Creating Wildfire-Resilient Forests in California Helps Us All

When you walk the aisles at The Home Depot, there are many wood products that originate in forests. Forests are places of beauty, sources of wildlife habitat and inspiration. Forests are also synonymous with wildfires and devastation. Wildfires impact all of us, no matter where we live. Wildfires are not only devastating to the people directly impacted, but they also impact our supply of forest products.

Our supplier, Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC), practices sustainable forestry since they know that sustainable forests are wildfire-resilient forests. With approximately 350 square miles (228,800 acres) of forestland under MRC management, fire management is a big part of their business. By creating safe, healthy forests, MRC is working to ensure a sustainable source of forest products for the future.

According to NASA, the California wildfires of 2020 created smoke that nearly blacked out San Francisco and traveled as far east as Utah. Sustainable forestry management is a tool to protect communities and forests. In dense, dry forests and wildland-urban intersections, such tools include fuel reduction, or the removal of excess burnable materials that can accumulate, feed wildfires and make them more dangerous. When there’s less fuel, wildfire has a hard time burning into the canopy of the forest. Fires that stay on the ground are more easily and safely controlled by firefighters. They are also less likely to destroy the forest and everything that lives within and around it.