Glomalin and Conservation in Humboldt County The 1996 discovery of the soil glue glomalin is changing our understanding of the impact of elevated carbon dioxide, while giving important clues to forest health, watersheds, revegetation, wildfire and carbon sequestration. Here I share what I have found so others may read and draw their own conclusions, and relate it to my own experience, Humboldt County issues and stories from the news.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

82. Focusing on a truly epic eco-problem  

82. Focusing on a truly epic eco-problem
This is an important article not because of complaints against groups or individuals but because it demonstrates the gap between what we know and how things get done. There is no doubt about the road problem caused by trying to develop unstable areas after logging. It was part of the general plan at the time to limit subdivisions into a few “manageable” areas. Like logging though, nothing is manageable if you arte ignorant of the ground rules the system depends on. We, as a culture, have been ignorant of the role of fungi in forest soils. Now the roads are too important to close and the drainage too skewed to return without massive costs. And hindsight regulations have made it extremely difficult to actually accomplish much on the ground.
A good example is the Good Roads Clean Creeks Program initiated by the Mattole Restoration Council as a result of DFG insisting on collecting baseline creek data in order to determine public money effectiveness. Instead of providing machine work to put in rolling dips, restore swales, remove berms and re-contour the roads, two years data were needed to establish a baseline. Having accomplished that we proceeded to inventory sediment delivery sites with landowners receiving informative reports and larger groups drawing up work prescriptions and lining up funding. A lot of effort went into pointing out the need for this work, which in fact amounted to free road work for participating communities. Still, folks don’t want a lot of new people in their neighborhoods and that is a problem.
After wrangling through 2003 it looked like we were ready to go this year. But first there was a delay in that it wasn’t realized we had already completed the sediment delivery baselines. Later we were told permission forms weren’t signed, but they were all on file. They finally busted the camels back when work was set to begin when CDF complained archeological and botanical surveys (of roads in a devastated watershed) hadn’t been performed. These had been partly done on one side for a shaded fuel break last year and earlier this year on my side, in-stream and upslope. And so we missed another year of actual improvement and dragged out for another year the need to ask permission and access. Its enough to make you throw your hands up.
The real issue here is the complete lack of understanding causing the sediment delivery in the first place. We note that glomalin destruction causes dust in the summer as well as in-stream sedimentation, and hill-slope erosion, compounded by disruption of natural drainages leading to unraveling of the soils and delivery into stream channels. This problem is common to all environments. Simple basic facts and methods can be applied to great effect but they threaten common perception. Regulators have got to allow restoration projects to move forward. Restoration groups have to realize the difficulty of keeping communities on the same page when you have fluctuating likelihood of implementation.
The General Plan does not try to fix these problems, it tries to contain them until better understanding points out why rural development has caused as much problems as clear cutting. We have twenty years to substantiate this story before many of these plans come up for review. When we, as developers and consumer of information, really investigate glomalin and forest issues we will finally have “green development” and “sustainable forestry”. In the meantime we will have all the problems associated with destroyed glomalin from sedimentation to low flows to fire danger, pointed out in Our Shrinking Watersheds and other pieces in this blog.
82. Focusing on a truly epic eco-problem
This is an important article not because of complaints against groups or individuals but because it demonstrates the gap between what we know and how things get done. There is no doubt about the road problem caused by trying to develop unstable areas after logging. It was part of the general plan at the time to limit subdivisions into a few “manageable” areas. Like logging though, nothing is manageable if you arte ignorant of the ground rules the system depends on. We, as a culture, have been ignorant of the role of fungi in forest soils. Now the roads are too important to close and the drainage too skewed to return without massive costs. And hindsight regulations have made it extremely difficult to actually accomplish much on the ground.
A good example is the Good Roads Clean Creeks Program initiated by the Mattole Restoration Council as a result of DFG insisting on collecting baseline creek data in order to determine public money effectiveness. Instead of providing machine work to put in rolling dips, restore swales, remove berms and re-contour the roads, two years data were needed to establish a baseline. Having accomplished that we proceeded to inventory sediment delivery sites with landowners receiving informative reports and larger groups drawing up work prescriptions and lining up funding. A lot of effort went into pointing out the need for this work, which in fact amounted to free road work for participating communities. Still, folks don’t want a lot of new people in their neighborhoods and that is a problem.
After wrangling through 2003 it looked like we were ready to go this year. But first there was a delay in that it wasn’t realized we had already completed the sediment delivery baselines. Later we were told permission forms weren’t signed, but they were all on file. They finally busted the camels back when work was set to begin when CDF complained archeological and botanical surveys (of roads in a devastated watershed) hadn’t been performed. These had been partly done on one side for a shaded fuel break last year and earlier this year on my side, in-stream and upslope. And so we missed another year of actual improvement and dragged out for another year the need to ask permission and access. Its enough to make you throw your hands up.
The real issue here is the complete lack of understanding causing the sediment delivery in the first place. We note that glomalin destruction causes dust in the summer as well as in-stream sedimentation, and hill-slope erosion, compounded by disruption of natural drainages leading to unraveling of the soils and delivery into stream channels. This problem is common to all environments. Simple basic facts and methods can be applied to great effect but they threaten common perception. Regulators have got to allow restoration projects to move forward. Restoration groups have to realize the difficulty of keeping communities on the same page when you have fluctuating likelihood of implementation.
The General Plan does not try to fix these problems, it tries to contain them until better understanding points out why rural development has caused as much problems as clear cutting. We have twenty years to substantiate this story before many of these plans come up for review. When we, as developers and consumer of information, really investigate glomalin and forest issues we will finally have “green development” and “sustainable forestry”. In the meantime we will have all the problems associated with destroyed glomalin from sedimentation to low flows to fire danger, pointed out in Our Shrinking Watersheds and other pieces in this blog.


