Cal Fire hopes a “New Vision” for Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) can break a literal log jam and win the cooperation of both environmentalists determined to stop all logging and timber companies, two of whom are suing the state over its handling of delays to the cutting
The Newsom Administration hopes to “demonstrate” how Native practices, combined with modern science, can create sustainable solutions to climate change and fire prevention while also allowing people to continue living in wooden houses. It’s a tall order and the New Vision also promises equality in management with Indian tribes and improved recreational opportunities. Some want to throw in ways to use the forest for foraged food and biomass energy. Forests are being viewed anew as economic and community centers, rather than just standing strip mines. From Australia to Brazil to Canada and around California, historic Native burning and other innovative management strategies are updating forestry practice.
The old vision, in place for 70+ years, was to allow timber companies to log the “people’s forest” while the state studied this “demonstration.” Anybody who thought Jackson was a local science lab or primarily dedicated to hiking, biking, global warming mitigation or mushrooming, had something else coming. This was shop class for loggers first, not friends of the forest fairies. Even the fire prevention measures have been historically lacking if that slowed logging too much, critics and the big brush piles say. The New Vision is designed to replace the old management plan several years before its due date.
But is all this a bunch of rainbow stew in the sky sponsored by the local chainsaw dealership again? Or do they really mean it this time?
I wondered this as I watched one of the most ridiculous public meetings I have ever attended as a reporter since my first in 1983, when Houston Post reporter-turned-publisher Jane Fried, sent me to a Houston Transit Authority meeting which lasted eight hours. I wrote down every quote and minute details about all 11 options being considered, covering 42 pages of notes only to find out when I returned the word limit was 800 words! The JAG meeting, where more than 100 people packed into a space meant for about 50 af Fort Bragg Presbyterian Church’s dining room, droned so unintelligibly that there was little to write on my notepad this time. I couldn’t even get my overlarge body into the church hall at first and there was no place to sit. Standing in a far corner balancing a notebook and camera I could only intermittently see or hear. Few gave their names. Some spoke again and again. Nobody went to the front of the room. Why bother? No microphones were available.Voices that sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher came from somewhere in the overloaded room.
Up front was the oversized “Group” the JAG, splayed along a row of windows blazing in the astonishing September sun. The Board of Forestry must have made the JAG a “group” lest someone take it all seriously or present a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order for committees or councils .The JAG was cynically defanged by that Board of Forestry, which nixed a working compromise between environmentalists and local loggers. Vince Taylor, leading the environmental side with Bill Heil, forged the deal more than a decade ago to create the JAG in concert with top local loggers like Mike Jani and Art Harwood. The greens dropped a lawsuit that had stopped logging for nine years. I interviewed Taylor, who has since left the area, after the Sept 15 brain numbing meeting. Taylor told me that if he had to do it all over again he wouldn’t have compromised and helped create the now impotent JAG. He says the best option now may be to go back to court and make Cal Fire do environmental impact reports and follow the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The state has exempted itself from CEQA, but Taylor and others like Matt Simmons of the environmental group EPIC say that self exemption needs court challenge. EPIC sued Cal Fire last year in an effort to block harvesting, but the injunction was ultimately denied by Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Jeanine Nadel.Taylor said if they were forced to comply with environmental studies, the state overlords would not be able to make that grade.
“They wouldn’t be able to meet the legal requirements that would be necessary to get past a judge,” Taylor said.
But here is a surprise. All this sordid history (not including my interviews) came into the meeting from an unlikely source - Cal Fire, which is truly being much more open and now appears to really want to least talk about the New Vision. Cal Fire’s Kevin Conway acknowledged the history but said the New Vision, Scope of Work and management plan update priorities coming down from Gov Newsom and his enviro honchos mean we can’t all go back to that moment in 2011 when locals had forged a great compromise.
