In October 2017, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, working with the Red Cliff Band, Bad River Band, and other Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission member bands, carried out a prescribed burn on Stockton Island. Fire specialists from the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs burned five acres on the northern end of the island's tombolo to reduce shrubs and hardwood trees encroaching in the pine barrens, encourage blueberries and other native plants, improve wildlife habitat, and reintroduce the cultural practice of burning the landscape. Park ranger Damon Panek, a White Earth Ojibwe, drew on traditional ecological knowledge and oral stories that Ojibwe had long picked blueberries there and maintained good picking through rotational burning, supported by fire scars and charred stumps on the island. Superintendent Bob Krumenaker said the pine barrens is a globally significant ecological system that is slowly disappearing without fire and is especially distinctive because humans helped create it. On October 11, 2017, more than 60 tribal members and park staff traveled to Stockton Island for a ceremonial feast and tour of the proposed burn area, where Leon Boycee Valliere of Lac du Flambeau led a ceremony in Ojibwemowin explaining to the island and its spirits that the fire would cleanse and refresh the landscape and restore plant communities diminished by years of fire suppression. The burn began a renewed connection to the landscape linking Native cultural practices with the National Park Service mission, and the lakeshore planned additional burning on the Stockton Island tombolo.