The Collins Almanor Forest (article)



	Chester timber stand in the Almanor Flat. Timber Cruiser leaning against a sugar pine with ponderosa pine and white fir trees in the background, 1924.

The Collins Almanor Forest:
An Experiment in Sustainable Forestry

The Collins Almanor Forest (CAF), part of the resource base of Collins Pine Company, comprises about 95,000 acres located about 180 mile northeast of San Francisco. It straddles the transition of the Western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Range and the Southern Cascade Range. In 1993, the Collins Almanor Forest became the first industrial forestland in the U.S. to be certified for sustainable forestry under the Forest Stewardship Council standards. But the story begins almost 100 years ago.

In 1901 Everell S. Collins was sent by his father T.D. Collins to scout timberland in northern California for the Curtis, Collins and Holbrook Company (CC&H). He found open park-like stands as a result of repeated burning of the understory. Many of the fires were set by the Maidu Indians to promote better travel, hunting and crops of wild food. The main logging road, which was later constructed out to the west-end of the property, closely followed the original Lassen Trail. Peter Lassen established the trail in 1848, as a cut off from the Appelgate Trail to the Sacramento Valley. Heavy gold rush traffic moved through this area in 1849, with J. Goldsborough Bruff remarking in his diary that “the woods are alight with fires.”

Everell wrote to his father in October of 1901:

The CompanyÕs timber lies on a tableland with low hills crossing it, and here and there a tall mountain. The timber is chiefly bull pine or yellow pine, now called California white pine (Ponderosa Pine), with ten percent of sugar pine. There is also some white fir or silver fir, tamarack (Londgepole Pine) and very little larch (Douglas-fir). The sugar and other pine runs 140 feet to 160 feet in height and up to six feet in diameter on the stump for yellow and eight for sugar pine. Average stump diameter is about two and a half and four feet. The timber is scattered with little undergrowth. Trees hold their size well towards the top (and) limbs (start) about thirty feet off the ground. Chief defect seems to be knots (and) some trees are very cross grained causing the lumber to warp badly. I estimate the (pine) timber would average twenty thousand to the acre cutting as we do in Washington, or forty to sixty thousand as you cut and saw in Pennsylvania. The fir is rough and I think quick rotting and is not worth anything. Average diameter is two feet and height 140 feet. The tamarack is about a foot in diameter and twenty-five feet high and considered worthless. The country is not all timbered. There are large open places on the lower ground that are used for sheep range and on the higher mountains there is rock and chaparral. The timber is on the low hills and slopes. The ground is very fine for Ry (railroad) building.



Everell Collins was a second generation lumberman who scouted and acquired most of the Collins Almanor Forest lands in 1902.

CC&H held the timber near Chester, California for years without milling or marketing it, due to the lack of an economically feasible method to get the logs to a mill and the means to get the lumber to markets, the majority of which were back East. The coming of World War II, with the resulting high demand for lumber, suddenly made it worthwhile to develop the timber resources held in California. In addition, a railroad link to the east was established by the Red River Lumber Company. When E.S. Collins died in 1940, he left a portion of the CC&H property to the Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church. Truman Collins was elected President of all CollinsÕ enterprises shortly after his fatherÕs death. The CC&H was the largest of five ownerships then comprising the Collins Almanor Forest and a long-term harvest contract was established between CAF and the Collins Pine Company.

TrumanÕs commitment to sustained-yield forestry developed in the late 1930s to early 1940s. Through the Western Pine Association and the Pacific Logging Congress Truman knew Dave Mason, the father of sustained-yield forestry. In the Spring of 1941, Truman hired George Flanagan, who had been a partner with Mason in the early 1930s, as the Chief Forester of his fatherÕs estate. He also hired Wally Reed, who was knowledgeable about the early bark beetle risk rating systems, as the first Forest Manager of the Collins Almanor Forest. Wally established growth plots over the entire ownership (a circular acre plot for every 160 acres) and implemented selective harvesting. Truman was quickly convinced of the benefits of sustained-yield and planned for a perpetual supply of timber to the Chester mill and support to the community where jobs would be permanent. In 1943, because of its “dedication to growing trees for tomorrow”, the Almanor Forest was certified by the Western Pine association as the third Western Pine Tree Farm. In the Tree farm application Wally Reed wrote the following:



George Flanagan (left) was hired by Truman Collins (right) as the chief forester of EverellÕs estate. Truman and George had each been influenced by Dave Mason prior to that time.