The New Vision got off to a rather bad and familiar old start on Sept 15 when everybody learned the Cal Fire/JAG facilitator resigned before the meeting, saying Cal Fire was just pushing through timber harvest plans again and not engaging in the collaborative process that the New Vision promises.
Should Cal Fire hire an out-of- town consultant to implement the New Vision for Jackson Demonstration State Forest? Was all this chaos meant to make everybody want that?
When Cal Fire brought up the need to hire a consultant to lead the process, the audience at the Sept. 15 meeting erupted with catcalls about more out-of-town friendlies working off public funds. There were cries of “here we are” and “Us” and “Pick us.” Bill Heil said “We are right here. Give us a chance!”
But in reality, is there anyone locally who can get intractable environmentalists to work with state leaders with a history of infuriating the tree huggers with broken promises? Both sides have track records of deception and hyperbole. Does Kevin McCarthy need an easier job than Congress? This hiring of the consultant will be at the heart of the Oct. 13, from 5:30 - 8 p.m. meeting of a JAG “committee” and Cal Fire.
At the Sept 15 meeting, the New Vision â˜s new Scope of Work flopped along with two timber harvest plans and everything else on an overpacked JAG agenda. Nothing was voted on and the meeting spun manically in circles. Environmentalists actually directed most of their ire at the Scope of Work being on the agenda more than on the timber plans, saying it was all premature, natives had not been consulted. The public kept saying they had no idea what the New Vision and Scope of Work were or where they had come from. (Although it was laid out in stellar bureaucrat speak in the voluminous agenda packet.)
JAG members did write a letter saying the JDSF is running out of money as timber harvest plans have been stalled for years now and that’s the prime source of revenue for JDSF. Two timber companies have filed lawsuits over a process they also say is not working for them, thanks to the protests and Cal Fire’s position of not covering the damages the interruptions caused.
The facilitator for CalFire and the JAG, Kimberly Rodrigues, had resigned a few weeks before the meeting, saying she was frustrated and stymied by state efforts to pack JAG agendas and not truly consider anything but getting the usual rubber stamp from the JAG, an advisory group to CalFire and the state, which manages the JDSF. Rodrigues attended the meeting as a spectator. Later, in an interview — and In her resignation letter — Rodrigues said she had hoped to increase collaboration, not merely pretend to be interested in diverse viewpoints and cynically push agendas forward. She called the Sept. 15 meeting the most frustrating and confusing event she had been to in twenty years of involvement in contentious forestry issues.
Only one other meeting rivaled it for confrontation and none for general chaos.
“The agenda was flawed to begin with,” she said in the interview. “There were too many agenda items and not enough time for the needed discussion. I suggested the meeting focus solely on the Scope of Work, but they insisted the timber harvest plans had to move forward.”
In her resignation letter, she wrote, “The JAG works on consensus, the highest form of collaboration, yet the process is not truly collaborative. Cal Fire announces the projects and timelines, seeks limited input with limited dialogue and makes decisions. I am willing to support a collaborative process if and when the State and Cal Fire commit to such a process.”
Rodrigues’ departure worried several people already distrustful of the process. “I am disheartened to learn of Kimberly Rodrigues' resignation in protest,” said Evan Mills, a climate and energy scientist who lives in the village of Mendocino and who attended the meeting. “Prior to Rodrigues' arrival, there had been severe erosion of confidence in Cal Fire's ability to act in the public interest and to employ modern, science-based methods of forest management. The grounds given for the resignation only affirm this concern.” Mills is concerned with how managing the forest will move forward. “Cal Fire cannot credibly proceed with further management decisions or approve new THPs without re-establishing a balanced and collaborative process, beginning with a new and credible facilitation process.”
