Soquel Demonstration State Forest

Soquel Demonstration State Forest (SDSF) is situated in the Santa Cruz Mountains along California's central coast. Originally part of a Mexican land grant, the property was logged by several different owners prior to the State taking ownership in 1988. Today, the forest is managed for sustainable timber production, research, educational activities, public recreation, fish and wildlife habitat, and watershed protection. SDSF is unique because it is the only State Forest located near large urban areas. Its proximity to the metropolitan centers of the San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Bay Area provides excellent opportunities for hands-on forestry education and outdoor recreation while demonstrating a working forest for the public.

SDSF contains coast redwood, Douglas-fir, mixed hardwood, chaparral, and riparian ecosystems along the East Branch of Soquel Creek and Amaya Creek. The forest is geologically active, with the San Andreas and Zayante Faults passing through the property. There are several natural springs and small marshes found in closed depressions that are associated with the forest’s geologic activity. The epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake is approximately two miles south of SDSF, in the neighboring Forest of Nisene Marks State Park.

Forest Stats:
Established: 1990
Area: 2,700 acres
Elevation: 450 - 2,400ft
Precipitation: 47.53 in per year
Temperature: Max: 90 F - Min: 32 F

Soquel Demonstration State Forest Roads and Trails Map
Soquel Demonstration State Forest Weather Website (westernweathergroup.com)

The Forest is open from dawn to dusk daily. No Camping Permitted.

Sustainable Timber Management

A major purpose of the SDSF timber management program is to demonstrate sustained yield management with examples of timber harvesting. In simple terms, sustained yield is the yield of commercial wood that an ownership can produce continuously at a given intensity of management consistent with required environmental protection and which is professionally planned to achieve, over time, a balance between growth and harvest. SDSF is used to demonstrate examples of timber harvesting under sustained yield management, while also sustaining or improving air, fish and wildlife, water resources, watersheds, aesthetic values, and recreation. Silvicultural methods and harvest techniques that can be applied under the California Forest Practice Rules for the Southern Subdistrict of the Coast Forest District are and will continue to be researched and utilized to demonstrate sustained yield management with an uneven-aged forest structure. A secondary goal of harvesting timber is to generate revenue to cover maintenance, operation, and other costs of SDSF. This includes funds needed for research, inventory, monitoring, and rehabilitation projects of the various resources in SDSF.

Recreation

DSF's recreational management goal is to provide for uses that are compatible and integrated with resource protection, public education, and forest management. Access for public recreation is at 29400 Highland Way in Los Gatos. At this location there is a parking area across the Soquel Creek Bridge off Highland Way. There is a portable toilet located inside the yellow gate. There is no developed drinking water source at the forest. The policy for recreation at State Forests is for it to be rustic and non-motorized, therefore all classes of electric bikes are prohibited. The forest is open from dawn to dusk.

SDSF offers a range of rustic, day-use recreational opportunities including hiking, biking, horseback riding, and picnicking. Mountain biking is by far the most popular recreational activity at SDSF with about 10 miles of single-track trails. Popular routes for mountain biking are accessed along Ridge Trail first by climbing up either Sulphur Springs Road or Aptos Creek Fire Road (via The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park) and then descending through the forest on Corral, Braille, Flow or Sawpit Trails. Hihn’s Mill Road is the main access unpaved road through the forest connecting the parking area and the bottom of all the single-track trails.

Research

Research opportunities in SDSF are numerous, offering small or large, general or specific, and experimental subjects. Research efforts at SDSF have provided management staff with baseline data regarding the geology, archaeology, hydrology, and overall ecosystem health in the forest. Monitoring takes place regularly to assess the benefits and risks of timber operations in watersheds close to urban areas. A complete field survey for archaeological and historical sites was completed after the establishment of the SDSF. Numerous sites were located, and many more intensive surveys have been conducted. Other studies include a biotic inventory and assessment, numerous bird surveys and botanical surveys, research on blood-borne disease, regular herpetological surveys, and research as part of the Santa Cruz Mountain Puma Project. Extensive geologic surveys and mapping, recreation studies, as well as periodic forest-wide timber inventories have been completed. Hydrologic and stream habitat studies have been ongoing as well as monitoring of stream enhancement projects. Assessments and studies of the movement and function of large woody debris have been conducted with additional project work for stream enhancement planned. CAL FIRE has provided incentives through Forest Health Research Grants including Demonstration State Forests and in 2020, Cal Poly University researchers were awarded a research grant that will focus over four years on SDSF impacts of increasing pace and scale of forest health and fuel reduction treatments along with the carbon, water, policy and economic linkages.

Soquel Demonstration State Forest Management Plan

Management Plan

Soquel Demonstration State Forest Goals

Restore and enhance the natural resources within the forest, including watershed protection.
Provide public recreational uses that are consistent with protection of SDSF.
Develop a forestry education program for the public, schools and interested organizations.
Demonstrate sustained-yield timber harvesting sufficient to cover forest operations and management costs.
Protect old-growth redwood trees.
Provide research opportunities in forestry and natural resource management.

