Forest “management” effort @ Tomales Bay State Park panned by environmentalists
This article in a local Marin County newspaper, The Marin Independent Journal, is already two years old, but still relevant today. This deforestation project is still in process, and work may begin as early as autumn of this year (2025).
The details of the project led by California State agencies Cal Parks and Cal Fire remains chillingly vague, even after even after two years have gone by. It’s difficult to more accurately critique a deforestation when its implementers won’t — or can’t — tell the public exactly what it’s doing, or where it’s going to do it.
Where, exactly, will shrubs and other understory vegetation be masticated — i.e., mulched into dead wood chips. How many hundreds of trees will be felled? Which specific trees are they? Why will these be felled? What elements of healthy, lush, wild coastal forest should not, as you assert, be in the forest; are somehow “wrong” and shouldn’t exist here? Which plants needs removing? (Very few are being labeled as “invasives,” btw, for those who believe in “invasive species.” And how will a complex, living, interconnected forest be “helped” or “healed” or “restored” by killing hundreds or even thousands of plants and trees, as this project’s general plan indicates (yet without specifics)?
• READ A CRITIQUE of this deforestation project by a biologist with The Western Watersheds Project
When a Cal Parks representative giving a tour of this forest was asked, in person by this activist writer, while in the forest, “Could you point to a specific area and explain exactly what plants will be killed and what plants will be sprayed with herbicides, and what trees will you cut down (called tree “removal”)? No specifics could be offered. Instead, only vague assurances of “care” and “respect” and “stewardship” and use of Native American “traditional ecological knowledge,” aka TEK, were offered.
Trust us, say the representatives of the many agencies and for-profit sub-contractors itching to get their gloves on millions of dollars of “wildfire mitigation” state funds available to “manage” a wild public forest with chainsaws, chippers, masticating machines and herbicides.
• READ MORE DETAILS about the Tomales Bay State Park deforestation project: https://www.TreeSpiritProject.com/CalFire
Excerpts from Marin Independent Journal article:
A group of environmental and advocacy organizations opposes the plan, stating that it is relying on overly broad forest management practices approved by the state and applying them to Tomales Bay forestlands without in-depth environmental studies.
The opponents say the work will disrupt the habitat of sensitive and endangered wildlife and plant species, dry out the forest floor and make the forest more susceptible to wind-driven fires. They also say the park should focus instead on maintaining fuel breaks and clearing defensible space surrounding nearby homes and communities.
“We do not think that basically clear-cutting native bishop pines is in any way mimicking the natural 200-year fire cycle,” said Laura Cunningham, California director of the Western Watersheds Project nonprofit group. “What we want them to do is leave the forest alone. It’s doing just fine the way it is.”
READ ARTICLE: https://www.marinij.com/2023/02/18/tomales-bay-state-park-managers-plan-tree-cutting-burns
Don’t get mad – – get involved!
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and you’d like to speak out and act up to save forests everywhere from similar, destructive deforestations masquerading as “management projects” and “restorations” and “wildfire resilience work” and “forest health treatments,” you can!
To get involved, Contact Jack of the TreeSpirit Project HERE