...
Even my attempt to make this image of theirs look more realistic doesn't help most people realize it, though. If you look carefully, that is cutover timberlands. Uneven aged trees and way too many broadleaf — weed — trees. Definitely NO old growth. So this preservation is at best just to keep the ground for the redwoods to grow back.
I don't know which sector of 10,000 acres they're trying to add, and the Forest Service just this last summer let 7,500 acres of it burn, using Blue Creek as the northern firebreak of the Nikowitz Fire.
A few minutes on Google Maps will show you the various squares of logging shows past, but not yet how much damage was incurred by the fire. Also, they let the 12,000+ acre Peak fire in the Gasquet Complex burn right up to the ridge road to the north above Blue Creek, burning nearly to it from the other side... but it was the south side of the creek that had the most timber tall enough to shade the water well enough for salmon survival anyway.
I'm saying this before dastardly El Niño winter rains will have done their worst with wildfire-compromised cutover-timberlands we hope will get back to forest someday. So I don't see how much good will be done by this purchase and giving it over to Yurok stewardship. The feds have more money for mitigation work, that I can't tell has happened. They've done an assessment for it. I'm afraid to look. And I don't think the fucks are going to DO thing one.
I guess, maybe kick it upstairs for more "study" or... sell it.
So I guess it won't end up mattering who doesn't put the mitigations work in, and neither landowner will have much to log for a loooong time, let alone shade the streams and keep the hillsides from sliding into them.
They talk about its remoteness and inaccessibility by road. I don't think they have looked at a map in their lives. Or they are just neglecting to mention that there are good fire roads on both sides of it, easily accessible from highways, and, yeah, you might have to hike a few hundred feet down to the creek, but it's definitely not rocket science... and then there's that tourist lodge near where it lets into the Klamath, but who's counting?
They only want five MILLION smackers from us for this unholy mess....
That would probably be for lawyers and trustees to use it to pay the taxes on it "in perpetuity" and administrators' salaries or something, wot? Am I being an asshole again?
Apropos of nothing, I suppose, it just warmed up nearly ten degrees here in the last hour or so. So either my house is burning down or the arctic blast has moved off... and it's raining extremely satisfactorily, thank you.
always and any time....
