Kate McMichael | Grassroots Coordinator
Kate McMichael is a small woodland owner and retired educator. In 2019, she and her wife, Theresa, purchased 39 acres of healthy, multi-aged forestland in the McKenzie River corridor. Eighteen months later, it burned in the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire. The fire—and the outpouring of support, both emotional and literal, from the forestry community—became the crucible for a deep dive into forest ecology, forest management and forest policy. Forestry education and forest literacy have become compelling interests for Kate, inspiring her to become a Master Woodland Manager and join Oregon Women in Timber, which supports and advocates for science-based forestry education for Oregonians of all ages. She is the current state president of OWIT. Additionally, she is in her second term as Landowner-at-Large on the ODF Committee for Family Forestlands and serves on the Boards of the Oregon Tree Farm System and Oregon (and Lane County) Small Woodlands Association. She is also part of the McKenzie Watershed Stewardship Group, Friends of HJ Andrews and active in Lane Families for Farms and Forests. She received the 2024 OTFS Co-Chairs Award for her championing of sustainable forestry in the woodland community.
In addition to living a crash course in post-fire recovery in a changing climate, she finds her “spare" time taken up writing and editing newsletters, planning woodland events and tours, and crafting legislative testimony, social media, video and website content. Kate sometimes wonders how, in her “quiet” retirement, she attends more meetings now than when she taught high school or worked in faith and justice circles advocating for homeless and mentally ill San Franciscans. What sustains her is an abiding hope that someday she and Theresa will be able to walk under the canopy of the baby trees they planted.