Redwood Reader

Anatomy is a big word for someone who claims scientific ignorance, as Stephen Lewis points out in his opinion article in the Eureka reporter of May 28, 2005. So it is we can see this article is poorly researched as science and as history. We agree fear is a powerful tactic, and it is no secret that many quotes from Germany can be equally applied by our modern administration and without credits we would be none the worse for wear. Fear based on false information is a more serious charge, and it also stands the test of time. A more enlightening article might be called Sediment Wars so we can skip the scam aspect.
Timber wars have raged in Humboldt since it was discovered. At first companies grabbed as much as they could using the Stone and Timber Act and railroad rights of way. Save the Redwoods League was founded in the twenties by the wives of timbermen. In that decade state legislators voted not to allow tree cutting in along roads in state parks leaving us with Confusion Hill, Highway 36, Mattole Road, Avenue of the Giants and the stretch leading into Crescent City as unfixable situations. Union organizing and busting was big in the thirties here. While things seemed to settle down with the war effort, in reality the bulldozer and plywood were causing a new timber boom. Laws such as the property tax law taxing standing timber at 70% encouraged people to cut 70% of their timber whether or not it was profitable enough to go to market with because it lowered annual property taxes. At our properties at the ends of roads, piles of rotten Douglas fir logs are a testament to this thinking.
All was rock and roll until the warning flood of 1955 when the results of massive road building, tree cutting and soil disruption collaborated into a stew of mud. This had no obvious effect but the flood of 1964 did.
We have learned a lot of lessons from this flood, and it also set in motion wheels that continue to turn today even as forty year old events fade from memory. Massive cat logging and skidding had begun to impact salmon runs, and the canneries were beginning to close. The massive destruction caused a huge drop in property values in the County and the population fell forty percent. To counter this and take advantage of the burgeoning back to the land movement the County Board of Supervisors opened several areas to subdivisions, usually in areas previously roaded by ranchers and timbermen. These newcomers have raised property values and property taxes and brought a more holistic approach to living in the environment.
My friend Carlo Mazzone came here with a group of foreign investors set up by local realtors because there was no American market for the devastated lands. A small charter plane flew them up here and they went to Panther Gap to look at land. Carlo thought it was the perfect setting for an international comedy theatre and so Dell Arte was born. Carlo had students from around the world, and he made them water planted trees as part of their education when the school was in Panther Gap. Carlo was the first person to challenge a logging action that I am aware of, and he did it the Dell Arte way, acting out a heart attack until BLM and ERS went away, then yelling “Comedia Dell Arte!” at them as they drove away. This is in the early 70’s.
At this time the State voted on new Forest Practice rules to prevent another man made catastrophic loss. We are living with these rules today even as science plows ahead. HCP’s are supposed to incorporate new scientific findings but we see they are a quarter of a century behind on mycorhizzia and a decade behind on glomalin, which is inextricably linked to causes of sedimentation and remediation.
We also see the county failing to maintain these private subdivision roads, and miles of denuded stream banks and vegetation free land trying to recover. Meanwhile landslides continued decades after the last Cat left an area, mostly from excessive runoff caused by its concentration but plenty from stumps decaying decades after trees were cut. My brother bought some of this land in 1976 and it cost him 200 dollars an acre with no money down. The parcels were subdivided by Bob McKee and logged by Lyle Rock. Being streamside, this parcel took all the insults in the watershed. A 1964 stream with coho, Chinook and steelhead was reduced to a nearly trickle. Land continues falling away today with no relief except massive landforming operations, but thirty years of tree planting have resulted in a slowly stabilizing landscape. Steelhead are back, no salmon yet, but now some stretches dry up in the summer, another result of ignorance of the role of fungi and its products in a forest.
As creek bottom owners we tried many times to slow down the destruction coming down from above us, but this requires understanding and cooperation from many landowners. There are cost limits. BUt mainly there was an information disconnect- what caused the sediment to be cut loose in the first place?
Pacific Lumbers founders were aware of the destructiveness of clear cutting they witnessed in Maine and the Lake States. Other redwood companies with differing business plans came and went for a century until only PL was viable, mostly because they limited entry and select cut, inadvertently protecting the forest floor with pretty good results- PL lands were the least impacted fisheries in the eighties, especially Freshwater and Elk River and Salmon Creek.
