Bob Putze was the first residential landowner to place a conservation easement on his land with the TLC. His property adjoins the Port Huron State Game Area along the west side of Abbottsford Road just south of Ruby. It is a nice northern forest community with lots of Eastern White Pine, and tall Red Pines that Bob planted in 1964. Edge species like Big-tooth Aspen and planted spruce are gradually dying off in the increasing shade, while shade-tolerant American Beech and Sugar Maple are colonizing the understory, a natural process known as forest succession which leads to a mature native forest community. The ground-level vegetation is diverse and of good native quality with the usual species of cool sandy soils in the Port Huron area including at least three species of clubmoss, a distant cousin of ferns, along with Canada Mayflower, Wintergreen, and Low Sweet Blueberry. A small area of wetland is covered by Royal Fern with Michigan Holly shrubs. Bob Putze’s forest is potential habitat for Michigan Endangered Painted Trillium, a rare species that occurs in the area and is now known only from Saint Clair in all of Michigan.

The Bob Putze Preserve is characteristic of the drier and more northerly forest remaining in the region. In the Port Huron area, northern forest complex is a secondgrowth woodland complex of mesic to dry-mesic northern forest, dry-mesic southern forest, hardwood-conifer swamp, and southern hardwood swamp on sandy soils extending across large parts of Kimball, Clyde, and Port Huron Townships. The vegetation of this complex is a unique blend of northern and southern flora, skewed largely toward northern species. This generally northern community complex covers a broad and flat landscape of coarse to fine sands deposited across the glacial lakeplain, the dominant cover being swamp forest. Smaller upland sand ridges are typically scattered throughout the complex, deposited in glacial drainageways or as glacial lake beaches and inland dunes.

Bob Putze is a very conscientious and reverent man who loves God’s creation and cares for every animal that ventures onto his land. Bob feeds them all, including deer, turkeys, rabbits, raccoons, opossums, and stray cats. Even Pileated Woodpeckers come to his suet feeder, and Flying Squirrels live in a nest box by his driveway. Bob has always felt a spiritual connection to his land. For years, he wanted to ensure that the woods would remain natural and undeveloped. The TLC conservation easement provides the legal basis for that protection in perpetuity.

Because of the value of the TLC conservation easement, Bob Putze could claim a significant federal income tax deduction over 15 years, the property taxes will not be uncapped upon sale, and he could claim a local property tax reduction.