Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Cold Air | 6 New Cases | Lorraine Tognoli | AV Library | Unvaccinated Surge | PA Welcome | AVVFFA Raffle | Ukiah Library | Ballhunters | Ganja Ordinance | Immigration | Water Talk | Alien Rejection | Ed Notes | Social Order | Taxfree Wealth | Planners Planning | No Password | Poach & Pot | Sax Cow | Art Display | Yesterday's Catch | Evil Addiction | Fetch | Lonesome Me | Self Esteem | Desal CA | My Advice | Biggest Elephants | Phoneless Fool | Saving Steelhead | Unintelligent Species | Forest Health | Found Object

AN UNSEASONABLY COLD AIR MASS will result in below normal temperatures for the interior through the week. Coastal highs will be mild after chilly morning lows. Scattered showers are expected to develop with daytime heating over the interior mountains this afternoon, with isolated thunderstorms possible for Trinity and northeast Mendocino Counties. A cold front will approach on Friday, bringing a chance for rain primarily to Del Norte and northern Humboldt Counties. (NWS)

6 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

LORRAINE TOGNOLI

Lorraine Tognoli beloved sister, daughter and aunt passed unexpectedly April 20th of 2021. Lorraine was born on June 2nd 1959 in Daly City, California to the proud parents of Bob and Rosaline Tognoli. Lori was an added blessing to the Tognoli family home joining her two brothers Matthew and Micheal. They loved each other dearly. Lori would quickly become the steward of the family whether needed and welcomed or not. In other words; the baby girl had arrived and her brothers where her most precious allies. She realized quickly she could do whatever her two brothers could do and she did. She loved well and was well loved.

Lori received her early education in Daly City. Upon graduation, Lori relocated from the Bay Area to various locations in Northern California and ultimately to Nevada. From Denny’s to Nevada’s finest casinos, Lori was hard to miss; beautiful and personable, she loved the hospitality and gaming industry.

For the past five years, Lori resided in Fort Bragg, Ca. where she resumed her daughter role, spending countless hours looking after and “stewarding” her father Bob and her two brothers around. They loved each other immensely; perfect quadrants, who could always be found laughing and reminiscing over the rich family history they all shared. An avid puzzler, Lori would spend hours toiling about enjoying piece by piece until many of her incredible masterpieces were completed. She was also a true lover of music and diverse in her selection. She loved walking along the ocean trails and having daily conversations with her bestie Christine. She was a GOOD friend, daughter, sister and aunt.

Lori is survived by her two brothers Matthew John (Loretta) Tognoli, and Micheal George (Troyle) Tognoli. One niece Susan (Alexander) Tognoli-Ayerbe. And one nephew Dominic Tognoli. 

Lori also leaves behind lifelong friends Christine and Tracy. Her beloved cat Nina and countless friends and colleagues. She will be deeply missed.

Rememberance is the greatest gift. In celebration of Lori, the family invites her friends to the ultimate “PARTY for LORI” on Saturday June 19th at 1:17 pm until. 534 Baywood Court, Ukiah.

LOCAL SURGE LIMITED TO UNVACCINATED PERSONS

Miller Report for the Week of June 7, 2021; by William Miller, MD; Chief of Staff at Adventist Health – Mendocino Coast Hospital.

Over the past two weeks we have seen an uptick in cases of COVID here in Mendocino County with about 50 new cases and seven persons hospitalized (6 inland and 1 on the Coast). There are a few observations that we can make of the situation.

First, we know that the pandemic is not over and that it will likely continue as a global pandemic for a while yet, at least for another year. During that time, we should expect the cases to ebb and flow. Eventually the global pandemic will fade, but the virus that causes COVID will remain indefinitely. This is just like H1N1 influenza that caused the 1918 influenza pandemic. That pandemic is over, but the virus is still here and occasionally pops up again causing smaller outbreaks.

Second, this current uptick is unlikely to lead to a significant rise in cases like we experienced this time last year. By the end of May, 2020, California was recording almost 4,000 new cases per day and the case rate was rising with a peak in mid-summer. This week, we are seeing only about 850 new cases per day and the case rate is already starting to slow. The difference is that today almost 60% of Californians have been vaccinated either fully (~45%) or partially (~15%). 

So, while a little over half of the population is protected from COVID, the other half is not. What we are seeing now is a surge in the unvaccinated 40% of the residence in the county. 

