Mattole Wildlands Defense

Wild Mattole River Salmon Dying as the Headwaters Dry Up

2008-09-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

The Eureka Reporter article below details the water crisis in the Mattole River Headwaters. Incredibly large amounts of money are made each year in this area (you know what I mean). The plants are being grown with this water. Please give back to the river by whatever means you can, for the sake of the river and all of our future.

"To report trapped fish, phone Michelle Gilroy of the Department of Fish and Game at 707-441-5791."

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Flows remain lowest on record for Mattole

Published: Sep 29 2008, 10:32 PM · Updated: Sep 29 2008, 10:34 PM

This summer continues to mark the single lowest flow year on record for the Mattole River, according to a news release from Sanctuary Forest.

The organization based this on data from U.S. Geological Survey flow gauges in Petrolia and Ettersburg, as well as Sanctuary Forest’s flow monitoring in the Whitethorn area.

“The Mattole River watershed remains in uncharted territory with this record-setting dry season,” the release stated.

Two weeks ago, the Mattole stopped flowing entirely at its headwaters, as measured upstream of Bridge Creek, according to the release.

As of Wednesday, the situation had not changed, with zero measurable stream flow found at most monitoring spots in the headwaters.

Flows at Petrolia and Ettersburg, after rising following the Sept. 19 rainfall, have now fallen back below the lowest measurements ever recorded in any previous year, the release stated.

With the headwaters broken up into isolated pools, juvenile salmon are being left exposed and stranded and creeks are drying up, according to the release.

“This drying up pattern is not only more severe than we have ever seen, but is also occurring two to three weeks earlier than in the recent lowest flow years — challenging residents to endure a longer dry season than many were prepared for,” the release stated.

“The Mattole water crisis is causing hardship for more members of our community every day, as most residents depend directly on the river, creeks and springs for all their water. Yet it is our native salmon that will likely bear the brunt, unless we do everything possible now to stop or reduce water use,” the release stated.

Sanctuary Forest asks that residents flush less, bathe less, fix leaks, and let lawns and gardens go brown until the rains come.

“Pumping when flows have essentially stopped can quickly drain those pools where fish are surviving, so if you must pump, do so for shorter times at slower rates; slow your pump down by restricting the discharge with a valve,” the release stated.

To report trapped fish, phone Michelle Gilroy of the Department of Fish and Game at 707-441-5791.

For more information, visit www.sanctuaryforest.org.

Mendocino Redwood Company to Assimilate Pacific Lumber

2008-06-08T15:43:00.000-07:00

Reposted from Stop Maxxam!.

The ruling is in, Pacific Lumber will be taken over by Mendocino Redwood company (knock on wood). Texas bankruptcy Judge Richard Schmidt chose the MRC plan over the Noteholders proposal to auction off the company, essentially stating that the auction plan did not fulfill the requirements of a successful reorganization plan. Not much time to get into more detail today. Check out the Humboldt Herald blog for more. (also see the times standard report) I'm planning to write up some analysis of how this could effect forest defense activities.

2008-06-06T13:49:00.001-07:00

judge schmidt made his ruling today on the pacific lumber bankruptcy.he chose
mendocino redwood company.

Awaiting Decision in Pacific Lumber Bankruptcy Case

2008-05-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

The closing arguments in the PL bankruptcy case were made this past thursday. The Mattole has been largely left alone by PL in the past few years, first due to thier "watershed analysis" and later to the financial troubles the company faces thanks to the extreme rate of logging mandated by their owner for the last two decades, Charles Hurwitz of the Maxxam corporation. We await news of the judges decision which may be issued at any point now.

Camp Out May 2nd-9th

2008-04-10T18:07:00.000-07:00

click poster to enlarge

Happenings: Forest Defense Skillshares - Discussions - Hikes (mellow + challenging) - Music - Story Telling - DIY Media - Swimming - Campfires - Games - Group Cookouts

We will be examining recent events in the Pacific Lumber bankruptcy and what the future may hold for the ancient forests of this region.

Free Event, please bring whatever food, funds or other supplies that you can.

Please bring your own camping gear, dishes/utensils.

The camp location will be announced 1 week in advance.

contact info: (707) 502-0673 mattoledefense@lycos.com

(relevant message will be recorded shortly)

Check out these reflections on last years spring Skillshare at the Mattole River Beach.

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Pictures

And some stuff on our more recent Action Camp at Grizzly Creek.

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Patrolling the Mattole Wildlands

2008-02-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

Mattole defenders recently braved the snows of Rainbow Ridge to check on the Old-Growth forests of the North Fork Mattole River. On the way we detoured to recover our camera trap and bring it with us to a much more remote location. We'd set up the camera in Rattlesnake creek on a tree next to an animal trail after our last foray into the North Fork was thwarted by deep snow. When we located the camera it was dangling upside down from the tree and partially stuck in the mud. There was little to indicate what had happened and we continued on our 15 mile moonlit journey. Upon our late night/early morning arrival in the headwaters of the North Fork we set up camp and settled in for the night. Before going to sleep we checked the camera and found pictures of a medium sized cinnamon colored bear inspecting the camera. Not exactly sasquatch but satisfying nonetheless.

