Forest Management Talk

Coastal forest habitat. Photo courtesy of U.S. Forest Service.

The MidCoast Watersheds Council invites the public to “see the forest for more than the trees” with a talk by forester Matt Fehrenbacher on “Managing Forest Lands for Multiple Resources,” Thursday, June 1, 6:30 p.m. in the public meeting room of Central Lincoln PUD (2129 Oregon Coast Hwy, across from the Safeway complex) in Newport.  The event is free and open to all.  Refreshments will be served.

Fehrenbacher, who works for Trout Mountain Forestry, will discuss an approach to forest management for various owners including family lands, municipalities and lands owned by conservation organizations, that emphasizes multiple uses.  He will describe the vanEck Forest, a 7,200 acre private forest located in Lincoln County managed under a working forest conservation easement.  The easement establishes restoration and maintenance of native forest structure as the primary ecological goal while continuing to generate revenue for the landowner.  Alternative silvicultural approaches such as selective harvest, various thinning regimes, and harvesting to retain trees of variable sizes are being used to encourage complex forest structure while maintaining the capacity for productive commercial forest management.

A native of the rural Willamette Valley and a Corvallis resident, Matt Fehrenbacher has spent the last 20 years in the woods of the Pacific Northwest managing private forests for a broad range of objectives. As a forest engineer and silviculturist for a large industrial timber company in northwest Oregon he implemented some of the earliest salmon habitat restoration projects crafted under the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds. During his ten years as Director of Stewardship at Pacific Forest Trust he was instrumental in development and management of the first forest carbon market project registered under California’s Climate Action Reserve.  He also directed the stewardship and forest management activities on 20,000 acres of forest conservation lands. Since joining Trout Mountain Forestry in 2011, he has maintained a client base which includes family forests, non-profit conservation organizations and municipalities.