March 10 Chapter Meeting – This meeting was held at UC Berkeley in conjunction with the Student Chapter and the Forestry Club. The Forestry Club provided a great chili feed to get us all ready to hear about the East Bay Hills wildfire reduction project. We had two guest speakers, Brad Gallup of the East Bay Regional Parks District and Carol Rice of Wildland Resource Management, Inc. They described the work that is being planned or implemented in the Parks and on UC Berkeley properties in the East Bay Hills to remove non-native eucalyptus and other trees as well as fire-promoting invasive plants (such as brooms).
Russell Reservation – This property, part of the University of California, is located north of Highway 24 and just north of the city of Lafayette. About 300 acres in size, it has been used for forestry research in the past, although these studies have languished. There is also an astronomy facility there with a couple of telescopes. Currently it is used by UC Berkeley’s Logging Sports Team as a practice site and recently used for the April 2nd ‘Bearclave’ competition involving teams from Berkeley, CalPoly, Shasta College, and Humboldt. The site seems to have quite some potential for public forestry education, maybe a mini Forest Conservation Days, or public forestry education events on weekends? The Chapter is beginning to look into the possibility, which would be in partnership with UC, the Berkeley Student Chapter, and the Logging Sports Team.
Upcoming Chapter Meetings:
Thursday June 16th 6pm, will be held in Napa Area, location TBD, tentative topic – vineyard establishment and management in forested lands – state of the art.
Saturday, August 20th, Chapter summer field meeting; topic and location to be determined
Thursday, November 17th 6 pm, will be held in San Francisco, exact location TBD, tentative topic – Urban Forestry in San Francisco’s Presidio
