'Rivers to ridges' restoration sought in Northern California national park

John Driscoll in the Times-Standard (California): The Six Rivers National Forest wants to pick up the pace of restoration efforts on the land as part of a larger push to address climate change, population growth and wildfires across the nation.

Just what that effort will look like is the subject of an upcoming public meeting on Feb. 16. Six Rivers Supervisor Tyrone Kelley said that the event is meant to air plans for hardwood stand restoration, sediment reduction, road work, plantation thinning, the use of prescribed fire and recreation, as well as economic opportunities that may exist.

The stepped-up restoration program, called “Rivers to Ridges Ecological Restoration” is part of a landscape-level approach. One of the largest parts of the proposed efforts would be restoring hardwood and oak woodlands on some 120,000 acres of Six Rivers, and on 145,000 acres of plantations and other logged lands. ”Those stands are overcrowded and they need to be thinned,” Kelley said.

That should help make those areas more resilient to wildfires, tree diseases like sudden oak death and to encroachment of human habitation, Kelley said. The pace of the work is currently not fast enough to deal with the growing effects of wildfires on the land, he said.

Map of the Six Rivers National Forest, from the US Forest Service