Though there are no new logging plans in this area the Pacific Lumber Company is engaged in a watershed analysis which they hope will result in a weakening of watercourse protection rules thereby gaining access to currently off limits areas of Old-Growth and other mature forests. Maxxam, the holding company that owns PL, may lose control of PL through the bankruptcy and upcoming reorganization of the company. This would be a great thing as Maxxam owner and corporate raider Charles Hurwitz has basically sucked the company dry and run it into the ground. He aquired PL in the 80's through a hostile takeover and just about tripled the rate of logging of the company that had the world largest privately held Ancient Redwood forests. He kept Pacific Lumber in debt the whole time. The results- bankruptcy and a depleted forest.

But back to the Mattole. Activists and community members have fought long and hard to slow or stop Maxxam/PL's forestry practices with mixed results. There has been much direct action, lawsuits and at least two failed attempts to purchase the 18,000 acres of Mattole lands from PL.

On our patrol we visited two large areas of Old-Growth forest where logging has been stopped (though not permanantly) thanks to the hard work of activists and community members. One area was in Sulpher Creek where, in 1998, activists climbed threatened trees and faced violence daily while the clear cut logging was fought in court. The lawsuit eventually prevailed and the remaining trees still stand.

The other grove we visited is on the steep north face of Long Ridge. This hillside is covered with cold springs that run year round. Pacific Lumber tried to log here years several years ago but met resistance in the form of widespread logging marker removal, a road blockade and, later on that year, a tree sit occupied by nine people right next to the Columbia helicopter landing deck. Logging contractors had been falling trees for weeks on Long Ridge and the tree-sit was a bit of a last ditch effort on the part of the activists. The idea was this; it's illegal to fly the chopper within 500 ft. of civilians so therefor the chopper would have to be grounded until the sitters were removed. After discovering the sitters, the helicopter crew decided to work anyway. They refueled several times at the landing deck during the course of the day, flying dangerously near the sitters who had meanwhile put a mylar blanket in the top of the tree for visibility. Much to all of our surprise, at the end of the day the entire logging operation was packed up and relocated about ten miles away. This included their fuel tanks and several trailers full of equipment.

We later discovered that nearly all of the Old-Growth on the north face of Long Ridge that had been marked for cut was still standing. The logging crew had been busy at work in there on the last day but had only gotten a small fraction of what had been approved for logging.

Hiking in this forest heightens ones awareness that although we have had some success here, the oldgrowth in this area is still threatened and PL, or a new owner, may very well come back here and try to take these trees once again.

Coming Soon: Update on Backwoods Activity

2008-02-03T15:25:00.000-08:00

For now, check out these pics of a Cinnamon hued Black Bear (Ursus americanus) inspecting our new camera trap. To download the Google Earth KMZ file click here.

Community Forestry Group on PL Bankruptcy- 'We're still in the mix'

2008-01-10T17:26:00.000-08:00

Hank Sims latest Town Dandy column about the Pacific Lumber bankruptcy takes a closer look at the situation with TAG or Timber Acquisition Group. He describes TAG as "...an alliance of businessfolk and enviros, loosely associated with the Redwood Forest Foundation down in Mendocino County. The TAG’s idea was to operate Palco land on the “community forestry” model, with sustainable harvest rates and community input into management decisions."

He quotes David Simpson, an active Mattole Valley resident and TAG member-
“All I can say is we’re still in it,” Simpson said. “We’re still in it, we’re working on our plan, and hopefully it will be a plan that has benefits beyond what other alternatives can provide.”

click here for full article

Article on Pacific Lumber Bankruptcy Status

2008-01-09T12:25:00.000-08:00

This editorial piece by local journalist Hank Sims gives a good overview of the status of PL's bankruptcy. Currently there are four groups vying for control of PL. They are; current owner Maxxam, the Timber Noteholders (bankers, insurance companies), Mendocino Redwood Company and the Unsecured Creditors.

No New Logging Plans This Year

2007-12-06T16:52:00.000-08:00

As winter storms arrive, Pacific Lumber and their major creditors are in a mediation ordered by the Judge overseeing the PL bankruptcy case. The outcome of the mediation will probably have a huge effect on the future of the North Fork and Upper North Fork of the Mattole River. About 2,000 acres of Oldgrowth Douglas Fir forest stand in the North Fork Drainage, much of the Upper North is blanketed in healthy, large second growth firs and hardwoods with scattered smaller Oldgrowth stands. The Oldgrowth trees here are known to reach 400 years old or greater.

Prior to this, PL submitted a reorganization plan calling for the selling of 22,000 acres sudivided into 160 acre parcels and labeled as "trophy" homes or "kingdoms". This was met with outspoken resistance from residents and the Humboldt County Supervisors that don't live on PL land.

