Case Study 1: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Building a Forest Restoration Economy across the Central Sierra of California
“This is where I’m going to be buried,” Pat McGreevy proclaimed with a smile as we walked through a recently restored forest stand in the foothills of Calaveras County. McGreevy, a retired U.S. Army colonel, has taken on the bold retirement plan of restoring thousands of acres of forestland in the central Sierra. So far, he has led over 2,000 acres of forest projects across the region.
McGreevy is one of a long list of characters working to rebuild both the economy and landscape of Calaveras County and the central Sierra. Calaveras County, located on the western slope of the central Sierra of California, lies halfway between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park, sandwiched between some of our nation’s most prized landscapes. A historic gold mining and logging region, the community’s legacy has been painted by the classic boom-and-bust story that has struck many parts of rural America.
The Boom and Bust History of the Central Sierra
The boom-and-bust legacy of the central Sierra of California is rooted in the gold rush of the mid 19th Century. As the gold rush brought people and resources to the area, many of the towns and communities of the region became booming trading posts and commerce sites. Mokelumne Hill, an unincorporated community in Calaveras County with a current population of about 600, was one of the wealthiest, most populated places in the state at the time.
With development from the gold rush came a need for lumber and timber for mining operations and surrounding infrastructure. Within a few years, sawmills had popped up across the central Sierra producing tens of thousands of board feet of lumber per day.
However, by the mid 20th century, the timber industry was in decline from corporate consolidation and changing markets. The closure of many of the mills across the central Sierra resulted in a devastating loss of jobs with secondary and tertiary effects felt across the local economy. One community member recalls, “The timber industry collapsed and all the [lumber] mills closed within a very short time of my arrival. Times up here got really tough- heavy meth use, a lot of drunken driving, a pretty significant change in fortune.”
A History of Collaboration and Restoration
As the community reeled from the recession, they came together to try and heal and revitalize their community and economy. During a series of grassroots meetings, diverse local leaders and stakeholders assessed their assets to chart a path forward, reconciling social and political differences over their common commitment to people and place.
Out of these discussions emerged several new community renewal initiatives, including Calaveras Healthy Impact Product Solutions or CHIPS. CHIPS was founded in 2004 to put people back to work restoring the area’s forests, meadows, and watersheds. Steve Wilensky, Founder and President of CHIPS explained, “We decided, okay, we can agree that fire-safe work and restoration and watershed work- that was a good thing. And jobs- that was a good thing.” The fall of the timber industry not only had deleterious effects on the economy, but a century of intensive logging had left the landscape in dire need of repair. The mission and work of CHIPS addressed both of these challenges in tandem.
However, CHIPS quickly realized that to reach the pace and scale necessary to make meaningful change across the landscape and the community, they needed the support of a broader base of partners and stakeholders. So, in 2008, CHIPS came together with other local leaders and initiatives to form the Amador-Calaveras Consensus Group or ACCG to expand collaborative efforts and increase the pace and scale of forest restoration across the region. ‘A small nonprofit is not going to change the world without there being a coalition of partners,” explained Wilensky, “We needed a broader basis to do our work… a nonprofit could play a role but they couldn’t wag the dog.”
The ACCG brought together diverse public and private partners including land managers, local utilities, loggers, and environmentalists among others. In 2012, the ACCG was one of ten collaborative groups across the country to be recognized by the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, receiving $10 million over ten years to increase restoration efforts on federal forest lands in partnership with the US Forest Service.
Since then, the community has seen the cascading effects of good collaboration, finding new and innovative ways to work together and leverage the skills and resources of each partner. By working with local grassroots organizations such as CHIPS, the Forest Service was able to increase the pace and scale of management of national forest lands to a level they could not have done on their own- restoring nearly 400,000 acres in ten years.
Building Pace and Scale: Expanding the Model Across the Sierra
However, the region took another blow in 2015 as the Butte Fire tore across 70,000 acres of land in Calaveras and Amador counties, destroying over 500 homes. The fire came on the heels of the 2008 economic recession, further exacerbating social and economic hardship in the area and adding environmental devastation to the list. Soon after the Butte Fire, the region faced widespread tree die-off from beetle-kill, the result of years of drought across the Sierra.
Following the eye-opening and devastating Butte Fire and amid the new reality of the tree mortality pandemic, stakeholders across the state started to realize the importance of the work that CHIPS and the ACCG were doing to return the landscapes to their natural state through forest management. As a result, dollars started pouring into the region to increase forest restoration efforts and help prevent future catastrophic fires.
Over the past five years, CHIPS has seen a huge expansion of its operations across the entire Sierra Nevada range. So far in 2020, CHIPS has brought in nearly $6 million in grants and contracts to restore forests and rebuild the workforce across the region. Much of the organization’s growth has been through partnerships with native tribes across the state including the Washoe, Paiute, and Miwok tribes, employing native men and women to lead restoration efforts on their ancestral lands.
In addition to increasing the pace and scale of environmental stewardship across the landscape, the expansion has provided a new source of employment within economically depressed rural and native communities throughout the Sierra. Rick Hopson, a district supervisor for the Amador Ranger District of the Eldorado National Forest has worked closely with CHIPS to implement projects across the region. “When you meet the kids, the young adults that are on these crews, it is pretty cool to see them enthusiastic about the work they are getting done and getting a paycheck and building something for themselves,” said Hopson.
CHIPS is not the only group whose footprint has expanded in recent years. Pat McGreevy, a member of the CalAm Team, a group of professional foresters in the central Sierra, has planned and implemented thousands of acres of restoration on lands in Calaveras and Amador Counties. In addition to restoring private land, the team has partnered closely with the Bureau of Land Management to restore lands that have been unmanaged for decades, the result of a lack of resources and staff. “The BLM land had never been worked on for generations…Their attitude now is we are so underfunded and understaffed the only way we can maintain our property is through collaboration with locals,” explained McGreevy.
Looking Ahead: Building Sustainable Forest Processing
However, as the pace and scale of forest restoration continues to increase, there is growing concern over the lack of facilities and mechanisms for processing material removed from the forest. While there has been substantial investment across the state for working in the forest, there has been little to no investment to handle the woody biomass. Present forest value-added infrastructure (mills and other processing facilities) cannot handle the volume and type of woody material being removed from the forests through thinning.
Jonathan Kusel, the Executive Director of the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, is one of many leaders across the Sierra that has been working on the biomass processing hurdle for years. “We collectively as a state will fail if we don’t rebuild a wood utilization infrastructure to go hand in hand with the landscape scale restoration,” explained Kusel. Without an avenue to add value to the work happening in the forest, many feel the work will continue to be dependent on public and private funding, limiting future growth and sustainability.
However, despite these challenges, local leaders find hope in the successes they have championed and continue to work to conserve and sustain the landscape and the people that call it home. Wilensky explained, “The amount of people working back in the forest- if you look at that finite picture, there are a lot of lives that have been changed in that.”
