Management projects across Kitsap aimed at restoring healthy forests

NORTH KITSAP -- Patches of sunlight broke through the leafy canopy in Grovers Creek Preserve, above North Kitsap Heritage Park, as a small crowd stood in a cool, dirt-smelling grove, staring at pink fluorescent tags tied around some trunks in a tightly-packed group of trees. The tags mark trees to be cut for "thinning," a forest preservation strategy where some trees in a dense group are cut, opening the understory below the canopy for surviving trees to grow larger and healthier.