Nate Madsen from the Lost Coast League and special guest David Simpson discuss sustainable forestry, climate change and wildfire. David Simpson is a local, environmental sustainable forestry advocate. David has been involved in sustainable forestry since its in inception in southern Humboldt.
KMUD radio, 91.1 FM / kmud.org
Gray Shaw continues the “Go Nuts” series, hosting a discussion about acorns with permaculture system designer Melanie Mindlin.
ISF hosts an in-depth discussion with Humboldt County tribal representatives. Topics include sustainable forest management, wildfire, forest certification, and Rainbow Ridge.
Nate Madsen from the Lost Coast League hosts a discussion about Rainbow Ridge and take called-in questions and comments.
Yana Valachovic and Lenya Quinn-Davidson, from the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, host a discussion about wildfire in the western states and the current wildfires in Northern California.
Gray Shaw hosts a discussion about agroforestry with a focus on chestnuts, with Carla Thomas.
Chip Tittmann and Richard Gienger host a discussion: Sustainable Forest Certification, Successes and Failures from the 1980s to the present, including the origins of ISF and its quest for sustainable forestry certification.
by Susan Nolan
A recent backpack trip to the Yolla Bolly Wilderness gave an immersion in fire ecology. In Indian times Cedar Basin must have been frequently burned. Someone pointed out that Indians burned to manage vegetation, not for fire control, and that would certainly be true in Cedar Basin, a place that would have been used for summer gathering and hunting, not a place to live year round. (Both the Wailaki and the Wintun used that area.) The early ranchers who ran cattle up there continued the burning regime to keep pastures clear.
But as the young Forest Service gained traction it suppressed fire to preserve timber resources. Protected from their greatest natural enemy, trees began filling in the grassland. It was quite striking to me on this trip that so many of the trees are young, short and pointy-topped.
There are scattered old growth trees. Their progency crowd around them:
You can see this tree grew up without near neighbors by the dead lower branches remaining on the trunk—those would have been shed much earlier in shade. With more frequent fires, the little trees would have been killed off.
An interesting spot is Saunder’s Place, a small stand of old growth next to an unusual meadow, very near a creek, a natural campsite. Note size of red backpack. Looking south.
Looking north across the meadow from within the small grove, you can see dense young trees filling in:
I bet the Wintu had a name for Saunder’s Place too; it is definitely a place. And reading the forest, it looks like in their day this little grove stood by itself in a mostly open grassland.
Jenny Burnstad speaks with Eric Lassodovitch and Brenda Quintero about utilizing timber from forest-thinning. All three are members of the Forest Reciprocity Group, or “Frogs.” Burnstad is a co-founder of Cloud Forest Institute, Lassodovitch is a co-founder of Polecraft Solutions, and Quintero is the founder of the Trees Project.
Jenny Burnstad and Govinda Dalton of the Forest Reciprocity Group discuss thinning forests and fuel-load reduction for fire safety and wildlife restoration, utilizing the small-diameter trees for construction.
KMUD radio, 91.1 FM / kmud.org