After the purchase in 1985 it was obvious to us living on the roads used by loogers there were more trucks on the road, often imperiling other drivers. On July6, 1987 a young driver working for Don Nolan under contract with PL clipped a redwood near Panmplin Grove. The empty bunk broke off and came into the windshield of an oncoming vehicle. The driver, Sandra Chomicki, was killed. Her 19-month-old son sustained major life threatening head injuries. He went to the Bay area for critical care and rehab, and has been raised in Humboldt since then. He will graduate from Eureka City Schools Independent studies program this month after many years in special education classes and then home school. Many more facts about Humboldt became evident in his case, like testing the victim but not the driver that caused the accident. CHP tried to prove some kind of illegal drugs were involved because they found a baggie with poppy seeds in it, but the butter proved it was from a bagel and the judge tossed the allegation. Testimony the driver had been drinking beer at a party after midnight the night before was excluded.
One of the effects of this kind of disinformation was Citizens Observation Group began counting log trucks, which spread the word about highway dangers of increased cutting. These people were already mobilized on another issue but his legitimized the power of the new settlers. They began trying to slow PL down. Byron Scheer said it would take a purchase, and the Headwaters deal emerged form thin air. As is so often the case, the deal wound up being a great deal for PL’s owners, only pretty good for PL operations, a nice grove for taxpayers but not a protected watershed as envisioned, and a new round of forest regulations from the Federal government in the form of Habitat Conservation Plans. Preservationists were just hippies until sport and commercial fishermen realized sedimentation was the primary source of impacted runs of salmon and trout. All of this was in place before Redwood Summer.
Meanwhile forest mycologists began understanding the vital role of fungi in forests. The sheer numbers and diversity had mycologists gathering information for a century before the roles became known. Then it was mostly the symbiotic role of fungi and trees in mutual assistance in food gathering. Soil scientists studying topsoil discovered a soil glue made of a glycoprotein produced by mycorhizzia, which had the property of binding soil particles, creating tilth, holding water, and vaporizing back to CO2 when destroyed. This alters our thinking on sediment, the role of CO2 in the atmosphere, and methods and meaning of restoring the landscape.
Many local groups started trying to fix their roads wound up as watershed groups because the roads directly impact the creeks, and because they had to pay for roadwork nearly every spring. Much of this roadwork just reinforces good work done under the wrong information causing continued instability rather than fixing it. We cannot ask every landowner to not do anything to their land but we can storm proof roads, reduce runoff, take some roads out of commission and wait patiently for a new form of transportation that has much less impact on the landscape. This is far more important than reducing emissions because emissions are part of the cure while roads remain problematic. So we have Good Roads, Clean Creeks in the Mattole watershed, an attempt to storm proof all the roads in the watershed still being used, and putting some of the worst offenders to bed. These projects cost a lot of money. The longer it takes to do, the less the dollars are worth and the more the program will cost in absolute dollars. Nevertheless, this is a great regional project like the culvert replacement program that will benefit many people AND the environment.
Today science is at hand that will prevent any more cataclysmic events from our forest practices, and allow us to find a sustainable rate of harvest that is environmentally friendly. In the altered forests we are looking at now we see a lot of overgrowth leading to crowding and fuel loading. We see the lack of big trees has diminished the forests capacity to clean the air, store the precipitation and provide habitat and clean water for its denizens. Nationally, progressive projects like the Chesapeake Bay Restoration effort, which has each county imposing rules on every landowner to control and direct every drop of precipitation on his property in a 64000 square mile developed watershed, will be the work of the new century as we go into fully sustainable living patterns mandated by the results of the industrial age.
For these reasons we are glad the General Plan restricted growth to the already developed areas. In twenty years we will be able to build sustainable living spaces that do not sacrifice the environment. Right now either you destroy or preserve glomalin, but there is plenty of room for more development friendly insights that will allow us to achieve most or all of these goals. Some farmers and ranchers, as well as many aboriginal peoples, intuitively know the balance, as it is the heart of sustainability.
Finally, what happens when the voice of science is drowned out by people afraid of a lowering bottom line, who sit on published information while jamming unsustainable plans through on the basis of economic necessity? Who tells the judges what to read? How is new information incorporated into current decision making? How long will it take?
We also point out that many pro-timber people lump environmentalists together. We point out the many non-timber groups around like the Coalition against Toxics, the Pavement Moratorium folks, Ida Honoroff and the clean air people, The Surf Riders, sport fishing groups like Cal Trout, the Audubon Society, and the many river and wildlife recovery and restoration groups and including agencies like BLM, DFG and the Water Quality Control Board.
This is article 137 on the Redwood Reader at www.redwoodreader.blogspot.com.