 |
| Spring 2008 |
Vol. XVII, No. 2
|
|
FOREST HEALTH / FUELS REDUCTION
Trinity County Fire Safe Council
The Trinity County Fire Safe Council, which the District has coordinated since 1998, continues to work to improve cooperation and coordination in all aspects of wildfire management in Trinity County. Members of the Fire Safe Council include US Forest Service, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Volunteer Fire Departments, Trinity County, the Watershed Research and Training Center, Bureau of Land Management, Trinity RC&D Council and private citizens. Together, these groups are working to involve the residents and landowners of Trinity County in fire prevention and response preparation in order to best avoid catastrophic fires in the future. One of the goals of the Fire Safe Council is to involve the whole community in working to protect their property as well as their neighbors’ by being aware of the risk of fire damage and taking some simple steps to help prevent it. During 2007, the Trinity County Fire Safe Council continued to work with the Volunteer Fire Departments to develop ingress/egress plans for fire safety and continues to work with Trinity County on Fire Safe elements of the Trinity County General Plan. As a result of the success of the Trinity County Fire Safe Council’s planning process and education and outreach efforts, the RCD continued to obtain funding for a wide variety of fuels reduction projects during 2007 to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire. New projects this year include the Community Chipping project with funding from the North Coast Air Quality Management District and fuels reduction work in the Weaverville Community Forest with funding from CalTrans.
|
Biomass Utilization Coordination
Funded by the US Forest Service in early 2007, the Trinity County Biomass Coordinator is working to improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildland fire through fuels reduction projects and the development of local woody biomass utilization in Trinity County.
Through collaboration and cooperation, the coordinator is working to develop a landscape-scale woody biomass utilization process in Trinity County, educate landowners on the benefits of fuels reductions, timber stand improvement and forest restoration, demonstrate to potential end-users about available technology in regards to biomass utilization and work to develop value-added products from small diameter timber and woody biomass.
This project is working to educate people who play a key role in woody biomass utilization, and through showcasing samples of value-added products that can be created from biomass, stimulate an interest in pursuing this effort further. This project is the first step of many if biomass is to move towards implementation.
The Gazebo Project (pictured above) is an example of biomass utilization, as the materials for the gazebo are considered “sub-merchantable” (not large enough to be sent to a mill). Developing a value added product helps to reduce the cost of doing fuels reduction as the biomass that was once either burned or chipped is now considered to have value and can be sold for the development of products such as the gazebo. The gazebo is a kit developed by The Watershed Research and Training Center in Hayfork as a prototype for roundwood construction. The timber in the kit came from fuels reduction projects within Trinity County and were processed at the Hayfork Small Diameter Sort Yard.
|
Weaverville Community Forest
The Weaverville Community Forest Stewardship Project is planned to be a multi-year project on approximately 1000-acres of densely forested BLM public lands adjacent to the town of Weaverville. The Stewardship project will meet both the Weaverville community and BLM management objectives for multiple use resource management, reducing hazardous fuels near communities, and improving overall forest health. Several community meetings and on-site field trips have been conducted and a cooperative agreement and initial stewardship forest plan has been developed. This initial project operation and management plan was designed to implement initial fuels treatment work on some of the highest fire risk areas near the Timber Ridge subdivision. Revenue generated from this treatment will then be used to complete future projects on BLM lands within at the community forest such as: additional sustained yield forest health treatments, road and trail maintenance, patrol, sign maintenance, cultural inventory and interpretation.
TCRCD developed a detailed initial harvest treatment plan for mechanically thinning approximately 200-acres of lands within the Weaverville Community Forest and adjacent to the Timber Ridge subdivision in 2006 and implemented this plan in the summer of 2007.
The timber harvest plan included flagging boundaries (property, sale area, harvest area, stream management zone, and special treatment area), delineating logging systems, roads, and landings, preparing silvicultural prescriptions, marking trees, cruising marked trees for gross and net volume, preparing a cruise report and draft sale area map, and preparing harvest specifications, such as slash treatments, road watering standards, etc.
|
A negotiated sale agreement for approximately 450,000 board feet was entered into between the TCRCD and BLM based on the above and was amended twice to accommodate changes in the timber market and a desire to make adjustments to the mark. The TCRCD subcontracted the forest health timber harvest to Stan Leach Timber Inc. Work began on June 18, 2007 and the logging project ended on October 3, 2007. A total of 786 MBF were harvested and delivered to Trinity River Mill in Weaverville from the 219-acre Phase I. No work was performed in riparian areas. Total payments to the TCRCD were $334,866.30; to the subcontractor were $248,426.57 and to the BLM for deposit into the Weaverville Community Forest Stewardship Account were approximately $111,116.81. Most of the project slash was chipped and removed from the forest, being taken to biomass facility in Anderson, CA. 13 loads were removed.
|
Other accomplishments for the year include:
- Installed gates to control public access and protect against vehicle-caused erosion
- Signage installed
- Invasive weed survey and management undertaken
- A Christmas Tree planting project was implemented by BLM in the winter of 2007 (approximately 8,000 Douglas Fir seedlings along the PG&E right-of-way)
- Two informational kiosks were refurbished and new, Weaverville Community Forest Information was installed at the kiosks at Mill and Oregon Streets
|
Return to the Trinity County RCD Home Page
|