Focusing on a truly epic eco-problem
http://www.times-standard.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,127%257E2906%257E2458905,00.html
Sunday, October 10, 2004 - My Word by Stephen Lewis
Palco earns sustainable forestry certificate again for second year in a row.
EPIC wins $6 million lawsuit against Palco for alleged HCP violations.
What's wrong with this picture? Well, for one thing, sustainable forestry certificates are given by professional foresters and judge's decisions are made by judges without forestry credentials. Keeping forestry issues outside professional foresters and professional forestry regulators and in the hands of the media and courtroom judges who are not trained in forestry issues is the strategy of EPIC and all environmental protest organizations seeking the demise of Palco and corporate timber operations in Humboldt County.
Anti-corporate media campaigns are substituted for environmental science information and our local media gobbles it up because conflict sells. Unfortunately, we citizens pay the price for having our lives run by those whose incomes, as well as political and personal social standing in liberal and counterculture circles, hinge on these anti-Palco media-oriented campaigns. We citizens pay for the courtroom battles. Palco workers pay with jobs lost when judges rule in favor of professional protesters at EPIC. But the very worst part is that while our newspapers and TVs are full of environmental protest news, the most serious eco-crisis in Humboldt County goes by virtually unnoticed -- that eco-crisis being the ecological damage to Humboldt County watersheds and watercourses by the environmental impact of over 8,000 rural homestead subdivision residents.
In sad irony is the fact that EPIC was begun by SoHum rural homesteaders who wanted environmental information so as to develop ecologically compatible homestead lifestyles. But back in the late 1980s, right after Maxxam bought Pacific Lumber Co., EPIC began to shift emphasis away from homestead improvement issues and on to the ecological problems of Pacific Lumber Co.'s forest practices, because that was where the donation money was given most freely as well as where activists received greater public recognition. No one paid much attention to homestead issues, but they certainly did when the old Leftist standby, anti-corporate anything, took over as the dominant political paradigm of our local environmental movement.
One has only to look at how EPIC's operating budget zoomed to its current half-million dollars per year since the sea change to anti-Palco tactics happened at EPIC. The staff isn't from the homestead community any longer, and tellingly most all EPIC staff are childless. This becomes relevant when one considers EPIC's lawsuits' financial impact on Palco workers and their families.
Because I have been involved since 1990 trying to bring the importance of the unregulated rural subdivision eco-damage issue before the public through scores of letters written through the years, I am heartened that finally, after 14 years, public agencies are getting around to beginning to deal with these problems -- as witness the General Plan's agreement on protecting our rural watersheds from over-development. But there is much more to be done and one of the first things is for us to stop letting professional protesters like EPIC divert our attention away from Humboldt County's major eco-problem, the environmental impact of thousands of homesteaders polluting watercourses and siphoning off critical late summer and fall water resources.
As long as EPIC is being paid by donations and grants and court fines to find any scrap of evidence of Palco negligence, as long as EPIC press releases are printed verbatim with no substantial questioning by media reporters, as long as media do not themselves conduct serious investigative reporting into the subdivision eco-damage issue, Humboldt County citizens are being used and abused by these eco-profiteers at EPIC. Remember, for activists, money isn't always the reason for promoting a one-sided campaign against corporate timber industry workers. But public recognition and power over peoples' lives is. Some people are very greedy for fame and power in our community and are willing to distort environmental protection issues in order to achieve it.
Tragically, distorted environmental information put out by professional environmental protest organizations like EPIC is used to fuel vigilante actions like Earth First's harassment of Palco loggers, which has cost one misinformed protester his life. Next time you read about an EPIC "victory," remember the citizens and wildlife that are paying the price.
Stephen Lewis is an artist and writer. He lives in Rio Dell.


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