I spoke with Dr. Andy Coren, our county health officer, to get his perspective. “For those who remain unvaccinated, they are at the same risk of severe COVID, hospitalization and death as in the past. Plus, now we have to worry about faster-spreading variants. They can pass it along to co-workers, friends, relatives and visitors,” Coren said. “For those who can get vaccinated, they should do so as soon as possible, and enjoy more security and stability in their lives, less need for testing or for quarantine, easier travel and easier admission to large events such as sports and conventions. Those who are not vaccinated should be regularly testing to protect those around themselves.”

I appreciate the comments and feedback of all the readers of the Miller Report from both sides of the vaccination discussion. One reader recently sent me a link to an article that criticized public health officials for using fear of COVID as a means of encouraging people to get vaccinated. The article then went on make claims about the dangers of vaccination and encouraged people to not risk vaccination. What I found really interesting was the apparent hypocrisy of the article. On the one hand the author of the article accused health officials of fear mongering by providing facts about a very real pandemic that has killed millions worldwide, while in the next breath she extolled unproven, fear based claims about vaccinations to dissuade people from taking steps to protect themselves. 

With this kind of banter going on, it may still be confusing for folks who are undecided about getting vaccinated. So, here is a summary of the facts. The vaccines do not carry a microchip that allows the government to track you like your cell phone already does. The vaccines are not capable of altering your own personal genetic makeup. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are not associated with a risk of blood clots. The Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines, which use a completely different technology from Pfizer and Moderna, have been associated with an extremely small risk of blood clots in young women. For example, over 82 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been given worldwide with less than 20 people getting blood clots from it. Lastly, the emergency use approval process by the FDA is a means of expediting the bureaucracy involved in approving a new drug, but it does not cut corners on the required testing of the drug. So, deciding to wait until the FDA “gives full approval” makes no sense. 

In the final analysis, we each need to weigh the risks and benefits. On the one hand, there is a pandemic which is still active and has killed over 3.7 million people, left untold thousands with long-COVID disabilities, and seriously damaged the economy; versus extremely small risks associated with getting a shot. I do hope that if you remain reluctant to get vaccinated, that you will think twice and reconsider the decision. 

For more information about the vaccines, please refer back to my articles of March 29^th and April 5^th . All previous Miller Reports are now available on my website at www.WMillerMD.com. 

(The views shared in this weekly column are those of the author, Dr. William Miller, and do not necessarily represent those of the publisher or of Adventist Health.)

THE POINT ARENA WELCOME SIGN is finished and installed! It's at the south end of town facing northbound travel on Highway 1. This was sponsored by the Point Arena Merchants Association and installed by the City of Point Arena. As I'm sure you know, there's usually more to something than meets the eye and this set of photos shows how the sign was (re)created. The goal was to have it be bright, beautiful and LONG-LASTING! (Mendo’s premier muralist, Lauren Sinnott)

AV FIREFIGHTERS RAFFLING OFF THREE TOP-NOTCH PICNIC TABLES.

The Anderson Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association (AVVFFA) announced Tuesday that three eight-foot picnic tables will be raffled off on the Fourth of July. Tickets available at the Fire Station when Secretary Patty Liddy is there, or find a local first responder who can provide you with your ticket. Only 400 tickets will be sold for $20 each. This is your opportunity to win a beautiful picnic table and provide funds for our volunteer first responders. 

THE UKIAH BRANCH of the Mendocino County library has opened its doors again to the public at 105 N. Main St. It is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays for patrons wearing masks to come inside and pick up holds or simply browse their collection.

SUPERVISOR HASCHAK:

The new cannabis ordinance with expansion is going forward. The cultivation of 10% of rangeland and ag lands was approved 4-1 with direction given to staff to bring back language later in the summer to limit it to 2 acres for the near future. 

There are some good things in this new ordinance such as no water hauling, some restrictions on hoop houses, prohibition of generators as primary power sources but the overall impact of large expansion was the prime reason I voted no. 

The County needs to show that it can handle the current cohort of people in the permitting process, properly enforce the rules that we have already, and have a robust law enforcement response to the proliferation of illegal grows in our County. People are rightly concerned about water, environment, and community and their voices were loud and clear.

Supervisor McGourty and I are the ad hoc committee for drought response. We are hosting a Countywide Drought Task Force zoom webinar on June 10 at 4:00. We will discuss the formation of a County water agency, voluntary water reductions, and other efforts to help us deal with this historic drought. The address is too long to put here but it will be on the County’s youtube channel and facebook page.

SUPES TALKING WATER AGAIN

Will a re-born County water agency do anything to help Mendo’s water woes?

Short answer: No. 

Long answer: No.