No timber representatives spoke at the meeting beyond those on the JAG. Instead, timber companies are using legal action to object to the losses they say the process has caused them. Two timber companies have active cases against Cal Fire in Mendocino County Superior Court, saying an ineffective process of managing timber harvests and protesters has damaged them economically. Mendocino Forest Products Company is suing over its harvest at Soda Gulch, which was hit by protesters towards the end of that THP. A hearing was held Sept 29 in the second case, which Willits Redwood Company has brought against Cal Fire. Willits Redwood Company, which bought timber in the “Caspar 500” from Cal Fire. That THP is the heart of all the controversy now but it went though its public comment period unnoticed by protesters just the pandemic hit in 2020. The THP was rubber stamped and contracts awarded but property owners in the area and environmentalists got stirred up when they started marking the trees. In 2021 and 2022, forceful and uncompromising protesters emerged to shut down the timber harvest plan in Caspar and delay two others already well underway deeper in the forest. There were big crowds of forest defenders, tree sits, arrests and people risking their lives and the sanity of tree cutters by going into closed areas of active tree falling. New timber workers got their first look at the non-violent but scary confrontational methods that were last seen during the 1990s. Redwood Summer and the years after, featuring Judi Bari and even more dramatic methods used to stop logging by openly corrupt corporate raiders. For reporters, it has been a nightmare from the beginning to find a sculpt a topiary of objectivity or truth from a thicket of Timber Wars exaggerations..
Anderson Logging of Fort Bragg, working on legally awarded contracts, bore the brunt of the recent protests in Caspar as the contractor for Willits Redwood Company. Two Anderson leaders, including Mylers Anderson, were the only local timbermen I could identify, listening to the entire Sept. 15 meeting.
Cal Fire says they listened to what the public was saying in 2021. Indeed, the first three timber plans they released in 2023 were tailored to better consider climate change, native input, water quality and fire prevention. There are at least three study proposals underway in Jackson underway that are unrelated to logging. Most importantly Cal Fire says they have begun a process of co-management with local Tribes, however, in complete secrecy. They said confidentiality agreements were involved.
The state, in the person of Kevin Conway, boss of all the state forests, won’t say for how long negotiations have been going on, what tribes are involved in them or even how many local tribes are negotiating with the government. Even the JAG itself and enrolled members of tribes at the meeting are in the dark about what is on the agenda between the governments or what changes Natives may be asking for. Logging opponents are being asked to trust state bureaucracies led mostly by people from the logging industry to negotiate in secret with unknown tribes, who have their own agendas, of course. The enviros have formed a phalanx where the only opinion accepted is no logging whatsoever. Few people spoke in favor of the timber plans and when they did, they got a cool reception at best.
Roger Sternberg, former head of the Mendocino Land Trust and long time local leading conservationist, had his speech interrupted and argued with after he supported scientific forestry and when he brought up the “replacement problem.” The replacement problem is the notion that when action in one area is frozen, it gets done elsewhere. If all logging is stopped as protesters want, the same amount of logging will simply be done elsewhere. But critics repeatedly pointed out that the state has failed to do other obvious things, like sell carbon credits in some areas rather than log. And they say we can only do here what we can do here. The mahogany stands will have to be protected by somebody over there.
While the biggest actual changes in JDSF over the past few years has been upgraded trails, recreation advocates were a small minority. Everything from both sides was all about timber harvests.
Gabriel Quinn-Maroney, a local forest and native plants buff, said any new vision and upgraded management plan should include other activities that have long been inexplicably overlooked, such as seed saving and genetics work with local trees, native plants and Jackson Forest’s famous mushroom resource. Mushroom hunters from around the world, but especially Southeast Asia have long hunted and sold mushrooms in Jackson and other forests, sometimes living permanently deep in the forest to practice their trade.
The Indigenous Perspective
One of the moves made after the protests was the appointment of Reno Franklin, chairman of the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, to the JAG board. Many at the meeting thought the big news of the day on Sept 15 might have been the arrival of the official three-person delegation from the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians. They spoke briefly but confirmed at least their tribe was indeed involved in negotiations with the state and that they remained hopeful about that at this point. They did not weigh in on the timber harvest plans or take sides on the contentious issues they quietly listened to for several hours. Cal Fire is taking the position that they are not subject to open meeting laws but are more like foreign diplomacy, which is not subject to public review. Cal Fire refused to release anything whatsoever about the negotiations, such as who they are with.
“Our inability to comment on the negotiations may be frustrating to the public and the JAG but it’s the process we must follow,” Conway said.
Edwina Lincoln, a member of the Yuki Round Valley Tribe, said at the meeting that her tribe had not been invited, and got no answer in public as to whether that was true. She talked privately at length with Cal Fire after the meeting but I was unable to track down what was said.
The trio of Coyote Valley tribal leaders, including the tribal chief, said they were now the official representatives of the tribe. In the past Michael Hunter, Priscilla Hunter and Polly Girvin have appeared as tribal representatives and spoke forcefully about the history of abuse of natives and their lands have suffered, against logging, and demanding land be given back to tribes especially around sacred sites..
None of those three appeared at the current meeting. Comments were sought from all sides but none wanted to speak publicly at this point
“The Coyote Valley Tribal Council is the governing body of the tribe and it authorizes spokespersons to represent and speak on the tribe’s behalf,” said Richard Campbell Jr., vice chairman of the tribe. He was accompanied by tribal historian Margaret Olea and Tribal Chief John Feliz Jr.
“The tribe is committed to continuing our efforts to seek tribal consultation where we can move forward with important consultation with Cal Fire and other agencies in a government-to-government format that provides for effective resolution and to create solutions to meet the priorities of our tribe and the people of California,” Campbell said.
Despite the speech by Campbell Jr. verifying that at least one tribe is being consulted, confusion reigned throughout the meeting about whether any tribes had really been consulted on the whole business of redoing the Scope of Work, creating a New Vision and how these completely different priorities and new approaches can fit into the creation of a new management plan, which is the ultimate goal. Many non native people also claimed to represent the positions of natives as being against logging and for return of tribal lands. Natives bring a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives to the issue. Some local tribes have significant logging operations.The Round Valley Tribe has used its forests to dabble in the carbon credit markets. And what would tribal co-management look like in terms of the New Vision and public access? Tribes don’t need to invite Mendocino’s crowd of hoary-headed demonstrators to give input, nor the climate scientists or even other tribes or dissenters within their own tribe who aren’t at the official table. What if the Tribes don’t like the state’s New Vision? How does equal, co-management work then? What if tribes can’t agree among themselves anymore than the mostly non native bunch could on Sept. 15? Who will exactly say when to log, when to sequester and when to burn? Will all this continue to be in secret? How will you and I give input into “The People’s Forest” when natives have had it returned to them at least in part? Why on earth would the Board of Forestry shut down a perfectly good compromise? I’d like to ask them, especially Jani, who was never afraid to get out in the crowd and give what seemed to be straight answers while other logging executives hid from the protesters. But that;s for another meeting.
The issue was and continues to be that Mendocino Coast residents view JDSF as a local resource and the state sees it as a statewide resource and thus have locals ability to fiddle with timber pans very difficult and at the same time, made opponents more and more angry.
The Forest Tour That Didn't Really Happen
I was told by those in charge before lunch the scheduled tour was still going forward. I went and was blown away by what I saw. The dichotomy between an obviously stalled and distrusted political process and the grand forest everybody is fighting over was immense.
Deep in Jackson State Forest, the sounds and smells of civilization are gone. This is a true wilderness world apart that is at the same time a property trampled on by mankind for 150 years. Two Cal Fire forestry workers who were ALSO there for the tour, and a passing bicyclist noticed how when we got out of the car, all the hair stood up on my dog. He’s a town animal and was thrilled by the emergence of his wild ancestors through unimaginable nose data. I could feel it too.
The tour of Jackson Demonstration State Forest timber harvesting area had been intended to allow Calfire to show off ”PyroSilv” harvesting, or use of fire both before and after a timber harvest, one of those globally critical ideas. The idea is to bring restorative fire to long-unburned, fire-dependent forests and see if that can create better fire protection, better forests and logging opportunities all at the same time.
The 293 acre PyroSilv Timber Harvest Plan (THP) area, located 8 miles west of HIghway 1 and about 2 miles south of HIghway 20 was one of two timber harvest plans up for review or approval at the disastrous September JAG meeting that was underway while we toured.
We discussed the unusually diverse selection of trees visible just from the tour start area. Then a phone call came from inside the meeting; the tour had died along with everything else on the agenda during a chaotic 6 plus hour meeting. We four (counting the dog) couldn’t resist looking around and taking our own brief tour. There were gigantic grand firs, a tree not usually reaching harvestable size. There were third growth redwoods, some a hundred feet tall and three feet in diameter. There were also skinny redwoods of roughly the same age that were so close together to not only be worthless as timber but which also degrade soil nutrients. There were tan oaks, douglas firs and even a dead bee tree full of woodpecker holes. Amidst it all were constant signs of generations of logging. Stumps of old growth giants could be found, some surrounded by fairy rings of rising giants. These giants looked to have been gone for more than a century, but their high stumps still commanded awe. There was an ancient rock wall that blocked a road, now buried deep in the forest duff with large redwood trees having taken over as road-blocking sentries. There was a big pile of beer cans inside a giant stump and a 1950s government marker sign, shot into oblivion long ago, nearby.
The tour was intended to illustrate new techniques inspired by those very old Native American practices, long scorned and even outlawed that foresters around the world are now turning to. When walking through this overused but resilient forest, the reality of fforestry science came to me through the living colors of manzanita and conifer greens. The forest has become a feral, eroded mix of brush, hardwoods and tiny trees growing inches apart. All that is attractive to invasive species. Worse, firefighters in the areas were too good at their jobs and much of the forest, including the tour area, has been deprived of fire for a century or more and now poses a much greater fire risk. Native plants and trees desperately need fire, which is part of their evolutionary biology.The science shows that this forest needs intense management, including loggers, love them or hate them. “Science shows that formerly harvested redwood forests need active management to advance towards old growth form and function,” Cal Fire documents state.
I drove back to the meeting and everything was still droning in circles just like when I had left a couple hours before. Everybody was talking but who was listening? Argument after argument was repeated by someone else. It was hard to know if this was from an inability to hear what the previous person had said or just stubbornness. In one corner of the room, two Cal Fire workers typed furiously trying to take minutes. As it happened, the JAG didn’t seem to make any formal suggestions to the Board of Forestry, despite some interesting science being presented. For example, Professor Stephen C. Sillett, Redwood Forest Ecology Chair at Cal Poly Humboldt and J.P O’Brien, a university climate scientist who resides in Caspar, gave extensive written and verbal comments about the impacts of climate change on the forest.
O’Brien is excited about using fire as a management tool in JDSFand broadly. However, he said in written comments that the Pyro-silviculture THP will only use fire before the harvest on 50 of the 300 acres. And the burn comes after using conventional logging techniques including tractor logging on 61 percent of the THP. “Tractor yarding” logging is frowned upon by environmentalists.
George Hollister, the chairman of the JAG, expressed frustrations with how gummed up the process has become.. He wondered if any timber companies would even want to bid on timber harvest plans under the circumstances.
Others said his notion pointed to a key twisted irony in the process. Timber companies wiped out this forest as a productive place for logging. Then the state bought the property in the late 1940s from the owners of the land and the Caspar Lumber Company to demonstrate how sustainable forestry could work. But in order to get any modern timber company to look at this forest, now with as much brush as economically viable timber, the JAG and Cal Fire need to go back to practices such as tractor/bulldozer logging. Caspar Catch 22.
Jason Franklin said his native roots date back seven generations from contact. He is not from a recognized tribe. He said the forests left are needed for their spiritual value and that many natives are left out because they are forced to comply with Western government formats and organizations to do so. "I know 100 people who would like to be part of the process but are unwilling to give it up".. to a process they don't trust and which has disrespected them, he said. His speech got a big applause from the crowd.
Ellen Buechner was one of the speakers at the meeting who said she hoped it was possible to find hope for the future in the chaos. “Every decision we make right now, large or small, will impact whether our children and grandchildren will have the opportunity to live meaningful lives in the environment we leave to them. The original mission of JDSF was to figure out how to log the forest most efficiently. It is not too late to admit that, while helpful in its time, the mission has outlived its purpose, and it is time to reframe the mission from extraction to regeneration.”
She continued, “If we can do this with every living and bureaucratic system under our control we will have a chance, but we need to pivot now, wherever we can. This is our only hope, to stop prioritizing dollars and begin prioritizing recovery and restoration in all systems: physical and environmental, social and governmental. Money and jobs will follow. We do this for JDSF by entering into true co-management with our local tribes and abandoning our profit motives outside of tourism.”
Environmental activist Naomi Wagner described the urgency of the forest resistance she has helped lead for three years. She said she had started as a forestry student determined to learn sustainable logging but now favors a complete logging ban, due to the warming planet and the fact that logging never really slowed down. “Too much has been cut. It’s too late for that,” she said in the meeting.
Is it too late? Can we really launch a New Vision of any kind in polarized America? I was left with so many questions. One is what is with all these government meetings in churches lately? I’m a Presbyterian myself, but isn't this the wrong time in history for any new marriages between church and state? I’d love to hear your questions and answers.
Contact me at frankhartzell@gmail.com
A FORESTER RESPONDS
There were a few errors in the article.
Mike Jani is not a logger. He is a Forester from Santa Cruz. Harwood is not a logger. He was previously a sawmill owner in Branscomb.
Openly Corrupt Corporate Raiders… Well, when I meet with the Willits Redwood guys there main thing is keeping 35 guys working in Willits. When I see them at my private sales I usually get the co-owner who is also a Forester. One look at his hands would pretty much dispense with the corporate raider description.
He is a hands-on owner and I got the idea the primary objective is to keep his guys going.
I think this is true of Myles Anderson also; he is a woodsman and much of his motivation is to keep his guys working.
These are pretty good jobs for many working dudes in Fort Bragg, .most of whom are Spanish speakers.
I believe the lawsuit with the State is about breach of contract. When you sign a deal, you should fulfill it.
It is my understanding M&P Hunter are no longer elected and were previously convicted of fraud.
So it seems to me there is an issue of credibility there. I went to a Forest Tour (Whisky Springs) and I did not hear one word of dissent from the Native Americans who attended from Point Arena. What I found interesting was the lady was an expert in Roberts Rules of Order, no issue with Forestry on that date.
Your description of a sale 8 miles West of Highway One and Twenty puts the project in an aquatic location in the Pacific. Yep, you probably meant East.
Grand Fir or Abies grand is is a common merchantable species in our County and is a pioneer species with a very fast growth rate. In my opinion any discussion of this species should include the introduced Balsam Wooly Ageldid causing epidemic mortality in Western Stands. Your information was categorically wrong. Misinformation is a critical element in people’s hardened stances on this topic. Your article did not help promote truth in Forestry.
Your comment that skinny suppressed trees are worthless, is categorically wrong. In fact there has been a price surge for fencing products which use those trees which do not have great girth or high ratios of heartwood.
Your comment about these trees depleting soils is perplexing and I have no idea how you came up with that.
I will give you credit for going in the woods with the hound. You should look at the Whisky Springs experiment which is right off of 20. The signage is poor but when you look at the treatments I would bet a 12 pack you will agree the least desirable forest is the un-thinned control unit. I was shocked at the difference between the thinning treatments and believe you will be also.
Be First to Comment