Early morning fog over Jackson State Forest,
 by Garth Hagerman

Help Restore Our Publicly Owned Redwood Forest

Jackson Advisory Group Meeting October 3-4

September 23, 2008. The Jackson Forest Advisory Group (JAG) will hold its monthly meeting on Friday and Saturday October 3-4, 2008. Agenda

Friday and Saturday meetings will begin at 9:00 a.m. at the Fort Bragg Senior Center, 490 North Harold Street. Saturday afternoon there will be a field trip to the proposed North Fork Spur Timber Harvest Plan and the recent fire that covered 2000 acres around Indian Springs.

Friday morning, starting at 9:30, the JAG will continue to work toward agreement on a set of goals and principles for managing Jackson State Forest, as a step in developing the group's work plan. The discussion will continue until 4:30 p.m., with a short break for lunch at 12:30 p.m. The public is welcome to participate in the discussion.

Saturday morning, starting at 9:00 a.m., the JAG will continue to develop it work plan, identifying key questions and priorities. The recreation committee will give a report on its September meeting, which discussed the trail inventory project, Off Highway Vehicles, organization of a Users Group steering committee, and problems at Horse Camp and Big River Campground (Detailed Minutes). Cal Fire staff will give an overview of the management plan for Jackson Demonstration State Forest.

The Saturday meeting at the Senior Center will adjourn at 12:30, to be followed by a field trip to visit a proposed Timber Harvest Plan and the site of the summer fire that covered about 2,000 acres, primarily in stands that were last logged about 100 years ago. The public is welcome on the field trip but must provide own transportation, sedans not advised.

See the Agenda for details, locations, and times.

Recreation Committee Meets on September 19

September 10, 2008. The Recreation Committee of the Jackson Advisory Group will meet on Friday, September 19 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

The meeting will be held at the Jackson Demonstration State Forest Learning Center located east of Camp 20 on Highway 20. Map and directions.

The purpose of the Recreation Committee is to encourage public involvement in expanding recreation opportunities in Jackson State Forest. The Recreation Committee is working closely with the staff of JDSF.

At previous meetings, cyclists, equestrians, hikers, off-highway vehicle users, and shooters presented their ideas and priorities. A joint effort is underway to create an inventory of popular trails in the forest. Preliminary map.

This meeting will address the following topics:

Continuing to develop an inventory of trails, discussing how to add supporting information to the trail map that has been created.

Reviewing other recreation priorities put forward by users.

Developing a Jackson Forest Users Group. Steps to be taken include: Identifying a core group of recreationists who will commit to representing their community of users on a regular basis; developing a governing structure and charter for the Users Group; deciding on the relation between the Users Group and other recreation groups.

 Discussing problems that have been raised about maintenance and horse impacts on Big River Campground and the adjacent stream.

More News
 

Editorials

The Final Chapter

August, 2008. In 2000, the Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest filed suit to halt logging in Jackson State Forest. Over the next eight years, legal actions or the threat of legal actions compelled the Department of Forestry (formerly abbreviated as CDF, now Cal Fire) to refrain from any logging and to develop a new management plan and accompanying environmental documents. Finally, in January of 2008, a new management plan for Jackson State Forest was approved, with the support of the Campaign.

One issue remained unresolved - what was to happen with the two timber harvest plans (THPs) filed in 2000, for Brandon Gulch and Camp 3. These plans were subsequently halted by the legal actions of the Campaign. The state contended that the THPs were still valid, although they were long past the 5-year expiration limit in the statutes. With the approval of the management plan, these plans could go forward...  More

More Editorials

Public Access to Forest Discouraged

July 31, 2008. Road 500 in Caspar is a highly used public road. A private landowner at the west end of Road 500 has attempted to discourage public access to Jackson Forest by having posted this sign -

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This sign is in conflict with the stated position of Cal Fire on preventing any effort to discourage public access to this road.
More.

Read my latest Jackson Wanderings column, published in the Fort Bragg Advocate and Mendocino Beacon at the new Jackson Forum

New Ways to Learn and Participate

July 8, 2008. As the topics being considered by the Jackson Advisory Group (JAG) expand, you will find it challenging to keep abreast of developments and to get your views heard by the JAG.

Help is here in the form of several new online capabilities.

Real-time online email archive
You can keep abreast of ongoing discussions among JAG members at the public JAG Google  Group.

This location has real-time archive of all emails among members of the JAG on topics of substance, together with attachments. Replies under the same heading are kept together making it easy to follow the discussion.

