2022 Firewood and tree felling about committee HOT 4 CLOSED

We are looking for Phellinus (Poria) weirii root rot and not Armillaria root rot, I believe, if the trees are the ones that I am thinking about. This root rot spreads slowly but lasts in the soil for over a century. I am not sure how to slow its spread except not to allow Douglas fir to grow in the vicinity. Trees will generally survive up to about 30 - 40 years in age and then die and fall over. My knowledge of this pathogen is limited and is based on work done in 1955 and 2008. Some discussions have suggested that you might plant western red cedar (western hemlock [?]) in these areas to possibly control it over the long-term. -- Phil

from committee.

Update: on the weekend of June 25/26, enough wood was bucked, split, and stacked to fill 2/3 of the woodroom.

from committee.

Chuck, Rick, and I were at Meany today. Everything around and in the lodge is nice and tidy, like a herd of little elves came through a couple weekends ago and tidied things up before they left. 🤗

Today's purpose was meeting Anne and Mike, the arborists from A&M Tree Service NW. We explained to them our intent: we love our trees, we will never log them, and we don't care about the timber value. The things we care about are forest health, biodiversity / habitat, fire mitigation, and keeping trees off our power lines.

Then we walked the line. Meany crew walked the line at the last work party and identified some dead and/or problem trees. We did okay. The arborists brought trained eyes, and pointed out, "see those mushrooms on the side of that tree," and, "look at the ant colony under this one," and "wow, lightning strike here, but the tree is still okay!," and "this is a hot spot here with 5 dead trees and this one is shedding bark." The net result is we're going to have a collection of habitat trunks standing along the power lines, with the tops removed so they're less of a hazard.

from committee.

On October 17th, Meany hosted a small group of sawyers in an instructional program for USFS Certified Sawyers. We felled a half dozen smaller trees near the telephone cabin for the purposes of instruction and thinning for fire suppression and root rot mitigation purposes. Also felled were the (4) dead trees behind the Tow Hut.

from committee.