Oregon Natural Forestry

Conservation, “don’t know how to get there, but know where to start” was about in the middle of Peter Hayes’ conversation with the group brought together by the Rockaway Beach Citizens for Watershed Protection, Friday evening, September 29th.  In Hayes talk titled “Say Yes! to Better Forestry” he shared with us his fifth generation view of his connections with forests and what it might look like extending out several more. With more questions than answers and more hypothesis than facts he talked about the demand for multiple forest values and current reality that logs are the only way to pay for them. Hayes asked where is “better” on the spectrum between forest complexity such as wilderness areas that are supported by tax dollars and simplified forests, “tree farms”, that can generate revenue.  Between these two forest ideas is there a place to listen and work through differences recognizing that the multiple values forests provide need be paid for with multiple revenue st...

Damn those incense cedars, they just keep growing. That was the comment from one of a group I met who were trying to create a wildfire resistant community around their homes.  They were concerned because of a wildfire burning near them.  Looking around it was easy to see the grass, then the small trees, next to larger trees besides homes.  Some had already taken action, and broke the grass to home connection, but not everyone.  There were those who would not touch a tree. Forests, natural, are so dynamic, they are always changing. Some of this change is visible like the West’s wildfires that clogged metropolitan areas with smoke.  Other changes are more subtle like the tree limb that breaks off in the first windstorm of the year.  That limbs adds to the forest floor humus absorbing the first big rains, a burn scar not so much. So what is a natural forest?  Should it be resilient and able to absorb the effects of climate change? Will the natural fo...

Welcome to the Oregon Natural Forestry blogspot and over the course of the next year I plan to explore what a natural forest is. This exploration will be a combination of people’s comments and current forestry research with the purpose of offering these concepts as on the ground forest management plans beginning October 1, 2018.  The entire history of ships entering and leaving the Columbia River with their ports of call and assorted cargo would probably be easier to map, than our connections with the forest. A question posed long ago to Oregonians by the Oregonian, was “Do you have what it takes to manage Oregon’s forests?”.  That question hasn't really changed but the connection has and is worth exploring because it is such a personal experience for many.