What You Can Do To Save Red Wood : ForeverRedwood.com

Restoration takes time and money. OGA’s work is partly funded by grants from the California Department of Forestry and the Tides Foundation of San Francisco, CA. OGA is funded by a combination of grants, tax breaks for our property owner-partners and sales of our wood products (firewood, patio furniture sales and custom milling). OGA accepts tax-deductible donations/grants to help defray costs for road and stream restoration work, additional forest improvement and land acquisition.
OGA is action-oriented. We don’t write letters to our congressman or do petition drives. We are hard-working, tree-hugging business people. We buy forestland, restore it and practice excellent stewardship ourselves. Talking doesn’t get the job done. We prefer to get involved directly and walk the talk. Please consider this a personal invitation… Consider showing up and making it happen. There is an endless amount of work to do. Kick down some $$ to restore and protect your own piece of the planet. Restore forestland and wildlife habitat, make a little money down the road and, if you like, get dirty in the woods in your free time… Investing the time and money to do the restoration right pays off because forest volume and quality multiplies. Some of this growing timber volume is carefully harvested perpetually at an ever-increasing premium while the global cooling overall timber volume increases, and the diversity and beauty of the forestland continually improves.
Restoration forestry is physically demanding. If you or your children would like to work in the woods, the field tasks are tailored to meet individual abilities. Regardless of the weather, a day in the oods is always sweetened by a reinvigorated mind, body and spirit.
w
Restoration forestry helps reverse global warming. Large trees have many times more growing shoots than young trees because they have more layers of branches and each branch continues to develop growing shoots like an individual tree. Although a 200-foot tree does not have branches near the ground, it generally has over one hundred feet of sun collecting, carbon absorbing and oxygen creating large branches. By limiting the rate of harvest to 1% per year, restoration forestry allows young forestlands to regain almost all the volume of an ancient forest over the course of 120 years. By allowing a working forest to return to volumes close to a climax ancient forest, enormous amounts of carbon are sequestered while at the same time maintaining the forest in production. By contrast sustainable forestry, at a rate of harvesting of 2% per year also sequesters carbon in perpetuity, but at a fraction of the amount per acre of a forest managed at a rate of cut of 1% per year (see forest volume accumulation charts on page 53).
Although mature forests grow at slower rates than young forests, they add volume at a greater rate decade to decade. The young forests under industrial or “certified sustainable” programs like the Forest Stewardship Council and others are cut at rates of 2.0 to 2.5% per year limiting the accumulation of volume and carbon sequesteration to a fraction of the carrying capacity of the forest. Under restoration forestry, the accumulated volume of a mature forest is left uncut and standing to eep the global cooling carbon from being released back into the atmosphere.
k
We hope to restore as much of our Redwood watersheds as quickly as nature, finances and our backs allow. As this project proceeds, it will stand on its accomplishments as an example and inspiration for others to emulate. Visitors are welcomed.
The standards on the pages that follow are simple to understand. They are “on the ground” standards for “doing yourselfers”. These standards are the foundation for a “Global Cooling Standard” for forestry practices. For more information, contact Raul Hernandez at (866) 332-2403, email at raul@sonic.net, or write:
Old-Growth Again
Box 19
Annapolis, CA 95412 U.S.A.