Tuesday morning, the Supervisors discussed re-forming the County’s toothless Water Agency which had been shut down in 2009 in the wake of the Great Recession budget cuts. Most of the talk was about applying for grants and hiring an administrator and the general obvious desirability of water supply projects to develop into grant applications.

As usual, the discussion was purely abstract, and totally ignored history. We recall three candidate projects that were initiated by former Supervisor John Pinches, the only Supervisor in recent memory who gave serious thought to water in Mendocino County. 

Pinches' ideas were either outright opposed or died from the indolent inattention paid them by his fellow supervisors.

Pinches proposed developing Scout Lake east of Willits to supply the perennially thirsty Gateway to the Redwoods and points south. He also identified and suggested a Redwood Valley swale that he thought might catch a useful amount of annual rainfall if dammed; and Pinches' idea to run a pipe from Dos Rios to Willits and Ukiah along the rail track right of way to divert limited high winter flows from the Eel River South Fork when flow rates were high sent David and Ellen Drell and Eel River/Humboldt supporters into a state of shock, and tapping the winter flow of the Eel was rejected out of hand. (What's left of the Eel is also federally protected as wild and scenic.)

As we recall the Scout Lake project foundered because the “leadership” was unable to arrange agreements between the City of Willits, the Boy Scouts (property owners), and the pipeline waterway right of way.

The proposed Redwood Valley project foundered when Environmental Impact Report requirements were raised, and then the County lost interest (and creative thinking) when Pinches left the Board.

The point is, more agencies, more admin, more meetings, more grant applications, and more grant money are all irrelevant if there are no realistic projects and someone to push them day to day and week to week, hurdle after hurdle. Well paid admin types are too willing to take no for an answer or accept that every i be dotted and t crossed to take as long as they like, drought or no drought.

Tuesday’s Supe's water discussion was heavy on magical thinking which assumed that yet another new bureaucrat would magically enhance the county's water supply.

Viable proposals from the hardest hit inland and coastal areas like Redwood and Potter Valley and the town of Mendocino are required, and these areas and their water customers have to be willing to pay a reasonable rate to both encourage conservation and store and maintain whatever water they can find. 

Further, the word “conservation” was never mentioned during Tuesday’s discussion. Mendo’s current water usage patterns have to be scaled back, more dry farming required, large users ordered to conserve. If not, no amount of water supply and storage projects — on the off chance a bureaucrat can find one — will address the longer term problem.

(Mark Scaramella)

ED NOTES

HER MANY FRIENDS in the Anderson Valley will be relieved to learn that Carolyn Eigenman has survived a terrible medical ordeal, which the long-time Boonville resident best describes herself:

On May 4th after a lovely visit with my family just that weekend, I experienced sharp pain and shortness of breath. At Kaiser Santa Rosa, I was admitted to the ICU where I was told that I was the perfect candidate for a heart valve replacement through a new procedure that would have me feeling “remarkable” in just a couple of days. So they shipped me off to Kaiser SF and things fell apart from there. Now finally after twenty days (not the two I was expecting) I was finally released. Since then I have been recuperating at my daughter’s home with all kinds of love and attention from my family. 

I was incredibly ill and unable to walk, read or function in any normal way and was often not expected to pull through. The experience was really the worst in my life and I will never go to the hospital again ever. It was so traumatic. I am very surprised to be here still.

Since I have been out of the hospital I have been improving everyday.

WE RECEIVED this message from Trevor Mockle, the county's recently appointed public info guy: “Mendocino County will be hosting a COVID-19 Update, Friday, June 11th at 2:00 PM. If your outlet would like to participate in the Q&A section of this Update, please have one of your reporters contact me directly BY 10 AM Friday, and I will be happy to send you a Zoom invite. Each media outlet must keep to 2 questions each during the Update. We appreciate all that you do, and we look forward to seeing you there.”

“WE APPRECIATE all that you do.” Har de har, Trev, I'll bet. So I write back to ask why a visual conference call with the county's hard-hitting covid doctors, Coren and Doohan, the latter helping us through the plague from her home — “part time” — in San Diego at the bargain rate of a hundred grand or so for this year alone, require a special invitation given that few if any of Mendo's snoozing media are interested. And only two questions? All six of us must be expected.

TREV gets all uptight and snaps back, “I just assumed that you would want to be part of this distribution list; if you would like to be removed just let me know. Best, Trevor."

I ANSWER: "Don't have to get all huffy about it, Trev. Gotta be a pro about this stuff in the PIO game. To us, being on the list is the same as being off list, as a Zen master might say.”

