Environmentalists, Loggers Team Up To Protect California Parks By Thinning Forests Responsibly

STANISLAUS NATIONAL FOREST (CBS13) — A coalition of environmentalists and loggers are teaming up for a new way to protect California's parks by thinning forests without destroying the wild environment.

More than half of the Stanislaus National Forest is dense enough it's hard to walk through. Now, an unlikely partnership has formed to try and reduce devastating wildfires.

The two men walking through the forest admit they wouldn't have been friends a decade ago, but now they agree on how to protect the forests.

"For many years, our center fought against logging, because the Forest Service was clear cutting, or cutting the best old-growth trees that we thought were important for wildlife," said John Buckley with the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center.

In Stanislaus National Forest, trees appear to walk. The Forest Service carefully selected which small trees to remove and new machines can cut and pick up one tree at a time, leaving a few feet between some trees and keeping some clusters.

"Science based logging combined with prescribed burns provides that middle ground balance," Buckley said.

Oak trees and wildflowers now see the light, providing food and habitat for wildlife. The brush and dead limbs that would help a fire are gone.

The Forest Service doesn't have the manpower to come in and set the prescribed burns to finish the thinning, and there are thousands of acres the partnership wants to thin before it's too late.

Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions, which is the coalition of environmentalists and loggers, says it's lobbying Congress to show the method helps the environment and to get the money to thin out national forests.