101 REASONS
…to oppose 10-year-long chainsaw “thinning” & herbicides “treatments” in Tomales Bay State Park’s lush coastal forest.
A devastating industrial deforestation project is in the works for roughly 1,000 acres of an approximately 2,000-acre dense, lush, secluded coastal forest, at Tomales Bay State Park in west Marin County, CA.
This deforestation project is being sold by California state agencies CalParks (California State Parks) and CalFire (the California Dept. of Forestry & Fire Protection) to an unsuspecting and misled public as a “health initiative” to “restore” the forest, and for “wildfire resiliency” — using chainsaws, chippers, masticating machines and herbicides, which are known poisons. Cutting down hundreds of trees and destroying thousands of bushes and shrubs that make this wild, coastal, fog-enshrouded forest uniquely dense, is billed as a way to “help restore” it.
As if massive, mechanized killing can “heal” a forest that is perfectly healthy. War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength.
• BACKGROUND and general info on the Tomales Bay State Park forest assault is HERE: https://www.TreeSpiritProject.com/CalFire
• AN ESSAY, “Orwell’s forest,” describes the rogue’s gallery of misleading language used to misinform, mislead and spread fear of nature, the natural process of wildfire, and wild forests themselves: https://treespiritproject.com/deforestation/orwells-forest/
Fear of forests clears the way for “chainsaw management” of not just this one relatively small, precious forest, but for millions of acres of wild, dense, healthy public forests throughout the west. Why? Because state agencies can win millions of dollars of state wildfire reduction funding by, in effect, yelling, “Wildfire danger!” about all California forests.
Government agencies entrusted with forest protection are now actively destroying them. READ WHY & HOW: https://treespiritproject.com/deforestation/orwells-forest/
The rest of this page is a growing list of all that is egregiously wrong, and destructive, and patently false, about this multi-million dollar, forest-reducing assault — which describes chainsaws, chippers, masticating machines and herbicides as “treatments” to “improve” forest “health” and wildfire resilience. These two agencies, CalPark and CalFire (and the U.S. Forest Service, too) — which the general public mistakenly believes protect wild forests — will assault an unusually lush, dense, previously unmanaged coastal cloud forest in the name of wildfire safety and forest health.
These agencies, aided by private, for-profit sub-contractor companies, will kill hundreds of acres of trees and plants in order to “save” the forest they can no longer see as a healthy, integrated, self-sustaining whole.
A biologist with the Western Watersheds Project analyzes — and debunks — the Tomales Bay deforestation project.
READ biologist Laura Cunningham’s, California Director of the Western Watersheds Project, “scoping” letter. (CLICK ON IMAGE on the right). It painstakingly debunks, in detail, the project’s pseudoscientific underpinnings:
https://treespiritproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/WWP-et-al-1.19.23-Tomales-Bay-State-Park-draft-plan-COMMENTS-PWP.pdf
The proposed industrial “treatments” will damage the forest.
• The Tomales Bay forest is dense, unusually lush and healthy precisely because it is has NOT (yet) been managed industrially as is now proposed. The project’s so-called “treatments” include chainsaws, masticating machines, chipping machine and poisonous chemical herbicides. These are sold to the public as necessary to “restore” forest health, as well as for “wildfire resilience.”
To the contrary, these severe ecological assaults will damage hundreds of trees, thousands of shrubs; reducing the forest, denuding it, trampling it with workers and machines year after year, all damaging this lush, healthy, publicly owned wild forest.
The forest’s complex, interdependent soil, groundwater, plants and animals will even be poisoned with an unspecified number of gallons of chemical herbicides, like Dow Garlon and Monsanto Roundup formulations.
NO SUCH THING AS AN “OVERGROWN” FOREST
This wild forest — like ALL wild forests — does not need “thinning” to become healthy or more “wildfire resilient” as it proponents assert. Sadly, even the biologists and ecologists working for these agencies contend, this and MANY forests need to cut into with chainsaws and masticating machines — which they call “thinning,” to be restored.