Pacific Lumber has yet to complete their "Watershed Analysis" that was begun over a year ago. We have every reason to believe that PL is trying to build an arguement for the reduction of stream protection buffer zones. These buffer zones are supposed to protect watercourses, and thier inhabitants by keeping soil disturbance far from the creeks and keeping the creeks shaded and cool. The greatly diminished salmon and trout need cold clean water to survive. Downstream human residents also benefit from watercourse buffer zones as they reduce the risk of landslides and flooding. There are unusually high amounts of year-round streams here in the rainbow Ridge area which results in a large amount of forest being protected.

Mattole Wildlands Defenders continue to monitor the situation 24-7-365 or something close to that.

Please get in touch if you have questions and/or want to help.

Helping Defend Nanning Creek Giants

2007-09-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

Mattole Defenders are lending assistance to the Nanning Creek Forest Defenders. The tree-sits have been raided by climbers contracted by Pacific Lumber and some supplies and gear confiscated. Thankfully so far no tree-sitters have been taken down. It is unclear whether two people reportedly arrested in the area were associated with the action. Friends and supporters of the tree-sitters held a vigil at the main access gate in Scotia. Unspecified direct-support efforts on the ground have been successful so far in helping the sitters.

Blog posts from the field.

7/4/07
7:43 PM- Mattole defenders have received word- nanning creek tree sits are under siege by maxxam goons. we're responding-stay posted.

10:42 PM- Ongoing vigil @ nanning gate in scotia. 15 People. tree sitters holding strong. climber eric shatz was up there today.

7/5/07.
7:21 AM- The vigil is still going. Good dialogue btwn forest defenders and scotia/rio dell locals. No one has entered the gate all night.

Emergency Measures Taken to Help Imperiled Young Salmon in the Mattole

2007-08-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, a group of locals, volunteers with Mattole Salmon Group, Mattole Restoration Council and Americorps and Coho Confab attendees took emergency measures to increase habitat for the remaining Chinook salmon and the larger population of Steelhead (aka Rainbow Trout). Floating willow mats were constructed and tied along the bank where some habitat like underwater overhangs and partially submerged logs already existed.

This increased the underwater shade and hiding places for small fish.

This summer in the Mattole River multiple thousands of young Chinook Salmon migrated downstream with the July rains. When they reached the estuary they faced a deadly array of conditions such as unhealthy warmer temperatures, predators and competition from bigger fish. The warmer water temperatures are partially due to a history of careless logging that has triggered numerous landslides, decreasing the capacity of the formerly deep pools and increasing sunlight on the water. This problem is exacerbated when large amounts of water are taken out of the river by residents.

(also see Sohum Parlance)

These stresses appeared to be causing emaciation in the young fish. They would not be able to acclimate to enter the ocean until months later when the fall rains come and breach the river mouth which is closed by a sand bar each summer. Additionally the young fish were not yet acclimated to salt water, so artificially opening the river mouth would not help.

The Mattole Salmon Group tried to get permission from the California Dept. of Fish and Game to net 5,000 of the young fish to be kept in a fish rearing facility until the fall rains arrived. The Dept. of Squish and Maim refused this request claiming that the Mattole Salmon Group would hurt more fish than would be helped.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries biologists had said they would help relocate the fish if the plan was approved.

One local diver described entering a pool in the river and swimming with an massive school of young fish so thick that you couldn't see the river bottom.

Last week, Mattole Salmon Group divers failed to locate the thousands of young Chinook leading many to believe that over 90% of the young fish have died.

Previous work this year by the Mattole Salmon Group includes the construction of two huge fish habitat structures in the estuary. These are already functioning as refuges for Salmon and Steelhead.

The following is reposted from the Santuary Forest website.

What you can do:
CONSERVE NOW!!
Every water source counts, including all water taken from tributaries and springs that feed the Mattole
Fix Leaks. Leak proof your water storage tank and water system;
Use a tank shut-off valve to keep water from overflowing or use overflow piping that leads back to the stream or river
Reduce watering of garden & landscape: Try dry farming, drip irrigation, mulching, timing of watering, avoid over watering, and drought resistant plants
Reduce household water use
Recycle grey water
Install low flow shower heads and fixtures - Free fixtures available from Mattole Restoration Council (629-3514)

Prepare for even greater conservation measures for the entire month of September:
Stop watering lawns and let them go brown
Stop watering gardens
Share a shower
Reduce or eliminate toilet flushing - use an outhouse - "let it mellow"

Summer Update

2007-07-31T21:30:00.000-07:00

- Maxxam/PL's Mattole Watershed Analysis Timeframe Extended
- Map Update

Mattole Watershed Analysis
According to the most recent Mattole Restoration Council newsletter, Pacific Lumber's Watershed Analysis data is incomplete. The analyisis will require more surveys and negotiations and will continue "through the fall". So far, Pacific Lumber has not filed any new logging plans in the Mattole River Watershed but they have carried out herbicide "application" on hundreds of acres of forestland.

Both stumps and standing hardwood trees are killed in order to reduce competition for the commercial softwood seedlings planted by the company. This in effect turns the logged forest into a tree plantation.

