Forest Restoration on private lands in the mattole

1. Forest Restoration on private lands in the mattole Not immune to controversy

2. Need for Forest Restoration

3. Typical second growth forest in the Mattole, lots of tanoak, scattered fir, houses and roads

4. Rate of Forest Recovery • Hardwood dominated stands are likely to stay that way for hundreds of years • Stand replacing fire may reset this condition multiple times • Intentionally reducing hardwood stocking, planting conifers and focusing growth on existing conifers shortens the timeframe for recovery by hundreds of years • Thinning also reduces chances of stand replacing fires by reducing fuel loads, again hastening recovery of old growth conifer forests

5. Distribution of Forest Types Today

6. Options in the Mattole • 116,000 acres of private forestland in the Mattole • Status quo: Conifer-dominated stands harvested commercially on industrial and ranch lands using THP process, mixed stands not managed at all, MRC obtains outside funding to do targeted restoration projects • Alternatively: MRC develops program to provide private landowners with incentive to implement forest restoration and sediment abatement on their own lands, using money generated from timber harvest

7. PTEIR in the Mattole • The bargain: streamlined approval and “EZ form” planning in return for using lower-impact prescriptions • Entirely voluntary: expands options available to landowners • Expected savings of 40 to 65% in plan costs

8. PTEIR in the Mattole: process to date • Broad-based steering committee oversees process, including 2 forestry activists • 4 neighborhood meetings held throughout the Mattole in spring and summer 2007. • Official “scoping” occurred in winter 2008. • Comments from scoping incorporated into project description • Advance consultation with representatives from public trust agencies has occurred throughout the process.

9. What isn’t in the PTEIR

10. PTEIR: Keeping the Forest in Forestry • Grow bigger, older trees • Increase proportion of conifer • No herbicide • Continuous forest cover

11. Elements of Forest Restoration • Welsh, H., G.R. Hodgson and A. Lind. 2005. Ecogeography of the herpetofauna of a northern California watershed: linking species patterns to landscape processes. • Findings in the Welsh et.al. (2005) paper correspond well with the forest restoration practices included in the PTEIR • Tailed frogs and torrent salamanders were only found in late seral, conifer dominated forests in the Mattole • all of those areas would be off-limits to harvest in the PTEIR

12. Elements of Forest Restoration • Abundance of late seral conifer forest needs to be increased in order expand the range of rare amphibians • Within the PTEIR, landowners couldn’t practice short rotation, even-aged forestry that lead to abundance of young forests • Amphibians need dispersal corridors • PTEIR includes a combination of no-cut buffers and canopy retention requirements to protect the continuity of their habitat.

13. Stream Buffers in PTEIR PTEIR buffers are more protective than those in the Calif. Forest Practice Rules. That’s true even though buffers are less necessary on sites harvested under the PTEIR. They’re less necessary because forests managed under PTEIR will retain large trees and high canopy cover.

14. Is riparian protection adequate? The PTEIR is designed to provide cool, clear water to parts of the stream network that support aquatic life (Class I and II streams). Note how much more densely mapped the stream network is on a 1995 THP (right oval) than in one from 1983 (left oval).

15. Is riparian protection adequate? • Unquestionably, cold water and high canopy cover are essential for some amphibians and fish • That does not translate, however, to a need for across-the-board restrictions near all Class III streams. By definition, any fish-less stream that supports vertebrate aquatic life (including amphibians is Class II. • Class II streams in the PTEIR have 30-foot no-cut buffers and 70-80% canopy cover requirements out to 100’ • Class III channels, by definition, do not support aquatic vertebrates, and are dry in the warm season. The only way they can affect amphibian or fish habitat is by transporting sediment to Class I or II streams.

16. How does the PTEIR protect Class IIIs? • The issue with Class IIIs is sediment. • Within 30 to 50 feet of Class III channels, the PTEIR requires 50% canopy cover & prohibits: • heavy equipment use except at approved crossings • group openings (patch cuts) • falling trees across the channel, and • removing trees whose roots visibly stabilize the bank or channel • These measures will prevent the PTEIR from causing surface erosion into Class III channels

17. What about Landslides? Map by the California Geological Survey of landslide hazard in the Mattole Orange denotes “high landslide hazard”; Red denotes “very high landslide hazard”

18. Steering clearof danger The PTEIR’s approach to landslide breaks the mould of one-size-fits-all regulation. Instead, it uses mapping of the Mattole done by unbiased geological experts, combined with on-the-ground field observations by foresters, to avoid logging in ways that might trigger landslides.

19. Worrying intelligently about sediment • Any proposal to forbid harvest on slopes >30% near Class III channels must not based on any of the extensive geologic information known about the Mattole, nor the larger literature. • For example, in the Northern subbasin an inventory of all landslides indicated that only 4% of sediment delivered to streams by landslides came from slopes that were 30-50% slope. The rest came from steeper slopes.

20. Worrying intelligently, Part II Map of geomorphic terrains in the Mattole watershed Prepared for the North Coast Watershed Assessment Program

21. Conclusions, Part I • Undoubtedly, we need forest restoration, improved conditions for aquatic life and landscape-level evaluation of forestry practices • The PTEIR can deliver all of these things if it is still flexible enough that landowners have incentive to use it • Making the PTEIR infeasible for most landowners will not stop logging in the Mattole or hasten the recovery of big old conifers. Instead, it will encourage the use of THPs.

22. Conclusions, Part II • The PTEIR stands to provide a range of benefits: • Incentives to grow bigger, older forests which provide habitat for creatures whose range has been diminished • Self-funding mechanism for road upgrades to avert sediment problems (required on PTEIR roads) • Reductions in fire hazard as forests are thinned, and not cut & replanted to highly flammable young stands • Income for landowners that reduces their temptation to subdivide. • All of these benefits are jeopardized by excessive restrictions on PTEIR harvests.