Kristen Sandel
Valley Women’s Club (VWC)
What Does a Demonstration Forest Do?
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) manages and operates 14 Demonstration State Forests, with a total area of around 85,000 acres. These demonstration forests are intended to “conduct research on different forest management practices” for use in the forestry and commercial logging industry. Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) is the state’s largest, occupying 48,652 acres in the Mendocino County ancestral lands of the Northern Pomo and Coast Yuki territory, represented by the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and headed by Michael Hunter, tribal chairman. JDSF has been at the center of an often-heated debate about the appropriate use of these publicly held lands, their stewardship and their sustainability. JDSF is not a state park (though it is open to the public for recreation), but is designated as a ‘working forest’ and subject to timber production as the primary land use. Commercial logging in the state’s demonstration forests harvest about 14.3 million board feet of conifer timber annually and generates about $8.5 million a year.
Coastal Redwood Forests’ Unique Ecology
Protecting and restoring California’s remaining coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests is a key aspect of recognizing and combating climate change. Coast redwoods create dense, fog-heavy temperate rainforests, reducing wildfire risk in these areas, and coast redwood forests store more carbon, for longer periods of time, than any other kind of forest on Earth.
Often growing in circular clusters, with an elder ‘parent’ tree forming the center of the burl mass and providing nutrients to rooted sprouts, these enormous, long-lived trees generate unique microclimates, offering a rich habitat for wildlife such as northern spotted owls, coho salmon, black bears, banana slugs, coastal giant salamanders, and speckled black salamanders. They also host a wide variety of flora such as Pacific trillium, hound’s tongue, rhododendrons, and hundreds of fungi species. Redwoods are a critical part of the watershed in these bioregions as well, making them an important link in the larger Pacific coastal ecology, and their thick bark makes them highly fire resistant, able to survive repeated wildfires over a 2,000-year lifespan. Redwoods also buffer and channel air currents and wind, allowing greater stability and protection from wind throw for trees within the forest and establishing habitat zones that allow wildlife to flourish. Redwood forest ecosystems are complex, fragile, and hugely valuable to California’s biological diversity and resilience.
A History of Protest
Mendocino County’s Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) has for decades been a focal point of continuing outcries against timber harvests, including arrests and lawsuits to halt logging, and heated discussions around the uses of public land in California’s forests. Tribal groups, conservationists like the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), the Sierra Club and the California Native Plant Society (CNPS), forest biologists, and direct-action activists are at odds with state agencies like Cal Fire, which reviews and approves Timber Harvest Plans (THPs), and logging companies who have an interest in harvesting an area.
Established in 1949, JDSF’s almost 50,000 acres of coastal land hold significant stands of mature second-growth and remnant old-growth redwoods. The Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians has protested against the use of their ancestral forests for commercial logging, calling for a moratorium on all logging, road building, and herbicide application in JDSF, with the support of the California Tribal Chairpersons’ Association, representing 90 tribes within California, and the over 70 allied organizations of the California Environmental Justice Coalition. As a sovereign tribal nation, the Coyote Valley Band has engaged in ongoing conversations with California’s state government at the highest levels, including the Natural Resources Agency, on the forest’s future and their role in its preservation not as a logging site, but as an important part of their cultural, historical and environmental heritage (https://pomolandback.com).
Tribal Voices for the Forest
In recent years, the idea of tribal co-management, incorporating cultural and historic practices such as prescribed fire, has gained support, including from Wade Crowfoot, who is the current Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. What this co-management would look like in practice, however, is yet to be seen, as state and tribal representatives have differing visions on how to shape JDSF’s future.
Anti-logging demonstrators including Earth First!, local activists and tribal groups have held both peaceful and disruptive actions to protect these unique forests from what Cal Fire describes as strategic ‘harvesting’ to promote an intensively managed approach to ‘forest health’, thinning large, older trees to allow younger ones space and light. But forest defenders and climate activists argue that logging one of the West Coast’s largest carbon sinks, in a time of devastating—and rapidly increasing—climate change, is neither sustainable nor desirable. Continuing the logging operations also seems to fly in the face of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order establishing the state’s 30X30 climate change initiative, which calls for permanent conservation of 30% of the state’s lands and coastal waters by 2030.
An Uncertain Future
In January of 2022, Cal Fire announced a temporary halt to timber sales from Jackson Demonstration State Forest’s stock due to the observed nesting season for federally protected northern spotted owls, marking a cautiously positive shift in the agency’s management approach to operations in JDSF. State Senator Mike McGuire said that year that he expected to see the development of an interim management plan more focused on climate mitigation and wildfire resilience. However, there is currently no formal, permanent moratorium on logging within JDSF; in August of 2022, Cal Fire announced the resumption of logging activities and has since released a modified Timber Harvest Plan, named ‘Camp One’, that calls for maintaining mature trees and overstory and promoting the health of salmon populations.
Meanwhile, tribal representatives, activists, and conservation groups continue to work towards greater protections and a larger tribal voice for the future of this vital natural, cultural, and historic landscape.