Redwood Reader

The Mattole Salmon Group is celebrating tis 25th anniversary this weekend with a meal and music at the Mattole Grange Saturday night, $15 a meal or $5 for music only. Anyone who has never been to one of these local fundraisers would be amazed at the importance of these little parties in a small isolated community. The young people especially appreciate the chance to hear live music and have something to do. Generally there are older folks for the meal and busy people get a chance to meet and do before the entertainment gets underway. The Mattole Grange and the Community Center deserve special thanks for providing facilities over the years.
The Mattole Salmon Group was founded to return salmon to the Mattole River. When it became clear upland conditions were part of the cause of salmon decline, Freeman House split and formed the Mattole Restoration Council to improve up slope conditions as a necessary prerequisite to stable in stream conditions. While the Salmon Group stayed focused on fish the Restoration Council began tree planting, seed gathering, industrial timber monitoring, road closures and eventually Good Roads Clean Creeks in order to reduce sedimentation.
Now we are beginning to see returns on our work. Last year it was reported that the run was about one third of the historical salmon runs, 3500 chinook and 1500 coho. No steelhead numbers were given but I believe our fishery is about to stand on its own two feet again. This is significant because the Klamath run is likely to be very poor this year, probably from a multitude of factors including dams, low water, poor regeneration several years ago, too few spawners the last two years, minimal upwelling by last years spring winds making poor food chain conditions in the sea offshore. Of course, all these are also subject to natural cycles in fish populations still poorly understood. The Colombia is having its worst runs ever while the Sacramento is having a run of historic proportions.
Redwood Reader has repeatedly stated that forest regeneration is the key both to late summer low flows and reduction of sediment in streams, and that fish will return when these conditions are met. SO it is with relief we see Pacific Lumber has decided Douglas fir lands do not meet its business model and cannot be profitably harvested. There is a good reason Douglas fir land is about a thousand per acre, while redwood lands are about 10,000 an acre, comparable to grape land. This, if it covers the Mattole holdings, and there is plenty of reason to believe it does, eliminates the last industrial threat to the Mattole. We have earlier asked BLM and MRC to weigh in on THP’s that would deliver sediment to the overburdened estuary. I have also presented the facts of glomalin to PL during their Mattole Watershed Analysis, and it would seem to be the basis of their decision, coupled with reaffirmed authority of the Water Quality Control Board to exercise its power over logging. With a huge chunk protected for stream buffers and steepness, terrible soil and climate conditions for road building and maintenance, limited value of the lumber itself, about half the value of redwood, the planning and permit processes and a bunch of negative publicity, PL has done the right thing by any business standard. Unfortunately, that is result of not developing a better business plan.
I don’t like to pretend I know what they are up to, but 60, 000 acres at 1000 per is about 60 million dollars, a little more than two interest payments. Perhaps the amount to pay off will go down a bit if the land is sold. The other 160,000 acres of redwood are valued at up to 10,000 an acre, about 1.6 billion dollars, and the fir is about 3.6% of the value of the timberlands. For this reason we had hoped PL would see the need for new markets for forest management, use their scientific expertise to draw out operational facts and move into the 21st Century with an income and a plan for marginal forest lands, and their political capital to power through new regulations that not only provide lasting habitat and water supplies, but annual income for carbon farming. Instead, they have bailed, and like the Forest Service are paying annual costs by selling capital assets.
We feel this would have been the time to negotiate for carbon sequestration at a time when the Governor has launched his million home solar initiative along with other measures to reduce greenhouse emissions. It is imperative we come up with a plan to clean the atmosphere, acknowledge that our problems on the ground can be mitigated by taking action on the atmosphere, that millions of dollars in restoration and preservation are a hindrance to the economy, that wild lands need income to remain in healthy conditions, and that the private market for carbon sequestering should pay for all of it, and that government and big business are needed to make it happen, and that this is a rare opportunity to rectify damage from past practices. We can make use of the aerial fertilization effect on a grand scale and hopefully we would see a reduction in atmospheric gases as regulators cap industrial emissions and on the ground practices restore the landscape while there is an abundance. We will also have an abundance of understanding when it comes to the environmental cost of development.
For this reason we are disappointed yet ecstatic to see the new chair at HSU dedicated to redwood forestry. With the amount of material in this blog alone we could keep people busy for fifty years without doing the reductionist thing species by species and organ by organ. We need the picture of a forest as a system, a community of different individuals with jobs, families and a building pattern that makes the environment a healthier place for its residents. We also point out the need to understand subsoil communication via pheromones, succession, suppression in the different life stages, manipulation of systems, individual modifications into more useful products and quantification of carbon and water storage. A lot of work is being done and HSU needs to come up to speed if it wants to be on the cutting edge studying its own local resources.
The opportunity cost is the melting of the Artic sea ice and glaciers around the world, continued habitat loss, heightened fire danger, less water availability and less air cleansing, and failure to provide jobs and income in rural areas that don’t degrade the environment while not getting our own house in order.