I recently submitted the following letter to the California State Assembly’s Natural Resources Committee. (Here’s their letter portal if you want to submit your own.) I was inspired by this call to action from Mendocino Trail Stewards.
Dear Chair Bryan and Members of the Committee —
I’m writing in support of AB 2494 and taking action to bring Demonstration Forest management into the 21st-century, and make it work for local communities, for local economies, and for local environmental health. I have lived most of my life on the Mendocino Coast, and now I live in LA but still spend at least month staying with family in the area every year. One of the most notable aspects of life in Mendocino County is that publicly accessible public lands are largely restricted to a thin strip along the coast. (I noticed this recently when visiting my brother in Humboldt county, which has significantly more accessible nature away from the coast.) The lack of public lands is mostly because the beautiful redwood forests by and large belong to logging companies. But it is also because our publicly owned demonstration forest, Jackson State Demonstration Forest, is managed more as a timber harvest operation than as a public good.
In recent years there have been extensive protests against timbercutting operations, yet CalFire continues to manage the lands much as they have in the past: coming up with THP’s, not developing the inland mass of the forest for recreational use, and pursuing a status quo that isn’t working for our communities. It’s time for a change! AB 2494 offers the potential to turn these treasured forests into the public good they always could have been.
I have a story: in 2018 I was teaching poetry lessons in the public schools in Mendocino and Fort Bragg. One day the opportunity came up for me to combine one of my poetry lessons with a field trip the Environmental Studies class at Mendo High was taking to the “Fritz Wonder Grove,” on Mendocino Land Trust land in the Big River watershed. This land is remarkable not because it contains old-growth trees of ancient age, but because it was only cut once and since has grown back truly enormous trees. It demonstrates the incredible resilience of redwood forests, and it makes a great place to help students write ecological poetry. (What we were studying that spring.) It also showcases the way that our forests can serve science, education, and recreation—beyond just supplying so many board feet per acre.
This bill represents low-hanging fruit! We should seize it! The big timber companies are opposing this bill not because it will significantly dent their bottom lines, but because it might show a different way to steward our forests, after a century-and-a-half of systematic destruction. Good!
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely, Jasper Nighthawk