• “Thinning” is a non-scientific term designed to mislead people. It carries the connotation of minor individual tree pruning or thinning, but is vague and has no strict definition. Over 50% of the trees in a forest can be cut down and THAT devastation can be — and often is — described as forest “thinning.” Currently, literally millions of acres of public forests — including the healthy, dense, as-yet-unmanaged wild Tomales Bay forest — are being targeted for industrial “thinning” and “management” assault.
And “thinning” — deforestation — is done in the name of “wildfire reduction” or “forest health” and also for “bio-fuels” projects. All of these assaults on wild nature use industrial machines like chainsaws, masticating and chipping machines, and oftentimes chemical herbicides, too.
• Wild, unmanaged forests are healthier and more fire resistant than managed forests. Logging forests — being sold to the public as “thinning” — means cutting down precious, living trees and felling equally essential, standing dead trees (called “snags”). The loss of trees both living and dead harms overall forest health.
Because everything in a wild forest is needed and integrated into a complex, dynamic system. This is how nature has evolved. This is how nature works.
• All these so-called “management” projects of wild forests ignore established ecological science, and common sense too. Project planners will, they often say, “open up the forest canopy” to help certain species of trees (or plants) they deem worthy of “saving.” But always at the expense of other plants they deem less worthy of living. These other plants may be killed (masticated, mulched, sprayed with herbicides) by the hundreds or even thousands — and this is called “removing vegetation” and other euphemisms created to minimize the reality of so much killing.
This is also the destruction of hundreds of acres of animal habitat, but that is another ecological reality — and brutality — that is rarely even considered.
At Tomales Bay, the tree species these de-foresters claim deforestation will “help” are aging Bishop pine tree stands. Other nearby trees and plants will cut down because they are considered “competitors.” Their claims lack peer-reviewed scientific support. They also defy basic ecological science, which knows that forests are complex, interrelated ecosystems, not simply manmade vegetable gardens where we plant tomatoes and kill dandelions we label “weeds.”
And as a result of destroying both forest tree canopy and understory plants, the forest will be made sunnier, and thus hotter and windier, and thus drier — and thus more prone to wildfire ignition. LEARN MORE about wildfire caused by management.
ECOLOGICAL SCIENCE IGNORED
• The complex science of forest ecology is denied and/or ignored. The project falsely claims that killing other nearby plants will benefit Bishop pines — disregarding modern science documenting the root and mycorrhizal interconnectedness of understory plants, trees and other organisms in the soil. The project treats Bishop pines like tomatoes in a backyard garden and all other plants like garden “weeds” to be killed — without ecological importance or function — and targets them for destruction. This ignores decades of established, current science describing complex, interdependent forest ecosystems.
HERBICIDES: TOXIC ICING ON A KILLER CAKE
The toxicity, persistence and damage done by herbicides is also glossed over or completely ignored. The project, again, rejects the preponderance of established science of how herbicides like triclopyr (e.g., Dow Garlon formulations) and glyphosate (Monsanto Roundup) and imazapyr cripple plant function. And damage the gut biome of wild forest animals including countless insects, earthworms, birds, raptors and mammals who live here.
Acting as de facto public relations agents for the chemical industry, these forestry and fire prevention agencies — including California State Parks and Cal Fire on the Tomales Bay deforestation — simply ignore the established science documenting all the ecological damage that herbicides do to soil health, microbes, fungi, non-target plants and animals. And the contamination of groundwater.
All plants in a forest should be categorized as “non-target” plants.
BISHOP PINE FORESTS ARE REGENERATING ON THEIR OWN
The Bishop pine stands along Tomales Bay are perfectly healthy and regenerating naturally. The man older Bishop pine trees and dead standing trees (snags) in this coastal forest should need not now, or ever, be cut down or “cleared” or “removed.” Forest regeneration occurs gradually, naturally — and more readily — without industrial assaults such as poisoning the soil with herbicides.
