Steve Mietz on why it’s crucial to think big and go bold

Dear League friends,

Growing up in New Jersey, in the shadow of New York City, I knew both the city and the woods. And my heart was with the woods.

I talked to the trees and felt a kinship with them. I remember one time, some kids were messing around, pulling at a tree’s needles. I stopped them, saying they were hurting it. They all laughed at me, but I didn’t care. The tree was safe, and that’s what mattered.

My connection to the natural world grew as I gained outdoor skills through scouting and reached the rank of Eagle Scout. As a teenager, I fell in love with the American West during a week-long backpacking experience in the mountains of northern New Mexico. After college, I headed west and never looked back (despite my mom’s repeated requests that I return to the East Coast—as recently as last month!).

These early experiences in the outdoors inspired my deep stewardship ethic. They framed who I am and how I’m raising my two sons. I’ve never forgotten how time in nature brought me peace during a turbulent childhood. Or the sorrow of watching widespread development transform many of my favorite outdoor places into unwelcoming spaces. It’s why I am such an advocate—not just for protecting nature, but also for making sure that everyone has an opportunity to experience it.

For these and many other reasons, joining Save the Redwoods League as president and CEO has felt like coming home. The League’s priorities—healing forests across the redwood range, connecting communities with nature, protecting something incredible and lasting for generations to come—reflect my deeply held values. The League’s vision to restore 800,000 acres of redwood forest is the kind of daring, big-picture thinking that gets my blood pumping. The League’s talented and tenacious staff, passionate supporters, and trusted partners—these are the fierce redwood champions I want to work side by side with to shape a brighter future.

I come to the League after a long career with the National Park Service that took me across the American West and showed me the need for courageous action in the face of existential threats to our forests, rivers, and critters. As superintendent of Redwood National and State Parks, my rallying cry to staff and peers was, “Be bold! Be brave!” We were stewards of a misty and majestic landscape like no other, containing nearly half the planet’s protected old-growth coast redwoods. Yet almost two-thirds of the parks’ acreage had been previously logged.

Healing these damaged timberlands was the clear path to creating vital wildlife corridors, restoring functional watersheds and powerful carbon sinks, and reconnecting the isolated ancient groves.

There was no perfect plan. No reward without risk. But we had the strength of partnership—as well as the power of audacious optimism—as California State Parks, the National Park Service, and Save the Redwoods League joined forces. Together we were able to leverage decades of science-based restoration knowledge, take calculated risks, and move boldly forward despite our critics. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, it is not the critic who counts but those who are actually in the arena, who know the great enthusiasms and great devotions, who strive valiantly toward a worthy cause. It was in this spirit that we took on the challenge of healing the redwoods, moving at the pace and scale necessary to meet the moment and make a lasting impact.

The result is Redwoods Rising, one of the largest restoration projects in U.S. history, with the ambitious goal of healing 70,000 acres of redwood forest. The initiative rose from the depths of COVID despair and the 2020 megafires, delivering a message of hope, resilience, and action that has drawn in over 100 million dollars in financial support and captured the imagination of the public, land managers, and conservationists around the world. We’ve already revived thousands of acres, removed countless logging roads, and uncovered miles of buried streams. And we’re just getting started!

This issue of Redwoods celebrates the power of restoration not only to heal the forest but to empower local communities. Our feature story “Building the Restoration Economy” reveals how forest restoration projects on California’s North Coast support financial stability and community well-being. This positive ripple effect is being felt by everyone from Indigenous construction crews to young forestry apprentices, from truck drivers to innkeepers to the owners of a tiny roadside pizzeria.

In our “Giant Strides in Sequoia Protection” article, we celebrate another alliance inspired by Redwoods Rising: the Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition. The success of this coalition in rapidly addressing existential threats to the giant sequoias demonstrates how we must respond to the urgency of the climate situation. If we are to surmount the formidable challenges that lie ahead, we must think big and act with courage and speed.

There will always be critics—taunting, seeding doubt, tearing down what is dear to us—but we cannot let them turn us from our important work. Now more than ever, it’s crucial for Save the Redwoods League and our supporters to be bold and brave, to leverage our unique position in the environmental community, to inspire through action, to show others how healing the planet can heal society and ourselves. As history tells us, it is in periods of great uncertainty and great change that positive actions matter most. We are at the right place and the right time to make a real difference.

Sincerely,

Steve Mietz
President and CEO
Save the Redwoods League