Category: From the Blog

Article by Margaux Clarke. Margaux completed her University of Washington Environmental Studies Capstone Project with Northwest Natural Resource Group in Winter/Spring 2023. 3… 2… 1… Say Cheese! NNRG’s use of scout cameras (camera traps) at their climate adaptation project in Nisqually Community Forest are an important part of the snow monitoring research, but they provide more insights into the forest activity than just the snow depth. For the purpose of this project, the cameras are used to collect daily snow accumulation data to supplement the data taken once every two weeks by NNRG techs. There are six cameras on site:

Last spring, Paul Hansen and his 16-year-old granddaughter found themselves tromping through his forest near Mount Rainier (Tahoma), in Washington. Both were searching for old PVC pipe remnants and rebar stakes hammered into the ground, but their motives that day were split. Paul was hoping to find the centers of circular plots he’d marked out 10 years prior in order to do regular inventory of his young forest near Eatonville, Washington. His granddaughter was hoping to spend some time with granddad…and take home the promised $50 bribe in exchange for the inventory assistance. While GPS coordinates helped guide them to the

Forest owners can help accelerate research and understanding about the factors affecting the health of western redcedar through two methods: sharing observations online or collecting soil samples

Fireside chats are monthly community events where forest owners can talk directly with NNRG staff and other forestry professionals, and connect with other forest owners in western Washington and Oregon.

We asked the NNRG staff and board — notorious for thinking about forests as much off-the-clock as on — for the best forestry, nature, PNW, and environment-related books they read this year. The result is a list as varied as it is long! Click on a title below to read about the book, or scroll down to read about the whole list.  Deep River Author: Karl MarlantesPick from: NNRG Director of Forestry Kirk Hanson “In the early 1900s, as the oppression of Russia’s imperial rule takes its toll on Finland, the three Koski siblings―Ilmari, Matti, and the politicized young Aino―are

2023 is fast approaching, and we’re eager as beavers in a wetland forest to start some of the new projects we have planned. But before we start construction on our next lodge (so to speak), we’d like to take a moment to reflect on some of NNRG’s most notable achievements and activities of 2022.   1. Monitoring shows the value of snow gaps at the Nisqually Community Forest climate adaptation project In winter 2021-2022, we completed our first season of snow monitoring at our climate adaptation project near Ashford, WA. Forestry techniques like thinning and gap cuts are sometimes recommended

Forest owners looking for ways to profit off of their forests sometimes turn to producing non-timber forest products, or NTFPs. Some lease salal harvesting rights to greens companies; others make and sell evergreen wreaths made from cut boughs. One member of NNRG’s group’s FSC® certificate has created a successful business out of a less conventional NTFP: renting out a uniquely luxurious treehouse deep in their woods. Sean, who stewards a 200-acre forest in southern Oregon with his parents, built this treehouse with the help of a few friends. He grew up building treehouses, so designing and constructing this large treehouse to rent

Planning what happens to your land after you pass on is a critical part of good forest stewardship. If you don’t plan to sell your land or pass it on to another family member, you’ll need to figure out not just how it will be managed in the future, but who will manage it. That involves a lot of decisions, and likely a lot of outside help. But even if you do plan to leave the land to your kids or other family members, don’t assume that transition will happen smoothly on its own.

The future is looking drier, and the trees are taking notice. With climate change creating warmer and drier summers, how can we use forestry techniques to increase snowpack and slow snowmelt for water availability? This question led us at NNRG to create an experiment in practical forestry methods, in collaboration with several partners.

Nestled on the edge of the Olympic Peninsula about halfway down Hood Canal, Camp Robbinswold includes 570 acres of young, older, and mixed-age forest that is Forest Stewardship Council® certified through NNRG’s FSC® group certificate. The camp property includes 1.5 miles of shoreline and tidelands, a 10-acre freshwater lake, 350 acres of forest managed for sustainable timber production, and 220 acres of forest set aside for conservation.  For nearly 100 years, Camp Robbinswold has drawn campers from western Washington (and far beyond), who explore the camp’s shores and forests whilst learning leadership skills, practicing outdoor recreation basics, expanding their ecological

A new and unique project is underway for NNRG: we’re writing a book! Co-authored by NNRG’s Executive Director Seth Zuckerman and Director of Forestry Kirk Hanson, and published by Mountaineers Books, the book will be a “how-to” manual for forest owners that teaches them to notice the natural qualities of their land, decide how to care for it, and roll up their sleeves to keep it healthy for the next generation. The anticipated publication date is spring 2024. The introduction to the book—authored by Seth Zuckerman—is published below. I cut my forest teeth during the late 1980s and ’90s, a time

Since its founding in 1992, NNRG has been led and staffed by a small, rotating band of idealists and innovators. 30 years later, though the team remains small, the impact of our work has spread as swiftly as a field of salmonberry that’s found a gap in the canopy. When NNRG sprouted 30 years ago in Port Townsend, it went by another name: the Olympic Peninsula Foundation, or OPF. In the early part of the 1990s, OPF was focused on improving salmon habitat and stream restoration in the Olympic Peninsula, and providing jobs to forest workers who had been left

It’s that classic love story: boy meets girl, boy buys forest, girl marries boy, boy plants 100,000 trees. Okay, not classic, exactly, but sweet, definitely.  When Fred Beazell bought over 500 acres of former farmland near Corvallis in the early sixties, he had dreams of living on the land with his long-time sweetweart, Dolores Anthony. The couple married a few years later, but for decades continued to live in Silicon Valley, where they both worked in tech. Still, Fred made frequent weekend trips to the land and found immense joy in digging holes and planting seedlings – over 100,000 of

We are fortunate that many Forest Stewardship Council®-certified forests in the Pacific Northwest are open for public enjoyment. These lands offer an opportunity for all of us to know what healthy forests look and feel like. Here’s a list of FSC-certified forests that are open to the public.

RESOURCES FOR IDENTIFYING AND CONTROLLING FLORA NON GRATA IN YOUR WOODLANDS Invasive plants such as the ones listed on this page can damage natural resources. They can quickly erode biodiversity in woodlands and reduce wildlife habitat by overtaking and toppling trees, eroding streambanks, crowding out and shading out native plant species, and even changing soil chemistry. On this page we’ve compiled some resources for woodland owners dealing with invasive species. There are many more resources out there, particularly through university extension service websites like this one from WSU Extension.   An ounce of prevention… Figuring out how to deal with

Maintaining a steady and reliable source of water in a changing climate is critical for the health of both people and ecosystems. Northwest Natural Resource Group (NNRG) has been testing methods of ecological forestry that will increase the resilience of future watershed forests. At the Nisqually Community Forest near Mount Rainier, we have implemented several forestry techniquesthat you may recall from our previous article: Thinning the forest to spread available soil moisture among fewer trees, Installing snow gaps so that more snow accumulates and extends snowmelt season Planting seedlings from warmer zones to provide a local source for adapted genetic traits The techniques were