California redwoods preserve turns fire-damaged wood into boon for farmers

SANTA CRUZ CO., Calif. -- Helping the greater Bay Area stay Climate Ready can sometimes require major projects, like restoring a fire-scarred forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And while that restoration work is going on, managers at the San Vicente Redwoods are pioneering a bio-friendly way to dispose of the dead and charred wood -- an innovative method that's also benefitting local farmers.

Four years after the CZU fires roared through the Santa Cruz Mountains, teams are still working to clear the charred forests to help prevent a repeat disaster.

Nadia Hamey is lead forester at the fire-damaged San Vicente Redwoods. She says crews have created miles of sophisticated fire breaks in the area and removed more than 20,000 tons of logs and dead trees. The challenge is what to do with them.

"Trying to find anybody who can turn it into lumber, even boards with a lot of character," she says.

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But then, forest managers hit on another bio-friendly solution -- burning the wood, not into ash but a product known as biochar.

They're blackened chips that can be worked into the soil to sequester carbon and help plants spread healthy root systems. We first reported on the technology as researchers at U.C. Merced were working to make the specialized burners cheaper and more accessible.

"It's kind of a stable form of carbon, so it has longevity, and is actually a really cool agricultural amendment," Hamey adds.

But creating the biochar is one challenge. The second is finding a destination for it.

While commercial suppliers truck the material around the state, managers at San Vicente have found at least one destination closer to home: a well-known organic grower known as Jacobs Farm.

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Manager Greg Rawlings met us in one of their fields north of Santa Cruz, just a few miles away from San Vicente. That's where the farm is mixing in biochar with the rows of premium dill and cilantro.

"And then once it's in the soil, it again acts like a house or condo and it protects it from, you know, overwatering or well, you know, say, excessive rains or flooding or, you know, drying out because, you know, it's in that protective case," Rawlings explains.

He believes customers will ultimately taste the difference.

"It's really crucial for organic biology, organic agriculture, especially in the sense that in what you want to do with an organic field is you want to you want to have the plants in symbiosis with the fungal and the bacteria in the soil. And that's what produces, you know, the great flavor of organic produce," Rawlings maintains.

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The biochar processing at San Vicente is supported by major grants from CAL FIRE and from the State Coastal Commission. Both agencies have invested significantly in the wildfire resilience and prevention on the property.

Back at San Vicente, it's a kind of testing lab for a technology that's helping to turn the remnants of a painful disaster into a productive solution -- one they hope will spread to other areas across Northern California and the West.

This story is part of our Climate Ready series - a collaboration between ABC News and the ABC Owned Television Stations focused on providing practical solutions to help you and your family adapt to extreme weather events and the current challenges of climate change.

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