The following is a press release issued by the Eel River Recovery Project:
The Eel River Recovery Project, in collaboration with local landowners, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), is working to return good fire to the land through an ambitious multi-year watershed-wide forest health project in the Tenmile Creek Watershed in the Laytonville area. On October 11, ERRP hosted a successful prescribed burn on almost 30 acres in the lower Tenmile, and on November 23 they organized a well-attended community pile-burn at Vassar Ranch. Both burns were led by Burn Boss Scot Steinbring and the nonprofit Torchbearrs.
On December 7th, Will Emerson of the Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance (NM-ERA) will join ERRP to co-host a FREE onsite workshop at Vassar Ranch, open to all community members, to learn more about the pile burning and the Tenmile Creek Forest Health Project and see the burn effects from the recent pile-burn. Emerson will conduct a hands-on demonstration of the ecological benefits of different burning methods including conservation piles, “rick” burning, and the portable biochar kiln.
- Saturday December 7, 2024 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
- 7 miles north of Laytonville
- Learn how to build piles in the forest and safely burn them
- Get hands-on instruction in lighting piles, monitoring them, and quenching them.
- Learn about what permits are required and how to get them.
- Learn new techniques for burning, including the conservation burn technique, making biochar in a Ring of Fire kiln, and building a rick of poles and watching it burn.
- The workshop is FREE with a FREE lunch. The event is supported by a grant from the Mendocino Community Foundation.
Attendance is limited to 30 participants because of parking issues, so pre-register now. Directions and more details will be emailed to you once you register. Register by clicking HERE and filling out the form.
The Lower Tenmile Creek project area is located near Hwy 101, approximately 7 miles north of Laytonville. The workshop will begin at 10am, and smoke may be visible from Hwy 101 and surrounding areas.
Our native fire-adapted forests are choked with areas of dense trees and woody fuels on the forest floor, the consequence of over a century of fire suppression. Over the spring and summer, Elk Ridge Tree Service hand crews thinned slash and woody debris and built hundreds of burn piles at the Vassar site. Burning these piles will start to reduce the backlog of fuel loading so that prescribed broadcast burning can happen safely in the area in the future. The workshop on December 7 will explore climate-smart ways to burn piles that store carbon as biochar rather than releasing it into the atmosphere.
For more information visit https://nm-era.org/
