If anything is lacking in Neal Youngblood’s life, it isn’t a professional challenge. As a geologist for Redwood National Park, Youngblood supervises logging road retirement. In terms of restoration of the region’s essential natural systems, there is no job that …
It had always been Rick Sermon’s dream to bring the joy of a greenhouse and nursery to his workplace. Sermon saved that task for just before his retirement. Before that, he had one last thing to take care of as …
Todd McMahon is Vice President of NCRM Inc. (external link), an environmental consulting firm. He has helped manage League properties for many years, and has a great ability to understand each forest—what forces have impacted it, and what it needs …
As a young child, Priscilla Hunter lived in the Coyote Valley Rancheria northeast of Ukiah, California. Her grandmother taught her to respect the land—its beauty, food, medicinal herbs, and spiritual connections. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dam destroyed …
As a child, Mary Wright, a former Save the Redwoods League Board of Directors member, enjoyed long camping trips. Every summer, her parents would pull into a state or national park and let her choose from the long list of …
When she was growing up in Connecticut, Peggy Light knew Save the Redwoods League co-founder Arthur Connick as the grandfather who’d “do some kind of financial stuff in New York, then pop up at our house.” She remembers him being …
When California’s state-park crisis hit in 2011, businessman Andrew Vought was shocked to find that Portola Redwoods State Park was slated for closure. “I couldn’t let that happen,” he said. Vought had long enjoyed hiking and camping at the park, …
As surprising as it may seem, the shaded areas on park maps indicating different kinds of habitat and vegetation do not always reflect the reality “on the ground.” This is true for Redwood National and State Parks, which contains a …
It’s fire season again. Last week, the local news reported on a 2,500-acre fire in Napa County, just east of the redwood range and Save the Redwoods League’s property near Bothe-Napa State Park. As I’ve mentioned before in previous blogs, …
The League’s Cape Vizcaino property is in need of a little TLC. Well, maybe a lot. In a previous blog, I described the problems we have with Douglas fir and tanoak trees encroaching into one of the property’s coastal meadows. …
Here at the League, we keep a close eye on the redwood forests. We monitor changes in ownership, regulations, practices, natural disturbances and more to understand the state of the redwoods. But, how can we tell how forests worldwide are …
There is a sad paradox to much of my work as a forester. I became a forester because I love the forest, yet much of my work requires me to kill trees. No matter what the larger goal is for …
While many people were searching for brightly colored eggs this past Sunday, I spent my Easter hiking in the forest looking for trillium and rhododendron flowers. As I walked along the Lady Bird Johnson Trail in Redwood National Park, I …
During my annual monitoring visit to one of our lands, I noticed thick brush growing up around the redwood forest. Something would need to be done about it! California’s drought has brought dry conditions that create an increased chance for …
As we at Save the Redwoods League begin to focus on managing and restoring land as much as on acquiring it, we will need to ask ourselves hard questions about what it means to be a conservationist these days. Chief …
When we want to restore forests, it’s as simple as just planting some redwoods, right? You may be surprised to hear that the business of replanting a forest is a bit more complicated than that. When we work to restore forests, we try to make sure that the forests we rebuild are as close as possible to those that were lost — and there are also very practical reasons for doing so
Last week’s blog began, perhaps a little cavalierly, with the assertion that growing big trees may be the easy part of redwood forest restoration, and so far as it goes that’s a fair assessment. It also may be a little …
Compared to fifty or sixty years ago, logging practices in redwood country today are dramatically different and much kinder to the environment. Gone — thankfully — are the days when heavy equipment punched primitive roads into the forest, dragged heavy …
Ten years ago, the first crews entered the newly-protected Mill Creek watershed. Their mission: to implement a large-scale experiment in forest restoration. As the result of past logging and misguided reseeding practices, the young forest of the watershed had become …
Last month, I explained the nuts and bolts of conservation easements, a super important tool in land conservation and one that we at Save the Redwoods League use often. This month, you can learn about what happens next: monitoring and …
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