Commercial Logging’s Satanic Mills

The tree sitters are not the first to stand up to the loggers. In 1946, the liberal US representative Helen Gahagan Douglas proposed to nationalize the entire redwood forest. The back-to-the-landers of Albion Ridge have been a thorn in the logger’s side since the 1970s. Mendocino County was the late Judi Bari’s base for Redwood Summer in the 1990s. Tree sitters have been the pride of Northern California environmentalists for several decades now, above all in Humboldt, the county north of here, though Julia Butterfly Hill, the best-known of sitters, was widely known and highly regarded here in Mendocino. In this century, the campaign to save Jackson State Forest slowed the lumbermen down. Now, with Mendocino Trail Stewards leading the way, saving this forest is becoming a movement again. (The Stewards have been joined by EPIC (the Environmental Protection Information Center of Humboldt County), Redwood Nation Earth First, and a host of local groups — most importantly, surely, several Pomo tribes).

Mendocino County is the heart of what ironically is still referred to as the Redwood Empire. Once one of the great natural wonders of the world, redwood trees were the dominant flora on the coast from the Oregon border south as far as Big Sur. It was (and what’s left of it is) a band of woodland 450 miles in length, reaching inland usually no more than twenty miles from the sea. Since the time of dinosaurs, it has flourished through wet winters, cool ocean breezes, and the fog of summer. These trees, some 2500 years old or more, grow to 350 feet, making them, with the sequoia of the Sierra, the largest creatures on earth.

The first peoples of this coast lived with the forests; that’s another story, but, to our great benefit, we now increasingly hear their voices, in spite of a history of grotesque pillage and plunder by settlers past and the racists of today. Commercial loggers first came to Mendocino with the gold rush; lumber was needed for the mines and railroads, and for California’s fast-growing cities. The mills in Mendocino were established in the 1860s. The loggers attacked the coastal forests first; timber was taken out by ship. The steep, rugged coastal mountains were insurmountable barriers to inland alternatives. By the end of the century, there was a mill in virtually every estuary and cove along this rocky coast — satanic mills by any standard — belching fire and smoke, surrounded by instant slums, a coastal chain of oozing sores.

By the end of the century, 40 percent of the old growth was gone. The devastation left behind was clear for all to see. The land, wrote a founder of the Save the Redwoods League in 1919, was devastated; it reminded him of the “war ravaged districts of France.” US Highway 101, the “Redwood Highway,” built in part with convict labor, opened the rest of the forest from the inland valleys; chainsaws, bulldozers, and trucks took out the trees of every last nook and cranny of the forest. Today one is as likely to see a big tree in Berkeley as here in Mendocino County. Less than 3 percent of the entire forest is old growth.

Action for Our Future

All this, however, has brought with it new perspectives on the forest. The Save the Redwood League once focused entirely on old growth; now it champions preservation of second and even third growth. The tree sitters are in second growth trees, big trees in a forest dominated by small and smaller trees. They inhabit a lovely grove well worth saving, but typically one surrounded by thick undergrowth and the slash of past logging. Visitors to the coast are often awestruck by the Navarro Redwoods State Park, a strip of second growth along the Navarro River, often not knowing just how narrow — and young in redwood time — this state park is. Second growth can be stunning.

Still there is the magic: “no thoughtful person,” wrote the naturalist Reed Noss, “could stand beneath one of these immense trees, gaze up into its canopy, and not help but think that here is a remarkable organism — so much more than all the board feet of lumber that men might cleave from it.” Conservationists as well as ordinary visitors have long been overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of these groves, together with, less tangibly, the inspiration gained from walking amongst them. We are not alone in thinking this. In our age of COVID, Japanese therapists recommend shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing,” as having psychological benefits in the face of the pandemic. Good advice. Of course, there are the more mundane pleasures of these woodlands for those who live in our coastal neighborhoods — the hikers and dog walkers, bird watchers and mushroom hunters, the trail bikers, the ordinary citizens now joining this fight.

We live today, however, in an age of multiple crises, including one of extinction – what is to become of our lions and bears and bobcats and deer, of the owls and other birds and of all the creatures that we cannot see, yet make up this extraordinary ecology? Surely, habitat restoration is called for, not more destruction, lest this silent slaughter continue.

And now, of course, there is climate change. Our political leaders seem to be all in on this. Carbon sequestration is acknowledged to be key to rescuing a threatened planet. They say they have the science on their side. And why not? My friend Will Russell, professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University and the foremost proponent of natural restoration, puts it this way: “The essential story here is that coastal redwood forests are the best terrestrial carbon sinks on Earth, approximately twice that of their nearest competitors.”

And we learn that that’s an understatement. We all know about the Amazon. The expansive Amazon tropical rainforest of South America is one of the world’s largest carbon sinks. But on a per-acre basis, the Amazon is not nearly as efficient at absorbing carbon as the coastal temperate rainforests. The Douglas fir forests of Oregon and the hemlock and cedar forests of Alaska store about twice as much carbon per acre as the Amazon. The giant redwoods of Northern California, which store seven times as much, form the most-carbon-dense forests in the world.

So the response is easy: save these trees. But, in truth, huge challenges remain: corporate greed, private profit, and compliant politicians. Almost all of the forest land of Mendocino County is in private, corporate hands. The Mendocino Redwood Corporation (owned by San Francisco’s Fisher family) alone owns 228,000 acres. And, alas, Cal Fire, a public institution, acts like a corporation. With redwood timber now selling at an all-time high, there are millions to be made from just one harvest of Jackson State’s yield. Never mind that California remains awash in cash, and Cal Fire, in the aftermath of the wildfires, is the darling of the state and can get as much of that as it wants. There is never enough when it comes to cash. Anyway, why let the Mendocino Redwood Company run away with all that money? These, then, are powerful opponents with powerful impulses. Common sense aside, the forest remains contested terrain, irrationality endures, and, as of now, the loggers rule.

Nevertheless, people are changing, and the old guard here is giving way to a new generation. “We need these trees,” Greasy told me (before returning to high school in Mendocino — replaced by another youngster), “for my generation, for our future. I hope our action here will inspire others, future generations.”

So, here’s to Greasy and Bugs and the tree sitters on call, courageous and farsighted, faces of the future today.