cruising. He specializes in pine management, harvest planning, and ensuring timber sales are set up and completed in a timely manner for clients.
Please provide a professional history introduction (prior and during your time at Steigerwaldt):
- Prior to starting at Steigerwaldt, I worked for a large landowner called Wausau Paper in Northwest Wisconsin for nearly 7 years. I did a wide variety of tasks from marking timber, property boundaries, cruising, timber sale administration and everything involved in reforestation.
Why are you passionate about this field?
- I am passionate about this field because it has a wide variety of tasks that can be done. No two days are alike. One day you can be marking timber, the next running property boundaries, and the next day you could be working on a carbon project anywhere in the US.
How do you serve our clients?
- I work with clients to meet their management needs, goals, and objectives. That could be anything from managing their stand of timber to running a property boundary for them.
Why do you enjoy working at Steigerwaldt?
- I enjoy the fast-paced work environment here. It is also has a friendly work place atmosphere that is hard to beat. I also enjoy the benefit of finding shed antlers while I’m working!
Since you’ve worked here, how has the industry changed?
- Since starting at Steigerwaldt a lot has changed in the industry. Pulp mills have closed and/or changed hands many times in the 9 years I’ve been here and many loggers and foresters have had to change adapt to the ever changing markets.
What industry changes are you most excited about?
- I am excited about the changes that have been made in the technology side of the industry. When starting out as a forester 16 years ago all we had was a GPS that showed you track logs and waypoint. Now we have state-of-the-art ruggedized tablets that show your locations and tracks, but also have high resolution aerial photos and topographical maps.
What’s your favorite tree and why?
- My favorite tree is Tamarack for two reasons: One, I love cruising Tamarack-it’s always reasonably straight making log calls easy. Two, it looks very pretty in the fall when the needles are golden yellow and the adjacent balsam or spruce next to them are green. Proof that mother nature is a Packers fan.
Where do you like to go on vacation?
- I like to go to our families cabin near Spooner, WI. Many weekends growing up were spent here fishing, swimming, and spending time with family.
What is your favorite outdoor activity?
- By far it’s deer hunting in the fall. I love every aspect of it from checking trail cameras to the actual hunt itself. My son is now 5 and I enjoy the father/son bonding time we have doing all of that which makes it even more enjoyable.
