Sonoma County quotes, stories, and case studies

Brock Dolman, on thinning Douglas firs: 

“[We had] a logged-out forest that then was fire-suppressed, and you see in this case the Douglas fir encroachment, what many people refer to as a dog-hair thicket, where there’s many, many young stems that are invading into a hardwood forest. And then the firs slowly shade that system out and take it over. They’ve got a lot of dead branches, what people often refer to as a fire ladder, those dead limbs where fire can climb up into the canopy. Or they begin to shade out the other trees and convert that ecosystem over. We love Douglas fir, it’s an amazing native tree, it’s not that we’re out to get Doug fir, but that we’re looking for a balance in the disturbance regime. We have a mantra here: fewer trees but more forest. It’s about the quality of trees vs the quantity, focusing on the older trees, the canopy closure of the trees, the space between the trees.”