July North Fork Map Update
click on the map to view larger version.

Forest Pictures and Links

2007-07-22T20:15:00.000-07:00

An Oldgrowth Douglas Fir in an untouched area above Alwardt Creek.

Stump in a clearcut on the opposite side of Alwardt Creek. 335 Years Old.

A Mattole Defender surveys the same clearcut.

Slideshows
Long Slideshow
Activities in April
Pics From May

More Pictures
Skillshare Camp at the Mouth of the Mattole
Oldgrowth Hardwoods

Focused Effort to Document the Forest

2007-05-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

[click on the map for a close-up view]

Latest Map Update
This map (produced by Mattole Wildlands Defense) shows the roughly 2,000 acres of Oldgrowth Douglas Fir forest on Pacific Lumber land in the North Fork Mattole River drainage. This map is periodically updated as more information comes to light through research and field surveys.

Stealthy Field Surveys
Since this forest is held by a private corporation, forest defenders take a risk by hiking 12 to 16 miles on roads and cross-country just to reach this remote area. After this we hike nearly every day visiting different areas in the North Fork Mattole drainage. We take pictures, write down observations, work on maps and make GPS waypoints.

More Focused Documentation Effort
Recently there has been a more focused effort to document the current conditions of the N. F. Mattole ecosystem. Over the last 5 years, information on the amount and types of forest remaining and other changes to the landscape has been hard to come by. Some clearcut and "rehab" logged areas have been sprayed with herbicide to kill the Oak and Madrone trees which compete with the more profitable conifers. The exact acreage of land that has been sprayed is unknown. Through field surveys and other forms of investigation we are working to shed more light on this and other issues.

The Long View- Beyond the Mattole Clearcut Wars, a Choice of Futures

2007-04-16T19:16:00.000-07:00

[note: though written in spring 2001, this writing is just as applicable and relevent today, though the 3,000 acres of oldgrowth forest he mentions now stands at around 2,000. There wouldn't be that much left if not for the efforts and dedication of community members and volunteers working through the legal system and taking action in the woods.]

photo: MWD

by Freeman House 2001

This forest is not dark, but broken by large, bright sweeps of upland prairie that now, in the spring of 2001, are as radiantly green as any mythical image of the welcoming land. This country has been sacred ground and tribal territory, milk and honey, meat and wood, garden and factory, and now the last stand in defense of a legacy landscape, depending on whose eyes have been looking. Its current owner is Maxxam Corporation, a conglomerate renowned for its devotion to the bottom line.

When you're among the old trees on Rainbow Ridge, the prairie expanses are never far from sight or out of mind. The big trees are Douglas firs, four feet through at the base, large before any white immigrant ever saw them. There are tanoaks and madrones and coast live oaks, too, giants of their own races.

photo: MWD

A century and a half ago, there was a lot of this kind of habitat in the Coast Range; now this 3,000 acres of low-elevation, mixed-conifer forest and coastal prairie is the largest uninterrupted piece of its type left in California. Dependent wildlife, once plentiful across the landscape, has fled here for shelter. If you're in the right place, your eye is drawn to the long view, all the way to the silver glare of the Pacific. We're in the headwaters of the largest tributary of the Mattole River, and up here at 1,500 to 2,000 feet above sea level the creeks run clear and abundant. Farther downstream, where the big trees have been cut too close to the streams, the picture is not so pretty.

photo: MWD

In a place like this, where the vistas are at the same time grand and softly inviting, the mind can be drawn back to the time before the forest was owned by Maxxam, and forward to when Maxxam itself will be history, to deep time and large cycles. Also to what was once called the sublime, especially here where an earthquake can lift up the land several feet in a few seconds, where more rain falls in the five-month wet season than in most places in California. Such landscapes invite philosophy, as they come to represent nature's living memory. Once they're gone, we will not be able to re-imagine their elegant complexities. The highest and best use of these rich places may be as an arena for reconsideration of our human place and function in the landscape.

Once we get beyond the habit of regarding the landscape as a static event, we'll be closer to ordering our lives within the constraints and opportunities of our unique habitat-homes. Not only does the landscape change over time, but so do the social values that drive our activities on the land. Our activities on the land are as large a determinant of how that land functions as are soil types, weather cycles, and geology. In North America, we're running out of time to rediscover the nature of our relationships to its places, to begin living as if we were going to be here for a while. In the Mattole watershed, the westernmost in California, it doesn't seem strange to think like this. After all, the current dominant culture has been here for less than a century and a half.

One ridgeline west of where the forest is being clearcut, but still on Maxxam land, there is an unusual sight: a garden-sized stand of coast live oaks, very old. In a forest type identified by its mix of species, it is rare to find a pure stand of any one of them. But it is likely that two hundred years ago many such small stands dotted the Mattole landscape. The native peoples (Mattole, Sinkyone, Wailaki, and Wiyot) relationship to the oak was complex and active, productive oak groves maintained by family right and responsibility. The timely use of fire optimized acorn production, arrested the growth of competing species, and controlled pests. The results of such management were likely many well-tended groves throughout the Mattole (especially tanoaks, treasured for their large, sweet nut), maintained at an arrested stage of natural succession.

