The Timber Box of the Sierra Nevada: Innovations in Forest Management

The Timber Box of the Sierra Nevada

The Sierra Nevada is currently a tinderbox, with the early days of June bringing sweltering temperatures reaching 97 degrees Fahrenheit. The air shimmers above the landscape, which is dotted with the remains of dead trees, engulfed in dense underbrush. Within the Stanislaus National Forest, a network of logging roads meander through majestic firs and towering ponderosa pines, leading to towering burn piles that stand 20 feet tall. These piles consist of tons of scrap wood, deemed unworthy of being transported to a sawmill. They are the result of laborers on the front lines combating forest fires, working as part of a timber crew tasked with thinning these forests for the U.S. Forest Service, in collaboration with a tech startup that aims to revolutionize the operation of the enormous machines used by the crew.

These machines, known as skidders, are formidable vehicles standing 10 feet tall, equipped with four massive wheels, a bulldozer-like blade at the front, and a tree-sized grapple hanging from the back. They serve as the industrious worker bees of the logging industry, efficiently hauling downed logs from the forest to designated landing sites where the logs are delimbed and prepared for loading onto trucks heading to the sawmill. Typically, a single operator manages these machines during grueling 12-hour shifts, maneuvering to gather logs from behind before driving forward.

Engineers at Kodama Systems, a forward-thinking forest management startup located in Sonora, California, have ingeniously modified one of John Deere’s skidders. They have equipped it with an array of cameras and radar, integrating it into the internet. The outcome is a groundbreaking remote-controlled machine that undertakes the labor-intensive tasks for the timber crew while simultaneously learning to operate semi-autonomously. Utilizing LiDAR technology—short for Light Detection and Ranging—the skidder can efficiently map its surroundings within the forest.

Skidders truly embody the essence of the wildfire prevention workforce.

The founder of Kodama, Merritt Jenkins, was an engineer in search of a significant challenge when he relocated to Twain Harte two years ago to gain insights into the timber industry. Meanwhile, Joe Lerdal, serving as the head of operations at Kodama, is a proud graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. He spent his college summers fighting wildfires, bringing firsthand experience to the company’s mission.

Kodama has successfully raised $12 million, driven by the pressing reality that much of our forest land is now overrun with combustible material, poised to ignite at any moment. A stark reminder of this danger occurred a few hundred miles from Stanislaus, where a man inadvertently ignited the Park Fire by driving a flaming car into a ditch in early August. This catastrophic event resulted in a blaze that consumed an area larger than the city of Los Angeles.