History
Hayfork lies in the center of Trinity County and the Trinity National Forest in northwestern California. Trinity County is a rural county whose rugged mountains are covered with rich, mixed coniferous forests as well as some oak woodlands and grassland. The timber and recreation industries are the core sectors of the economy, making it one of the most forest-dependent areas in the Pacific Northwest. Over the last 20 years the county's economy has been affected by changes in national forest management. The "forest closure" of 1990 affected over 30 logging families in Hayfork and the subsequent sawmill closure in 1996 affected over 150 families. In a few short years, over 40 percent of the payroll in Hayfork, a town of 2000 people, had disappeared. At the same time, the Forest Service downsized its workforce and thirty government jobs were lost. One of the most telling statistics is the percentage of children in the local schools relying on the "Free and Reduced Lunch Program". In 1990, 54% of Hayfork children participated in the program. At the end of the 1990's, about 80 percent of students were in the program. Despite the economic and social distress in the 1990's, Hayfork and Trinity County still have rich natural resources and human resourcefulness on which to build a new sustainable economy.
The Watershed Research and Training Center was formed in 1993 to help address the needs of the people and natural environment in Hayfork. Through its diverse programs, the Center has sought to develop the human capital and economic infrastructure needed to steward our forests and create a healthy community now and into the future. Some of our accomplishments so far have been:
- Training displaced workers in GIS, post-fire rehab activities, assessing ecosystems, restoration projects, and business skills
- Providing research and demonstration on how small-diameter logging can be low-cost, low-impact and profitable by marketing value-added products
- Providing micro-loans to entrepreneurs to market non-timber forest products
- Conducting research on sustainable harvesting of plants
- Creating a Hayfork-based GIS center and socioeconomic monitoring program
- Designing "stewardship contracts" for small contractors
- Helping to form the Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities Partnership, an effort to pool the resources and create greater market leverage for small-scale community based forestry groups