TREV, belatedly hip to being messed with by Boonville's beloved weekly, closes our dialogue with, “I would never say I'm a pro at anything; more of a jack of all trades type ethos. A Heinlein quote comes to mind; something about specialization being for insects… As always your humble public servant. Best, Trev” 

(I’M STARTING to like this guy.) 

COREN AND DOOHAN ought to be fired. Doohan never should have been hired, and Coren serves no useful purpose. Doc D represents another of CEO Angelo's gifts of public funds. Coren's recitation of state covid directives and hospital stats could simply be replaced by, say, Trev Mockle, at a big savings. Doc Doohan raking in a hundred thou as Coren's long distance assistant from her home in San Diego is simply one more swindle orchestrated by the CEO.

ADD to the lengthening list of stuff going terribly wrong, a massive chunk of the internet dropped offline Tuesday morning. Outages were reported on the sites of many of the world’s biggest publishers, including The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, the Financial Times, and parts of the BBC. Reddit, Spotify, Twitch, some parts of Amazon, and the British government’s main website were also returning error messages. TechCrunch reported that an outage on Fastly—a widely used CDN provider—appeared to be the cause of the major global blackout, and Fastly wrote on its site that it’s investigating an unspecified problem that is creating “potential impact to performance” for its big-name clients. Around 50 minutes after it first identified the issue, Fastly wrote: “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.” Some of the sites started reappearing online after that message was posted. (Daily Beast)

WOOF-WOOF. That big sign on 128 at the junction of Hopland Road threatening non-maskers with 100 dollar fines is a nice little joke, almost as funny as the signs threatening thousand dollar fines for littering.

A BIG FAN of both ladies wonders, “How many meals have Lauren Keating and Libby Favela supplied the populace with over the years? A lot!” 

A READER NOTES: “For some reason, Anderson Valley has towns that move. Kendall City, the precursor to Boonville, seems originally to have been slightly north of the current downtown - essentially at the turn onto Mountain View Road.” Next time I see Sheriff Kendall I'll ask him to channel his ancestors. The Sheriff's family founded our little town, but then moved on to the South Coast and from there branched out to Covelo. When the Kendalls moved from Boonville the place was re-christened Boonville after a man about whom little is known. The Andersons of Anderson Valley were a pioneer family who simply named the whole area after themselves. (No, this Anderson is not related, although he has been known to suggest as much when trying to wheedle a bank loan. As an impertinent reader once demanded, “Anderson? Anderson Valley? How many snakes in that Anderson nest anyhow?” A bunch, for sure. 

THAT NOISY HELICOPTER flying low and slow over backyard Boonville this morning shortly before noon, seems to have been PG&E's eye in the sky scoping out the welfare of their lines. Lacking confirmation of who the chopper belonged to — some people said PG&E, some said the police looking for dope plants. PG&E is more likely. Police surveillance is required to keep, what? 500 feet in the air? Besides which pot plants don't have to be ferreted out, they're everywhere. The police generally confine themselves to the big grows, not backyard gardens, assuming the backyard is suburban size. 

THE SECRET IRS FILES: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income

In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes. Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.

propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

PLANNING COMMISSION TO PLAN

Dear Interested Parties,

The Staff Report(s), Agenda and Draft Minutes for June 17, 2021 is posted on the department website at: mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff with any questions.

James F.Feenan, (707) 234-6664, feenanj@mendocinocounty.org

ON JUNE 4, 2021, wildlife officers with the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) served a search warrant on the 5200 Block of Hargus Road in Laytonville. Support was provided by a CDFW Environmental Scientist and the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

The search warrant was part of an investigation into deer poaching and illegal cannabis cultivation.

Prior to serving the search warrant, a thorough records check was conducted on the property to determine what steps may have been taken to secure a state license. In this case, no state license or county permit to cultivate commercial cannabis was obtained.

The site was located on unnamed tributaries to Rattlesnake Creek and Tenmile Creek – both of which feed into the South Fork Eel River watershed. CDFW has documented many species of concern in the area including steelhead, Chinook salmon and the Foothill Yellow Legged Frog.

Environmental violations and impacts observed on the site included:

Two on-stream dams, which impounded the natural stream flow.

Several unpermitted, undersized and inappropriately installed stream crossing culverts on roads used to access cannabis cultivation sites.

Delivery of sediment, which is deleterious to aquatic life, from unpermitted stream crossing culverts.

Over 2,700 illegal cannabis plants were eradicated, and 24 pounds of processed cannabis and 187 pounds of shake was destroyed.