Annual first salmon and first acorn ceremonies reinforced the human population's sense of its place within ecosystem processes and provided a way for tribal knowledge to incorporate an ever-widening range of experience.

photo: MWD

As a result, core resources were managed for the security of future generations with a style of cultivation and consumption likely to result in more food rather than less.

The Euro-Americans who invaded the valley beginning in 1856 had little time to learn about indigenous land management. Within seven years of settlement the last natives were being rounded up and forcibly moved to distant reservations.

The quarter of the watershed landscape occupied by coastal prairie plant communities was pushed to support a smaller human population who had to work harder to survive than the peoples they had replaced. Subsistence gardening on the fertile bottomlands was augmented with the cash from cattle and dairy products. Grass seeds carried in the animals hooves quickly replaced the perennial bunchgrasses which had fed browsers like deer and elk year-round, with European annuals, green and nutritious in the late winter and spring only. The bottomland was put to work producing hay for cattle rather than grains and vegetables for humans. The cash economy had come to the table. The more it eats, the hungrier it grows.

BOOM: Oil and Leather

Euro-Americans seem to be natural entrepreneurs, always responding inventively to cash shortages. Beginning in 1864, oil seeps in the foothills seemed to some like they might solve the problem forever. But although the oil came out of the ground so clean that it could be burned in lamps, it came in small quantities. Before the combustion engine, the fuel was worth hauling out in goatskin sacks on the backs of mules, but it soon became uneconomical.

In the 1880s , another generation discovered that the ubiquitous tanoak, once prized as food, had a high concentration of tannin in its bark that made it useful in the leather tanning process. There was enough to make it seem like one more inexhaustible resource of the Wild West. So much that it financed the construction of a reduction plant in nearby Briceland that processed 3,000 cords of bark a year. At the mouth of the river, two miles of rail were laid and a quarter-mile of wharf built out into some of the windiest waters in the Pacific to carry the bark out of the hills and down to San Francisco. Another wharf was built at Shelter Cove, near the headwaters of the river. The ocean took out the wharf at the mouth five years later, but the tanbark lasted long enough to support crews living in the woods for six to ten weeks every spring for twenty years, until the war to end all wars. The crews would fell the trees, strip the bark, and leave the wood on the ground. And then it was gone, or so scarce as to be unrewarding to go out and get it.

It would be another generation before the stump-sprouted shoots were large enough to be called trees, and by that time synthetic tannins would be doing the job. A little more than 50 years had passed between the time those tanoak groves were providing staple acorns to several thousand humans and the time they were lying naked on the hillsides. This would not be the last time the cash economy would turn natural provision upside down.

photo: MWD

BUST: Eating Venison

The next generation had a quiet time that would be remembered as a sort of hardscrabble utopia by its survivors. A road to the county seat got built and the produce of orchards and dairies could be hauled into town to supplement an economy based as much on mutual aid as on competition. King cash was in charge now, its hold cemented by gasoline, but it was so far ruling with a gentle hand. The watershed would no longer provide for as many people, but it still provided well. Lean times meant eating more venison and salmon: who could complain? The quarter of the watershed landscape in prairie and pasture was doing all the work; the dark forests were too far from the mills and situated on slopes too steep to engage the economic imagination.

BOOM: Falling Timber

The next war changed all that. Or rather, the events after the war did so. The wartime meat subsidies that sweetened the pot for ranchers were soured by a tax on their standing timber, which occupies three-quarters of the watershed. As the US armed forces returned from World War II, they created a housing boom which in turn created an enormous demand for Douglas-fir two-by-fours for mass-produced tract housing. The war effort had resulted in the improvement of heavy machinery that ran on treads. Small tractors capable of navigating steep slopes, cutting roads, and hauling logs made the previously inaccessible back country of the Coast Range vulnerable. In Humboldt County, the tax on standing timber remained until the late 60s, so there was every incentive for the independent landowner to log.

Small land-based timber corporations began to acquire large parcels of remote timberlands. An industry that had focused on redwood now spread to every softwood-rich habitat in the West. The flurry of growth included Pacific Lumber Company (PL), previously devoted almost exclusively to redwood lumber production. Locally owned and paternalistic, PL ran its operations as if its company town at Scotia would support many generations.

In California, there was little timber regulation until 1975. In a quarter century, some 90% of the Mattole watershedÃ•s ancient Douglas-fir forests was logged Ã& much of it by gyppo (independent) outfits contracted by resident ranchers Ã& with no replanting required. Never had so much soil been exposed to direct pounding by the regionÃ•s heavy rainfall. Spiderwebs of abandoned dirt roads criss-crossed the landscape Ã& ten linear miles for every square mile, on average. Although several mills hired valley men for 20 years, more of the revenue represented by the timber was leaving the watershed for mills in other parts of the state.

