Conservation Forestry

How and why the Land Trust harvests timber

This article originally appeared in our newsletter, Landmarks, Spring 2007

Some people might be surprised to to find out that we log land we own. Probably the most surprised would be those who have seen Byrne Forest. We have owned this 322 acre forest since 1984 and done careful timber harvest on parts of it five times (the sixth time will be this summer). The result is a beautiful, healthy, and productive forest – and because of how we harvest, it will stay that way. That’s why we call it conservation forestry.

After the surprise comes the question, “Why?” A conservation group that logs seems incongruous to a lot of people, but it makes perfect sense to us.

The short, and incomplete answer is that we have to. The Land Trust acquired the forest with Carlton Byrne’s stipulation that it be managed for both educational and recreational uses, and as a sustainable working forest. In fact, the first two Land Trust timber harvests (50 acres in 1987 and 60 acres in 1990) were used to pay off the purchase part of the gift/purchase transaction.

We have carefully and selectively harvested timber three times since then and will conduct our next harvest on 78 acres this spring and summer. The funds from these harvests will be used to care for the forest and other conservation lands. Since we acquired the forest in 1984, it has generated over $1.1 million to support our conservation work.

These funds support our on-site Land Steward, Jeff Helmer (above) who takes care of the forest, maintaining trails, keeping invasive non-natives plants at bay, and making sure that the property does not suffer the fate of so many unmanaged lands. You won’t find trash dumps, illegal camping, excessive erosion or ATV trails at Byrne Forest. Pretty much everyone who visits says it’s beautiful and those who know forests can see the signs of its health. (We’re hosting a Member Walk on June 9th. See the back page for details.)

The forest wasn’t healthy or beautiful 120 years ago after it was clear cut and burned, like most of the conifer forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains. One result of clear cutting is the forest that grows up afterwards is an even-aged forest: essentially the opposite of a natural forest, which has trees spread across the age spectrum. An unmanaged forest after clear cutting looks more like a tree plantation than a natural forest – as the picture below shows. A dense, even-aged forest can have 200 or more trees per acre; a healthy old growth forest as few as 35. Our forest management is designed to reduce tree density and to provide age diversity – which is why Byrne Forest is both healthy and beautiful.

We do this through a comprehensive Non-Industrial Timber Harvest Plan and by virtually hand selecting which trees are harvested. The Forest Stewardship Council certifies our timber as a sustainable product. The area we’re logging this year was last harvested 18 years ago. Trees are marked for removal so that nearby trees can grow more vigorously. Hand selecting trees is a complex business. It depends on the slope, the size of nearby trees, the ease of getting them out, the proximity of creeks, and more. Our staff and board members have toured the area with the foresters and reviewed their plans – and feel good about what we are doing. Our Conservation Project Manager, Julie Anne Hopkins, will be onsite to oversee the harvest.

Another measure of our care is that we harvest substantially less than allowed under state regulations. State law places 40% of Byrne’s redwoods off limits because of the steepness of the slope or proximity to streams. (Byrne Forest encompasses part of seven watersheds and ranges in elevation from 600 to 1600 feet.) That means that of the 200 acres of redwoods, 80 are untouchable. The state allows harvests of up to 60% of trees over 18 inches in diameter on the remaining 120 acres – but we harvest on average 35-40% and do so only in part of the forest at any given time. In the past twenty years we’ve taken out 3,500 trees – and planted over 16,000!

The bigger picture

The harvests at Byrne Forest are part of the bigger picture of conservation both in our county and globally. Forests provide us with clean water, wildlife habitat, wide open spaces – and play a major role in climate change. Three-quarters of California’s drinking water originates in forests and forest loss is a major contributor to the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere and global warming. Up to a quarter of man-made CO2 emissions are a result of the loss of forests. In the US more than 1.5 million acres of forests are lost to development each year – releasing as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 53 million cars in a year.

Santa Cruz County is two-thirds forest and most of those forests are commercial timberlands (125,000 acres, 43% of the county). One of our strategic goals at the Land Trust is to permanently protect those forests and we don’t believe it can be done by buying them all and turning them into parks. Protecting the Santa Cruz Mountains means protecting productive timberland – and making sure that logging is carefully done without the unintended consequences of erosion and deteriorating water quality. We are practicing what we preach, which is important as we reach out to landowners. As we talk to timberland and farmland owners, we hear time and time again that this embrace of working lands is one of the reasons they’re willing to talk with us about protecting their working lands.

Protecting timberland through conservation easements that stop development isn’t something we invented. The Vermont Land Trust has protected 450,000 acres of timberland. The Downeast Land Trust in Maine is working on the protection of 340,000 acres of working forests, and owns and manages a 27,000 acre forest. In Humboldt County, the city of Arcata has carefully logged its 2,000 acre community forest for years – generating $500,000 a year to care for the forest and its system of trails, as well as acquiring and caring for new park land.

The Pacific Forest Trust has protected thousands of acres of working forests and manages the van Eck Forest in Humboldt County, the first forest in the state registered under the California Climate Action Registry. The registry is part of a growing trend that recognizes the benefits of forests for carbon sequestration – absorbing the CO2 we generate. People are also beginning to recognize that building with wood generates less pollution than alternatives like concrete and steel, and that building with timber logged closer to home saves transportation. Today, 80% of the wood used in California comes from out of state, mostly from places with less environmental regulation of timber harvesting practices.

That’s the long answer to why and how we log: because it’s good for the forest, good for land protection, and good for the environment. We think of it as conservation forestry and understanding it requires that we recognize that it isn’t your grandfather’s logging. The days of clear cuts are over, at least in our county. The days of haphazard, environmentally insensitive selective logging are also over, at least in land trust managed forests. The days of development, however, lie ahead of us and we believe that conservation forestry is one vital way to protect our county from becoming another lost California landscape. •

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