IN THEIR OWN (NATURE’S) TIME, NOT A FORESTER’S
• The natural timetable for Bishop pine forest regeneration varies widely — by decades, even centuries — depending upon environmental factors such as soil, temperature, wind, waterways, fog and sun.
Forests age, die and renew themselves in their own time, as they have evolved to do over literally millions of years — without any human interference or “tending” or “help.” And certainly not on the arbitrary human timetable being imposed on the complex forest ecosystem here. But our modern, technological and profit-driven society imposes its will and its destructive, industrial “treatments.”
MAKE-WORK PROJECTS for AGENCY BUDGETS $$
In this case, these state agencies can get their gloved hands on millions of dollars of California state wildfire reduction funding. This deforestation isn’t being driven by private corporation seeking profit per se — although private sub-contractors WILL be hired and will profit; it’s about justifying these state agencies justifying their own existence.
and justifies them by asserting this is the equivalent of thousands of years of “stewardship” by pre-industrial Native Americans. As if Native Americans wielded chainsaws and chippers and herbicides.
• Contrary to the project’s claims, there are hundreds of young Bishop pine trees already growing in the forest at Tomales Bay State Park. Bishop pines are regenerating just fine, thank you. And this false claim — that Bishop pines stands won’t naturally replenish and renew themselves without industrial intervention — is one of the principal justifications for this project’s assault on the forest.
“Healing” and “restoring” a forest with a masticating machine?
• Forests thrive without human interference. Stating or even implying forests require “management” is patently false and intentionally misleading. Native Americans did not tend all forests everywhere — and never tended forests with industrial chainsaws, masticating and chipping machines and bulldozers and herbicides.
The best, healthiest, most helpful and wisest actions humans can take — including agencies like Cal Parks and Cal Fire who propose forest “management” for ulterior motives like budget acquisitions — is to let wild forests be wild.
Global warming is one of the greatest ecological stressors on forests of the modern era. Ironically and tragically, 2 primary drivers of global warming are fossil fuels emissions and deforestation projects like this one at Tomales Bay State Park in Marin County, CA.
• Wild forests don’t need humans; but humans need forests. Hands off, boots out, chainsaws down. And NEVER use herbicides which are biocides. harming all life indiscriminately. Instead, cease all of our many forest assaults, including forest “thinning” projects which purport to reduce “fuel loads.” Cease so-called “bio-fuels” (wood pellets) projects and discontinue “salvage logging.”
Ending all of these forest assaults would allow forests to naturally regenerate and thus mitigate global heating. Because global heating, caused by all these Orwellian-named deforestation projects, only puts additional stress on forests, creating a monstrous, industrial deforestation-global heating feedback loop.
Wildfire danger will be increased (not decreased as claimed).
• The project’s chainsaws will reduce tree canopy, felling both living and dead trees (both of which have valuable ecological function in a healthy, wild forest) thus allowing more sunlight onto the forest floor, thus reducing forest moisture, and drying out the forest. This increases, not reduces, the likelihood of a wildfire ignition — which is the exact opposite of the project’s false claim.
• Wildfires are natural, normal processes which benefit forest health. West Marin County’s relatively recent Vision Fire (1995) was human-caused, by an incompletely extinguished campfire. But the much more recent 2020 Woodward Valley Fire (2020), also on the Point Reyes National Park (in west Marin County, CA) was started by lightning. Neither wildfire “destroyed” the forest or did permanent damage to ecosystems (which, by contrast, dairy and beef cow farms do).
Logging industry public relations campaigns of yesterday — but also today — demonize wildfire, ignore its benefits, and exaggerate its destructiveness — all to justify logging and deforestation, which are now described with euphemisms, including “forest treatments,” forest “thinning” and “management.” And “management” typically includes extensive herbicide use too. To be clear, this is all deforestation, plain and simple.