The cash economy was turning the region into a cash colony.

photo: MWD

BUST: Mud

In 1955, and again in 1964, "hundred-year" storms occurred late in the winter. The winter of 1955 had been cold, and there was an unusually heavy snow pack on the higher hills. When the snow was melted by rain, it unleashed enormous amounts of water down gullies, ravines, and feeder creeks that no longer had vegetation to slow it down and trap some of the soil it carried. In a matter of days, the nature of the river was changed Ã& from a stable, cool, and deeply channeled watercourse to one that rose and fell flashily, meandering in its newly shallowed channel and tearing out streamside vegetation. Sediment jammed river bottom gravels and filled pools once deep enough to remain cool all summer. Clean gravels and cool waters are an absolute requirement of salmon; a precipitous decline in salmon populations followed, and continued until 1990. The hotter, south-facing slopes, unplanted after logging, often came back in thick chaparral, prone to burn uncontrollably.

REHABILITATION

Windfall profits, along with the ugliness of a ravaged landscape, may have moved some ranchers to sell out. It took only the subdivision of a few of the large, cut-over ranches in the Mattole to turn the watershed into a destination for the thousands of young urban people seeking self-reliant lives. In the 70s, the back-to-the-land immigrations had observable effects on the landscape, but possibly more importantly, on the nature of human desire as it is directed at the landscape. Within ten years, the human population of the valley tripled. By and large, the newcomers brought with them attitudes native to the burgeoning national environmental movement, as well as the conviction that enormous social change was impending and that they were the agents of that change. Some of the first institutions they created were highly effective environmental reform organizations.

photo source

The new city-bred pioneers had their hands full staying alive for the first few years. Rapid and near-total immersion in the wilder landscape brought a humbling and visceral experience of the degree to which modern people are ignorant of the ways the natural world works. Environmental restoration projects proved to be highly effective learning forums. In the Mattole, as well as in other places in North America, a restoration movement began to take shape, a movement that emphasizes the systematic self-education of human communities about the habitats that support them.

Homesteaders who tended salmon eggs gained more intimacy with the creatures freshwater needs than any classroom training might have given. Workers replanting barren slopes with local Douglas-fir seedlings and monitoring their survival learned a generation's worth of the processes of natural succession within a few years. Nothing teaches practical hydrology more quickly than attempts to armor eroding stream banks.

Habitat rehabilitation work quickly expanded to include a more informed examination of land-use practices. Organizations like the Institute for Sustainable Forestry developed measurable standards for timber production within ecological parameters. Land trusts were established to move certain lands into the public domain and administer others through benign conservation easements. All these new organizations showered the community with educational newsletters. Collective learning of this sort had not taken the form of social institutions since the destruction of indigenous peoples rituals.

It was trial and error. Like Gil Gregori, a riverfront farmer and urban transplant who has engaged in restoring the Mattole for a quarter century, most settlers didn't arrive with the knowledge that willow plantings will attract valuable insects, shore up banks, and cost less than moving boulders. "I learned it," Gregori says. "(I saw that) they slow the water down. If you can get something to grow there, it's going to do the work for you. As the years went by, people started seeing what was working and what wasn't, which influenced not only the land but their own identity, says Gregori's partner Robie Tenorio. "The restoration feels right," she says. "It feels like you're here, and it's your connection to the land. We live on the river, and this is where we are."

Playing counterpoint to these progressive movements are the various effects of the new-age version of the cash economy- outlaw marijuana production- introduced by the newcomers, but now widespread. Early cash flow from these activities freed up volunteer time that nourished the arts and social and environmental movements. But recent innovations in bunker-style indoor growing powered by large, often unattended, generators are now able to destroy habitat with diesel spills. Community erodes as people hide their daily activities from each other, and generalized paranoia blooms in the form of locked gates and more extreme types of security.

Nonetheless, a community has responded to the land.

In 1988, the Mattole Restoration Council's survey of old growth habitat in the Mattole revealed it had been reduced by 93% since 1947. The survey also revealed that none of the remaining habitat had permanent protection.

A dramatic poster map was mailed to every one of several thousand residents and landowners in the valley. This local information moved community groups to engage in acquisition and regulatory efforts that put some two-thirds of the remaining old forests under public protection by 2000. Maxxam's three thousand acres in the North Fork are the last and most valuable legacy habitat remaining unprotected.

file photo

As I begin writing, a woman named Kim Starr has been sentenced to 120 days in the county jail for defending some of the last of the watershed that looks as it did two hundred years ago. "When that wildness is threatened," Starr said from Humboldt County Correctional Facility, "I donÃ•t know what else to do. All the waterways and the rolling hills and all the mosses on all the Doug fir trees and bay laurel trees and all the old-growth: That wildness gets in our hearts. It hurts knowing that 60 acres have been just totally stripped in that area."

