Editor’s note: The following is a letter to the editor. The opinions expressed in this letter are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Mendocino Voice. If you would like to submit a letter to the editor feel free to write to info@mendovoice.com.
Dear Editor:
Living, working, and raising two young kids in District 5, I commend my Mendocino County Supervisor Ted Williams for supporting Assembly Bill 2494 to shift Cal Fire’s management of 14 state demonstration forests to prioritize climate resilience, biodiversity and tribal stewardship, and uplifting the “huge opportunity to bolster our local economy with recreation” here in Jackson Demonstration State Forest. I also fully support AB 2494 because I believe it will create safe, permanent, good jobs in our poor rural communities.
I also support the state co-governing Jackson with our Pomo and Yuki neighbors in their important cultural landscape.
Cal Fire outright broke its promise to tribes and the local Mendocino community to pause commercial logging during management planning by recently approving the AMEX Timber Harvest Plan to clear-cut redwoods across a patchwork of nearly 500 acres in Jackson.
I hope that Cal Fire Deputy Chiefs Eric Huff and Helen Lopez are not planning to undercut the California Legislature as it’s considering AB 2494, by resuming logging in Jackson Demonstration State Forest or by approving the “Fire Berry Timber Harvest Plan” and “Camp 8 South Timber Harvest Plan.”
It’s time for better state forest management for Mendo locals, Indigenous people, and tourists alike.
Rachele Hayward
Gualala
Once again CalFire raises its middle finger to all the people who understand the true, long-lasting value of Jackson State Demonstration Forest and want to preserve it. AMEX targets nearly 500 acres of redwoods for extraction, including by clearcutting, to be done by Mendocino Redwood Products Corporation. So much for those small mom-and-pop logging businesses, the 2% that supposedly depend on Jackson for their livelihoods.
The Camp 8 South harvest plan targets another 461 acres, right next to the Noyo River where severely endangered salmon are slowly making a comeback. Some of the targeted second-growth trees (not legally-protected like first-growth now) are six-feet in diameter and more than 200 feet in height. They create an extensive canopy shade that prevents the flammable understory, typical of cutover sites, from invading. This is an example of a healthy forestland that could actually produce tomorrow’s giants, if left alone to do so. It already demonstrates what a healthy, natural forest can do.
For people who are worried about the logging industry, please note: “1.1 million acres of coast redwood forest are privately owned and considered unprotected. Half of this unprotected redwood forestland (approximately 560,000 acres) is owned by industrial timber companies. . . The remaining approximately 585,000 acres of redwood forest are privately owned by small forest landowners (properties 20,000 acres or fewer) that manage their lands for a variety of goals, including . . . timber production.” State of Redwoods Conservation Report
Industrial redwood logging is clearly alive and well in Mendocino County. You can witness this yourself if you look just a few yards past the tourist-pleasing “corridor” of redwood trees along Highway 20 and Ukiah-Comptche Road. You can see huge, sunlit gaps where the forest has been decimated above and below the road, where dead slash lies scattered and highly-flammable brush is already starting to take over. Wide, rutted dirt roads recently cut through the forest for heavy logging equipment are also visible. On top of that, many of those isolated, giant redwood groves you see still standing in lush, green meadows on the sides of the road are now falling to the ax. The green of the foerst cannot compete with the green of the almighty dollar.
Everybody loves the redwoods. Some of us just love them for the trees themselves, not the things they can buy when they’re cut down.