Additionally, evidence of potential wildlife poaching activity was discovered and seized along with ammunition and high-capacity magazines, while serving the search warrant.

A formal complaint will be filed with the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office. No other information is available at this time.

* * *

ON-LINE COMMENTS

(1) The State is 70 years too late on those stream crossings. Most of the “illegal stream crossings” around Mendocino are old logging skid trails left over from the boom and bust logging of the 1950s. It is incredible that the California Wildlife Officers keep on charging people illegal and exorbitant fines for logging practices which absolutely destroyed our county in the 1950’s. Recent evidence shows that the largest impediment to the healthy salmon ecosystem is the rubber compound a washing off our tires and into the streams! Of course the State and the County are using “environmental concerns” as a ruse to gain support for their failed war of oppression against the poor mom and pop farmers who do not have hundreds of thousands of dollars to jump through all the loopholes the County and State purposefully set up to make it impossible for poor people to join their “legal pot farm club”. If the State was truly worried about climate change and our local environment they would immediately put a halt to spraying 250,000 acres of herbicides by Mendocino Redwood Con-pany.. they would stop the liquidation logging of Jackson State Forest. But this is not about environmental concerns, they make these concerns up as they go along…. according to their way of doing business, we all have illegal culverts and stream crossings. Why? Because our subdivisions never had engineered roads and engineered culverts. Most subdivisions are what is left over from logging roads and skid trails. They used to skid the felled logs right down our streams, gullies and river bars! They have environmental concerns only when they wanna steal your land or charge you exorbitant fines. It's a ruse, they care less about real issues like modern logging of our planet's lungs, like the defoliation of our tan oak forests which provide oxygen and moisture to our forests. All they care about is stealing your and my property in the name of “environmental concern”… meanwhile look at all those clearcuts and logging operations. Look at our valley floors and oak woodlands being eaten up 700 -1500 acres at a time for the all so destructive wine grape fields. It's nothing but a ruse, folks.

(2) Right on! I’ll take it a step further….There are terribly destructive weed grows. Many are done by permitted “legal” mega-farms. Some are done by unpermitted greedrushers and I cannot stand with them. Many small scenes I know are done well environmentally yet can never get over the zoning or economic hurdle to become permitted. Some of them have used their cannabis profits to till back into their land and have independently done projects to IMPROVE the habitat for wildlife and for fish- using their own money to remove or improve old crossings and old extraction logging damage. And they are being labelled “criminal” unpermitted bad people in the mainstream press and culture. And they are being choked out by the corporate takeover that many are foolishly applauding. 

(3) Many asshole people in Laytonville running around with heavy equipment playing contractor. Cutting down trees, plowing, road scraping, destroying everything and laughing about it. Total disrespect for anything and everything. It’s all about $$$. A place up Fox Rock they got the illegal well drillers up there and they punched 10 dry holes that are over a hundred feet deep, each one cost several thousand dollars to drill. I mean and they aren’t even bothering to fill them just throwing a board over the top . One place just a little north of Laytonville the whole damn forest has been cut down and the waste shoved in the creek. So much so around this place massive mountains of firewood are piled. Clouds of silty soil blowing up in the air. Gallons of chemicals, hydraulic fluids, oil dumping, garbage piles. Right on the main road for all to see. Ah he's a good ol’ boy it’s ok no problem. At this point everything has been out of control for so long just pick a driveway and see what’s up there.

THE ARTISTS COLLECTIVE IN ELK will feature Anne Kessler and Craig Hathaway for the month of June, there will be an Artists' reception in the gallery garden on 2nd Saturday, June 12th from 12 to 3pm, with food and drink. Masks and social distancing will be required. Come meet the artists and see their work and all the artists work at the Elk Gallery. 

Anne Kessler is known on the coast for her pastel landscapes of local rivers. She is an impressionist who specializes in the play of light and color on water surfaces. She likes to imagine what Monet would have painted in Mendocino County where she has lived and painted for over 40 years. She has recently taken a break from the Studio Discovery Tour to paint commissions for hospitals in Sacramento, Chicago and El Paso to name a few. 

They find her pastels to be calming, up-lifting and colorful. Anne is delighted to once again be showing with Craig Hathaway's burl tables. Craig has been building custom made furniture since 1984 and has had great success with this work over the years, sending his tables all over the world. He tries to let the form made by mother nature capture the elegance of each piece, leaving the live/natural edge of each piece to speak for itself. Check it out at the gallery and online at: www.artists-collective.net 

The gallery is located at 6031 S. Hwy. 1, between the post office and Queenie's restaurant in Greater Downtown Elk. We are open daily from 10 am to 5 pm, for more information call 877-1128. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, June 8, 2021

ILEANA AMRULL, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TYLER ANDERSON, Willits. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

ANTHONY BERTOZZI, Redwood Valley. Suspended license, evasion by wrong way driving, probation revocation.