Sustainable Timber Management

The overarching management goal for SDSF is to maintain the forest as a managed working demonstration forest typical of managed forests in the area with a range of successional stages across the Forest. Early to late successional forest stages are managed across the landscape over time to meet research and demonstration mandates in the context of a changing climate, continually changing societal preferences and research needs.

Hardwoods are a significant component of SDSF and are evaluated during wildlife and timber management planning. One aspect of hardwood management is to examine and experiment with alternative uses for hardwoods. Hardwoods can be utilized as firewood.

Redwood regeneration in the Fern Gulch Timber Harvest area in Soquel Demonstration State Forest. In most cases, forest regeneration occurs naturally after harvesting. This is common in SDSF since the dominant tree species, coast redwood, sprouts quickly and vigorously from remaining stumps given sufficient light.

SDSF Timber Harvest History

	1995 Longridge	1998 - 1999 Amaya	2011- 2012 Rim	2012 Fern Gulch	2014 - 2015 Comstock Mill	2017 - 2018 Meridian	2020 Longridge	Totals
Acres	50	148	158	201	228	220	158	1229
THP #	1-94-307 SCR	1-98-027 SCR	1-09-107 SCR	1-09-096 SCR	1-13-027 SCR	1-15-139 SCR	1-18-047 SCR
Advertised Volume	550,000 BF	1,512,000 BF	1,826,300 BF	2,573,000 BF	1,972,000 BF	1,637,000 BF	739,000 BF
Volume Removed	556,130 BF	1,605,620 BF	1,594,750 BF	2,229,330 BF	2,134,060 BF	2,428,780 BF	808,830 BF	11,357,500 BF
Purchaser	Big Creek Lumber	Redwood Empire Sawmills	Sierra Pacific Industries	Big Creek Lumber	Big Creek Lumber	Redwood Empire Sawmills	Big Creek Lumber
Milling Location	Davenport	Cloverdale	Sonora, Chinese Camp and Davenport	Davenport	Davenport	Cloverdale, Chinese Camp	Davenport
Net Receipts	$90,502	$314,680	$594,458	$758,220	$922,816	$1,427,405	$411,620	$4,519,701

SDSF is a 2,700-acre working forest. The conifer inventory on SDSF is approximately 117,376,000 board feet and the annual conifer growth is 2,615,000 board feet. Seven timber harvests have occurred at SDSF since 1995 (totaling 11,337,500 board feet). The eighth Timber Harvesting Plan (THP) is scheduled to occur in 2022. The current harvest rate planned is for about 1,000,000 board feet to be harvested per year. Revenue from these harvests funds the management of the State Forests.

Redwood cones are collected at the forest during high production years. Redwood seeds are processed, stored and grown at the CAL FIRE L.A. Moran Reforestation Center in Davis, California. Redwood seedlings grown from seed collected in SDSF are planted in timber harvest areas and on privately-managed forest lands throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Redwood seedling planting in the Meridian Timber Harvesting area in 2019. Supplemental tree planting takes place in areas for research and demonstration purposes and in areas that do not regenerate sufficiently such as areas of Douglas-fir.

Fuel Management

Forest staff work with the Ben Lomond Conservation Camp Crews, CAL FIRE engine crews assigned to fuel management projects, and the California Conservation Corps on fuel reduction projects along many of the roads in the forest and along the forest boundary. Crews complete chipping, brushing, broom pulling, pile burning, and road clearing.

Shaded Fuel Breaks

Shaded fuelbreaks protect high value areas such as forest land, historical sites, and neighboring property. These are areas where vegetation and other forest fuels have been decreased in order to reduce the rate of spread of an advancing fire. Within these shaded fuelbreaks, dead trees and ladder fuels (shrubs and lower tree limbs) are removed and the overstory canopy is thinned to a level where shade wills still retard the growth of new ground fuels. The understory is modified so that a low-growing ground cover is retained within the fuelbreak to provide fuels to start a backfire. Whenever possible, fuelbreaks visually merge with the surrounding landscape, conforming to the natural features of the area.

Within SDSF, all main roads and prominent ridgelines are treated as shaded fuelbreaks. This is to provide safe locations for fire control lines and backfiring; ridgelines are commonly used as control points in the event of a wildfire.

Periodic maintenance of our shaded fuelbreaks isperformed with the help of crews from the Ben Lomond Conservation Camp, CAL FIRE project engines, and the California Conservation Corps.

Shaded fuelbreak work by CAL FIRE crews includes pile burning.

Ben Lomond Conservation Camp Fire Crew working to maintain shaded fuelbreak along Sulphur Springs Road.

California Conservation Corps crew working on a fuel reduction project with the chipper.

Research

Dozens of research projects, studies and monitoring projects have been completed and are in process at SDSF including: archaeology research, biological assessments, annual fish population monitoring, geologic assessments, watershed assessments, recreation studies, stream habitat surveys, bird surveys, herpetology surveys, stream temperature monitoring, Sudden Oak Death research, instream Large Woody Debris assessments, restoration and monitoring, tick borne disease research and mountain lion research.

