Our goal is to bring a greater ecological focus to forestry, implementing management strategies to enhance forest health and resiliency.

By combining increased protection for unique ecological features (large snags, old-growth trees, and large down logs), with an active approach to thinning young and overcrowded stands, we are helping shift the management paradigm from purely extractive to one based on resource stewardship and sustainability.

Rain Shadow has an experienced team with the right tools for the job. We’ve implemented ecological thinning and fuel reduction projects for numerous private landowners, the San Juan County Land Bank, OPALCO, and more. Our consulting team has extensive knowledge of local fire ecology and experience developing forest stewardship plans; we’ve also helped local communities become Firewise USA® sites.

Ask us about cost-share programs to help make your forestland safer and healthier.

Ecological Forestry & Restoration Thinning

The San Juan Islands have a history of fire suppression and past logging practices that have resulted in overcrowded and stressed forests. High-grade harvesting was a common practice that has eroded forest health and timber quality and led to a loss of big trees with old-growth characteristics that are a critical component of our complex ecosystems. Though we can’t replace old-growth trees and historical ecosystem structure and function overnight, we can plan for the future.

Thinning overcrowded forests to reduce tree density serves to increase the health of the remaining trees as more resources are available to each tree, resulting in higher vigor and increased resilience to stress and disturbance. Thinning can also target the removal of tree species less adapted to climate change in favor of promoting more drought-tolerant species expected to better tolerate our current and expected future conditions.

Ecological thinning can be also be used to enhance and protect legacy features, and biomass removed in thinning can be used to enhance wildlife habitat (in the form of habitat piles or constructed logs) or to create chips, mulch, and biochar.

Fuel Reduction and Fire Risk Mitigation

In the face of climate change, we are experiencing warmer, drier weather for longer periods in the summer, with rain concentrated in only a few months of the year. Our trees are under stress that makes them more susceptible to insects, disease, and mortality, in turn leading to heavy fuel loads. San Juan County’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan estimates the county has nearly 85,000 acres of forest with a moderate or severe need for fire fuel reduction.

In short, we have more biomass in our forests, and the biomass we have is more flammable – so, the risk of catastrophic wildfire that could damage property and resources and risk human lives and health is growing.

Rain Shadow has the expertise to design and implement fuel reduction projects to meet your needs, from thinning and brush control to shaded fuel breaks, which make use of existing roads or trails to reduce the likelihood a fire will spread and enhance access for for emergency responders and egress for residents. Our projects make use of hand cutting, machine cutting, mowing, and chipping, along with progressive techniques such as conservation biochar burns that return valuable nutrients and carbon to forest soils.