The Problem:

Overgrowth of flammable material due to fire suppression

Gradual habitat loss due to overgrowth

Catastrophic habitat and property loss due to inevitable wildfire

The Solution:

Manual fuel reduction

Making biochar from this fuel for use on-site defrays labor costs of fuel reduction

Prescribed burning, after fuels are sufficiently reduced

Our Conditions:

• steep terrain (40’ contour interval on topo map)

• remote location

• logging damage

• off-grid homesteading

• cannabis cultivation (ended 2022)

History

Southern Humboldt County has been exploited in waves for beaver pelts, tanbark, sheep, logs, and finally cannabis.

Fire suppression began in the early 20th century, promoting Douglas-fir from an occasional species to a dominant one.

The region was logged with bulldozers in the 1970's. Back-to-the-land homesteaders bought logged-over land cheap, built homes and planted weed. The forest was mostly left to recover on its own. Douglas-fir resurged and forest litter accumulated.

More aggressively profit-driven growers arrived after 1996, when medical cannabis was legalized in California, while many of the original homesteaders remained. Many of the same abuses done by logging were repeated by commercial cultivation.

Tying It Together

The cannabis cultivation that defined this region since the late 1970’s has largely ended as of 2022, with the collapse of the California cannabis economy. Families that grew cannabis here still face the threat of wildfire from a century of fire suppression, along with legacy impacts of unregulated logging prior to their arrival. Remaining residents have fewer funds for dealing with this threat as it continues to increase.

Manual fuel reduction is required to prevent catastrophic loss of stored living carbon. By making biochar from excess forest fuel, the problem of fuel buildup can still be a threefold solution: for garden soil productivity, forest soil restoration and carbon sequestration. Free home-made biochar is an incentive for dealing with excess fuel.

Douglas-fir, a pyrophyte that propagates invasively under fire suppression, is the most abundant material for making biochar among many. It shades out native oaks and takes over meadows, gradually reducing biodiversity. Wildfire in fir-dominant forests tends to incinerate all species, whereas in the absence of firs, fire drops to the ground and oak and other hardwood canopies mostly survive. Reclaiming and conserving oak woodlands and meadows is part of the purpose for this project.

The green rush of cannabis cultivation has ended, and other revenue streams are being sought. Biochar production will not provide one, but it will support local forest restoration, increase garden productivity and sequester carbon, among other things. Centralized, industrial biochar production is a viable business model that is being practiced responsibly elsewhere in the state, but it is out of scale with forest homesteading. Sensitive and endangered species live here. Low-tech biochar production addresses these concerns. We need to stabilize our land and our lives, not start another wave of exploitation. Instead of a wave, biochar represents a ripple — a Black Ripple of healing for the economy and the forest.