Logging as an Ecosystem Service

This is California Ag Today brought to you in part by Surround. Apply Surround Crop Protectant now to keep your high value crops 4-to-6 degrees cooler, while reducing damage from sunburn, heat stress and insects. Visit NovaSource.com for more information.

Zane Peterson is a young logging entrepreneur who got his break in offering ecosystem services. Zane’s companies removes small trees from areas deemed by the state to be a fire hazard.

Peterson… “When I started to kind of move off of my own SB-901, (Senate) Bill 901 happened, which provided power purchase agreements to the remaining power plants in California. So what happened there is it gave us a five year contract for these power plants that, you know, they were able to make money and put that money back towards the ground. But there was strings attached with that contract. You couldn't just take wood chips out of urban areas. You had to receive that material from the woods, from these tier one and tier two high hazard zones. Which the state of California went out and mapped. So right when that happened, I was involved with Farm Bureau. So I kind of had some knowledge with what that assembly bill was and how the whole process was working. I kind of knew it was coming down the pipe.”

Peterson says while most loggers focus on the larger trees, he focuses on smaller trees. Tune in for part two with Zane on Monday.