by Mark Green, Executive Director
Dear friends of California’s wild places,
With blazing temperatures throughout the state and the inevitable fires that follow them, summer is upon us. With it, attention naturally turns to California’s magnificent forests, where destructive wildfires can develop.
CalWild’s approach to forest management has always been focused on ensuring that we have healthy, diverse forests which support biodiversity, natural fire regimes and effective watershed functioning. As such, we understand that people have been managing the forests of California for tens of thousands of years, and simple abandonment of this management to “let nature take its course” results in buildup of fire fuels that smother native vegetation dependent on periodic fire and feed wildfire when lightning strikes or other causes start them.
For a century, fire suppression and wholesale logging comprised the Western approach to forest management. As a result, we have seen devastating and deadly wildfires, which are worsening over the past decade as impacts of climate change take hold. What is needed is forest management that results in varied ages and species of trees. This supports the greatest biodiversity and healthy forest functioning.
Fear of wildfire has unfortunately been seized upon by opponents of sound ecological management policies as an excuse to attempt to gut our keystone environmental laws (see alert). We must beat back these attempts and, in their place, implement sound conservation science in managing California’s forests.
Where I live in Sonoma County, the great softwood forests of the Pacific Northwest narrow down to a thin band along the foggy coastline, while oak grasslands and chapparal thrive inland. These characteristic landscapes of California deserve our caring for their beauty, their biological richness and for the clean air and water they provide us.
Please take action to tell Congress that the so-called “Fix Our Forests” bill is no fix, and nothing good for our forests. And thanks for your support for CalWild as we advocate for our state’s extraordinary wild places.
For the wild,
Mark Green
Executive Director
