FOREST FLASH

March 2024

In Pacific Forest Trust’s e-newsletter, Forest Flash, we send you the most recent PFT news and updates on forests, clean water, climate, and wildlife. Subscribe here.

Dispatch from the Mount Ashland Demonstration Forest: Winter Discussions Lead to Spring Plans

Bear prints

The Mt. Ashland Demonstration Forest (MADF) offers a unique setting for learning about forests, climate change, managing fire and more. With its diverse ecosystems and rich biodiversity, it provides amazing opportunities to demonstrate climate-resilient management in these globally unique forests while being only minutes from the Rogue Valley metropolitan area. A key goal of our work on the Forest is to inspire and engage the next generations of forest stewards in restoring a more vibrant, resilient world. Collaborating with educators and engaging students allows us to foster a deeper connection to nature and instill a sense of responsibility towards environmental stewardship. Emily Bowes, our Stewardship & Outreach Associate on Mt. Ashland, is leading this effort for PFT. This is the first of a set of her “Dispatches from the Forest” as she develops our program. 

“I am filled with enthusiasm about the potential impact of these collaborative projects, says Bowes, “because together we can empower young minds and foster a culture of environmental stewardship while restoring the Forest.”

Emily recently took a group of local educators up to the mountain where a deep layer of snow still covers the ground and roads. They strapped on their cross-country skis, toured around, and brainstormed innovative ways to utilize the MADF for educational purposes. All the signs of spring on their route—budding dogwood trees and bear prints in the snow—were natural cues to incorporate teachings on nature’s dynamic changes in their future hands-on lesson plans.

The Mt. Ashland Demonstration Forests is a perfect place to create immersive experiences that educate and inspire the next generation of environmental leaders as they meet the challenges and opportunities of managing forests in the face of climate change.

Progress in restoring the Redwood Forest Canopy, van Eck California

In 2021, we began working with Dr. Stephen Sillett and Marie Antoine of Cal Poly Humboldt, as well as Giacomo Renzullo of BWA, our on the ground forest team, to pioneer the reestablishment of canopy fern mats in our still young redwood forests at van Eck California. Unseen by most people, the forest canopy is sometimes called the “eighth continent” of the planet, due to its importance in supporting both an extraordinarily complex system and its role in supporting the forest overall. These fern mats, composed of leather-leaf ferns (Polypodium scouleri), can develop to be the size of cars, and are crucial to overall forest function and canopy diversity. They collect soil, seeds from other plants, provide habitats for amphibians, birds, and insects, and, perhaps most vitally, capture and filter water—lots and lots of water. This is particularly crucial as climate change warms and dries the redwood habitats.

PFT President Laurie Wayburn and Marie Antoine up in the canopy.

Understanding the role of fern mats in forests is relatively new. Steve was one of the pioneers in this area beginning in the 1990s. Active restoration is newer still, and the van Eck is the first commercially managed forest to undertake such restoration. Since 2021, we have “planted” 60 fern mats, cultivated from collected ferns that blew down from local forests, and placed them into the crowns of 15 especially tall and robust trees on the van Eck. Even though the first planting was done in a drought year, they all survived!  Followed by 2 subsequent plantings in quite wet years of 2022 and 2023, we think the viability through variable weather years helps demonstrate the relative probability of success of such restoration. Once the ferns are well established, they spread their own spores out, and our work is done. We just then need to maintain those trees and thew growing forest overall.

We hope this inspires broader-scale canopy regeneration efforts, nurturing a keystone species and providing ecosystem-wide benefits that sustain diverse life forms for generations to come. We are excited to continue this restoration working with Steve and Marie!

Please consider a donation to the Pacific Forest Trust. Your help—in all capacities—makes our work possible. Thanks for supporting us as we support forests!

Oregon’s short legislative session just wrapped up earlier this month, and with its conclusion came good news!  PFT, with its colleagues in the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts (COLT) worked hard to demonstrate the value of the Oregon Agricultural Heritage Program (OAHP), a critical source of funding for the conservation of Oregon’s working lands. We were thrilled that funding for the program was included in the capital construction bill, granting the state’s landowners a vitally needed means to protect their way of life and conserve the natural resources that they steward. The OAHP is one of a very few conservation funding sources in Oregon. It this vital to help meet the growing interest in landowners across the state who want to preserve their lands for their families and future Oregonians.

Much of Oregon’s farmland is also forested, and PFT is working with several landowners who manage their lands for agriculture, ranching, and forest values.  Our working lands conservation easements provide numerous benefits to sustainable land stewardship, be it for food or forests, as well as the vast public benefits—from habitat to watersheds– this conservation ensures.  With new funding of $5.8 M, these new investments will spur significant new conservation as well as restoration and stewardship.  PFT will continue to advocate for new and expanded conservation funding in the next session and beyond!

• Please join us for Forest Fete—our annual gala and THE premier event for forest lovers—on May 2nd in San Francisco! This year’s keynote speaker is California Natural Resources Agency’s Wade Crowfoot; John Popper of Blues Traveler will provide musical entertainment! We will honor CA State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas. Help us set the night aflame, and bring your friends! Tickets here.

• The Capitol Weekly podcast aired with a discussion with PFT President Laurie Wayburn on how the conservation and management of California’s forests, as well as that of its other natural and working lands, can help the state reach its ambitious climate goals and mitigate the worst effects of climate change. 

• There has been a shocking increase in global temperatures since last summer, but little concrete information about the exact cause. Our colleagues aggregated some relevant research. Here is a global temperature ranking from climatologist Brian Brettschneider; June 2023 through February 2024 saw consecutive months of record-setting global temperatures. Meanwhile, Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Godard Institute, re-up’s that last year’s heat was anomalous and requiring of more data.