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Starr is one of several hundred forest activists and several score residents resisting Maxxam"s intention to take down this old forest in the next decade. Her sentence is stiffer because she refused probation. "I reject that system completely," said Starr, who said she wouldn't rule out more civil disobedience. "The more of us that do it, the stronger we become." The 54 people arrested for similar incidents of trespass and resisting arrest (they tend to be locked down and difficult to remove when arrested) await sentencing. Up to 200 additional "John Does" can be charged with obstructing a lawful business as part of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP suit) and restraining order begged and received by Pacific Lumber/Maxxam Corporation.

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Two irreconcilable and very modern projections of human desire are encountering each other on these remote lands. The seemingly dominant one, supported by regulations and law, is the treatment of landscapes as sacrifice zones to what Wendell Berry calls the total economy, where there is no value but that measured in dollars. The outcome of this vector of desire is all too predictable, as can be seen in the preceding history.

Resistance to this alternative, at its finest, may be emblematic of our desire to reintegrate human communities and landscapes. Until we learn more about the land's own strategies for recovery, the results of this effort are unpredictable, but the more wild habitat we allow to be destroyed, the less likely it is to reach fruition.

The practitioners of civil disobedience are buying time for community activists to explore acquisition alternatives. By putting their lives on the line for wild, living landscapes, they lend strength to the foresters and landowners, restorationists, and environmentalists who are inventing the details of a livable future. The land demands of us that we develop a long view of the future. If that future is to include the lives of places and of communities of place, we are also required to learn the lessons of our long experience of those places, and learn them soon.

Freeman House, a resident of the Mattole River valley, is author of Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species (1999, Beacon Press, Boston).

This article first appeared in Terrain Magazine Fall 2001. Terrain is the magazine of the Berkeley Ecology Center.

Recent Pics And Account From Mattole Defenders

2007-04-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

Part of the mission of Mattole Wildlands Defenders is to engage in restoration actvities in this remote and rugged landscape. Most recently this has meant planting willow stakes to stabalize streambanks at the top of watercourses.

Details: Stakes were cut sparingly from a stand of Willow trees. A nearby collapsing stream bank was planted with the stakes. Willow cuttings can naturally root in moist soil. We will return to the site periodically to check on the results. On the last day of the monitoring trip we discovered a major source of erosion in the headwaters of Sulphur Creek. A steep gully starting at a logging road drainage point is being used by cattle as a trail. Unfortunatly we were out of film when we discovered the erosion. This site will be the next priority for protective restoration.

Old Growth Douglas Fir Forest on the Lower North Fork of the Mattole River.

Year round springs feed numerous streams that run through these ancient groves. Pacific Lumber plans to log this and the other remaining oldgrowth in their holdings here. They are attempting to weaken stream protection regulations in order to accomplish this. Around 2,000 acres of ancient forest remain in PL holdings in this area.

Ancient Forest in Sulpher Creek Headwaters.

From the Skillshare

2007-03-18T15:07:00.000-07:00

"I spent last week at the Mattole Wildlands Defense Skillshare at the Mattole Beach. I thought it went quite well."

"One of the most popular wokshops was the Coyuntura, which is Spanish for conjunction. It taught us a new way of analysis and finding solutions to problems. Other worshops were: pocket pouch survival kit, plant identification, rebel media, foraging, yoga, and history of Mattole forest defense. As a blogger and photographer, I was particularly interested in the rebel media workshop."
-Forest Defender Blog

"This weekend wraps up a skillshare in the Mattole where eco-defenders discussed non-violent strategy at resisting corporate attacks on the bioregion's forests."

"The weather was great, sunny and windy while people realized the value of living biomass as live willow trees provided us with shelter from the winds and dead dried branches provided heat for small cooking fires. The workshops featured a EZLN method called Coyuntura (pronounced Co-yen Too-Rah) that disscussed different forms of strategy in effective organizing. Coyuntura originates in Chiapas Mexico and is similar in using a concensus based decision making process as in the Caracoles (sea snail shell) council.."

"We also discussed the effects of free trade agreements on both the people and ecosystems of Mexico and the US. The regional effects of corporate logging's ecological devastation are also a result of free trade policy supressing local sovereignty in sustainable forestry planning (even in the case of SPI, another 'local' outfit). The bankrupty of Pacific Lumber and the resulting lay-offs is NOT a result of eco-activists and forest defenders (try as they may, there's only so many tree-sits while Maxxam/PL currently bankrolls 25+ poorly trained 'extracters' to remove treesitters by using physical force), though is the direct result of the 3X rate of harvests introduced after the '85 corporate takeover by Maxxam Corporation, headquarters based in Houston, TX.."

"The lives and homes of the logging workers are in NorCalifornia, though Maxxam's CEO and principal shareholder C. Hurwitz is attempting to hold PL's bankruptcy hearings in Corpus Christi, Texas, a far too expensive flight for a recently unemployed logger who had both their forests and their future stolen by Maxxam's corporate greed.."
-skillshare attendee

Wildlands Defense Skillshare Gathering March 11th to 18th

2007-01-30T17:53:00.000-08:00

You are invite you to join us and at the Mattole Wildlands Skillshare next week. Dates are from March 11th to 18th. This is a free gathering but donations of money and supplies are much appreciated.
contact # (707) 834-3100

Workshops will include- Direct Action Training, Backwoods Skills, Tree Climbing, Plant Identification, Fire Building, Shelter Building, Blockading, Fire Dancing, Pocket Pouch Survival Kit and more.

