Sustainably Coexisting: Soquel Demonstration forest, mountain biking, and logging
- Shiloh
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
When I was a fledgling mountain biker, I heard about this place called “Demo.” Demo is Short for the Soquel Demonstration Forest and at the time, I was told, accurately, that the riding was over my head, full of steep technical downhills. These days, Demo is one of our go-to riding spots. (Sidenote, I did break my collarbone at Demo once upon a time, which, in the MTB community, is a mark of a true mountain biker.)
Demo is a rare, mountain bike paradise in a remote part of the Santa Cruz mountains. And, naturally, when I was told the full name, Soquel Demonstration Forest, I wondered what a demonstration forest was.
My fellow riders explained that Demo is a place managed by CalFire to test out forest management practices, practices that prioritize forest health while promoting recreation and timber harvesting. Given that mountain bikers are generally treated as the ugly stepchild in the trail user ecosystem, (hikers and equestrians getting top priority), this was super interesting. A place where we were actually encouraged to go and ride? And they let us build trails too! (See the pic at the bottom about the Santa Cruz Trail Stewardship Council). That’s cool!
For that reason, I was super excited when I found out that, in my capacity as a Valley Water Director taking part in the Santa Cruz Mountain Stewardship Network’s Spotlight program, I would get to spend a day with CalFire learning about Demo. In this blog I’ll share what I learned with a focus on:
Why Valley Water cares about forest health
What is a demonstration forest
Forest Health and Water
Why would I spend a day learning about a forest as a Water District Director? Forests are key to water quality and flood protection in that they:
Control the flow of water, slowing it and helping to mitigate against floods
Keep soil in place, preventing dirt from running into waterways and creating problems for fishies and such
Act as sponges absorbing, storing, and cleaning our water before it ends up as drinking water
Sadly, due to mankind’s hubris, the health of our forests is in peril. Logging and fire suppression has led to forests that are tinder boxes. With climate change, less rain throughout the entire year and hotter temperatures compounds the tinder box problem. As a result, forest fires have become a serious problem. Not only are they a danger to property owners and air quality, but without trees holding the soil in place, soil can wash into our waterways, causing problems with water quality. Woody debris also ends up in our riverways creating flood risks through log jams. And, barren hillsides means water simply runs off the landscape before it has a chance to be absorbed. Again, a flood risk.
In short, forests play a critical role in the health of our water resources by holding it, absorbing it, controlling the flow of it, and cleaning it. Thank you mother nature!
What’s a demonstration forest?
Created out of a concern of overlogging and clearcutting, the State of California now has 14 demonstration forests covering about 85k acres of public lands. These are tracts of forests managed by CalFire. The goals include:
Watershed protection and restoration
Education and research
Sustainable timber harvesting
Old growth redwood tree protection
Recreation consistent with resource protection (Fun fact: Mushroom foraging is explicitly called out as a form of recreation, great for us mountain bikers who also love mushrooms.)
It’s important to note that one of the key pieces of research these forests set out to tackle was how to harvest timber sustainably. This, in order to help private property owners log their land in ways that keeps the natural environment healthy. I’ve linked to the research page at the end of this blog where you can fully nerd out, but as a teaser, here are some of the fascinating titles of some research papers that come out of our demonstration forests:
Carbon, fire hazard, and forest regeneration dynamics following high severity wildfire in a mixed-conifer forest
Effects of dead tree removal on the resilience and successional trajectory of high-mortality forests
Understanding the costs and limits of vegetation management for wildfire mitigation in coastal California: a comprehensive ecological and economic study at the Soquel Demonstration State Forest
Doesn’t that sound like super fun reading material?! Importantly, this research helps us manage our forests so that the human species can continue to live on this planet.
It is important to note that there is currently a bill before the governor to change the emphasis of demonstration forests. The bill aims to make sure the goals of demonstration forests reflect the realities of climate change and incorporate more fully the perspectives of the tribes that originally lived in these spaces.
What we learned
While out at Demo, we learned some lessons about sustainable timber harvesting, including that their main goal is not to identify trees to take out, but trees to leave. With Soquel Demo, CalFire partners with Big Creek Lumber for the logging part of the equation and Big Creek is not interested in putting itself out of business by chopping down all the trees. Instead, they harvest trees in a way that improves growth and the longevity of the industry.
Other interesting tidbits we learned about redwood and the industry:
Redwood likes to be disturbed and it helps them grow better.
Santa Cruz has been the heart of the environmental movement which helped push the industry to develop sustainable harvesting practices early.
California has lots of environmental regulations but Redwood is still economically viable because it only grows here.
In terms of the companies that harvest redwood trees, transportation costs are a
key differentiator. The closer the forests are to the mill, the less transportation costs which results in an economic advantage.
At Demo, they harvest every other year according to their timber harvest plan and the plan is updated about every ten years.
Back to Mountain Biking
In the minds of many professional environmentalists, there is often a tension between human access to nature and protection of nature. Many believe access should be restricted, lest humans despoil the natural environment. Within this mentality, mountain bikers are viewed as hoodlums only out for a thrill, tearing up the trails, leading to erosion and overall doing damage to the forest.
Places like Soquel Demonstration Forest are researching these types of questions, trying to understand that balance between recreation and conservation.
For me, I’ve always felt that if people aren’t allowed to have fun in nature, we all lose. We lose because being IN nature is essential to human health. And we lose because if people don’t experience it, they won’t appreciate it, and then in our democracy, we won’t set aside public dollars to preserve and maintain it.
In addition to nature being inherently good, without it, we die.
Lastly, if you haven’t been to a mountain bike tailgate and experienced the incredibly welcoming MTB community, it is a treat, one in which an appreciation and respect of nature is stoked over many an IPA.
Below are some links to additional information from folks who are doing great work to preserve our forests.
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