Mickey Rachal, woodlands manager, has been named the recipient of the 2017 RoyOMartin Innovation Award. Mickey and his team have successfully developed methods of forest renewal through opti-stands.
Company-wide, our foresters continuously research and develop new forestry tools and techniques to improve the return on investments that we make in our forest-management activities. One of the largest investments we make is in forest regeneration, which is the preparation and replanting of harvest areas to begin the next generation of family-owned forests.
In 2015, RoyOMartin joined the Western Gulf Tree Improvement Program, based at Texas A&M University. This membership provides our foresters with valuable information needed to select the best tree families for our seedling procurement and deployment decisions. Over time, Mickey and his woodlands group have found a way to optimize the use of the best trees, with new plantations called opti-stands. In reality, our foresters are growing two crops in one stand, targeting the appropriate families and seedling cost to each crop.
RoyOMartin’s forest-renewal program strives to improve plantation productivity and quality with each successive generation by increasing volume growth, improving disease resistance, and improving tree and saw-log quality. Congratulations and thank you to Mickey for spearheading this effort.
