Show Notes
For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Oct. 22. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Fire and forest ecologists virtually all agree that prescribed and cultural fires will be an important tool to stop catastrophic wildfires from ripping through the state’s forests. But what should we do about forestland that’s already been burned by a fire? The U.S. Forest Service’s answer in the Mendocino National Forest is salvage logging. That’s a somewhat controversial practice when they cut down and remove dead trees to keep the amount of flammable material in the forest to a minimum.
Cynthia Snyder is an insect specialist and one of the people on a field trip through the parts of the forest where the August Complex Fire hit last year. She’s hacked off a piece of bark from one of the burnt trees nearby and shows us the insect boring holes and frass, or little wood scraps, they leave behind.
Those bugs are damaging the wood of those trees and making it harder for the Forest Service to find loggers to do the work. But research is showing salvage logging may not always be the best tool to use in every situation.
So the Forest Service is building on that research. Hydrologist Hilda Kwan describes the research project and the agency’s prescription: salvage logging some, all or none of the dead trees in a specified plot.
Silviculturist Radek Glebocki explains why this site specifically was chosen.
That was U.S. Forest Service silviculturist Radek Glebocki, hydrologist Hilda Kwan and entomologist Cynthia Synder on a tour of the parts of the Mendocino National Forest that were burned by the August complex fire last year.
For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local coverage, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.