F -- Stewardship Workshop for Contractors

News Release The Eldorado National Forest will be hosting a workshop on reducing forest fuels using Stewardship Contracting. The target audience is prospective contractors who wish to learn more about how stewardship contracts work and how to bid. Stewardship contracts allow the Forest Service to exchange goods for services, and were authorized by Congress in the 2003 Appropriations Bill. For the past 2 years, the Eldorado National Forest has been using the value of commercial timber from forest thinning to offset the cost of machine piling and chipping surface and ladder fuels. “Stewardship Contracts reduce the Forest Service’s reliance on tax dollars to accomplish vital fuels reduction in our forests, increasing the amount of work we can accomplish and shortening the time it takes to complete a project” according to Patricia Ferrell, Eldorado National Forest Contracting Officer. “We have completed some very successful projects that include piling the debris on the forest floor and thinning out the smaller trees to reduce the risk of a wildfire killing the larger trees and spreading to communities”. Fuels reduction isn’t the only work that can be done using stewardship contracts. Watershed restoration, wildlife habitat improvement, forest health, and noxious weed control projects are but a few of the kinds of work that can be accomplished. “Stewardship contracting is another tool we have to achieve our land management objectives and provides a lot of advantages,” said Ms. Ferrell. “But, like anything new, there is apprehension. We plan to help educate our prospective contractors so they can effectively bid on these projects.” The workshop will include a tour of the recently completed Sun Dawg project near Georgetown, and the new Rockeye project in the Mosquito area. The workshop will begin at 9:00 a.m., Friday, March 31, at the Georgetown Ranger Station, 7600 Wentworth Springs Road, Georgetown. For more information contact Patricia Ferrell, Eldorado National Forest Contracting Officer, 530-642-5146.