19th Annual Timber Harvest/Forestry Practices Tour - Virtual

The 19th Annual Timber Harvest/Forestry Practices Tour was combined with the 2020 Wildland Fire Tour this year as we reported on the 106 Reforestation Fuels Reduction Pilot Project on Thursday, October 22, 2020 on a virtual format using Google Groups. We introduced this new mechanical disturbance method that seeks to answer the call to increase the pace and scale of forest treatments to get ahead of wildland fire and forest health issues. By attaching a long cable between two large bulldozers and running the cable through a roller drum at the inflection point, the cable remains suspended off the ground, providing the leverage to pull over trees at the rate of an acre per four minutes. The Utah State Legislature funded this work as a Pilot Project to test 106's unique approach to addressing wildfire risk in Utah and in the West. The Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands is administering the funds and has contracted with the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University to study the fire hazard reduction, efficiency, and aspen regeneration in achieving management objectives of the treatments.