Pacific Southwest

Title: Using Scientific Information to Develop Management Strategies for Commercial Redwood Timberlands

Author: Barrett, Jeffrey C.

Date: 2007

Source: In: Standiford, Richard B.; Giusti, Gregory A.; Valachovic, Yana; Zielinski, William J.; Furniss, Michael J., technical editors. 2007. Proceedings of the redwood region forest science symposium: What does the future hold? Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-194. Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; p. 417-428

Station ID: GTR-PSW-194

Description: In 1999, PALCO (Pacific Lumber Company), a private landowner, and the state and federal governments agreed to implement a unique Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) on 89,000 hectares of commercial redwood and Douglas-fir timberlands in Humboldt County, California. The aquatics portion of the PALCO HCP contains a set of "interim" conservation strategies developed using regional studies of habitat conditions and threats to species. The HCP, however, also requires PALCO and the state and federal governments to undertake extensive landscape level studies, and in particular, watershed analysis, for the purpose of cooperatively developing and testing the effectiveness of land management prescriptions tailored to address local watershed specific conditions.

In the first five years of implementing the PALCO HCP, the interdisciplinary team of PALCO and agency representatives successfully developed an analytical framework for conducting watershed analysis, completed such analysis for three watersheds, and developed new operating prescriptions which target watershed specific issues while maintaining operational flexibility and economic viability. This paper discusses these studies, and in particular, the application of specific scientific findings to the development of management approaches. In the Freshwater watershed, results of the sediment budget supported easing mass wasting avoidance operating prescriptions and instead increasing prescriptions to reduce road surface erosion. Conversely, the Van Duzen and Lower Eel River watershed sediment budgets led the interdisciplinary team to refine mass wasting prescriptions by utilizing a new risk based model which provides greater protections for near stream environments. Uniformly, high stream canopy levels combined with surveys of existing large woody debris and development of local recruitment curves support the easing of no harvest restrictions in streamside riparian management zones in all three watersheds.

Keywords: HCP, sediment budgets, watershed analysis

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Citation

Barrett, Jeffrey C.  2007.  Using Scientific Information to Develop Management Strategies for Commercial Redwood Timberlands.   In: Standiford, Richard B.; Giusti, Gregory A.; Valachovic, Yana; Zielinski, William J.; Furniss, Michael J., technical editors. 2007. Proceedings of the redwood region forest science symposium: What does the future hold? Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-194. Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; p. 417-428.