A nonprofit buying North Coast forestland aims to save vital stands by taking over timber operations. Some say it’s going out on a limb.
[ California ] Chris Kelly takes stock of the dark green ridges of redwood and fir stacked against a light-blue skyline. It’s there that he plans to log roughly two dozen square miles of forestland in the coming months and years. But his employer is not one of the timber titans that have pulled lumber from California ‘s Redwood Empire for more than a century. He manages the land for the Conservation Fund, a 21-year-old Arlington, Va.-based organization that strives to balance natural resource protection with economic goals. And timber sales here will be used to pay for forest and watershed restoration. The group says it is the first nonprofit to own and run a major timber operation in the state. And the second- and third-growth redwood forests it has chosen are in a region where intensive logging has left a legacy of environmental problems and relatively young trees.

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org