January 2004, Volume 5, Issue 1

Cooperative Extension is an important and visible component of the College’s program in natural resources bringing UC’s expertise to those who live and work off campus. Greg is a CE Forest Advisor with programmatic responsibilities in wildland and forest ecology in Mendocino and Lake Counties. His specialized training is in terrestrial ecology. He has been with UCCE since 1985 and since 1990 has concurrently served as the north coast’s area advisor in Integrated Hardwood Range Management Project (IHRMP) administered from Mulford Hall on the UCB campus. Greg says: “I work very hard at promoting the university and demonstrating its competencies. My professional goals are to improve the forest condition and the communities that depend on them”.

It’s impressive to see the diversity of Greg’s program, and I suspect this is what makes his work so stimulating and rewarding. Since 1989 Greg has worked with Lake County’s conservation districts, the County public works department, and landowners to develop coordinated and collaborative planning efforts to address natural resources issues. An important part of this involves conflict resolution. As part of the IHRMP program, Greg has led an educational project in Mendocino County informing community agencies and landowners how to best conserve and manage oak woodlands. He does this through an effective program of educational workshops and group meetings featuring invited speakers and then prepares summary documents that are made available both in hard copy form and on the IHRMP web-site at http://danr.ucop.edu/ihrmp/. He is currently serving as the lead editor for the IHRMP’s second edition of A Planner’s Guide to Oak Woodlands. The new publication is currently in the production phase in the DANR process.

Greg has done important and innovative work stimulating community-based forestry. Absentee owners or corporations have traditionally owned Mendocino County’s commercial forestlands, which over time has led to a depletion of timber inventory that has impacted local economies and families. Beginning in 1997 Greg collaborated with a diverse group of stakeholders including a mill owner, a retired stock broker, a forest restorationist, a consulting foresters and a forest environmental activist, to initiate a new, inclusive approach focused on forest conservation by developing a model to stabilize financial markets and community involvement. Greg did this by helping develop the Redwood Forest Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c) (3) corporation aimed at acquiring, protecting, restoring, and managing redwood lands. The Foundation developed a new investment model, the first of its kind in the country to be recognized and sanctioned by the IRS, in which tax-exempt municipal bonds could be used to purchase forestland. The bonds are secured at lower percentage rates than other traditional financing vehicles and are then serviced from timber sale receipts. To pull this off, Greg meets monthly with collaborators and prepares for them alternative management scenarios that enable an evaluation of potential acquisitions. It’s worthwhile looking at the Foundation’s approach on the Internet at www.rffi.org.

Two important forestry players in the county are Mendocino Redwood Company and California’s Department of Fish and Game. In a novel, collaborative approach to resolving resource issues Greg facilitated the formation of a science panel charged with developing science-based approach to resource planning and management. The project is a key step to the Company’s completion of a Natural Community Conservation Plan (NCCP). The NCCP when completed will be the first such Plan developed on the north coast, and the first plan entirely focused on management of timber resources on private land.

Old-growth forests are a hot topic and there is considerable interest in whether young-growth redwood stands can be managed to enhance the rate at which they attain old-growth characteristics. To promote this concept the Save-the-Redwoods League has funded a collaborative project involving Prof. Kevin O’Hara, Greg, and the California Department of Parks and Recreation. The project focuses on determining the extent to which treatments such as thinning can enhance the rate at which old-growth structural characteristics are developed. Greg’s interest is in the relationships among silviculture, stand conditions, and wildlife populations. Greg is also assessing habitat elements and old-growth characteristics in Montgomery State Park and has developed a literature review and bibliography.

Greg’s competence in wildlife habitat relationships is being utilized in a collaborative project with Soper-Wheeler Company and with Prof. Desley Whisson at UC Davis. Soper-Wheeler has redwood land that many decades ago was converted to support cattle grazing. Efforts to reestablish redwoods are being prevented by extensive damage by rodents (voles). Greg and Prof. Whisson are comparing the effects of tilling, vegetation manipulation, and toxic baits on vertebrate feeding behavior, damage levels, and seedling survival and growth.

California has recently seen a huge increase in vineyard establishment. Greg, in collaboration with Adina Merenlender, IHRMP North Coast Specialist, has recently published articles on the impacts of converting oak woodlands to vineyards and the assessment of current environmental and forestry laws on California’s oak woodlands. He is also managing a project at the Hopland Research and Extension Center monitoring the avian community of an oak woodland stream. The results of the past 10 years of monitoring were recently published in the California Fish and Game Journal.

You can readily see from this brief overview that Greg is contributing extensively to the College’s forestry program and is addressing pressing forest resource issues. I’m sure you will agree that he is really succeeding in what drives him — promoting the credibility of the University and enhancing both forest resources and community well-being.