Soper-Wheeler Company Helps Protect Community from Wildfire
101-year-old company is first major landowner to use emergency forest thinning rule
Strawberry Valley, Calif. July 28, 2005 - Concerned about the fire threat posed by overgrown forests to thousands of California communities, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) enacted an emergency rule in June 2004 designed to enable landowners to quickly remove trees and brush to minimize potential fire threats to those communities.
CDF's emergency rule was designed to expedite thinning on overgrown forests near communities at risk of wildfire, like this land in Yuba County.
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The regulation gave communities at risk and landowners in the wildland-urban interface a more efficient way to reduce the risk of damage and loss associated with catastrophic fire. Prior to the rule, time-consuming timber harvest plans, which typically cost $30,000 each, were required. Landowners that use the rule must still protect wildlife habitat, water quality and other natural resources.
The Soper-Wheeler Company, a 101-year-old forestry company in Northern California, was the first major landowner to use the emergency regulation to clear trees and brush from an overgrown area near Marysville.
About The Fuels Reduction Project
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The fuels reduction project occurred in June 2004 on 100 acres near Brownsville in Yuba County. Soper-Wheeler Company had acquired the parcel through an exchange with the U.S. Forest Service. Trees had not been harvested on the land in recent decades and it experienced a significant fire in 1944.
In compliance with the Board of Forestry's emergency regulations, no tree larger than 26 inches in diameter at breast height was removed and the area retained 50 percent canopy closure. Before the project, approximately 400 trees covered each acre; now there are approximately 75 trees per acre.
Smaller trees and hardwoods were harvested, chipped and sold to Pacific Oroville Power Inc. in Oroville for use in its clean biomass energy plant. The material generated about 3,500 "bone dry tons" (BDT) of biomass fuel, or enough to power 3.5 million average-sized homes for one hour. (1 BDT = 1 megawatt = 1 hour of energy for 1,000 homes.) Some larger conifer trees were harvested and sent to one of the remaining mills in Northern California, producing 510,000 board feet of lumber, or enough to build about 32 homes.
Since the rule was enacted by CDF in early 2004, 33 forest thinning projects representing a total of 1,159 acres have been accomplished. Some of the projects are still in progress.