As you walk through various parts of Sunfish Lake Park, you may notice a lot of standing dead trees, dead trees leaning on other trees, as well as numerous downed trees. According to a 2015 Forest Management Plan by Steven Kunde, several areas of the park were hit with a storm in 2013 leaving a few blowdown areas with a lot of wood on the ground. The largest of these is in the northeast portion of the park. Some areas have also developed oak wilt, which is a type of disease that can kill primarily red oak trees. In the past, natural fires would occur periodically and remove some of this wood fuel and clear away understory brush and plant debris. This ‘cleansing’ of the forest floor would allow new seeds to sprout and healthy forest regeneration to occur. The need to remove some of this downed wood for fire management needs to be balanced with the benefit of leaving dead trees (called snags) and old logs for important wildlife habitat. Invasive species like buckthorn can take advantage of the open areas that dead trees create and quickly take up space that natural seeding would have filled. It is important to carefully manage all of these aspects in order to have a healthy forest. To see a copy of the Forest Management Plan, go to