The first time that I considered that the forests on our ranch might be in trouble was when my oldest son Jesse, a Humboldt State botany major, home on break, said, "Mom, this is not healthy forest." I was surprised. Really, every day I walked the trails of the ranch with our goats, reveling in the deer trails that climbed almost to the top of the ridge through the open oak savanna and then descended into California bay laurel (bay) and oak forest. We followed the ephemeral creek back to Dry Creek Road, the goats gambling down the tumbling, steep hills through tangled, wild grapevines. I had come to know the seasons of the ranch by the wildflower bloom in spring, the reddening of the poison oak in July, the occasional deer antler, gouged in combat, found in the hinterlands in autumn, and the thick green moss on the trunks of the oaks in winter. Occasionally an oak fell, and after a season or so, Donald cut it up for firewood. But until Jesse's assessment, I thought the verdant forest, with its forest floor a bed of sword and maidenhair fern, and its slopes secured by roots of snowberry and wild rose, to be a healthy, resilient ecosystem.
On the night of October 8, 2017, three fires surrounded us. For a week we did not know if our ranch would burn. As it turned out, it didn't burn that year, but I knew we had to do something. Too many trees were dying after the drought. Their debris increasingly covered the forest floor. Our forest had not been managed for at least 200 years, ever since white settlers arrived and then killed or chased off the people who had successfully cared for the Earth of Napa County for millennia.
Most of us know that our climate is in deep trouble. If we are going to keep global temperature rise from topping 1.5 degrees Celsius, we must reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) we put into the atmosphere by eliminating the use of fossil fuels. But we must also draw down the excessive CO2 already in the atmosphere. Our native forests do this naturally, sequestering carbon within their roots, trunks, and branches. Scientists say trees are our best hope of drawdown of carbon. There are calls to plant 3 trillion trees, which will help, particularly as the trees grow, but we also need to stop cutting trees. Proforestation, a term coined by Bill Moomaw, is a natural way to ensure trees do what they do best, including sequestering carbon, by not interfering with them. Proforestation "means growing intact existing forests to their ecological potential." When forests are disturbed, carbon is released, regardless of how the disturbance happens: wildfire, agricultural conversion, logging—or thinning.
Allowing forests to do what they do best sounds simple, and in some ways, it is until you take in the fact that we cannot just let our forests go without some tending. First Peoples knew this. We have interfered, stopping forest fires that naturally thin trees, burn underbrush, prevent fuel ladders, and destroy pests. Now we have a big problem: forests with weakened, sick, and dying trees and a warming, drying climate that supports wildfire. In the last four years, wildfire has burned almost half of Napa County alone.
According to Forest Unlimited, of the 33 million acres of forest in California, 24%, or about 7.9 million acres, is owned by non-corporate private owners such as Donald and me, and 90+% of this acreage is 500 acres or less. Many of us have no idea how to "manage" a forest—or even that we need to. And we are not alone. Those managing our forests are just now learning that we can't do what we have done in the past, mainly suppress fire, often to protect logging. Traditional knowledge about managing forests, particularly the use and timing of controlled burning, has been actively suppressed. We all know now that this has had severe consequences in the degradation of our forest lands and their ability to survive frightening frequency and increased wildfire intensity.
Back to our ranch:
I worked with Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS, under the USDA) around some erosion on our ranch. When I discovered they also did forest evaluations with matching funds on forest management, we applied. NRCS suggested that we also work with neighbors on the forest plan. We contacted the two neighbors to our north who agreed to work on their lands. Some level of funding is available for those who make up to $900,000 a year. Each landowner must apply separately.
The next step was an evaluation. NRCS Evelyn Denzin and forester Jeff Kelly walked our ranch, drawing up a plan that includes thinning the forest and pile burning and management of the debris. We received estimates of what the cost share would be. If we are accepted for this program, we will be in charge of getting contractor estimates, hiring, paying for it in total, and then applying for the reimbursement, covering up to 50% of the work completed. We can do the work in stages, but we must complete reimbursed work within three years.
