Top 5 Reasons to support NNRG:
Our dedicated, knowledgeable staff. If you own a small- to medium-sized forest and want to manage your land for more than just the almighty dollar, it helps to have someone in your corner with the wisdom and experience to help achieve your ecological, economic, aesthetic, and even spiritual goals for the forest. That’s the staff of NNRG. We have room here to mention just three of them: Rick, our most seasoned forester, has a 30-year track record of getting landowners the best price for their timber so they can cut the minimum necessary to meet their financial objectives. Lindsay, our director
Oregon Native Bee Atlas
Bees need our help. Just five years ago Oregon saw a major bee die off, and pollinator populations continue to decline around the world. “We have more species of bees in the Pacific Northwest than all the states in east of the Mississippi,” says Andony Melathopoulos, a pollinator ecotoxicologist with OSU. “We really want to protect that endowment.” The Oregon Bee Project, a partnership bolstered by OSU Extension, Oregon Department of Agriculture, and Oregon Department of Forestry, is hard at work to prevent another die-off. The program engages communities about their local bees, provide diagnostic services for beekeepers to recognize emergent diseases,
How to Manufacture Biochar from Woody Biomass
Converting excess woody biomass to a valuable soil amendment Saturday, June 30, 2018 | San Juan Island Biochar, a soil amendment made from woody biomass like branches and small-diameter trees, presents an opportunity for landowners to convert forest thinnings to a high-value product. Removing excess biomass from dense, crowded San Juan forests is an important way to increase fire resilience and improve ecological health. This workshop will cover all the tips and tricks San Juan County landowners have discovered to successfully and safely manufacture optimal biochar. This workshop is the third in a three-part series on woody biomass in the
FSC-Certified Northwest Forests
NNRG’s group certificate for forests meeting the Forest Stewardship Council® standards covers more than 190,000 acres in 86 different ownerships across Oregon and Washington. The forests certified by NNRG are depicted as dark blue circles in the map above. In addition, another 420,000 acres in the two states are certified under other auspices, including the South Puget planning unit of Washington Department of Natural Resources, EFM, the Coquille Tribe, the Collins Lakeview Forest, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and Oregon-based forestry consultants Trout Mountain Forestry. For a list of lands that are FSC-certified through NNRG’s group certificate, click here. For a selection of NNRG member profiles, click here.
Not Your Father’s Lumberjacks
Remember the Super-Axe-Hacker from The Lorax? The machine that could whack off four truffula trees with one smacker? Advances in logging technology have made this fantasy contraption a reality, with equipment like feller-bunchers, forwarders, skidders, and processors changing how we harvest. These machines can make ecological forestry better, efficiently and safely removing some trees while leaving others to continue providing wildlife habitat, clean water, carbon storage, and even beauty. Our Executive Director Seth Zuckerman shares his take on logging advances to a sold-out crowd at Ignite Seattle’s March event.
Measuring Timber and Woody Biomass in San Juan Forests
Techniques to estimate the volume of timber and woody biomass in your forest Saturday, April 28, 2018 10:30am-5pm Lopez Island Understanding which trees and how many to remove from your forest is critical to a successful thinning project. This workshop will introduce participants to strategies for installing forest inventory plots and collecting the right data to calculate timber volumes. Participants will learn how to distinguish trees that merchantable and options for utilizing non-merchantable woody biomass. This workshop is the second in a three-part series on woody biomass in the San Juans. All forest owners are encouraged to attend, regardless of past participation. You may
Jackrabbit Farm: Building a Food Forest System
by Kelly Smith, NNRG volunteer On a cool and misty morning last September, Kirk Hanson and I visited Jackrabbit Farm in Southwest Washington. Kirk, Northwest Natural Resource Group’s Director of Forestry, needed to make observations and gather data for a new forest management plan for the farm, which had recently been funded through the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). My presence on this visit was due to my interest in “job shadowing” him on a site with elements of agroforestry and permaculture. As we drove down the forested driveway, a wild rabbit hopped across our path, welcoming us to
Blakely Island Timber
Up in the San Juans Islands, our Forest Stewardship Council®-certified member Blakely Island Timber cares for more than 2,200 acres on namesake Blakely Island. Harvesting timber is a tool to achieve their goal of stewarding the forest with a healthy, productive long into the future. Douglas-fir grows much more slowly in the San Juans than on the mainland, creating stronger wood with tighter rings and greater contrast between light spring bands and dark summer ones. This beautiful wood is harvested according to FSC® standards. BIT does all of its own processing, milling, drying, and manufacturing on site using an energy-efficient
