2024 Reforestation Camp
By Forest Health Coordinator Neil Mortimer
Reforestation was a fairly new concept to me when I started as the Forest Health Coordinator with AWG just over a month ago. Healthy and resilient forests have different meanings to different people. Forestry management is often carried out on public lands by the federal, state, and/or local agencies who have jurisdiction over those lands. Catastrophic wildfires have become increasingly devastating as these fires burn across the Western United States. Large areas of forested lands have been decimated by these large-scale wildfires, and post-fire restoration is occurring at many levels across the western landscape.
I attended the first annual “Reforestation Camp” in Meadow Valley, California, in mid August. The camp was coordinated by California Association of Resource Conservation Districts as part of their Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program funded by Sierra Nevada Conservancy. The camp was held at the University of California Forestry Camp where there was a mix of classroom lectures and field trips to various sites where post-fire emergency restoration activities had occurred. Classroom lectures included an overview of reforestation needs, which include post-fire site preparation and planting, seeds and seedlings for replanting, a discussion on carbon credits related to replanting forests lost to wildfires, climate and climate change, and prescribed fire and its role in reforested areas.
There were two field trips to sites that had been replanted within the last three years post wildfire. We heard from two different licensed professional foresters who each managed one of these sites for reforestation actions. Both of these properties were nonindustrial private forested lands as this was a focus of the camp. Both foresters described the landowners’ ideas on what a post-fire reforesting of their lands would look like, and the forester developed a plan that they then implemented on the property. The foresters described their rationale for what seedlings were planted and how they were spaced on the land as well as how the sites were prepped for the reforestation actions.
The Reforestation Camp was a good learning opportunity for me in my new role as the Forest Health Coordinator. I look forward to building AWG’s forest heath capacity as well as my own expertise in forest health going forward.