JACOB CHAMBERS, Willits. Trespassing, resisting.

GAGE GORMAN, Willits. Burglary, unlawful possession of tear gas, resisting, failure to appear.

DANIEL HENDLEMAN, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

CASEY RAY, Willits. Controlled substance for sale, disobeying court order, probation revocation.

SETH SMART, Willits. Failure to appear.

DAVID SOWLES, Ukiah. Criminal threats, vandalism.

KEITH WILLIAMSON, Willits. False personation of another, failure to appear.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I believe the globalist-elite conspiracies are born from an attempt to understand why, and an intuition that, the entire fabric of our world – its assumptions, trajectories, history – is screwed up. It’s off. There’s a deep evil twisting everything. So, maybe it can be explained by elite manipulators who have an evil club through the centuries… 

There is an evil saturating our world, but it’s not explained by an evil club of elite manipulators. It’s explained by the human race’s almost complete dissociation from its natural state, which is to exist as small tribes dependent on wild nature. We have embarked on an experiment with agricultural and technological control over nature’s processes. These methods of control produce surpluses, growth, wealth, civilization, surplus population, slavery, complexity, smartphones. We are addicted to all these things. We are addicted to the short-lived thrills of agro-technical control over nature, to the highs of “success” these mechanisms of control bring. 

Our entire “period of recorded history” is the story of this human experiment with agro-technological control over nature’s processes and the power, surplus and destruction it brings. 

This is the actual source of the “evil” in the fabric of our world… (Of course it springs from natural human proclivity for and attraction to short-sighted successes… a difficulty of long-view foresight… a tendency to stupidity in the species.)

Fighting “evil elites” won’t fix the problem. Democratic revolt won’t fix the problem… We have to unravel our five-to-ten-millenium addiction to agricultural/technological systems of producing “surplus profit” from our environment.

OH, LONESOME ME

Everybody's going out and having fun
I'm just a fool for staying home and having none
I can't get over how she set set me free, oh lonesome me

A bad mistake I'm making by just hanging round
I know that I should have some fun and paint the town
A lovesick fool that's blind and just can't see, oh lonesome me

I'll bet she's not like me she's out and fancy free
Flirtin' with the boys with all her charms
But I still love her so and brother don't you know
I'd welcome her right back here in my arms

Well there must be some way I can lose these lonesome blues
Forget about the past and find somebody new
I've thought of everything from A to Z, oh lonesome me

Well I'll bet she's not like me, she's out and fancy free
Flirtin' with the boys with all her charms
But I still love her so, and brother don't you know
I'd welcome her right back here in my arms

Well there must be some way I can lose these lonesome blues
Forget about the past and find somebody new
I've thought of everything from A to Z, oh lonesome me
Oh lonesome me

— Don Gibson

DESAL NOW

Editor: 

Over the past few weeks various letters have offered pros and cons on desalination plants as an answer for our drought problems. I believe that desalination is the only long-term solution for this problem.

As a matter of interest, El Paso, Texas has the world’s largest inland desalination plant. It produces 27.5 million gallons of drinking water per day, plans are in the works to expand production to 42 million gallons per day, and it has been in operation since 2007. For details of the process anyone interested should visit the El Paso water deptarment website.

The greater Bay Area could easily support four or five plants of this size and a statewide desalination program would eliminate the state’s water woes for the foreseeable future.

Currently the population of California is in excess of Australia and New Zealand combined. To rely on water conservation and the whims of nature for the survival of a modern society is ridiculous.

California will never have enough annual rainfall to accommodate the population, and it’s only going to get worse as the population grows.

Allen Brogden

Petaluma

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT that we're back in the year 2001, and the US Senate has just issued a report into 9/11 neglecting to say it was an act of terrorism or cite Osama bin Laden as the man responsible for inspiring it? We'd think they'd all gone nuts, right? This was my thought process as I studied the Senate's 127-page findings into the January 6 riots at Capitol Hill and could find little reference to the two whopping big elephants in the accountability room: Donald Trump and the word Insurrection. The report makes startling, horrifying reading, not least for revealing the calamitous failure by intelligence agencies including the FBI to identify the deadly threat that they were reading about all over cyberspace in the build-up to one of the darkest days in America's history. For weeks before the attacks, Donald Trump supporters were making very visible threats online to storm the Capitol and target lawmakers, even sharing maps of the building's tunnel system. 

