Restores a Fire-Resilient Habitat

Forest owners, home owners and communities are struggling to manage the increasing risks from a hotter, drier world. The “wildlands-urban interface” or WUI is where forests and residential subdivisions neighbor each other – bringing greater risks of catastrophic wildfire for both. In a region where frequent, low-intensity burns were the norm for indigenous people, now large scale, high intensity fires are a great danger.

The forest the Epsteins purchased had been logged over and then severely burned in the 1973 Hillview Fire. Much of the property had become dominated by brush and thickets of madrone. There were few remaining conifer stands, and what remained was thick stands of young Douglas-fir or ponderosa pine, and only a few larger, older trees.The overly dense stands were unhealthy and dying. The Epsteins teamed up with forester Marty Main to implement l restoration strategies such as thinning conifer stands, clearing brush and overly dense hardwoods, re-planting, and carefully reintroducing “good fire” to reduce understory fuel loads and nourish the soil.

Now after 35 years of investments, the results are dramatic. There is twice the volume of timber, with more big trees and fewer small ones. It is a biodiverse and healthy forest, with a mosaic of vegetation types and spacing, including vigorous conifer stands of mixed ages and oak woodlands. The Epsteins’ fuel reduction treatments and habitat enhancements are interconnected with those on the nearby National Forest, Ashland Watershed, Siskiyou Mountain Park and Oredson-Todd Woods, creating cross-boundary protection across the WUI to change fire behavior.