Fire Prevention

Forestry Mulching and Brush Mastication

Mastication has become a common and cost-effective means for fuel reduction and restoration of open ponderosa pine forest.  There are many benefits of mastication over conventional methods of vegetation management which include the elimination of material to be hauled away or stacked and burned; a beneficial mulch material is left behind. We would like the opportunity to discuss these and other benefits with you and explain how both you and your property may benefit from mastication versus older conventional methods.

Over one hundred years of fire suppression in Western States forests has resulted in more crowded and more fire-susceptible forests. Prior to human intervention to suppress fires, forests experienced frequent low-intensity fires that removed combustible materials such as diseased and dead trees and ladder fuels. Frequent, small-scale, fires in forests stimulated the growth of fire-resistant trees and reduced the incidences of massive, catastrophic, forest fires that we have seen in recent years. Current forestry research indicates that removing forest fuels creates more fire-resistant forests without causing long-term damage to forest resources such as watersheds, soil and wildlife. Recent large-scale fires and insect outbreaks presenting the increased possibility of large-scale fires in western forests have led to a fuel reduction program especially in the wildland-urban interface.

In the past several years, there has been increased awareness of the role that brush and dense stands of trees play in spreading fire, which has driven the effort to reduce fuels around homes – particularly those in the wildland urban/forest interface. This has put pressure on forest landowners to remove trees and brushy vegetation from their properties, but they may not have experience with the best methods of doing this. Forest mastication, or “forest mulching,” is a common method that achieves results.

Some of the Benefits Of Forestry Mastication 

• Removing ladder fuels (brush) helps to reduce fire intensity and reduces the risk to structures from wildfires.
• Limbing up tress creates separation of the ground fuels from the aerial fuels also known as the tree canopy reducing the risk of a crown fire.
• Removing brush and smaller trees, from an overpopulated property with increase the nutrients, sunlight and water available to the remaining trees. 
• The remaining trees will grow with more hardiness, and strength enabling them be further resilient to extreme drought, infestation, and the effects wildfire.