• The project will increase the intensity of wildfire by felling both living and standing dead trees (snags), allowing greater winds to prevail in the event of a wildfre, which fuel wildfire and increase the speed of an advancing wildfire front.
• The project will denude, desiccate and damage the forest with its use of masticating machines and herbicides to destroy hundreds of smaller, moisture-collecting and carbon-capturing plants, so-called, “understory vegetation.” The forest’s rich, moist soil floor, will be desiccated by the herbicides, thus increasing forest aridity and increasing the chances of wildfire ignitions — which is the exact opposite effect that the project’s proponents promote it with.
• The most effective, proven wildfire protection for houses and communities is to “treat” houses, not forests. Far less expensive, and more effective “home hardening” and creating “defensible space” no more than 100 ft. from houses is how city, state and federal agencies recommend preparing for wildfires. LEARN MORE.
Thousands of animals will be driven from their forest homes.
• Chainsaws, chippers and masticating machines will be an ongoing, high-decibel sonic assault on the remote coastal forest along Tomales Bay, on the Point Reyes peninsula. The precious quiet of a secluded forest will be shattered for thousands of human visitors. And thousands of forest animals will be driven from their homes over the project’s 10-year duration.
• The project contains no detailed, site-specific scientific studies of the forest, or on the impact of the industrial vegetation-destroying machines, and the dozens of worker boots-on-the-ground will have on wildlife who live in this quiet, dense forest.
• Destroying understory vegetation is a massive loss of precious animal habitat, for birds, mammals, fungi, lichens and countless other organisms currently living in this healthy, wild, unmanaged forest. And for the animals that would migrate here if not for the planned decade of loud machine noise and vegetation destruction.
• The project contains no detailed assessment of the effect on dozens of animal species: songbirds, forest hawks, wood rats, mice, black-tailed deer, raccoons, rabbits, opossums, skunks, foxes, bats, coyotes, bobcats, chipmunks, squirrels and other mammals and birds who live in this dense forest. The project description simply ignores their existence and the massive impact of machine noise and human boots on the ground. They will flee their forest homes and may never return. Many of their homes will be pointlessly destroyed even if they did eventually return.
• The project has no scientific assessment of ESA-listed (Endangered Species Act) Northern spotted owls who live in this forest. They live in this forest and will be driven from it by years of high-decibel, industrial machine noise. Felling trees both living and dead also reduces their habitat.
• The quiet of the forest will be shattered and degraded for years. Not just for the countless thousands of animals, but also for human visitors too, who seek peace and quiet from the industrial noises of civilization — which will be introduced and ongoing here. This is a direct violation of the Cal Parks charter and purpose for the park in the first place.
Deceiving & scaring the public, for dollars
• Actual wildfire reduction measures and treatments are totally, even criminally absent from this project, despite the project requiring millions of dollars of public funding. During the project, and upon completion, surrounding communities will be in greater wildfire danger than before — while believing they are in less danger. And having spent money on “treatments” that increase wildfire danger rather than reduce it.
• State agencies Cal Parks (California State Parks) and Cal Fire (California Dept. of Forestry and Fire Prevention) want access to millions of dollars of state wildfire reduction funds — available by claiming — and falsely claiming — that “thinning” forests reduces wildfire risk. But it does the opposite. Numerous studies prove that logging, aka, “thinning,” forests leaves them sunnier (having felled trees with shading canopies of leaves), and thus hotter, and drier and also windier. All these factors increase the likelihood of a wildfire ignition. And once burning, the fire will be steadily fanned by winds, and thus burn faster. And thus reach human communities faster. Recent fast-burning California wildfires have been in grasslands, or in “managed” or “thinned” — aka, logged forests — not dense, wild, unmanaged forests which retain much more moisture. More trees, closer together block winds and slow fire fronts. They just don’t make agencies and corporations as much money as logging forests — which is now called “managing forests for wildfire resilience.”
