Giant Thoughts Newsletter

Wildlife Wonders: Cameras Find Forests Teeming with Life

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The League’s wildlife cams at Cape Vizcaino (Cape Viz) in Mendocino County caught animals in action playing, prancing, grazing, and generally doing what animals do. The property provides habitat to a variety of wildlife including (but certainly not limited to) American black bears, ospreys, black tailed deer, and pumas living among stands of old-growth coast redwoods, grasslands, chaparral, and a scenic, rugged coastline.

Parks without Borders: Real-time Adventures with Giant Sequoia

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Park Interpretive Specialist Jenny Comperda reports from Calaveras Big Trees State Park, where 10,000 students from around the world experienced the giant sequoia forest through the League’s virtual field trips.

Amanda Machado (center) visits Redwood Regional Park in Oakland with friends

Redwoods Helped Connect My Latino Family to the Outdoors

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Guest writer Amanda Machado in Redwoods magazine recounts how visiting the redwoods with her family and friends made the outdoors feel culturally like home. “People shouldn’t have to search outside their community to find magic outside,” she writes.

Scientists completed sequencing the coast redwood and giant sequoia genomes. Photo by Will Kirk of Homewood Photography (JHU)

Seeing the Forest for the Genes

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Researchers just unlocked the genetic codes of our coast redwood and giant sequoia forests, a remarkable milestone in the effort to protect California’s iconic redwood forests and regrow historically logged areas through the protection of the forests’ genomic diversity.

The Making of an Incredible Redwood Exhibit

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The Giants of Land and Sea exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences gives an interactive look at one of nature’s most perfect manifestations of ecological balance: In Northern California, an ancient redwood forest cloaks the rocky coastline, drawing life force from the Pacific Ocean to sustain an otherworldly place.

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Photo by Jon Parmentier

7 Ways to Celebrate Redwoods

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If you missed Earth Day and Arbor Day festivities, you can still mark the occasions belatedly with these seven ways to celebrate our beloved redwoods.

K-12 Giant Sequoia Tour from Anywhere

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Park Interpretive Specialist Jenny Comperda reports from Calaveras Big Trees State Park, where 8,500 students from around the world experienced the giant sequoia forest through the League’s virtual field trips.

Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Photo: David Baselt, redwoodhikes.com.

Captivating Essay of Redwoods’ History

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Coming face to face with a coast redwood or a giant sequoia can be a world-expanding experience. Yet, without real context of the species’ antiquity, gazing up at seemingly boundless crowns and at gargantuan trunks can actually leave some onlookers underwhelmed.

RCCI researcher Steve Sillett preparing to climb a giant sequoia. Photo: Paolo Vescia.

The Science of Giants: Exploring Redwoods Research from the Top Down

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Shrouded in fog and bearing dense, labyrinthine canopies hundreds of feet in the air, redwoods remain mostly a mystery because of their formidable size and scope. But nothing could stop several courageous and curious scientists from getting as up close and personal as humanly possible to the world’s tallest trees.

Photo by David Baselt, RedwoodsHikes.com

Make a Bigger Difference for Redwoods

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A thousand acres have already been restored as part of Redwoods Rising—a collaborative project to transform historically logged parkland into old, magnificent redwood forests once again. Please, make a gift now so we can keep working to restore the full 70,000 acres.

The League’s reaccreditation demonstrates sound finances, ethical conduct, responsible governance, and lasting land stewardship.

League Earns National Accreditation for a Second Time

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As the glow fades from the 100 candles atop our centennial birthday cake, there’s one more present we’ve yet to reveal—our renewed accreditation from the Land Trust Accreditation Commission! Save the Redwoods League achieved accredited status, for a second time, a mark of distinction and the gold standard for land trusts.

Photo by Neil Hunt, Flickr Creative Commons

Bringing Science Curriculum to Life at Calaveras Big Trees

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Park Interpretative Specialist Jenny Comperda reports from Calaveras Big Trees, where 950 students from around the world experienced the giant sequoia forest through virtual field trips in February.

Redwood National Park ehanced by LWCF. #SaveLWCF

One Step Closer: America’s Most Successful Conservation Program Advances

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One hundred and thirty-five days after the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) expired for the second time in three years, permanent reauthorization passed the U.S. Senate by a vote of 92-8, demonstrating strong bipartisan support for the program. Learn how you can help #SaveLWCF.

Giant Sequoia Global Learning Adventure

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Park Interpretive Specialist Jenny Comperda reports from Calaveras Big Trees, where 1,000 students from around the world experienced the giant sequoia forest through virtual field trips in January.

Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

My Redwood Confession: A Compelling Story of How Man and Tree Can Save One Another

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Trees are living, breathing beings; it’s easy to forget. Even those among the mightiest of them—the coast redwood, for instance—can seem mundane, ubiquitous in everyday signage, their timber hidden in the bones of Northern California buildings and homes. But to some, man’s connection to trees can be almost palpable.

Play Forest Matchmaker!

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We invite you to play a fun matchmaking game and celebrate 5 of the redwood forest’s unlikely—but enduring—loves.

Guardians of the Giants: A Legendary 100-Year History of Saving the Redwoods

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In the summer of 1917, three men had a collective vision. Beneath the 300-foot-tall ceiling of an airy cathedral of ancient trees in Humboldt’s Bull Creek Flats, soft beds of redwood sorrel underfoot and golden rays beaming through the canopy overhead, they found the inspiration to change the course of history.

Discovering Wildlife at Harold Richardson Redwoods Reserve

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This summer, the League protected Harold Richardson Redwoods Reserve, the largest old-growth redwood forest remaining in private lands. Many wild animals call the property home, including northern spotted owls, Townsend’s big-eared bats, foothill yellow-legged frogs, and Sonoma red tree voles!

We’re reducing the threat of severe wildfire by managing vegetation buildups in this Humboldt County forest.

New Grants Support Wildfire, Carbon Projects

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Two new awards from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) are supporting League work to increase the carbon sequestration potential of redwood and giant sequoia ecosystems, while protecting them and surrounding communities from the threat of severe wildfires.