Whole-forest management focus of Camp’s ecostry technique
From our weekly issue dated October 08, 2008
Orville & Mary Camp on a trail in Camp Forest (Illinois Valley News file photo)
For more than 20 years, Selma residents Orville Camp and his wife, Mary, have been refining their understanding of sustainable forestry practices.
He studied and worked on his 160-acre forest, compared it with other areas that were logged, and used various management practices throughout North America. He attended conferences in Canada and the United States; read books on the subject; and set out to create a model of whole-forest management.
On his property, Camp Forest, Coho salmon spawn, and juveniles live in his ponds and streams until ready to swim to the Pacific Ocean.
Camp teaches a type of forestry he calls Ecostry, a term he has trademarked, based on the idea that a healthy forest needs many other species in order to be a real forest. In 1984, he authored a book, The Forest Farmer’s Handbook.
During the past 25 years, forest managers have learned that tree plantations of one or two tree species are not the way to make a healthy or productive forest. Pine tree plantations can be wiped out by disease or insects. To be a true forest, there must be a variety of herbs, shrubs, trees, water, rich soil, wildlife, and no “management” by humans, according to Camp.
He advises that natural selection is the key to letting a forest manage itself, at no cost to humans.
Following natural selection, the whole forest relies on a tall canopy to maintain the soil and water temperature in it for the plants, fish, birds and other creatures in it. Each plant and animal relies on the entire system to thrive. Camp believes that by thinning only dead or dying trees or trees that will die in a year, humans can extract timber without harming the health of the forest ecosystem. He describes the ecosystem as intricate and that each species relies on all the parts of the forest for survival and reproduction.
“The nine essential elements of a forest are climate, soil, water, air, food, shelter, habitat, reproduction, and biotic recycling,” explains Camp. “Each layer from the soil up to the canopy supports a peculiar array of species and environment.”
Camp realized that the old skid roads were all wrong on his property, so he built his own roads and abandoned the old logging roads to Nature. This method avoids going off the road, destroying the forest floor and undergrowth. Riding along these roads, one marvels at the wide variety of abundant plant life, fungi, and wildlife in the cool, peaceful forest.
Orville and Mary Camp are passionate about Ecostry, which he teaches to individuals, private foresters, and government agency personnel such as the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. Camp says that he shows how his methods retain local social and economic well-being.
He points out the long-term stewardships and jobs related to all products and uses of the forest through his natural system. His methods, he said, maximize timber, lumber, medicinal products, firewood, ornamentals, edibles and salmon-spawning habitat. Camp offers workshops and classes in Ecostry in Oregon and Canada.
Camp notes that this kind of forestry provides people with places for hiking, camping, horseback riding, hunting, fishing, tours, education, and historical legacies. Because his method retains islands of old-growth trees and all nine essentials of a forest, his 160-acre Camp Forest, is beautiful, productive and thriving.
Camp and other members of the Deer Creek Association (DCA) have spent years developing a Nature-based forestry system. When faced with the clear-cuts near their properties by BLM’s Western Oregon Resource Management Plan (WOPR), they devised an alternative called the South Deer Creek Landscape Management Project (SDLMP). It relies on sustainable forestry methods based on Orville Camp’s model, Camp Forest.
BLM is agreeable to letting DCA try ira experiment on South Deer Creek, a section of 7,400 acres. More about Ecostry and the Deer Creek Association’s efforts can be found by contacting dca@rogueriver.net or phone 597-4313.
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