• CalParks and CalFire exploit the public’s fear of wildfire, encourage the public to fear dense, wild, unmanaged forests by labeling them as, “fuel loads” — which must then be “reduced” via logging, called “thinning” and “managing.” This common “false-problem-false-solution” mantra is repeated and exaggerated by media outlets, but not validated by wildfire science. READ MORE about wildfire.
• Chainsaws, chippers, masticators and herbicides don’t “help” or “heal” or “restore” forests – they only and always denude and destroy them by killing valuable plants and trees and soil.
• “Vegetation management” and “thinning” and “treatments” and “management” and “fuel loads reduction” are all euphemisms for deforestation; for cutting down tens of thousands of trees and understory plants. All of which are desperately needed to cool the local environment, and the planet.
• Demonizing lush, dense forests to justify logging. Up is down. War is peace. Forests are dangerous and flammable “fuel loads” that must be “thinned” in order to be saved, and for us to be safe. Wild forests are a threat to themselves, and us.
• Dense, unmanaged forests are healthier, damper, harbor more wild animals, and are less wildfire ignition-prone than managed forests. Unlogged forests provide critical ecological services to a greater degree than logged forests, including greater carbon sequestration, cooler temperatures, more moisture retention, more fog generation, more oxygen production, and more wild animal habitat.
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This webpage is occasionally updated because there are so many reasons the deforestation project planned for the lush, damp, healthy, as-yet-unmanaged Tomales Bay State Park will be degraded and damaged. Pseudo-science drives it, and is readily debunked as utter nonsense which defies common sense once you can untangle yourself from the popularize, timber and “biofuels” (aka, forest slashing & burning) industry-driven misinformation and outright lies..
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Ignoring biological and ecological science
– The deforestation project prescribes and justifiies massive tree and plant-killing — with chainsaws and masticators and herbicides — by falsely asserting that all plants are in competition. This ignores the much more complex ecological reality: some competition, yes, but only in a mosaic of large, more elaborate, and interdependent communities that are connected underground through root and fungal networks. Recent science has shown the existence of vast, complex mychorizal networks which allow interspecies plant communication and cooperation via chemical transmissions. All this is completely ignored in order to advance an agenda of killing the “bad” (undesirable) plants in a futile, misguided and misinformed effort to help the “good” plants they deem worthy of “saving” and “restoring” by killing many other plants around them. And also driving off thousands of wild animals which also live in complex interrelationships with forest flora.
Thousands of animals are completely ignored.
Animals are consistently and almost completely ignored by the project’s forester-planners.
This “thinning” deforestation project ignores the impact of felling trees, shredding thousands of understory plants, and spraying toxic herbicides in a living forest. Thousands of birds who nest in coyote brush and coffee berry plants; acorn woodpeckers and raccoons living in dead standing trees, foxes hunting rabbits in the sea of small plants… all are simply ignored as their woody homes will be destroyed.
– Dead and old trees targeted for destruction are essential to a healthy forest. Old and dead standing trees are precious insect food, bird and animal homes. They should not be felled, removed, thinned, poisoned or treated. A dense, wild, “unmanaged” forest is healthier than an industrially “managed’ forest.
Deceiving the public. Demonizing the forest. Exploiting native Americans, again.
- Pseudo-science is used to fool the public into thinking humans must manage forests because Native Americans used to; stating without irony or shame that chainsaws and masticators and Monsanto Roundup and Dow Garlon will have similar effect as the non-industrialized tools that tribes like the Coast Miwok used. inferring that humans know better how to promote forest health than forests which have evolved over millions of years to be healthy without humans.
- The project cynically exploits human fear of wildfire to frighten people into believing that forests are dangerous – – and 2) peddles the false remedy of assaulting forests with chainsaws and masticators
Go to CalFire / CalParks DEFORESTATION PROJECT page.
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