Umpqua Forestry Services

His unique experience includes residential and commercial tree care, power line clearance, hazard tree removal, wildland firefighting, tree planting and forest restoration. His experience includes hurricane, ice storm and tornado emergency response. Robert is a specialist in fuels management and all phases of professional tree care and forestry practices. Our perspective:

If we are to manage fore

sts for ecological integrity, derive our resources without disturbance of water cycle and maintain the full range of native wildlife species on the landscape, it is a challenge that must include the adoption of new ideas and evolving methods. Simultaneously, methods that have proven dangerous or destructive need to adapt or be eliminated. Many believe that USFS policies are out of date and should evolve as science and proven restoration management policies have presented. Every study that has investigated the issue of fire has found that the only way to effectively protect homes is to reduce combustible brush in “defensible space” within 300 to 500 feet of individual homes. Cause of death and destruction of property has conclusively proven that little or no fuels management makes firefighting impossible. The unspoken truth is how clearcut logging allowed millions of acres of manzanita and madrone to thrive, but have died in the shade of the now towering reforested timber. Current forest management policy on national forest lands remains heavily focused not only on suppressing fires in remote woodlands far from homes, but also on intensive mechanical “thinning” projects — which typically involve the commercial removal of upwards of 80 percent of the trees, including mature trees and often old-growth trees —that are mostly a long distance from homes. This not only diverts scarce resources away from home protection, but also gives homeowners a false sense of security because a federal agency has implied, incorrectly, that they are now protected from fire — a context that puts homes further at risk. The new scientific data is telling us that we should not be using fire to fight fire; In fact, "Control Burns" are a oxymoron, dangerous and unpredictable. The concept has caused the deaths of firefighters and the destruction of the property it was attempting to protect. To summarize; Ignoring or doing too little to control flash fuels costs lives and millions in property damage. Burning fuels is unnecessarily dangerous and depletes the forest of valuable nutrients, shade blocking, moisture retention and natural erosion control. Hand release is the alternative. Help us create jobs, boost our local economies and lets work together to clean the forest in a safe and sane way. Our economy, our forest and our entire ecosystem will be better for it.