Managing Change in our Community Forests: A Toolbox for Action

Date of Visit: June 4, 2015 
Type of event: Conference
Topic: Managing Change in our Community Forests: A Toolkit for Action
Organization: Oregon Community Trees
Location: World Forestry Center, Portland, Oregon
International Fellows: Stuty Maskey (Nepal), Sarita Lama (Nepal), Miguel Sanchez (Bolivia), Robert Mijol (Malaysia)
WFI Staff: Shadia Duery / International Fellowship Manager, and Rick Zenn / Senior Fellow

Invasive pests, changing climate regimes and increased urban density will cause changes in our urban forests in the coming years. What tools and strategies can managers use today to help our community forests adapt? This one-day conference provided participants with a toolkit full of possibilities, based on the most recent research in our field.

Keynote Address–Making Arborly Love: Urban Forestry Advocacy in the 21st Century
Erica Smith Fichman,TreePhilly Program Manager, Philadelphia Parks and Recreation

• Do your research
• Find good partners
• Build your brand

Soil! What it is and How it Works
James Cassidy, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon
Article about J. Cassidy

• Mollisols are the best soil type for agriculture (US has 28%)
• The answer is: Add organic matter!
• Organic matter and clay have a negative charge allowing for minerals (nutrients) that have a positive charge to attach to them.  

Fire Without Borders

Date of Visit: May 29, 2015 
Type of event: Field tour
Topic: Managing Forest Fire Hazards
Organization: Oregon State University / Forestry Extension
Location: Estacada, Oregon
Host: Glen Ahrens / Oregon State University / Forestry Extension
International Fellows: Stuty Maskey (Nepal), Sarita Lama (Nepal), Miguel Sanchez (Bolivia), Robert Mijol (Malaysia)
WFI Staff: Shadia Duery / International Fellowship Manager, and Rick Zenn / Senior Fellow

This field trip focused on learning about the behavior of the 36-Pit fire as told by those who experienced it, including details on fuel conditions, topography, weather, and the suppression effort. Discuss management implications with respect to fire resistance, fire resiliency, and fire safety.

Last September an unprecedented forest fire burned on Oregon's NW side, Pit 36 Fire. Over 5,500 acres of forest on Federal and private land burned down over 9 days. Low relative humidity, high temperatures, high East winds, and steep topography created the perfect conditions for a forest fire of large magnitude to spread fast.  Usually wind conditions slow down during night hours, but in this case they did not, allowing for the fire to grow overnight. The fire was human caused by a target shooting spark.

Forest fires are monitored with satellite imaging to declared them out, and this one has not been declared out yet, waiting upon a satellite image coming in the fall.

2015 Forests and The Economy Symposium

Date of Visit: May 27, 2015 
Type of event:  Symposium
Topic: 2015 Forests and The Economy Symposium
Organizers: Investigate-West and the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication
Location: Portland, Oregon
International Fellows: Stuty Maskey (Nepal), Sarita Lama (Nepal), Miguel Sanchez (Bolivia), Robert Mijol (Malaysia)
WFI Staff: Shadia Duery / International Fellowship Manager, Eric Vine / Executive Director

The Portland symposium featured leading experts that discussed innovative ideas and policy proposals for managing Oregon's forests.


The Missing Middle: Toward a Model of Sustainable Forestry for Oregon’s Private and Public Forestlands 
Panelists:

•     Brent Davies, Director of Forestry at Ecotrust
•     Peter Hayes, Co-owner, Hyla Woods and former Oregon Board of Forestry member
•     George McKinley, Executive Director, Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative

Sustainable forestry was defined as mimicking natural processes to attain long term forest health, managed for multiple values to meet human needs without degrading the resource.

Issue: Of the 4.3 million acres of family forestland is 1.9 is inside or within 1 mile of an urban growth boundary.
Q. How to compensate private owners to avoid having to change land use?
A. Aggregate small forestland owners to compensate them as a group. Embrace a landscape view to manage the forest with a shared vision.

Hyla Woods is a 1,000 acres forest land on the Oregon Coast that manages its land under FSC principles. FSC certification is not helping to provide premium prices for their products.

Issue: Not enough mill capacity in rural areas. Forests could be managed under restoration practices, providing small diameter logs (<10") from thinning to mills. There should be tax incentives for this mills to open.

Issue: Timber prices fluctuate a lot. How do you manage for the long term? Forests can be managed in multi treatment lots allowing for a diversification of products at extraction. Markets for small woods is starting to develop (i.e. Cross Laminated Timber CLT).