Dear Editor,
On Thursday the 25th of July 2024, Arcata’s personnel entered the private sections of the Jacoby Creek Road with a tree cutting machine to open up a pathway from the endangered Jacoby Creek Salmon and Steelhead Habitats to Fickle Hill for the purposes of turning the Wild Forest Ecosystem into a Domesticated Timber Farm. Arcata held no easements to utilize the private road and when the Block Captain of the Jacoby Creek Watershed Neighborhood Watch denied them access to utilize his private section of the road for commercial timber harvesting, Arcata’s Forest Manager retaliated and had the Sheriff’s Department arrest him under false charges. The Sheriff’s Department originally acknowledged that the road was private but refused to remove Arcata from trespassing on the road, even though Arcata was blocking residents from entering into town or returning home. One resident, who was an elderly disabled veteran, desperately needed to get to a doctor’s appointment, but Arcata’s personnel refused to move. Sargent Losey eventually intervened on behalf of Arcata and began making baseless claims that the private sections of the road had public access. When the Block Captain requested for the Sgt. Losey to present a public easement to the road, he refused and instead placed the block captain under arrest. Sgt. Losey then proceeded to get into the Block Captain’s car, which was parked along the side of the road, and drove it to another location, and then threatened the neighbors to allow Arcata to illegally access the private road or everyone would arrested.
Prior to this incident, the Block Captain had sent an email to the Arcata City Council, Environmental Director, and City Manager; informing them of his Islamic Beliefs regarding the sacredness of the Forests and the Trees. In the Holy Quran, it specifies that the Trees are worshippers of Allah (the most merciful, most kind), and are God’s creation. There is even a passage in the Hadith that reference the trees as Imam. The Block Captain received no reply and Arcata instead proceeded to come to his family’s holy land for the purposes of defiling their sacred beliefs. Unfortunately, Arcata’s disregard for the Sacredness of Nature is nothing new. 40 years ago, the Jacoby Creek operated as a thriving wildlife fishery, with salmon 3+ foot big flooding through the creek every year. Simultaneously, for the past 40 years, a group of kayakers have been coming to Arcata’s section of the forest to cut down the trees that fall into the creek, which create the salmon spawning grounds, so they could speed up the rapids for kayaking; in addition, a group of residents who live past the quarry have been illegally siphoning water from Arcata’s section of the creek. Arcata has turned a blind eye to these transgressions, resulting in the decline of this once thriving ecosystem into now endangered habitats bordering along extinction.
Fareed Atiq Ahmed, Bayside