Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 8
Community-Based Forest Management
in Arcata, California
MARK S. ANDRE
The Arcata Community Forest, established in 1955, comprises 2,150 acres of second-
growth redwood (
Sequoia sempervirens
) forest near Humboldt Bay in Humboldt
County, California (fig. 8.1). While redwood is the iconic northern coastal California
tree, the community forest also contains other conifers such as Douglas fir (
Pseudo-
tsuga menziesii
), grand fir (
Abies grandis
), western hemlock (
Tsuga heterophylla
),
western red cedar (
Thuja plicata
), and Sitka spruce (
Picea sitchensis
). Management
for the community forest is guided by the City of Arcata (population 16,900) govern-
ment leaders, the City's technical advisory committee, and local citizens, all of whom
have expressed commitments to a sustainable management program that serves as a
model of a managed forest for demonstration and educational purposes. Through vol-
unteer activities, the citizenry is involved in an adaptive management approach to in-
crease biodiversity, accelerate old-forest conditions, provide late-successional forest
habitat, and sequester carbon while providing revenue. Timber harvest revenues fund
forest operations, habitat restoration, and open space and parkland acquisitions. Com-
munity forestry in Arcata is designed to provide local residents the opportunity and re-
sponsibility to manage their natural resources. In environmentally minded Arcata,
manipulation of the forest by various means, including timber harvesting, has been so-
cially acceptable due to the ecological soundness of the project goals, confidence in
the Forest Management Committee, and the visible results of almost thirty years of
treatments.
History and Context
Lands within the community forest were originally claimed by Euro-American settlers
through the patenting—or privatizing—of public domain land. Most of what is now
the community forest was initially logged during the 1880s when trees were felled
with axes, wedges, and crosscut saws and skidded by oxen teams to Humboldt Bay.
Large trees with defects and many smaller-diameter trees were left following logging
and were often consumed in the slash fires that regularly occurred in the wake of
early logging operations. Most of the trees that remain on the forest today naturally