— Piers Morgan

SAVING SUMMER STEELHEAD and Prioritizing Flow in Times of Crisis

How to use the best available science to protect the Eel River and its fish. 

Hi Friends,

 Adjusting to the extreme dry conditions which have become more normal as climate change continues means managing water use in different ways. Two focus points on the Eel River during conditions like these are the lower Eel groundwater basin and Scott Dam on the upper mainstem.

We mentioned in our newsletter last month that PG&E made yet another request for a flow variance due to limited water availability. Over the last nine years PG&E has requested and been granted such variances seven times. This means that over the last decade, more often than not, there is not enough water in the Lake Pillsbury Reservoir to meet demands. Click here to read our newsletter from last month with more details about the risk of failure at Scott Dam's only outlet for water releases. And click here to read our comments to FERC on PG&E's latest variance request.

At the other end of the watershed we are expecting the worst for returning salmon this fall. Current flows near Scotia are nearly the lowest on record (only 1977 and 1923 were lower), and conditions are worse than in 2014 when the river disconnected in early fall. Stay tuned over the summer as we work with various partners to determine recommendations for Humboldt County to take swift action in an effort to reduce impacts to migrating salmon this fall.

And speaking of migrating salmon and steelhead, next week the California Fish and Game Commission plans to vote on our petition to list Northern California summer steelhead (as well as a similar petition by the Karuk Tribe to list Klamath spring chinook) under the California Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, we have reason to believe the Commission may follow the lead of the National Marine Fisheries Service and deny our petition, which is why we need you to take action this week and let them know how important it is to protect this unique life history of premature migrators.

Summer steelhead have experienced severe decline in recent decades due to their unique life history which brings them into freshwater much earlier in the year than their fall counterparts. They arrive in freshwater sexually immature and hold in cold pools over the summer, ultimately using fall rains to propel themselves far into the headwaters. While adaptations like this related to variable flows and temperature will likely be essential to steelhead survival through climate change, it also makes them especially vulnerable to impacts like flow alteration, water development, and other human activities that disturb the headwaters. It is essential that we preserve these unique wild genetics, and give salmon and steelhead the best chance at resilience to a changing climate.

For the fish, Alicia Hamann

Help Protect Northern California Summer Steelhead

At its June 16, 2021 meeting, the California Fish and Game Commission will decide whether to protect Klamath Spring Chinook salmon and Northern California summer steelhead under the California Endangered Species Act.

Spring Chinook and summer steelhead return to freshwater much earlier than their fall-run Chinook and winter-run steelhead counterparts. These unique life histories allow them to reach prime spawning and rearing habitats in the cool waters of our mountain streams. Recent genetic research has shown these remarkable life histories are driven by differences in a singular, very small part of the salmonid genome. Following the best available science, our petitions to list these extraordinary fish under California law argued that if we do not effectively protect remaining populations of spring chinook and summer steelhead, we will lose the critical genetic information that drives their unique life histories.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) agreed in its status reviews of Klamath spring chinook and Northern California summer steelhead that remaining populations of these fish are tiny fractions of their historic numbers, and that they face a range of severe threats including climate change. DFW concedes as well that run timing in spring chinook and summer steelhead is largely determined by the recently identified genes, and that it is important to maintain these life histories. DFW’s status review affirms that summer steelhead, for example, are “an important diversity component — that should be preserved.”

Unfortunately, DFW then follows the lead of the federal National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which has denied petitions to list Klamath Spring chinook and Northern California summer steelhead. The fisheries agencies say summer steelhead are not reproductively isolated enough from winter steelhead to list.

But one key piece of evidence they point to — a relatively high proportion of fish that have both winter and summer-return genes — is a result of the collapse of summer steelhead populations, even relative to winter steelhead populations, over the 20th century. Today, fewer than a thousand adult summer steelhead return to streams in California. More than half are in the Middle Fork Eel River alone.

The agencies point to research showing spring chinook and summer steelhead share more of their genes with fall and winter runs in their watersheds than they do with spring chinook and summer steelhead in adjoining watersheds. But every population that remains is at grave risk of extinction! Is it really more important to protect our shaky concepts of “species” in salmon and steelhead than it is to protect the few remaining examples of the highest-climbing steelhead on the planet?

Please take a few minutes today to write to the members of the Fish and Game Commission.

