Felice Pace, North Group Water Chair
the longest time while protecting water quality and biodiversity.
My mother was fond of aphorisms. One of her favorites was “Actions speak louder than words.”
Governor Newsom is a case in point. He says all the right things on environmental issues but his subsequent actions often don’t match his words. On water issues, for example, Newsom has an ambitious Water Resilience Portfolio, but he simultaneously allows Corporate Ag to dewater drinking water wells in the San Joaquin Valley and streams state-wide. Recently Max Gomberg, who had been water conservation and climate change manager at the State Water Resources Control Board, resigned from the Board because he had seen “the agency’s ability to tackle big challenges nearly eviscerated by this Administration.”
When it comes to forest and wildfire policy, Governor Newsom has also been a disappointment. His administration has not strengthened private land logging rules or taken steps to end the timber industry’s short-rotation clearcut and plantation forestry which puts nearby communities at great wildfire risk.
Newsom endorses protecting forests to maximize carbon storage but his administration has failed to provide incentives to persuade owners to allow forests to grow older between logging entries. And he has promoted the “thinning” of federal forests under the mistaken belief that thinning forests reduces wildfire risk.
Because it opens the forest to light and wind and reduces competition for water, “thinning” actually increases fire risk except in the very short term while reducing carbon storage. In the real world, allowing private and public forests to grow older and, in the case of public forests, allowing the forests to grow ancient, would reduce wildfire risks while maximizing carbon storage.
In late 2020 Governor Gavin Newsom issued a “groundbreaking” executive order making California the first state in the U.S. to commit to protecting 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030. However, there has been no meaningful progress on defining how the governor and his administration plan to implement the policy. Here, too, we see good words but a failure to translate rhetoric into on-the-ground reality.
President Biden is no better when it comes to forest, water and climate policy. He, too, talks good policy. But on the ground, where policy meets reality, Biden and his administration have not delivered. For example, soon after becoming president, Joe Biden said that his administration would protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water by 2030. That’s over 720 million acres!
However, Biden claims that land which is logged and grazed could count as conservation under the 30 percent designation if it is managed with “the long-term health and sustainability of natural systems” in mind. Anyone who has seen public land logging and grazing firsthand, knows that is bunk.
Biden’s approach to conservation mimics that promoted by Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot at the end of the Gilded Age. Today we see on the public lands the results of that policy: forest landscapes dominated by clearcuts and tree plantations and streams with severely impaired flow and degraded water quality. Clearly, a different policy is needed.
Solid science has demonstrated beyond doubt that commercial logging and grazing degrade ecosystems and damage water supplies and streamflows. Those impacts can and should be controlled more effectively. However, because the land and water degradation caused by commercial logging and grazing can not be eliminated, grazed and logged land can not and should not be considered “conserved”.
North Group Underwrites Two Campers
by Sue Leskiw
This summer, North Group Sierra Club sponsored two campers – a 9-year-old girl from Blue Lake and a 9-year-old boy from Eureka (whose father had attended the same camp!) – to week-long sessions at Lost Coast Camp near Petrolia. (Unfortunately, a staff shortage led to cancellation of the boy’s week, but North Group has reserved a slot for him in summer 2023.)
This is the fifth year that campers sponsored through donations to the Lucille Vinyard/Susie van Kirk Environmental Education Fund have gone to overnight camp at this venue in the Mattole Valley. The facility’s mission is to “provide youth with a dynamic summer camp experience, which promotes building self-esteem and positive friendships, individual expression, and fostering an appreciation for the natural world.”
In exchange for tuition, the camper agreed to submit an essay to North Group about the experience. Here is what she had to say:
“I had a really great time at Lost Coast Camp and can’t wait to tell you about it. I made new friends and a lot of memories. One of my favorite parts was going to the Mattole River. It’s a beautiful river and I love to swim. I learned how to make friendship bracelets and sing by the campfire. I really liked my cabin and counselors. I slept outside under the stars for the first time! It was a little cold, but I loved it. Last but not least: the awesome food. Thank you so much for the opportunity to have so much fun and learn. P.S. The drive there is awesome!”