Jackson state forest panel’s all outdoor tour will focus on fire resilience, management
East of the towns of Mendocino, Fort Bragg and Caspar lies the Jackson Demonstration State Forest, a 48,000-acre tract filled with redwood, douglas fir and other trees common to California’s North Coast.
Created in 1947 to allow sustainable harvesting, the area has been logged repeatedly but currently grows more new trees than are harvested.
On Friday, the forest will be the site of an unusual meeting for the volunteer panel that helps advise management of the forest.
For what is apparently the first time in the group’s 15-year history, the Jackson Advisory Group will hold its meeting entirely outside, traveling in the forest itself, rather than in a conference room. The meeting will focus on the impact of climate change and how it affects forest ecology and, importantly, wildfires and fire prevention.
Typically, the group’s meetings include many constituencies with different points of view — Native Americans, environmentalists, Cal Fire foresters, timber landowners, scientists and curious residents.
The results are often contentious, and after a particularly chaotic meeting last year, the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection reset the JAG, drafting a new charter with stricter rules on participation.
The forest itself becomes the loudest voice at the meeting, without speaking a word.
While no one expects any sudden resolution among the different points of view, the hope now is that a meeting under the forest canopy will further a more productive conversation.
Kevin Conway, state director of the state’s Demonstration Forest Program that oversees Jackson and 13 other demonstration forests, said meeting in the living resource allows people from sharply different points of view to see how policies they have defended and attacked are unfolding in nature. The forest itself becomes the loudest voice at the meeting, without speaking a word.
“I think our time in the woods is always very well spent,” Conway said. “It’s great to have the backdrop of what we’re doing. The conversations are different when everybody is in the forest and can actually see the forest, versus having them in a conference room where people can put forward any kind of concept that they want.”
The impetus for the all-outdoor meeting came in May when the JAG took a field tour through the forest to examine logging and reforestation practices.
Environmentalists who had leveled virulent criticisms indoors against Cal Fire’s management asked curious questions during the outdoors tour about a wide range of forest topics, ranging from pesticide use to invasive species management to fire.
Cal Fire personnel who often sat stony-faced when asked tough questions indoors, or dodged the queries, were surprisingly frank.
Keith Wyner, a retired teacher who photographs community events for social media, was intrigued by much of what he saw and said he learned a lot.
“I see a lot of slash. Is that a fire hazard?” Wyner asked during the tour, pointing to a hillside.
“That is a challenge,” said Cal Fire’s Jeremiah Steuterman, who described mitigation measures, including where the slash had been cut into smaller pieces to make it less of a burn pile in case of fire.
When someone mentioned CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, a woman asked: “What do sequins have to do with anything?”
A JAG member recognized that the acronym had never been explained and sounded like the clothing decoration.
But the crowd laughed and state employees acknowledged they sometimes speak in acronym soup.
On leadership and management
The Friday meeting will also feature some management changes.
It will be led for the first time in memory by a person not involved in logging, Amy Wynn, a Fort Bragg business owner who runs a firm helping landowners with issues like mitigation and planning.
Other news to be announced at the JAG meeting includes the promotion of Cal Fire Assistant Chief Emily Smith out of the area. She had been assigned to the Jackson forest in charge of communication.
With Smith gone, Conway steps back into a familiar role. He started his career working in the Jackson forest more than 20 years ago. He said Cal Fire plans to replace Smith and the vacant forest manager position at the demonstration forest. Conway said none of the other 13 demonstration forests has had controversy like Jackson, which is by far the largest of the 14.
Right: Kirk O’Dwyer, a CAL FIRE Registered Professional Forester in charge of a ‘New Vision’ timber harvest plan that uses fire both before and after harvest, displays a map during a tour in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) in Mendocino County, Calif., after the November 2023 Jackson Advisory Group (JAG) meeting. Left: (L-R) Amy Wynn, the Jackson Advisory Group (JAG) chair, listens to Kevin Conway, CAL FIRE State Forest Program Manager, during a tour in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF)in Mendocino County, Calif., in an undated photo.
Another item on the agenda is the announcement that Cal Fire intends to select Clifton Environmental LLC to manage the public input process for all of those ongoing processes in the Jackson forest.
The meeting starts at 9 a.m. Friday at Camp 20, roughly halfway between Willits and Fort Bragg on state Highway 20.
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