This site is particularly useful at the moment for following the JAG's discussions about how to manage Brandon Gulch and Camp 3 for accelerated old growth development.

You can't post at the site, but you can email me any comments or thoughts, and I will email them to the JAG and post them to the group.

New Jackson Forum Blog

INow you can add your own two cents (or priceless golden words) to the discussion about the future of Jackson Forest!

The Jackson Forum Blog is now open for business. IThe blog will be updated regularly with news about and reports from those working to plan the future of Jackson State Forest.

The Forum is the place to go to find out what others are saying about Jackson Forest and to have your own say. Check it out now!

The official website of Jackson Demonstration State Forest has links to official documents and meeting announcements related to Jackson Forest.

Where We Are and Where We Came From

Branching Out, the newsletter of the Trees Foundation, recently published my article on the history and developments of the movement to reform management of Jackson State Forest, Where We Are Today and Where We Came From. Also an Adobe Acrobat Version

What Lies Ahead?

March13, 2008. Fifty-thousand acre Jackson Demonstration State Forest is a major part of the landscape of the Mendocino County coastal community. It also has been a focus of controversy and division since 1995, when the Caspar Community protests against nearby logging began an escalating effort to reform management of Jackson Forest.

As memories tend to be short, many may have forgotten that during the 1990s, the state was cutting upwards of 60,000 trees per year from our public forest. The major management goal was "to get out the cut." Timber harvests were concentrated in previously unentered 80 to 100 year-old stands, and also in local neighborhoods that adjoined the forest.

Public opposition culminated in the formation of the Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest in 2000. The Campaign undertook a succession of lawsuits that effectively tied up all timber harvesting from 2001 until this year.

For the last two years, those at the center of the controversy have been working to find common ground. I am happy to report that these efforts have borne fruit.  Am opportunity has been created to transform our local 50,000-acre Jackson Demonstration State Forest into a model of excellence, into a world-class demonstration forest that will bring pride to our community, the timber industry, the research community, and the forest managers.

In January, 2008, the Board of Forestry approved a new management plan that contained the essential features of a consensus reached among representatives of major county timber interests, the Campaign, and the Sierra Club. With this approval, the state can now legally resume logging in Jackson State. What does this mean for the forest and for you and me?

A new "Jackson Advisory Group," is currently being appointed. It will have a balance of people with environmental, conservation, timber, and science concerns. Its charge is to work during the next three years to develop a consensus on a long-term landscape, recreation, research, and management plan. The advisory group will likely invite local people with knowledge and interests to join subcommittees focused on different aspects of forest management. Monthly meetings open to the public are likely. It also seems likely that the staff of Jackson Forest will welcome formation of a "Friends of Jackson Forest" to allow volunteers to assist in restoration and recreation projects.

During the time the public is working with the advisory group to develop a consensus management plan, until  2011, all harvests in Jackson Forest will take place under strong protections "to assure that long-term planning options, particularly in sensitive areas, will not be precluded."

Protections include avoiding harvests in areas that have not been entered since 1920 or that have a significant density of large trees (with some possible initial exceptions), review of all harvest plans by the advisory group (which will provide a forum for public input), harvesting only by selection methods (no clearcuts), and retaining at least 70 percent of tree canopy (or the equivalent) and not reducing the average tree diameter in the harvested stands.

Thanks to reform legislation, revenues from harvests in Jackson Forest will only be able to be spent within the state forest system. During the first three years, harvest levels will be limited to those needed to finance operations of Jackson Forest. Harvest levels will be a fraction of those occurring during the late 1990's.  

We are truly at the beginning of a revolution in management of our forest. Thanks are due to all of those in the community, the timber industry, the Board of Forestry, and most especially the Director of the Department of Forestry, Ruben Grijalva, and his staff, whose hard work and willingness to seek consensus made this possible.

Vince Taylor

For more history, see below and here.

The Next Phase Begins
History and the Future

January 10, 2007. When the Board of Forestry approved the new management plan for Jackson State Forest on January 9, 2008, it was a milestone in the long struggle to reform management of Jackson Forest.

In thinking about where the reform effort goes from here, I found myself thinking about how we got to this point.

1995 marked the first public demonstration against the industrial logging practices that had characterized management of Jackson Forest since it started operations in the early 1950s. Demonstrations escalated in following years, with activists chaining themselves to gates in hopes of preventing logging in redwood stands that had grown back untouched for nearly 100 years. More

Earlier Editorials

The Campaign's proposal for Jackson Forest