FALL TREE LEAF COLOR may be mostly a thing of the past. However, if I was a biology/botany teacher, an assignment I would give to my students for a weekend reason to get them outside to explore would be this: Find a natural area with forests to do a walk about, and be observant to see, record in notebooks and/or via camera, as many different leaf varieties as possible with as many colors as possible. Arrange the collection according to leaf shapes, simple or compound, from both trees or shrubs, and identify all the host plants the leaves came from.

My motive for this assignment is to make exploring into a forest or tree area a fun thing to do. And by the way, a grade for extra credit will be handsomely rewarded by the amount of effort the class participants put into this assignment.

Another motive is this — not all assignments can be obtained from books or online sources. Getting one’s feet on the ground, out of the house, and engaging visual acuity to look for specific details, and find enough samples to fulfill the assignment requires field time. More research can take place after the leaves are back home and being prepared for an exhibit.

Of course, prior botany classroom assignments will have primed the students to understand the basics of silviculture, tree studies, and other plant biology facts. You may not know that trees require different conditions for optimum growth. Some of those conditions are soil types, moisture level tolerances both high or low, temperature ranges both high and low, and elevation of the land itself from low lying floodplains, uplands and foothills of mountains and into the mountains themselves all the way up to the tree-line.

In North America, there are six broad natural forest regions. They go by names that in general describe the land itself.

These regional names are Tropical Forest, Southern Forest, Central Hardwood Forest, Northern Forest, Rocky Mountain Forest and Pacific Coast Forest. Two of these are found in the eastern part of America, two the western areas and two are transcontinental. Within each region, more specific names may be applied by botanists but that level of detail can come later as students grasp the big picture of all those plants we call trees.

Deciduous trees are not dead, just going through a late fall and winter stage where short day length creates big problems. Photosynthesis chemical functions of leaves cannot take place during the late fall and winter seasons.

The heavy lifting happened during leaf emergence last spring, then followed by the active manufacturing time of photosynthesis going into the summer and early fall. The tree grew, added another layer of wood fibers to its trunk and main limbs, and enabled a whole lot of carbon dioxide gas to be taken in. The tree leaves gave back oxygen, a gas that is essential for any animal living on earth’s surface.

Another thing we humans like about trees is shade, a perfect place to sit under on a hot summer day. Trees as landscape enhancement features are all around us.

Finding the right tree for the right space in the correct soils is an assignment all in its own right. The wrong tree in the wrong place is a hazard potential somewhere down the line.

For animals, and particularly birds, trees offer nesting opportunities, insects to hunt for, and berries or fruits to pick at for consumption. Life in a tree is way more than just the tree itself.

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My other image today is a mushroom, probably a shelf type, a polypore name of which there are many, growing on a tree blown over by wind storms at least five years ago. This log lays on the ground of a forest.

And the mushroom is just another component of nature’s life cycle apparatus. Mushrooms feed on the dead and decaying wood of a once living tree.

Given enough time, that log will become infested with various decay products, its wood will have gone from strong and sturdy to weak and rotten. Its decomposition will take a long time. However, it will eventually become a new series of ingredients added to the forest soils. Recycling of nutrients back to the soil has been going on since the very first trees of earth’s long geological history lived and died. Hurray for mushrooms.

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Everything seems to cost more. This is also true in the world of natural resource management, whether by federal, state or local agencies. The cost of doing their business keeps rising and the income streams to support conservation efforts from public sources retains its hard to get status.

Radio Iowa’s news release of Nov. 19, 2025 helps to shed light on the problem of funding for some Iowa DNR operations, specifically its wildlife programs, habitat restorations and maintenance of existing lands and facilities. Fishing, trapping and hunting license fees, last adjusted in 2019, are not keeping up.

Iowa DNR Commissioners have discussed this topic for a long time, and they are now preparing to see if the time is right come January when a new legislative session will convene. A proposal to raise license fees will be discussed, but what passes may be another thing. What is known is that many fishers, trappers and hunters are supportive of an increase in the fees they pay to renew licenses each year.

DNR operations for state parks and many other non wildlife related operations come from legislative appropriations. There is another side of DNR functions paid for directly by the users — i.e. the fishermen and ladies, the trappers and the hunters. Those license fees are the sole support for fisheries research and management, for wildlife program research and management, and game warden law enforcement duties.

According to Uriah Hansen of Huxley, a DNR Commissioner, those license fees are in desperate need of updating. A proposal to increase those license purchase costs by five percent is being urged.

Many users of this pay to play scenario are supportive of paying more for their outdoor time pursuits. That willingness by sportsmen to take on this financially helpful step is what will be needed to show to legislators.

As a writer on conservation topics for a long time, this scribe is fully aware of how much it costs to run conservation organizations adequately. I am also keenly aware of how easy it is for statements to be made that say in effect — “do more with less funding.”

The reality is not that easy. The truth is that conservation agencies at federal, state and local levels can only do less with less funding. A balance point is a hard thing to achieve with political bodies that control budgets.

At the state level, Iowa DNR employee numbers are down 4.5 percent since 2019. That means some really important job categories are left undone because of unfilled positions.

Across the board, the list of DNR functions that state law says DNR operations are supposed to do is way longer than financial support to accomplish those tasks. According to Terry Thompson, president of Iowa Great Lakes Fishing Club, his constituent members are supportive of a five percent increase in fees. Wildlife and fisheries management related work oftentimes can involve conferences at a national level, held at selected sites out of state.

Many states send employees to learn more, perhaps to present papers to a wider audience, and offer discussions on state-of-the-art concepts on these biological topics. For Iowa, a recent example was noted whereby wild turkey biologists wanted to attend a conference but could not due to a severely constricted budget.

In this case, the National Wild Turkey Federation took monies from land programs out to give to the DNR so that those biologists could attend the conference. This short term action takes away from the role of the NWTF and is not sustainable in the long run.

The entire discussion about license fee increases is a long process that has to work its way through legislation hurdles. Iowa is not alone in similar efforts to stay current in a world of fast paced change to operation costs.

Nebraska’s Game and Parks Commission has proposed raising fees by 14 percent next year. Missouri has raised fees for residents and significant increases for non-residents who recreate in Missouri from other states, and South Dakota lawmakers approved fee increases for outdoor recreation, including a 65 percent increase in state park entrance fees for out-of-staters.

I will leave you with this thought that I copied off many decades ago: “You can spend your way into failure, but not economize your way into success” — Author unknown.

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Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology.