Fits & Starts of a Redwood Forest Reserve
Big Trees, Little Tent, at Camp 8 on the Noyo River
By Chad Swimmer—this piece was first published in the January, 2021 issue of the Mendocino Coast’s Real Estate Magazine
5:30 a.m., November 1, 2020: my tent was completely dry. My ultralight one-person shelter looked insignificant tucked in among the hulking and seemingly healthy second-growth trees of Camp 8, Jackson Demonstration State Forest. Reverberating through the groves, the carpenter's hammering of a pileated woodpecker on a hollow snag was the only sound. No wind, no chatter of descending water, no jets overhead. The staccato quiet held my attention. But it wasn't the woodpecker—the second largest species in North America, the one Woody was modeled upon—that was jarring, it was the lack of dew beneath my fingertips, the profound aridity in the air. Redwood forests are really a type of cloud forest. They possess a perfect system for harvesting condensation and dropping it onto their root systems. But that morning—like so many in the last few summers—there was none.
I had come to Camp 8 by bike with my fellow Trail Steward and photographer Art Mielke. On the Noyo River, Camp 8 is one of an extended series of campsites surrounding Camp 1, up valley from Fort Bragg. We hadn't been sure where we were going to pitch our tents, but had gotten a late start from Gibney Lane. The ride up the Mitchell Creek drainage, along the ridges behind Caspar, then down to the Noyo river didn't take too long, but the afternoon shadows were deep by the time we reached the Egg Taking Station. Our original plan was for a harsh fourteen hundred foot climb up to a dry camp on Riley Ridge to watch the Halloween moon, but neither of us felt quite up to that. We had not been to Camp 8 before. Our bike-packing objective was just this: to get away, and to get to know Jackson better.
Why Demonstration?
Jackson Demonstration State Forest—the name is a mouthful. JDSF is quicker, but rather clunky and inelegant. Those of us who love this place mostly say “Jackson,” unaware of the history of Jacob Green Jackson, the Vermont transplant who bought a mill at the mouth of Caspar Creek in 1864 with some adjacent timberland thrown into the deal for good measure. He kept on buying, then incorporated his expanding holdings as the “Caspar Lumber Company,” in 1880, initiating a sixty-year period of wholesale industrial logging, at least as it was practiced at the time.
An eons-old ecosystem--along with the homeland of the Northern Pomo people who had been lovingly stewarding and coexisting with these groves--was nearly destroyed; only massive stumps and a few relic groves remaining. In the process, Jacob Green became a very rich man and one of the largest lumber dealers in the state. By 1947 though, Jacob Green had passed away, and Caspar Lumber couldn't (or wouldn't) pay its tax bills. It sold the cut-over 48,652 acres to the State of California with the stipulation that they continue as timber lands in perpetuity. Logging continued, but not nearly at the same pace. For one, there weren't so many valuable trees left. But more importantly, Jackson was now a demonstration forest being managed for silviculture research and what was then considered sustainable logging practices.
Now, seventy-three years later, areas of the forest are in the early stages of recovery. True old growth status, with all its elusive biological diversity and cathedral-like grandeur, its carpet of topsoil in the canopy, its bat-flanges, and its many species that never descend to the ground, is many hundreds of years off. Still, areas that have had no harvest entry since the 1920s are achieving second growth characteristics, showing the little studied but astounding potential Sequoia sempervirens (the coast redwood) has for bouncing back. The wonderfully named Fritz Wonder Plot, on State Park land near Big River, has some of the tallest second growth in the world and is accumulating biomass at a rate few ever expected. Data gathered in Humboldt has shown that this phenomenal rate of growth translates to the most carbon sequestered by any species in the world, and that the bigger and older a redwood is—at least until it’s about 1,500 years old—the more it sequesters.
In A Name
The name Jackson evokes an image in many of our minds of a magical place we love, full of memories and good times hidden among mossy trunks and ferny hillsides. It is the word “demonstration” that is more pertinent than the actual name. Managed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), the state forest system has eight demonstration forests, of which Jackson is by far the largest. Cal Fire likes to remind us that these are “working forests,” which means that though we, the California public, have the right to enter and recreate, their primary mandate is timber harvest. Like most of the public patrimony in the US, Jackson has been and continues to be used as a commodity with insufficient input allowed from those who walk and maintain its trails, raise our kids here, and have lived next door for generations.
As for the greater state forest system, it is almost entirely supported by funds raised by selling timber harvest rights here in JDSF. While this is argued as for the greater good of the people of California, it seems anachronistic that so wealthy a state could not support its forest system on other revenues. It most certainly is not in line with the wishes of a large portion of the Mendocino County population.
Enter the Mendocino Trail Stewards
On March 1, 2020, just as SARS-covid 2 was silently hopping from person to person, country to country, the Mendocino Coast Cyclists (MCC) had its annual public meeting. Twenty or so mountain bikers sat at fold-up tables in the Caspar Community Center's South hall to discuss upcoming trail work and rides, the few-thousand-dollar budget that covers the club’s minimal expenses, and the future of the Caspar area's world class trail network.
Photocopies of a map were passed around showing six timber harvest plans (THPs) being planned for the Caspar watershed and for areas in the Big River watershed surrounding the Mendocino Woodlands. There was also the possibility of others nearby. Nearly 80% of the trails in Western Jackson looked likely to be affected, though it was not clear how severely or exactly when.
Many of the cyclists at the meeting had lived on the coast long enough to remember the large clear cuts in the upper Caspar watershed—but that was thirty or more years ago. As the discussion continued, it became obvious that those thirty years had been something of a fantasy interlude, a time when the forests outside our backdoor were ours with no threat of harvest, a time that started in 2001 when Vince Taylor's Campaign to Restore Jackson State Forest got an injunction that stopped logging entirely.
Discontent filled the room. One person said, “My family and I moved here primarily because of these trails. We bought our house here. We brought money here.” A desperate question was on all our minds: “Why so much logging right here, in the area that gets the most use?” The meeting veered from complaining and lamenting to brainstorming. How could these harvests be prevented, or at least affected by the input of user groups such as the MCC? Within a week, six of us met separately and the Mendocino Trail Stewards was formed.
By June, we were meeting regularly—outside and socially-distanced, of course. We teamed up with Cal-Fire and State Parks for two forest clean-up days, removing three humongous flatbed truckloads of heavy-duty trash ranging from fish guts to motor oil, plastic bottles to soiled diapers, pizza boxes to dumped grow lights. Our profile increased. As the actual picture emerged of how many acres were being targeted for harvest by Cal Fire, our scope of activism began to widen. We had too much connection to this forest, too many years here to not feel anger and sadness as we passed by ribbons emblazoned with “timber harvest boundary” or trees ringed with blue spray paint. These meetings produced a vision and a mission statement speaking to who we are and what we are striving for.
There are over one hundred miles of single track bike, foot, and horse paths, many of which were built and maintained by MCCs' Steam Donkey All-Volunteer Trail Crew. They are almost entirely on state forest property, always pending the possibility of a timber harvest.
Leverage—within the bounds of the Mitchell Creek THP—photo by Art Mielke
The Balancing Act
Returning to November 1, 2020—that dry morning: as Art and I stuffed our sleeping bags and attached our gear to our bikes, a juvenile black bear strolled up and peeked shyly at me over a thicket of salal. For a moment I could see her nostrils pulsing before she disappeared back into the brush. In the middle of the night a mountain lion down the valley had entertained itself screeching at something. A flock of geese had flown over at first light honking their news of the day. Though in some ways these woods are remote and perilous if you're not prepared, they are not wilderness. Camp 8, despite being unused for at least a year, had a well-constructed and unoxidized bathroom. A picnic table with a barbecue fire-stand sat conveniently waiting for us. Our surplus of tasty nuts, raisins, bars, and miso cups had been purchased mostly at Down Home Foods, less than ten air miles away. But there was no cell reception, no way of getting aid in a pinch, no likelihood that anybody would happen by anytime soon.
Just up a steep hill, beyond a veneer of mossy second-growth redwoods, the forest character changed. An unnatural opening in the canopy revealed ample morning light. As Art munched, I scrambled up to look around, to see what kind of timber harvest had been “demonstrated.” Group selection, meaning areas up to two or more acres, had been cleared of marketable trees. These are primarily redwoods, but in some years, if the price is high enough, Douglas fir as well. The remaining wood, in this case a number of large madrones, hemlocks, and pithy sequoia had been cut and left on the ground to rot.
The art of timber harvest in JDSF is a balancing act. The Registered Professional Foresters (RPFs) employed by Cal Fire to write the THPs have a lot to consider. One of Jackson's goals is to research all the harvest methods employed by private timber holders, from single tree to group selection, cluster, variable retention, two-aged, and clear cutting (coyly dubbed “even-aged” management). There, the possible archaeological remains and artifacts, threatened or endangered species, erosion hazards, watercourse issues, road access, etc. Jackson is also mandated to promote the development of maturing and biologically diverse second growth. Finally, the RPF must factor into the plan that there is enough valuable timber that a Licensed Timber Operator (LTO) will even bid on it, otherwise their many months of work are for naught.
The choreography is intricate, but the real conductor is the California Board of Forestry, who considers “Jackson and three of the other Demonstration State Forests as commercial timberland areas managed by professional foresters” (Emphasis is mine; Board Policy 0351.1). It is believed that the board mandates that a certain amount of revenue be generated every year, but how much is undisclosed internal policy.
Riley Ridge
As we rode the steep, graveled, interminable grade of Road 363 up to Riley Ridge, we passed many older THPs. We swerved our bikes to avoid purple scat piles full of berries and paper wasps left by random creatures big and small but didn't see much alive or afoot. Once at the top, we headed east on Road 1,000—Riley Ridge. Mendocino County is large and sparsely populated, with thousands of miles of dirt byways, which most of its 87,000 odd residents and hundreds of thousands of visitors have never seen. This road mostly sticks to a high ridge, with views South into Jackson, North into a checkerboard of timberlands with a long history of name, and holding company, changes. These junk-bond-financed sales have left the terrain less valuable and more eroded, the increasing degradation a modern iteration of the Great Outdoors; out of sight and hidden from the masses.
Cal-Fire is not a perfect steward, but the contrast with these surrounding lands is notable. From Road 1,000 back to my front door, Art and I would pass by acreage owned and managed by Lyme Timberland, Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco, The Conservation Fund, and California State Parks at the Mendocino Woodlands, where the trees are still big and the shade deep. JDSF land is shadier than all the other timberland we saw—not nearly so cut over. Cal Fire claims to grow twice as many board feet as they cut every year, and to have an inventory of over 50,000 board feet an acre, as compared to 15,000 board feet/acre everywhere else. But these figures may not be accurate. In 1990 the state demonstration forests changed their method of quantifying timber inventories. The Campaign to Restore Jackson State argued in their successful lawsuit that Cal Fire was overestimating inventory and underestimating cut. To quote Vince Taylor, “In 1998, I presented to CDF substantial evidence that their recent estimates of forest inventory and growth were very much greater than the true values.” This was never refuted, and it is entirely possible that the situation continues. IFI—Cal Fire’s algorithm-based method of quantifying inventory that was in question then is still in use.
In any case, the comparison of JDSF to the surrounding timberland checkerboard of parcels is not entirely fair. These are managed by hedge funds and larger holding companies with obligations to their shareholders to maximize profits. Even when they are certified “sustainable” by groups such as the Forest Stewardship Council—as they practically all are these days—things such as clear cuts of up to sixty acres are allowed.
JDSF’s 2016 Management Plan: “efforts will be made to limit the extent of harvest in areas that… currently have at least ten trees/acre greater than thirty inches in diameter”, yet the map on page 442 shows clearly that any area with a THP planned or in operation fits this criteria.
The Big Contradiction—in 442 Pages
Meanwhile, Jackson is managed to generate revenue, which supports the state forest system (not nearly as gluttonous as private shareholders) and to generate data which the timber industry and its companion academic institutions need. This is supposedly under the guidance of the not publicly available four hundred forty page JDSF Management Plan, the California Forest Practice Act of 1973 and the Environmental Quality Act of 1970.
Herein lies the tension and the source of much of the conflict surrounding Jackson from the 1990s to the present. The state needs Jackson's revenue, but the state wants to appear as Jackson's careful steward to the increasingly environmentally conscious California public. Unfortunately, when faced with this contradiction, the state's need for revenue continues to trump lofty ideals and objective, science-based considerations.
To reduce this statement to one paragraph, consider that the plan and its adjuncts contain recommendations for quite sound forest management practices such as: efforts will be made to limit the extent of harvest in areas that have had little or no harvest entry since 1925 (or that currently have at least ten trees/acre greater than thirty inches in diameter) (JDSF Management Plan, 2016, page 3). Note that the phrase “efforts will be made” is neither legally binding nor enforceable. Unfortunately, areas that have less than ten trees/acre greater than thirty inches are not actually that profitable to harvest, so this recommendation—which practically heads the management plan—must be set aside as meaningless rhetoric. All six of the impending timber harvest plans in Big River, Caspar, Hare Creek, Jug Handle, and Mitchell Creek (over three thousand acres total—by comparison: twice the land area of Fort Bragg itself) are out of line with this crucial recommendation. These plans are mostly in recovering second growth, with substantial numbers of trees over thirty inches per acre, certainly more than ten. These are the very trees that provide enough value to the plans for a Licensed Timber Operator to consider bidding on them.
The balance that Mendocino Trail Stewards has had to negotiate has also been tricky. We quickly gained a lot of traction, but we stepped on some toes. In the years since The Campaign's successful lawsuit, the county's economy had changed drastically. People with money were leaving the cities en masse, buying properties, siphoning tech funds and retirement nest eggs North—something which has only increased since the pandemic began. The mills had closed and the county—indeed the whole Northwest end of the state—was left with a dearth of valuable timber. Fisheries were drying up. The marijuana industry was crashing. Like so many rural areas facing such enormous dislocation, tourism—already a pillar of the economy—became the only obvious solution remaining.
Our county’s newest residents have no memory of—nor connection to—the old Mendocino world of tree fallers, truck drivers, and mill workers. These are people who want a different kind of healthy, outdoor lifestyle on clean beaches and in intact forests. These are most certainly not people who want logging in their backyard. Others, even some of the Stewards, had been involved in the timber industry, had grown up here, but had soured on the failing old extraction model. Our job would be to usher this working forest into the future, demonstrating conservation, carbon sequestration, and recreation for the good of the climate, our children, and the burgeoning eco-tourism economy.
2020 Fire burning through logged areas in the Santa Cruz mountains
Smoke and Flames
Meanwhile, Art and I continued our big loop, climbing 20 percent grades up Road 1,000's orange clay surface to Three Chop Ridge. For so late in the fall, there was a lot of smoke in the air. The ridges were hazy enough that we even worried whether another fire had started. All of us Californians are traumatized. Such low humidity, such dry understory, brush, and grass, no precipitation in the forecast—the combination was dangerous. But we couldn't see any plumes, so we were left to continue forward—fast—down Road 200 an exhilarating four miles, our 2.3” tires gripping the newly-spread gravel. We passed a little rocky gorge with some pools that would have been inviting for a quick dip in the heat of Summer, then exited the woods onto Highway 20 at Chamberlain Creek. We could only assume that the particulate matter making our eyes water was from the massive August Complex fire, still smoldering away not so far to the Northeast.
Cal Fire—short for The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection—is charged with both managing forests and fighting fires. But fighting fires is expensive—more so every year—and as the fire protection side of things becomes increasingly important, the forestry side gets shorter shrift. When it comes to trees that aren't actively burning, there are two basic mandates: overseeing the state forest system and reviewing timber harvest plans on any forestland in California not owned by the federal government.
As a fire-fighting force, Cal Fire ranks with the best in the world. As a manager of forests, though, its record is dubious. For more on this, we go to a recent article published online in the Golden Gate Journal of Environmental Law, “Time for a Cal Fire Divorce,” by Richard A. Wilson, director of Cal Fire from 1991 to 1999, and Sharon E. Duggan, renowned environmental lawyer:
California’s Forest Practice Act [of 1973] was created and is intended to ensure healthy forests with protection of their environmental, economic, and community resources...That has not happened. Instead, today many of California’s forests are in “an unhealthy condition,” with increased forest density containing more small trees, fewer large trees, and more dead trees, creating intensified and devastating wildfire conditions.
CalFire carries an increasingly immense responsibility as a premier fire-fighting agency, top-ranked in the world. Every year, the demand to contain and stop devastating fires throughout our state increases. Fire prevention efforts have driven the agency’s financial budget, whereas forest resource management has been captive to politics largely driven by industrial timberland owners.
It is time to remove governance of California’s core sustainable forest management mandate from CalFire to allow it to focus on its overwhelming fire agency obligations...CalFire is not satisfying California’s forest resource management goals and objectives...An independent agency dedicated to governing forest resource management and land conservation is more critical than ever as California faces and attempts to respond to the irrefutable climate crisis. Our forests must be increasingly available to provide enhanced carbon sequestration for the survival of this and future generations.
These portentous words were written just before four million acres of California—not to mention large swaths of Oregon, Washington, and Colorado—burned. Nearly the entire staff of JDSF had to leave the coast for a month or more this past Summer to head north to fight fires on private and federal lands, adding to the backlog of work which has accumulated on the local office's understaffed shoulders.
Pedaling and Pondering
From Chamberlain Creek, we rode West on Highway 20, then down Two Log Road on Conservation Fund Land (release of liability forms available at the office in Caspar), just to the east of McGuire Pond. Art decided to hang out and poke around shooting photos of the subdued but still lovely fall colors in the Big River watershed. I continued on to the Mendocino Woodlands, past a hefty and pristine clump of Pleurotus ostreatus—oyster mushrooms. I wound up Road 700 through heavy second growth shadows, then along the ridge above Caspar Creek on Road 408 with its numerous cluster openings harvested three years ago. At the six-way dirt intersection, I headed down Road 500 as it wound through the dense, choked, and fire-prone stands of spindly redwoods which had emerged from the clear cuts of the 1990s. I cranked up Road 508, scheduled to become a logging road/fuel break next summer in the Mitchell Creek THP, zipped down Road 511, which will be closed to all the people who use it now for one to three years, down Mitchell Creek, Gibney Lane, and right to my front door—over thirty miles of pedaling and pondering.
Mendocino Trail Stewards started off with the seemingly far-fetched concept that the Western five thousand acres of Jackson could become a recreation-priority zone, for the benefit of locals and the budding eco-tourism economy. We wished and washed around until, as California burned and choked, as Death Valley reached one hundred thirty degrees, as yet another timber harvest plan was put on the table right in my backyard, as tens of thousands of desperate city-dwellers flooded the trails, and as November 1 dawned completely dry like so many other mornings recently, Gavin Newsom unveiled his grand 30/30 Declaration. It was an amazing and inspiring statement: 30 percent of public lands in California were to be managed with the primary mandate of climate change mitigation by the year 2030.
I had just before spoken with forester and professor Fred Euphrat as he was on his way to assess the damage to thousands of recently scorched acres near Healdsburg. His assertion was that these mega-fires had forced nearly every timber manager in California to reassess nearly everything they had been taught. His advice to us was that if we wanted to make a change to Jackson, we should be pushing for a forest with a mandate to demonstrate fire and climate resiliency.
I took this to heart. As a father of a six-year-old, as a man who feels that the greatest heirloom I received from my own father and the greatest gift I can give to my son is a love of nature, I could see two paths forward. I could despair. The situation on this weary planet is desperate and there is no denying it. And I do despair—for at least a moment every day.
Or I could work to change things in this little corner of this large and eccentric county where we live. I could take inspiration from the redwoods themselves, the most resilient of trees. I could push for something much larger than protecting trails from THPs. I could be fighting to protect the trees themselves, as they could be one of the most important warriors in the fight against climate change.
As the miles passed under my tires, the concept solidified: the Caspar Redwood Forest Reserve; 15,000 acres where timber harvest would only be conducted when absolutely necessary; a place where a new set of objectives including conservation and carbon sequestration research, unified ecosystem restoration, and non-motorized recreation would be primary mandates; a place where I could take my son in twenty years and still sit next to the same trees that I do now. In my head, I examined pitfalls and challenges of this dream from all sides and decided that to consider it a mere dream would be to doom it to failure.
Instead, as I rode into my yard, sat down in my living room and told my wife and son about my camping trip, I couldn't help but feel that the idea of a forest reserve was already becoming a reality; that it actually had a chance of materializing, and a good one. The more people I have told about this vision, the more I have come to feel that this is the moment, that now is the time. 2020 has been a horrible year in so many ways. But, like the moment after the fire when the new seeds sprout, this could be the moment of a grand rebirth.
Author’s note: in the months since this was written our growing coalition has decided by consensus to expand our calls to encompass all 48,652 acres of JDSF. Many of us would like to see the management of the entire California State Forest System become a group of demonstration reserves, demonstrating climate change mitigation science, holistic ecosystem restoration, and more….
Photo by Art Mielke
Sources:
https://www.mendotraintony.com/category/caspar-lumber-company/
https://www.mendorailhistory.org/1_towns/caspar/caspar_lumber.htm
https://www.kelleyhousemuseum.org/immigrant-woodsmen-rise-again/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112719316718
https://www.jacksonforest.com/EIR/Comments/taylor_final.pdf