Email your comments to fgc@fgc.ca.gov (mailto:fgc@fgc.ca.gov) by Friday, June 11 or join the meeting virtually on Wednesday June 16 and give up to three minutes of comments on the agenda item.

Click here for instructions on joining the meeting virtually. (https://eelriver.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1260e76581786d9b486399431&id=6ea41746c4&e=4535228e31) The California Fish and Game Commission will update this link prior to the meeting.

Suggested Talking Points

* It is extremely important to preserve diverse life histories and the wild genetics that give rise to them, especially given climate change. Diverse genetics and life histories increase a species’ resilience and ability to adapt to changes in their environment.

* If extirpated, spring and summer run life histories are extremely unlikely to evolve again from fall and winter runs. The allele that controls run timing evolved once and spread through many different watersheds. And spring and summer run timing is unlikely to evolve again from fall and winter varieties because heterozygotes have an intermediate run timing.

* DFW’s own analysis shows that Klamath spring chinook and Northern California summer steelhead are in danger of extinction and should be preserved.

23rd Annual Coho Confab August 20-22 on the Navarro River, Mendocino County

The Coho Confab is a watershed symposium that highlights restoration techniques and strategies to recover coho salmon. This event will feature field tours of large wood projects, flow enhancement efforts, floodplain and estuary restoration construction phases in Ten Mile River and a workshop and open forum highlighting flow enhancement strategies. This exciting “in person” event will be held at River’s Bend Retreat Center) in Philo and registration is limited so please register early. SRF will follow COVID precautions for this event and we request that only fully vaccinated people attend.

— Friends of the Eel River 

WHAT IS FOREST HEALTH?

by George Wuerthner

In an article in the Bozeman Chronicle about the North Bridger Timber sale, the Forest Service justifies logging the forests based on what it calls “forest health”. The agency claims logging will “restore” resiliency. But few ask what exactly constitutes a healthy forest ecosystem?

The agency defines forest health as a lack of tree mortality, mainly from wildfire, bark beetles, root rot, mistletoe, drought, and a host of other natural agents. To the Forest Service, such biological agents are “destructive,” but this demonstrates a complete failure to understand how forest ecosystems work.

This Industrial Forestry Paradigm espoused by the Forest Service views any mortality other than that resulting from a chainsaw as unacceptable.

This perspective is analogous to how Fish and Game agencies used to view the influence of natural predators like wolves and cougars on elk and deer. Over time biologists learned that culling of the less fit animals by predators enhanced the survival of the prey species.

Similarly, wildfire, bark beetles, and other natural sources of mortality enhance the long-term resilience of the forest ecosystem.

For example, the snag forests resulting from a high severity fire have the second-highest biodiversity found in forested landscapes. Large, high severity fires promote more birds, bees, butterflies, wildflowers, bats, fungi, small rodents, trout, grizzly bears, deer, elk, and moose.

Many species of wildlife and plants are so dependent on snags and down wood that they live in mortal “fear” of green forests. Some estimates suggest that as much as 2/3 of all wildlife species utilize dead trees at some point in their lifecycle.

Even worse for forest ecosystems, the Forest Service emphasizes chainsaw medicine to “fix” what they define incorrectly as a “health” problem. Chainsaw medicine ignores the long-lasting effects of logging on forest genetics.

Research has demonstrated that all trees vary in their genetic ability to adapt to various stress agents. Some lodgepole pine and ponderosa pine have a genetic resistance to bark beetles. Others are better adapted to deal with drought and so forth. Yet, a forester with a paint gun marking trees for logging has no idea which trees have such adaptive genetics.

Research has shown that thinning even 50% of a forest stand can remove half of the genetic diversity because it is the rare alleles that are important in the time of environmental stress. Perhaps one in a hundred trees may have a genetic ability to survive drought or slightly thicker bark that enables it to survive a fire.

There are numerous other known ecological impacts associated with logging that are minimized, overlooked, or ignored by the Forest Service. For instance, one of the primary vectors for the spread of weeds into the forest ecosystem is logging roads. Logging roads are also a primary chronic source of sedimentation that degrades aquatic ecosystems. Logging removes carbon that would otherwise be stored on the site. Even burnt forests store far more carbon than a logged/thinned forest.

So when the Forest Service asserts it is logging the forest to enhance “forest health,” one must ask whose definition of forest health are they using? The timber industry? Or an ecological perspective? So far, the agency is more a handmaiden of the industry than a custodian of the public trust.

(George Wuerthner has published 36 books including Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy. He serves on the board of the Western Watersheds Project. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org.)

FOUND OBJECT (you supply the caption)