Redwood Reader

Headwaters was given a report card this week by the Wilderness Society and the World Resources Institute as part of annual monitoring of the National Landscape Conservation System.. Middling poor grades were given mainly due to underfunding, understaffing, lack of a role in the agency’s state managers team, and a perceived slow rate of restoration projects. http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_3160273 It seems the marks are more about the National Landscape Conservation System of which it is a part, and the fact that local BLM folks are not on the state level team. Seems like Arcata has done an outstanding job in the area. They are gaining donated land and smaller budgets at a rapid pace, and we probably don’t need too much of an annual report on these parcels beyond progress reports, as this distracts from the staffs ability to work on other projects, including King Range, Gilham Butte, Table Bluff, Mill Creek, the last three all relatively new purchases and all requiring management plans. We’d rather see the restoration get done before funding dries up, which consists primarily of putting roads to bed and stand management of second and third growth timber into a mature condition.
The article seemed to think there was very good but shorthanded staff, which has been my experience as well. All of our public lands could use more money and personnel at the local level. What we don’t need is knee jerk reactions like the recent closure of National Forests for ALL activities without an impact statement, including berry picking, Christmas trees and mushrooms. Luckily it didn’t last too long but suppose you were planning to go, then cancelled your season, and then it was back on again, it was part of your livelihood and had planned all year for it. We fear the harvest of mushrooms will accelerate before their true role in the forest becomes general knowledge, and conservationists will have to battle the economic impacts of restrictions again.
For an article describing one North Coast road closure project, go to www.erosioncontrol.org and see this months article about Humboldt Redwoods State Parks project in Bull Creek, and remember some of these areas have ten miles of old roads per square mile, which also gives some idea of planning and costs involved in removing the old roads, which are a leading cause of habitat degradation for our coastal streams.
More ideas for the Forest include fire risk reduction and the need for sustainable energy sources. Bhiomass power plants got a push this week. There are actually half the number of them compared to a few uears ago.In Beating the bushes for biomass http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_3160246 John Driscoll of the Times-Standad talks with Steve Jolley of Wheelabrator, a biomass company. As a forester he sees the need for landscape wide management over the entire forested landscape in California. This is one of the big problems we are facing- what to do with all that explosive vegetative growth from increased CO2 and warmer wetter weather? Biomass can be an eager consumer of products such as thinning, timber stand improvement, fuel load reduction, “fire-safing” rural properties and payment for small amounts could make a big difference in the rural economy as well as encourage more work in the landscape. Hopefully a percentage or clients becomes efficient enough to use these methods on public lands, which we have said are in danger of overprotection from fire as well as deer and invasive species.
This kind of work could go on for nearly forever, and you can’t ship the jobs out. Combined with the current objectives of the Forest Service and other federal landowners with an understanding of the need to protect the glomalin based water system healthy is a promising future for people, the landscape, habitat and the wildlife
Another possible contender for this product could be the pulp mill. The Times_ Standard reported Evergreen Pulp Mill was granted an interim variance http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_3164518 on their lime kiln. We hope the electrostatic precipitator (scrubber) can do the job but it sounds expensive and only maybe going to work. It would be a shame to see that mill fail to operate after all the improvements since 1990 and the effort put into the bleach free paper. Humboldt needs help reducing waste, fire risk and increasing rural incomes, and these projects could do it. We realize larger contracts are probably the rule of thumb, but we need less boom and bust and more focus on the long term on millions of acres of forestland. I imagine they are mainly chip buyers from the mills but chipped brush by the pickup full is worth what? Who gets the branches and leaves? How much oil can you press out of ceanothus? What other trees can provide biofuel as well as habitat?
Time will come for many new products to come from our forests. Each new cycle of human activity focuses around some aspect unrecognized in the past, then suddenly found to be very useful. Naative Americans use forest products far differently than we do. The people after us will as well. That’s why we have to leave it better than we found it.