Redwood Reader

126. Anniversary
This week makes a whole year of Redwood Reader. There has been a lot to talk about and sometimes I feel I am not doing enough to educate folks about glomalin, the purpose of this blog in the first place. We have received very few comments, mostly good work type of comments. I expected to have a website for several key articles but I couldn’t fund it. Blogspot has been really helpful that way- it costs nothing and the archives stay on line so people can go back and research. CO2 Science has similar problems and went to pay for use in December, much to my chagrin but obviously necessary.
In that year I have found a lot of supporting evidence and as a result have been accumulating acute powers of analysis. These traits and abilities from knowledge should be part of every local land use decision, part of general education and a requirement all kinds of land managers. There are no nasty surprises if we understand soil mechanics and act accordingly. This does not preclude all activity, it just asks for smarter planning. We are also mindful of miners, who remove and replace entire ecosystems rather than fixing what is left when they are done.
Before the blog I had commented on HRSP and Headwaters plans with many ideas for resource protection. Then came glomalin. I mentioned it in King range comments as I was studying it, running out of time before I got it all together, causing abbreviated comments on other aspects of that plan. For Gilham Butte, glomalin was firmly fixed in mind. I found BLM’s practices very compatible with a glomalin regulating regime in place. The Plan supports the theory and the theory is carried out as BMPs without ever really mentioning a need to change operations. That is to say, BLM arrived at the same conclusions without benefit of glomalin knowledge as a result of years of observation. This is what we find in many sustainable activities- people unwittingly generating, protecting and taking advantage of the growing power of natural systems.
By now readers know we are critical of everyone. This is because they are all working from ignorance, and we are trying to dispel that. So no one is in the clear, from research scientists to companies and public agencies and private citizens forced to use poorly constructed roads, and making it worse by constantly rearranging drainage on top of watersheds, creating havoc below somewhere between the site and the creek. We also salute some folks environmentalists have trouble with, like grass managers and integrated sustainable farmers. These are the folks inherently protecting glomalin storage by maintaining conditions that generate revenue. We don’t support tree sits because of trespass laws, which we support as land owners. We do believe in civil disobedience to make a point or change law. The problem has been a lack of innovative ideas that would cause the company to rethink its practices, which are a result of regulation and economies of scale. They have done everything asked without benefiting from positive results and are vilified for the results they are getting. Time for something new..
We can see it is in everyone’s benefit to come to grips with this new science. We have pointed out Humboldt is an ideal situation for all the studies that would flow form investigating this. The educational and scientific infrastructure exists, and actually needs some new ideas for impetus.
IN the meantime I will continue to comment on local issues, report science I find, watch water issues closely, point out success stories and restoration plans and projects around the county and the country. This week I sent the first batch of articles to a printer to be published as Best of redwood reader. I am also rewriting this information into a glomalin book, as I believe the basic facts are in now and it is a matter of presentation. Blogs are difficult to lug around so I am anxious to get into a format people can take with them.
We thank our readers and hope they will educate their associates as well. The longer it takes to get the word out the more bad ideas we will have to contend with or undo. Large scale restoration and flood control projects desparartely need this knowledge, as well as developers and regulators in smaller settings but accumulating into huge amounts of impacted urbanized lands.
We read with amusement about Wendall Berry ranting about environmentalists having lost every battle they ever fought due to compromise. Then there was the death of environmentalism book and discussion, and criticism of large environmental groups, who have become big money Washington lobbyists without benefit of an idea outside of crying foul or buying land. We can’t save everything and we are limiting our sustainable choices by failing to understand what makes the system a system rather than a collection of individual species without collective infrastructure.