Catastrophic wildfires are increasing in scale, intensity, and cost across California. Sonoma County holds over 500,000 acres of forestland, yet due to the high cost of treatment and the lack of local processing infrastructure, the majority remains at high or very high risk.

The missing link? A regional wood campus that makes ecological forestry economically viable—supporting rural jobs, forest resilience, and low-carbon material supply chains.

With Timbershed in place, the region gains:

- A scalable market for small-diameter woody material that would otherwise be burned or wasted

- An economic engine to fund ongoing forest maintenance and wildfire mitigation

- A climate-smart solution that reduces dependence on ongoing public subsidies

- A pathway to meet California’s forest, climate, housing, and rural economic goals

- The preservation of Berry’s Sawmill, a legacy forest infrastructure site at risk of being lost to redevelopment

Timbershed offers a scalable, regionally anchored solution to California’s wildfire and rural economic challenges. By transforming trees typically chipped, piled, or burned into durable, climate-smart wood products, Timbershed restores ecological function while building economic resilience.

- A regional market for small-diameter woody biomass, enabling more forest treatments

- A rural economic engine to fund ongoing wildfire risk reduction and forest health

- An alternative to perpetual public subsidy for vegetation management

- A pathway to meet California’s forest, climate, housing, and rural equity goals

Timbershed is a scalable, site-based solution that unlocks the full value of ecological forest stewardship.

By transforming small-diameter trees—too costly to remove and too small for conventional markets—Timbershed makes forest restoration economically viable. Anchored by Berry’s Sawmill, it supports a public-private wood manufacturing hub that:

Converts excess biomass into durable, building products

Creates consistent demand for forest treatments, reducing wildfire risk at scale

Spurs skilled, rural job creation in milling, fabrication, and logistics

Demonstrates a replicable, community-scale model for wildfire-prone regions

The absence of local processing infrastructure is a critical barrier to meeting forest treatment goals in Sonoma County.

Despite state and county targets of 10,400 acres per year, only ~2,800 acres are treated annually on private lands. The economics simply don’t work—unless we build the infrastructure to process and add value to forest material.

Timbershed unlocks the treatment bottleneck. Located at the historic Berry’s Sawmill site, it creates the market pull necessary to scale restoration on public and private lands. Without it, small-diameter and other wood continues to be chipped, burned, or left onsite—fuel for the next catastrophic fire.

To ensure the long-term viability of restoration, Timbershed integrates innovative financing tools that offset the higher costs associated with living-wage jobs, ecological monitoring, and carbon accountability—creating a replicable model for community-scale climate infrastructure across California.