Redwood Reader

Congratulations and thanks are in order to State Senator Wesley Chesbro. Shortly after money for restoration was to be cut, Senator Chesbro introduced a new bill for funding North Coast restoration programs, parks, and hatcheries. Many small issues are covered by his bill, and it continues the good work of many people. Redwood Reader does not believe restoration is fundable as a permanent industry but do feel it imperative to cause and allow recovery of fisheries and landscapes. In this sense we support the culvert program, Good Roads, Clear Creeks and other restoration projects aimed at returning the landscape to at least stable. Restoration must lay the groundwork that allows an abundance of all things natural, of which we can use a portion while maintaining functionality of natural systems.
In this light Senator Chesbro's appointment to the Wildlife Conservation Board is even more significant than the new bill. The Wildlife Conservation Board helps the state target acquisitions for wildlife habitat and are responsible at least in part for many local land purchases. They also bring a sense of continuity in an area where the ground may shift after any election. One example is an old BLM worker who first helped create the Core Reserve on top of Gilham Butte in the eighties. He traveled out here and met the people defending the habitat. Standing on the Butte with your back to Humboldt Redwoods and Rockerfeller Forest looking at King Range National Conseervation Area, it is easy to envision the Redwoods to the Sea concept. Years later an opportunity arose to purchase a larger portion of the Butte, he was willing and able to support the purchase as a memeber of the Wildlife Conservation Board. Senator Chesbro, already familiar with many of the issues, opportunities and problems will make an excellant Board member.
Redwood Reader believes that some habitat needs preservation but that habitat is part of a continuum of economic activity on the landscape. Unfortunatly glomalin destruction has been a part of development since the very beginning. Glomalin producing fungi are at the bottom of many terrestial food webs as well as watershed stregnth. We believe farming will benefit from better understanding of mycorhizzia relationships. We hope that JR Smiths model of annual cropping of mast in a semi wild environment will provide economic incentive, deep rooting for landscape stability, plenty of habitat and year round water in the creeks. We need a model that allows for massive trees to do their part of the precipitation interception and storage. We need better understanding of the riparian sponge nad how we can take advantage of it without destroying it.
Development and glomalin production are very nearly opposite sides of the same coin. Old growth forests retain their glomalin and glomalin production capabilities for centuries. Pioneers move over the landscape harvesting animals but leaving the ground intact. Then came settlers who cleared the forest and plowed the ground. Farmers soon found they had destroyed the mechanism that caused fertility and replaced it with fertilizers. Developers later finished the landscape off with paving, roofing, lawns which created runoff, that in turn demanded larger public works to control.
Which brings us to last nights hearing and tomorrows decision on the Thp's for Freshwater and Elk River. I notified all local agencies as well as PL and Humboldt Watershed Council about glomalin. THe Water quality Control Board may be weighing this issue of sedimentation. I notified PL last summer about glomalin and that all the information was on the web to look at themselves, which they said they would do. Chuck Centers comment about standing all the trees back up and still having flooding indicates PL has not kept up with developments in the causes of sedimentation, or of the need for longer rotations, preservation of the forest floor or the function of the canopy in heavy rain events. They show no indication of new thinking, and the old thinking has failed us all.
Hopefully Redwood Sciences Lab is working on this, perhaps in their experimental work in Mendocino, so we can have real time forest science instead on connecting literature dots to understand what you are looking at. MEanwhile a policy of no new damage would seem to be in order on the ground. PL should jump into the science with both feet as there is a wealth of science that needs doing and research dollars could replace some lost timber revenue. It would be to their benefit if everyone was aware of the same information and we could decide what percentage of vegetation removal and ground disturbance is acceptable without cutting loose large volumes of sediment. Many regulatory approaches are out there, their cumulative impact is a struggling timber industry. With clear understanding we can find allowable cuts on steep land, critical habitat, Forest Service lands and less need for preservation of private lands as well as reducing the cost and time consumption involved in preparing THP's.while increasing the need for fire risk reduction and an economical use for small wood. They may also want to go back into intellectual property, which they haven't paid attention to since the welding shop and its patents were sold. We used to kid that a Japanese mushroom company would buy PL and make millions without cutting the big trees. It now appears it will be a Chinese pulp company trying to vertically integrate