[env-trinity] Weaverville Community Forest

[Patrick Truman]

Trinity district may expand community forest
By Dylan Darling
Wednesday, December 17, 2008 



Kenneth Baldwin of Douglas City discusses the Weaverville Community Forest along with other community members during a tour of the area with Bureau of Land Management officials and local politicians in October. The board for the Trinity County Resource Conservation District, which oversees the forest, is set to vote tonight on adding 12,000 acres to the forest.

If you're going

What: Trinity County Resource Conservation District board meeting.

Where: No. 1 Horseshoe Lane, off of Highway 3 in Weaverville.

When: 5:30 p.m. today.

Agenda includes: Vote on adding 12,000 acres currently managed by the U.S. Forest Service to the Weaverville Community Forest.

Already encompassing 1,000 acres, the Weaverville Community Forest could be growing - by 12,000 acres.

"We will really have a landscape-wide, community forest," said Colleen O'Sullivan, chairwoman of the board of directors for the Trinity County Resource Conservation District, which oversees the forest.

The U.S. Forest Service has already approved a stewardship contract that would give the community responsibility of managing the forest via the district. The district's five-member board votes this evening on whether to sign the 10-year deal.

"If all goes well we'll approve it," O'Sullivan said.

First brainstormed in 1999, the Weaverville Community Forest was established in 2005 when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management signed a similar stewardship contract with the district.

Such contracts had typically been made with timber companies, which would manage the land for harvest, said Alex Cousins, a grant coordinator for the district. 

While timber is still cut in the community forest, he said, it's done by loggers hired by the district, and proceeds from timber sales are spent on management costs and projects in the forest. Cousins said the funds from typical timber harvesting on federal lands would go into the U.S. Treasury.

The BLM had originally planned to swap the 1,000 acres of forest southwest of Weaverville with Sierra Pacific Industries when people in the small town proposed taking care of it on their own. He said they wanted to manage fire risk, preserve the "viewshed" - or the forest's appearance - and enhance recreation.

"They felt that if this land was traded out it would be clear-cut and it wouldn't look so good," Cousins said.

Cousins said anyone can join the steering committee that helps the district manage the forest.

Although the acreage would be increasing by more than tenfold with the addition of the Forest Service acres, Cousins said the district and its steering committee are ready to manage it.

"We are not going to take on anything we can't handle," Cousins said.

Reporter Dylan Darling can be reached at 225-8266 or ddarling at redding.com.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20081217/8e8c69e0/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: clip_image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 11197 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20081217/8e8c69e0/attachment.jpg>