Silvicultural Practices
“We protect wildlife and forests by preventing wildfires and by prioritizing silvicultural practices.”
Dense pine stands are thinned to improve growth, enhance forest health, and to prevent tree mortality due to high competition for nutrients and sunlight.
Thinning operations are done yearly to reduce susceptibility to fire damage, control/prevent bark beetle attacks, and improve productivity. Bulridge has seen the need to utilize the thinned material, which would have otherwise gone to waste. In so doing, investments in appropriate equipment such as a post peeler, post domer, and Scragg mills, have been made.
To recoup some of the cost for thinning operations, thinned pine is processed into a fence post and sold to the local market, although the potential for fence post exportation might be promising.