Update: Carpooling
Needed- Drivers For Fri. and Sat. Please call ahead if you can offer rides.

Carpools will be leaving Arcata at 10:00am Monday thru Saturday from the parking lot next to Sacred Grounds at 7th and Fst.

The gathering will be in the Mattole River region of Humboldt County. The trip from Arcata takes about 1 1/2 hours.
Please call for directions.

Camp Supply Requests
- Rope, Cord
- Hatchet or Axe
- Tarps
- Food Donations
- 2 Propane Tanks
- White Gas For Stoves

Mattole Defenders are organizing to defend the Oldgrowth forest and waters of the North Fork Mattole River from Maxxam/Pacific Lumber. There are around 2,000 acres of Oldgrowth Douglas Fir forests here. The company is expected to try and get the watercourse protections weakened this summer to allow logging closer to streams where most of the remaining Oldgrowth is found.

Mattole Slideshow

2007-01-21T19:13:00.000-08:00

For a bigger view click on "view all images".

PL Files Bankruptcy, North Fork Mattole Faces Uncertain Future.

2007-01-19T16:21:00.000-08:00

Regardless of what happens in the wake of Pacific Lumber's bankruptcy, Mattole Wildlands Defenders will continue to stay vigilant until the land, forest, streams and threatened species of the North Forks are guaranteed long-term protection.

Some possible scenarios of what may come are;

1. A bankruptcy Judge directs company operations.
2. The land is sold to developers or another logging company and faces further environmental damage.
3. The land is sold to conservationists and protected.

Even if the land is sold, the HCP rules will continue to apply. This includes mandated seasonal surveys for rare, threatened and endangered species. This also includes the results of the Watershed Analysis and the new rules for streamside logging that PL is expected to request this summer. The proposed new rules will likely allow logging closer to creeks in PL's holdings in Bear River and the Mattole. This would unlock large areas of Oldgrowth Douglas Fir in and around watercourse zones. Approximately 2,000 acres of rare Upland Oldgrowth Douglas Fir exist in this remote and rugged region.

Mattole Defense Winter Update '06

2007-01-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

Monitoring of Pacific Lumbers (PL) activities on the North Forks of the Mattole River continues. Some areas of previously protected forest could possibly be open for logging in the second half of this year. PL has not filed any new Timber Harvest Plans (THP's) for over a year, however, it is widely reported that the company is attempting to get watercourse protections reduced. This would allow them access to previously off-limits areas of rare ancient Douglas Fir forest. Some of these areas are within older THP boundaries and are in the "limited entry" or no cut zones. Clauses in these plans allow for logging to occur within the buffer zones if the rules are changed. There would be a relatively short public comment period (a few weeks) and then logging in these plans could begin again. An article in the Mattole Restoration Newsletter says that a draft copy of the new rules for streamside buffers should be available for public viewing and comment by early summer.

Important! Please write a letter for the Mattole.

2006-12-10T13:41:00.000-08:00

Thanks to California Voters, $450,000,000 are available to the Wildlife Conservation board for the purpose of Forest and Wildlife conservation. Please write a letter to the board expressing your desire to see this forest and it's watercourses protected from further logging activity. Click here to read more and for addresses to write to.

Douglas Fir

2006-11-26T19:57:00.000-08:00

Monitoring efforts in the backwoods of the Mattole are ongoing. Pacific Lumber is working on a draft proposal for new logging rules. They are expected to propose that they be allowed to log closer to creeks. This would give them both access to areas of untouched ancient forest and contribute to erosion. Logging close to creeks also reduces shade which raises water temperatures, thereby threatening the Salmon and Steelhead downsteam.

2006-11-19T21:02:00.000-08:00

In the Mattole River Watershed, the Pacific Lumber Company has logged most of what is currently permitted under their "Habitat Conservation Plan". Now they are seeking to loosen these restrictions so that they can log closer to creeks, thereby gaining access to previously untouched areas of ancient forest.

Ancient Douglas Fir in the Headwaters of Sulpher Creek, tributary to the North Fork Mattole River. This tree has been named Double Tree by defenders.

The Headwaters of Sulpher Creek. The North Fork of the Mattole River contains the highest density of old-growth forest remaining on Pacific Lumber land. There are over 2,000 acres of ancient forest in this remote region of sweeping prairies, steep unstable slopes and abundant geological activity.

Rattlesnake Creek. This tributary to the Upper North Fork Mattole has been heavily logged in the past. Since the rampant unregulated logging following World War II the forest here has mostly regenerated in a mix of Douglas Fir and hardwoods. There are, however, many landslides that appear to have been triggered by logging roads built around that time. Old-growth groves can still be found scattered amongst the smaller second-growth.

Ancient Oak tree above Rattlesnake Creek.