Community-based Forestry: A Dream Delayed: Usal Redwood Forest Easement Challenged

For many of us Mendocino Redwood Company's (MRC) ongoing effort to question the Wildlife Conservation Board's (WCB) use of state bond funding to support conservation easements on working forests has been puzzling. They present their positions as held for the sake of California taxpayer, for--the sake of achieving ecological objectives, and even for the sake of healthcare for children. Yet there are many opportunities to exercise such concerns. Why is MRC focusing so closely on the WCB process? And why only at the times when local conservation interests are soliciting funding from the WCB? (read more)


Letters
MRC Response to "A Dream Delayed" by David Simpson (read more)


A New Future for Jackson State Forest
The Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest has worked since 2000 to reform management of California's 48,000-acre redwood forest located in Mendocino County. January 15, 2011 marked a momentous milestone in the campaign. (read more)


Community-based Forestry: A Dream Delayed, Usal Redwood Forest Easement Challenged

In an apparently well-timed about face, the Mendocino Redwood Company (MendoRC) delivered a blow to many of its newly won friends in the environmental and sustainable forestry community when the company CEO urged a delay in the granting of a conservation easement to a well-thought-of North Coast conservation organization, the Redwood Forest Foundaton (RFFI). It was a blow which threatens MendoRC's standing as an enlightened operator as well as the relative harmony that has fallen over the timber regions since the end of the Maxxam days. (read more)


Engaging Timber: Protecting Your Watershed and Your Backyard
You've just learned that a logging plan is proposed in your backyard or watershed. Maybe you're concerned about adverse impacts to the steelhead or coho salmon that once were plentiful in area streams, but now seem more a dream than a reality. Or perhaps you're worried about your private road that is slated to be used for log hauling. Maybe your water intake is in a creek that runs through the land to be logged. What can you do and where should you start? The Fight Back! Forest Defenders Handbook, A Citizen's Guide to Timber Harvest Regulation may be able to help. But before getting into the particulars, it will be useful to understand a bit of the history of logging regulation. (read more)


Engaging Timber: This Land Is Your Land: National Forest Timber Sales and Public Involvement
The best thing that ever happened to me was the old-growth timber sale program on our National Forests. Seriously. (read more)


Engaging Timber: The Timber Harvest Plan Process: An Explanation
Looking out over the hills of the North Coast region, the expansive patchwork of clearcuts and young tree plantations marks a stark contrast from the tiny patches of preserved old-growth redwood forests within parks and the Headwaters Preserve. Private timber operators logged for years without effective regulation, and nearly destroyed the integrity of forest ecosystems for all of the species that depend on them. Since the 1970s local community activists and EPIC have worked to support better logging practices and provide habitat protection in our region, by monitoring industrial timber operations through the Timber Harvest Plan (THP) process. (read more)


Engaging Timber: Northwest California's National Forests in the Big Picture
A decade into the 21st century, the US Forest Service is only beginning to face the challenges that nearly overwhelmed it in the 20th. The tension between competing desires to exploit western forests for immediate gain or to protect them to provide for long-term sustainability first drove Teddy Roosevelt to create the National Forest system to secure both forests and key sources of clean, abundant water. But following World War II, the National Forests became the focus of an enormous logging and road-building boom. (read more)


Natural Forestry Progressing for Jackson Forest?
In the previous update, I reported that the Jackson Advisory Group (JAG) was considering "Natural Forestry" for Jackson State Forest. Since that time, the concept of Natural Forestry has evolved and appears to be making headway as the preferred management approach. (read more)


Monitoring Regional Forests
Central Coast Forest Watch (CCFW) has kept busy this year, both reviewing timber harvest proposals and weighing in on state regulatory packages. CCFW submitted an extensive comment letter on the Bohemian Grove Non-Industrial Timber Management Plant (NTMP) on the Russian River, outlining the ways in which that plan has misinterpreted the Forest Practice Rules to try to qualify for the in-perpetuity NTMP permit. That plan is still under review by CAL FIRE. We also prepared in-depth comments on the Eureka Gulch Timber Harvest Plan on Corralitos Creek in Santa Cruz County, which along with DFG and County non-concurrences, helped get a winter cut-off rainfall amount included in the plan, instead of open-ended winter operations. (read more)


Obama Administration Cancels Bush-Era Plan to Clearcut Oregon Forests: Salmon, Clean Water, and Old-Growth Forests Big Winners
On July 17 of this year, the Obama administration announced a decision to cancel a Bush-era plan that would have nearly quadrupled logging on public lands in western Oregon. The Bush plan, called the Western Oregon Plan Revision, or WOPR, re-zoned 2.6 million acres of federal public forests in Oregon managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The announcement came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild) and twelve other conservation organizations challenging the Bush-era logging plan. Obama officials said the Bush plan ignored requirements to protect endangered species living in the forests and could not be defended in court. (read more)


Community-based Forestry: Legitimacy and Stability for PL Lands
In January of 2007, Pacific Lumber Company (PL), through its two components, Scotia Pacific and Palco, filed for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors. I doubt anyone local needs a detailed depiction of how PL had treated its 217,000 acres of timberland during the preceding 22 years after its takeover by Houston-based Maxxam Corporation. If you set out to identify Community Forestry by what it absolutely is not, you might create a scenario like the one that actually developed between late 1985 and early 2007. (read more)


Community-based Forestry: Community Restoration Begets an Approach to Community Forestry
When the Mattole Restoration Council was founded in 1983, it grew out of the founders' realization that salmon don't just live in rivers, they live in watersheds. What's more, those watersheds aren't just made up of forests, prairies, and wildlife--they are home to people, too, the only species able to make a conscious effort on the salmon's behalf. For any restoration effort to gain traction and staying power, it would need to be rooted in an approach that invited all landowners and residents to participate in whatever way they could: a community-wide approach to restoration. (read more)


Community-based Forestry: Why Community Forestry? And Why Now?
"Community-based forestry (CBF) is a participatory approach to forest management that strengthens communities' capacity to build vibrant local economies-while protecting and enhancing their local forest ecosystems. By integrating ecological, social, and economic components into cohesive approaches to forestry issues, community-based approaches give local residents both the opportunity and the responsibility to manage their natural resources effectively and to enjoy the benefits of that responsibility." (read more)


The Final Chapter
In 2000, the Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest (the Campaign) filed suit to halt logging in Jackson State Forest. Over the next eight years, legal actions or the threat of legal actions compelled the Department of Forestry (formerly abbreviated as CDF, now CalFire) to refrain from any logging and to develop a new management plan and accompanying environmental documents. Finally, in January of 2008, a new management plan for Jackson State Forest was approved, with the support of the Campaign. (read more)