Management for the area embraced in The Collins Almanor Forest is so planned that in the minimum of time as is possible the area will be placed upon a sound, economic sustained yield basis.Through the application of sound forestry practice, entailing the use of proper selective logging, fire and insect protection, maximum of utilization and care for the reserve stands of timber, a continuous supply of logs and other forest products will be assured. The continuous flow of forest wealth will make for a high standard and stabilized community which in turn will not only benefit the community itself, but the County, State and Nation as a whole.

The plan was successful as the Chester mill has run continuously for 55 years and only reduced its production to a four-day work week for short periods in 1982 and 1998. The Chester mill currently processes 62 million board feet of timber, 30 million of which is provided by the sustainable cut of the Collins Almanor Forest. It runs two head rigs and two shifts.

Forest management on the CAF has remained flexible and has adapted to new information. Because of its sound forest management, only minor adjustments in stream protection needed to be made when the California Forest Practice Act was passed in 1973. In the late 1980Õs, the CAF management Plan was revised changing emphasis from maximizing growth to retaining a wider range of tree sizes; and from timber sustainability to managing for biological and structural diversity.

Then in 1993, the Collins Pine Companies were responding to fundamental changes in the forest industry. With the removal of many Forest Service lands from harvesting, lumber and log prices rose and began fluctuating. The company wished to pursue value-added products and market differentiation. The Collins Companies were quite interested when Vice president of Marketing Wade Mosby came back from a 1992 meeting trip to Europe, where he had learned about the Green Cross product certification program. Since the Collins Almanor Forest had been managed on a select-cut basis for more than 50 years they figured it ought to be certifiable. The foresters and organization were especially pleased when the CAF passed with flying colors, receiving a score of 256 out of a possible 270 in three major categories: timber resource sustainability, ecosystem health and community benefits. Collins is certifying its forests and subsequent products under the Green Cross label, which states that CollinsÕ forest management practices meet or exceed standards set forth by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international umbrella group which has the goal of encouraging forest management that meet selected criteria.

In March of 1993 Scientific Certification Systems, the certifying company, issued this executive summary of forest management on the CAF: “Overall, the evaluation team was quite favorably impressed with the Almanor forest management practices and the care taken for wildlife and the general forest ecosystem. CollinsÕ commitment to focusing on the quality of what remains rather than simply the quantity of timber removed has impressed the team members.”



	Cat D8 Tractor with Hyster winch and arch. Maximum haul 1600 feet. Two outfits provided an average of 220,000 board feet per 9-hour day. September 28, 1941.

Forest management on the CAF through the years hasnÕt been without its challenges. Early management that focused on removing the older, decadent and suppressed trees (nothing less than 18" had normally been harvested) and primary use of the single-tree selection method of regeneration had resulted, in some cases, in shade tolerant fir replacing the desirable sugar and ponderosa pine. Under the revised management plan, CAF is now experimenting with understory management including thinning from below, chip thinning submerchantable fir, and group selection which will leave larger openings. The future challenge is how to encourage pine regeneration while making only small openings during harvest. While Collins Pine practices even-aged management on its Pennsylvania lands that are stocked primarily with the shade intolerant Black cherry, they are committed to find alternatives to even-aged managed on the Almanor Forest.

Challenges also loom ahead as the CAF will be undergoing its re-certification process this year, as it must do every five years. While certification costs less than a basic company books audit by an outside accounting firm, maximizing payback of the certification effort through selling and marketing certified products requires much education and explanation. Collins Pine hopes that certification will result not only in a positive public image but also in a competitive edge in the marketplace. In the meantime, Terry Collins, part of the fourth generation Collins familY, feels “We have a forest we can be proud of and one that seems to be acceptable to a lot of people.”

–Steven Anderson
Forest History Today
1998
This article adapted from Collins Almanor Forest: A Human History by Terry Collins; Searching For Sustainability by Dan Shell, Timber Processing, Vol.23(1):10-15; and Collins Almanor Forest: 51-Years of Forest Management, Collins Almanor Forest staff.