Rake Force: Regenerating too-dense forests

Jake Dailey and his three-man crew have spent the past two weeks swimming through dense thickets of young hemlock on the Ellsworth Creek Preserve. They call themselves the Rake Force, and their current mission - a pilot project with The Nature Conservancy - is to thin the stands from thousands of stems per acre to roughly 150 stems per acre.

In spite of their name, which is a satirical play on comments then-President Donald Trump made in 2018 about the need to "rake" forests in order to reduce wildfire risk, the crew is using no rakes. Rather, they are using gas-powered chainsaws and weed-eaters with attached circular saw heads to lop and scatter the wrist-thick trees. It's hard work, and Dailey is looking for more help. Wages starts at $30 per hour, and the crew will be working on fuels reduction projects on the Ellsworth and other Conservancy lands throughout the fall.

"The terrain is intense," said Dailey. "I need someone physically capable of doing it, someone who is interested in conservation, who loves the outdoors, that sort of stuff."

But in addition to these basic qualities, Dailey is also looking to hire from a specific demographic: veterans. It isn't a strict requirement to become a part of Rake Force. But he does believe that this work offers unique benefits to those who have served.

"We're doing fuels reduction to protect and regenerate our forests, and I believe this work to be regenerative to the people doing it as well," said Dailey. "It's helped me with my PTSD from the war in Iraq. And I believe that's because of the treatment of being in nature, where I've received mental health benefits just by being outside and doing something meaningful."

The regenerative effect

The regenerative effect on the worker may even be more apparent than the one on the forest. In a region where the forest economy is centered around extraction and where thinning trees is as much an economic choice as an ecological one, Dailey acknowledges that it has been difficult to create buy-in for large-scale fuels reduction projects.

"Money for fuels reduction, especially here on the west side, has not been there," he says. "All the foresters I talk to always say, 'Oh, fire is not historically a problem on the west side.' And I respond to them with, 'It's not historically a problem on the west side, but things are changing.' Climate change is a legitimate threat... and we have a huge fuel load here on the west side, because that work hasn't been done."

The Nature Conservancy has been chipping away at that work on its own lands and on public lands, too. Earlier this year, the Conservancy and the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge used funding obtained through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to begin thinning former industrial forestlands specifically for fire resilience and stand diversity objectives. Projects like these and the one that Rake Force is currently working on typically progress a few tens of acres at a time. But, as Conservancy forester David Grover points out, the potential for west-side restoration treatments to be scaled up is immense.

"There's tons of it over the whole Emerald Edge," he explains. "The whole area is hundreds of thousands of acres that need this kind of work or restoration, and it takes a lot of... skilled laborers to do it."

"So TNC is trying to partner with local communities and help establish local work forces to get going on this kind of work," Grover adds. "And that's where Jake's crew comes in... We're looking for companies... that pay living wages and can help the local community."

Army of workers

Dailey says he wants to scale up eventually, too. He envisions Rake Force as an "army of regenerative forestry workers" who work from bases all over the Pacific Northwest, engaged not just in fuel reduction projects, but also in production of biochar and other value-added soil products, goat-grazing, and even firefighting support.

In the meantime, Dailey is building his crews one person at a time and taking his projects one acre at a time. It's slow and daunting and often a struggle. But he's in it for the long haul.

"My son's going to be doing this work in 10 years," he says. "I've got more work than I can handle in my lifetime, and so will my son. It's going to take multiple generations of people to turn this thing around."

To learn more about Rake Force and their work, visit http://www.rakeforce.us, or email Jake Dailey at u.s.rakeforce@gmail.com