SONOMA COUNTY
WOOD RECOVERY &
UTILIZATION PROJECT
PROJECT
PARTNERS
PROJECT
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About
The Sonoma County Wood Recovery & Utilization Project (Sonoma County Project) was selected by North Coast Resource Partnership (NCRP)as one of three sub-regional pilots to receive a portion of their funding originating from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research for our grant titled the Sonoma County Woody Feedstock Pilot Project.
The project seeks to realize the goals set forth in California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan as well as NCRP’s North Coast Resilience Plan.
As part of the selected projects, the Sonoma County project received support to conduct a feasibility study. Research for the study conducted during 2024 will explore the ecological and economic viability of rebalancing fuel loads in our forests. In addition, the pilot will assess potential opportunities to help offset the associated costs of forest health practice implementation. Toward these goals, the pilot will seek to determine the viability of creating an entity to manage woody material created from forest health and thinning projects, as well as begin community engagement.
The project is receiving technical assistance from the Watershed Research and Training Center as well as consultants funded by support of North Coast Resource Partnership via the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and the Bay Area Council Foundation’s California Resilience Challenge.
The Sonoma County Project will engage stakeholders in the county to explore the structure and feasibility of implementing an aggregation entity that purchases, transports, processes and sells underutilized small-diameter and “waste” timber from a diversity of procurement sources.
This excess woody material – small diameter trees, trees that can’t be sent to a sawmill, tops of trees, and chips – that is not used onsite for habitat, gully stuffing or to achieve other restoration goals, has the potential to support green forestry jobs, wood product makers, and to ideally offset the costs of ongoing, annual, forest management work.
The feasibility study will be guided by a vision of returning Sonoma County forests to actively stewarded, fire-resilient landscapes by improving the ecological health, function and biodiversity of our forests upon which our communities and ecosystems depend.
Feasibility Study + Planning
Our staff, consultants,
Work Group Members,
Technical Advisors, and stakeholders make this effort possible.
On the Ancestral Lands of Tribes
The Sonoma County Pilot acknowledges that the removal of Tribes from a large percentage of their ancestral lands within the county, coupled with the commercialization of our forests, has led to the dire ecological conditions we see today. Our goal is to help remedy these consequences by engaging, listening and learning from Tribes during the pilot and beyond.
Project Goals
As lead organization, Regenerative Forest Solutions (RFS) will engage working group members, stakeholders and technical advisors and consultants during the pilot planning phase to deliver:
Woody Material Supply: Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis
Potential Woody Material Demand and Wood Product Market Assessment
Establishment of a Draft Ecological Baseline
Entity Type Recommendation & Governance Structure
Infrastructure Assessment & Recommendations
Preliminary Community Outreach, Impact & Engagement Plan
Financial Modeling