SDSF recently received funding from the California Climate Investments, Forest Health Program to perform landscape-level fuel reduction and forest health treatments (Project ID 20-FH-CZU-059). There will be ongoing research to evaluate the effect of these activities on the landscape. View the list of grant awards.

Research Partners at SDSF

Demonstration and Education

SDSF serves as a laboratory to examine various forest management techniques in a coastal redwood forest ecosystem. Projects are done in-house and by outside agencies, interest groups or educational institutions. These demonstrations include stream restoration, forest thinning for fire resiliency, burning and regeneration studies. Data collected during demonstrations provides private landowners with information to make their own land management decisions.

Forestry education opportunities are provided for the public, forest landowners, the educational community, the media, natural resource professionals and environmental groups. SDSF takes these opportunities to teach about the multi-use nature of SDSF and displays how sustainable yield timber harvest, resource protection and recreation can be compatible.

Large Woody Debris Project

The Large Woody Debris (LWD) and Habitat Complexity Project began in 2012 to contribute to the survival and recovery of Federally and State listed Endangered Central California Coast Evolutionarily Significant Unit Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and Federally listed Threatened Central California Coast Distinct Population Segment Steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in the watershed, by increasing habitat complexity and pool frequency.

Certified Engineering Geologist Cheryl Hayhurst from the California Geologic Survey (CGS) presenting the LWD research sites on a public field trip.

Rootwads and logs that were taken from the Fern Gulch Timber Harvest area were used at the four stream sites and in the Streambank and Road Repair Project along Hihn’s Mill Road in the western area of the forest.

One of three rootwads installed at the LWD Project Site 1 in Soquel Creek.

CGS Geologists measure a redwood rootwad and log prior to installation.

Streambank and Road Repair site- before.

Streambank and Road Repair site- after.

Mountain Biking

SDSF covers rugged terrain and many areas with difficult access. Emergency response can take an extended period of time in some areas and cell phone reception is not consistent. Please be always safety conscious. Travel with others when possible and let someone know of your plans. There is no developed water source in the Forest and poison oak and ticks are common.

No e-bikes are allowed at the forest.
Bring plenty of water.
Advanced terrain exists on mountain biking trails. Ride within your limits.
Practice trail etiquette. Ride at a safe speed.
Be courteous to other forest visitors. Bikers yield to horse riders and hikers; hikers yield to horse riders.
Braille Trail, Flow Trail and Sawpit Trail are recommended for downhill traffic only. Watch for and expect two-way traffic on roads.
Respect private property by not trespassing onto adjacent private lands.
Check signboards and the SDSF Facebook page for any current closure areas.
Keep trails in good condition by not riding when soils are saturated. Stay off trails during wet weather and wait at least one day for each inch of rainfall before riding for trails to dry out.
Report problems and hazards to SDSF staff. Please call 911 in an emergency.
Watch for and expect forest management traffic on forest roads.
SDSF Roads and Trail Maps
“Thinking of Mountain Biking at SDSF?”

Please avoid creating ruts in trails by not riding when soils are wet.

SDSF staff partners with Santa Cruz Mountain Trail Stewardship (santacruztrails.org) for trail maintenance and trail projects within the forest. This partnership with the mountain biking community has led to additional high-quality trails supported by donations and volunteers. The forest remains open to the public at most times during daylight hours. However, some areas are subject to temporary closure for forest management activities.

For Visitors

Visitors to the forest enjoy bicycling, hiking, picnicking and horseback riding. While recreating in Soquel Demonstration State Forest, please keep these rules in mind.

1. The forest is open from dawn to dusk for day use only. No camping permitted.

2. The forest entrance is located at 29400 Highland Way, Los Gatos.

3. No motorized vehicles are allowed in the forest. This means No E-bikes or bikes with pedal assist.

4. Mountain bikes must stay off trails when it is raining, or soils are saturated.

5. Horses and mountain bikes must stay on designated roads and trails.

6. Park smart. Do not impede emergency access by blocking fire roads or gates.

7. California Fish and Wildlife regulations prohibit fishing in the East Branch of Soquel Creek.

8. Firearms of any kind are not allowed.

9. Pack your trash out

10. Pets are welcome but must be on a leash.

11. Smoking or fires of any kind are not allowed in the forest due to the associated fire risks.

Cautions

Announcements

The Soquel Demonstration State Forest Advisory Committee was formed to assist CAL FIRE in planning future management of SDSF and to assist with the development of the SDSF General Forest Management Plan. The Advisory Committee will be reconvening in 2022 to view some of the recent and planned projects. Check back here for updates, meetings and agendas.

Forest Contact Information

Soquel Demonstration State Forest Public Entrance
29400 Highland Way
Los Gatos, CA 95033

Soquel Demonstration State Forest Headquarters Office
3065 Porter Street, Suite 105 Soquel, CA 95073
Phone: (831) 475-8643
Email: soquel.stateforest@fire.ca.gov

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