Forest Restoration Project

Around the middle of the 1970s this old upland grazing range where Sage Mountain Center is located, was logged. Most of the 3-400 year old Douglas Fir trees where cut down, branched, and trucked away. What was left behind were large stumps, eroded logging roads, oil cans, rusty cables, and a tremendous amount of forest debris. In many areas the branches and limbs were waist deep. Some areas looked like a war zone. But the logging mess of the old growth trees was not the only problem. Fire suppression policies of the Forest Service encouraged the overgrowth of young firs causing the open meadows to disappear; this plays a big roll in altering the patterns of the native deer and elk and also diminishes the habitat for certain insects and ground-nesting birds. In addition, cattle grazing in these wild areas has increased the stress on the environment by overgrazing, trampling saplings, excessive browsing and streambank disturbance.

Normally, in about 10 year cycles, these forests would burn from lightning caused fires, clearing the understory of branches, limbs, and smaller trees. What would remain was a mosaic pattern of meadow and forest with light reaching the strongest trees fairly even. With man-made litter covering this area, along with a shortage of cleansing fires, the land which cradles SMC has become a fire bomb waiting to explode ( the wild fires of summer 2000 testify to the conditions that are present in many forested regions in Montana). After attending workshops and studying forest management material SMC developed a forest management plan which, over the last 8 years has proved to be a success. Four benefits are realized in one act: enhanced esthetics, habitat restoration, defensible space around structures, and space heating. The process works like this:

1.  We pick one section and manually sort through the downed debris and cut up anything larger than 3 inches in diameter for firewood. Small diameter trees, many the same age as the larger trees are removed. This wood gets stacked for winter heating of our buildings (because of the efficiency of our building we speculate that we'll have enough firewood for another 40 years, just from cleanup and thinning!).

2.  Small branches are raked and piled up and burned in the winter.

3.  In the spring the area is seeded with native grasses, if needed, and mulched. Sloped areas are swailed to prevent erosion.

Each restoration area is slightly unique and therefore requires flexibility from the general plan. With sensitivity and proper management SMC is working to leave the forest in better condition than when we found it.

Solar Electricity | Solar Hot Water | Passive Solar Space Heating
Cordwood Masonry | Plastered Strawbale Construction | Log Furniture Building
Composting Toilet System | Sustainable Living | Reforestation