Ryan Burns tries to inject a little humor into the discussion in his coverage of last Thursday’s public meeting. So far there aren’t any comments attached to the article itself, but both sides are off and running in a thread at Heraldo’s.
Recent Comments
 | "Henchman Of Justice… on Priorities |
| "Henchman Of Justice… on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
 | Just Watchin on Priorities |
| "Henchman Of Justice… on Priorities |
 | Forest Queen on Priorities |
| Just Watchin on Priorities |
 | Ed Voice on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
| Forest Queen on Priorities |
 | Eric Kirk on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
| Ed Voice on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
 | That Other Anonymous on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
| That Other Anonymous on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
 | suzy blah blah on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
| That Other Anonymous on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
 | Narration on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
9 comments
Comments feed for this article
June 19, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Anonymous
This is typical from Kalt.
“The Eel River used to have 500,000 fall Chinook every year. The most recent fish count shows something like 3,000,” she said, incensed. “I can’t believe people aren’t freaking out about this! That’s what it’s all about for me.”
Why doesn’t she freak out for people? People are what it’s all about for me.
June 19, 2009 at 8:28 pm
421
I think those numbers are inflated and you can’t blame it all on people. do you think the 64 flood changed the river at all?
“Chinook salmon were historically abundant in the Middle Fork Eel River to about the confluence of the Black Butte River. Their numbers were reported to be about 10,000 fish in the late 1950′s by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. ”
http://segate.sunet.se/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9512&L=FISH-SCI&P=62634
June 19, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Heraldo
Perhaps this is the difference between HumCPR and Healthy Humboldt. If it’s all about people, it can’t be about fish.
June 19, 2009 at 10:34 pm
anon
anyone curious about the meltdown at the mateel manana, saturday?
June 20, 2009 at 7:05 am
longwind
Jen (and Heraldo?) don’t even know about the citizen and state efforts to help our salmon on the Eel and its tribs, going back more than a quarter century? She thinks hers is the first freak-out of record? Wow. This attitude out of her ignorance-hole explains a lot of the creepy rhetoric.
June 20, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Skippy
The problem with Jen Kalt’s quote is the (unspoken) assumption that Plan A type restrictions on rural building will bring back the salmon. Less homesteads => more salmon. That’s a pretty big leap of logic with a large “black box” in the middle where the causal mechanism should be.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. For example, it’s often stated that the problem with homesteaders / back-to-the-landers is that they take too much land out of timber production. In other words, they don’t cut down enough trees fast enough. That seems to me like a big plus for the salmon, as well as a lot of other wildlife.
It’s pretty ironic that Healthy Humboldt is advocating for more timberlands to remain in Big Timber ownership and are against the land being broken up into smaller ownership where there is less logging overall, and slower, more selective cutting when it IS logged. Apparently Big Timber is great for our rivers, and restoration-minded homesteaders are eco-destroyers. Who knew?
In reality, smaller-scale ownership often results in much more sustainable forests, though perhaps less “productive” (at least in the short term). While Plan A fans like to make a lot of noise about how rural residents drive more, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, wouldn’t it also be true that the carbon-sequestration positives of less logging would help offset those additional vehicle miles?
And while those homesteads use water (but can use much less with greater winter water storage) isn’t it also true that their less-heavily-logged forests absorb and hold more moisture from winter rains than the big industrial timber operations, where more water runs off instead of being absorbed?
We hear a lot about the environmental negatives of rural living, but for some reason the analyses never seem to include credit for the positives that good rural stewardship can mean, as opposed to the Big Timber logging style that now (ironically) is posited as less harmful by folks like Jen Kalt and Healthy Humboldt. It’s as if our homesteads are judged by an unrealistic standard that assumes that if the homesteads weren’t there the land they occupy would all be pristine wilderness, whereas the reality is that the competing uses are large ranches and large timber operations, both of which can have their own very negative impacts on the land and the waterways.
It seems to me that some of these Plan A fans haven’t really thought through their positions to their logical ends. More like they started with the conclusion that rural living is bad, and worked backwards from there to justify that position.
Or maybe they’re just cynically using whatever arguments are handy (like homesteaders aren’t producing enough timber) even when it is contradictory to their true feelings about large-scale logging?
June 20, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Lawrence
The whole concept of timberland fragmentation does not hold water, at least in Humboldt County. When timberland is broken into smaller parcels, there is a much greater chance that in the future, much more money will go to the local community and less to shareholders — who knows where?
The new owners are much more likely to follow forest practice rules rather than just pay a fine as corporations commonly do. And because they selectively log, there is no need to spray herbicides as corporations do after they clearcut…the cheapest way to log in the economic short run.
‘Fragmented timberland’ is the excuse: the urban Planner’s worst nightmares are rural citizens who tend to be very hard to control.
June 20, 2009 at 5:46 pm
anonamuse
about “sub-division” :: isn’t it still true that if you acquire a piece of land, and divide that land into smaller pieces after acquisition , doesn’t CA real estate law call that a “sub-division”? and aren’t all sub-divisions required to be reviewed? do all sub-divisions have to meet the applicable criteria of the sub-division map act? it seems that most people who divide their land want to put houses/homesteads on the new “division”.
June 21, 2009 at 11:33 am
anon
Re: sub-division
Yes, when a parcel is divided into smaller parcels it is called ‘subdivision’.
Yes, people are entitled to live on land they own.
Yes. If 400 Acres are subdivided into ten 40′s, (a near impossible task already), there could be 10 homes sitting on timberland that in the near future will once again be a valuable resource. Good for them, good for the community.
Yes. If 1 acre were subdivided into 40 parcels, 40 homes would be on this acre. In Humboldt, this kind of subdivision happens in and around towns that are already established on the best farming soil. This resource is taken out of production. This is called ‘infill’, with services, food, and circus handy.
The word ‘subdivision’ is the same for both, but they are obviously birds of a different feather.