George Community Fuels Reduction Project

Project Description

As part of an on-call contract to provide the Clackamas County Soil and Water Conservation District with Priority Invasive Weed and Vegetation Management Services, Biohabitats is helping the agency and six different landowners implement a wildfire preparedness project in the rural community of George, Oregon.

Located within a Douglass fir and mixed hardwood forest where small fires had been previously suppressed, the community of George is particularly vulnerable to wildfire. Funded by an Oregon Department of Forestry's Small Forestland Grant Biohabitats helped the Clackamas County SWCD secure, the project aims to reduce wildfire risk by reducing the amount of available fuel and preventing fire from climbing into the canopy. To achieve this, Biohabitats is thinning the underbrush, along with trees smaller than eight inches in diameter. Specifically, Biohabitats' crew is performing precommercial thinning, pruning of dead limbs, herbicide application, and invasive species removal in riparian area of Suter Creek.

Biohabitats is also masticating the removed fuel and donating labor for firewood into the Estacada Area Food Bank. Biohabitats will return to the site in the fall to prune, and in the winter to plant native seedlings in the cleared riparian area. Approximately 100 acres across eight properties are being treated.