Our ranch is about 41 acres. Eight of these acres are planted in vines, orchard, and aromatics. The forest plan divides the 23.6 forested acres into units and collects data from four representative 1/10-acre plots. The data shows that, on average, there are over 1000 trees per acre, with about 850 of these being California bay laurel. It is unclear how this overabundance of bay has occurred, but they need to be thinned. The trees grow too close together, being ladders for flames to climb into treetops, and bay outcompetes the desirable oak and madrone. California Bay laurel also transmits sudden oak death to the oaks and the madrone and is very flammable. As you climb the mountain, the bay's incidence is less, being 50% of the trees, with 25% being black oak, and the remaining 25% split between California coast live oak and madrone. We also have a lot of brush accumulation. The last few years of the drought have weakened the oaks and madrone. Donald and I are shocked at the excessive number of dead trees which have fallen.
The forester’s recommendations raise questions that mirror those in forest management. Because we collectively have suppressed fire in our forests for so long, we have a dire situation on our hands. Everything we do now will have negative consequences, and yet, if we do nothing, the outcomes will be far worse. First, there is a lot of needed thinning if our forests are resilient and survive wildfire. According to author Daniel Matthews (Trees in Trouble: Wildfires,Infestations, and Climate Change), the density of forests that enjoyed frequent fires before white settlers took over the West was about 20-60 trees per acre. In some of the plots on our ranch, we have 1000 trees per acre. A recommendation is thinning to 100-200 trees per acre, leaving all the oak and madrone, more bay by the creek, and keeping distances between tree clumps to about 15 to 20 feet. Even leaving the larger number of 200 trees per acre means removing 800 trees per acre for almost 24 acres, or 16,520 trees! Many of these bay trunks are small, but I still can't get my mind around cutting that many trees. What do we do with that much debris? Burning releases carbon back into the atmosphere. Chipping creates kindling for wildfire, unless you compost it for years before spreading it again-- or make biochar, perhaps the best option. Biochar can be redistributed to the forest floor, increasing fertility and sequestration. Still, how do you make biochar from the chipping of 16,520 trees? The logistics are daunting. And then there is that issue of carbon sequestration. Those trees to be thinning are doing work at the tune of about 4.74 metric tons/acre of carbon sequestration a year (1).The cutting of 16,520 trees is a carbon bomb. How do we mitigate that? Do less dense forests do a better job at sequestering carbon, allowing trees to get larger? Having clumpy-gappy forests also supports the clumps surviving wildfire and provides safe habitat for wildlife.
Yet, there is the danger if we do not thin. Matthews cites studies saying that drought-stressed trees are more likely to die in a wildfire, even trees that are historically able to survive fire, like oak and redwood. Thinning may well help our drought-stressed trees survive. Ten years ago, we had a fire on our ranch shortly after doing the 100 feet defensible space around our home. All the oaks survived, although the fire browned the leaves. All the impacted trees are now healthy oaks.
Then there is the issue of the thinned bay roots sending up shoots. A common forestry practice is the use of herbicides, but we are committed to Biodynamic organic methods. Herbicides are endocrine disruptors and carcinogenic. An alternative plan uses goats trained to eat bay shoots. That would be the best option, but I can tell you that it will be a very hungry goat that eats bay. But then, my vet says my goats are spoiled.
I study the plan, considering the consequences of each decision. If we are going to get a grip on wildfire risk, I need to learn to manage the forest on our ranch and make some hard choices. It’s the only way to make our ranch forest wildfire resilient. What I decide will impact our neighbors around us, and what they decide will affect us. Like our watersheds and our air quality, our forests connect us with each other and with Nature. We are on a steep learning curve on how to most responsibly work with our lands. Please, if you own land with forest or oak woodlands, consider contacting one of the following agencies to get help making your lands wildfire resilient. There are federal and state plans available that help with cost-sharing, which include NRCS; Cal Fire's California Forest Improvement Program, which offers forest management for owners of 20-5000 acres; and the federal Emergency Forest Restoration Program, which helps owners who have been impacted by the wildfires.
(1)https://www.countyofnapa.org/DocumentCenter/View/307/Final-Appendix-A-Technical-Memo-1-PDF
Patricia Damery is a writer and lives with her husband Donald on a forested ranch on the western ridge of the Napa Valley. Her forthcoming book, Fruits of Eden: Field Notes, tells the story of her own entry into activism for oaks.