You haven’t heard from us for a while. Email alerts from the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters have gotten scarcer–in large part because of the change in ownership of the redwoods on the formerly Pacific Lumber land–now Humboldt Redwood Company. Our agenda is evolving…but one aspect of our work remains the same: our role in the offshoot group Friends of Headwaters Reserve and our monitoring of the management of the part of the redwood forest that was preserved and passed into public hands via the 1999 Headwaters Deal.

We are now planning some exciting field trips that we would like to invite you to be a part of.

These field trips and discussions with the public agency people who are managing the Headwaters Reserve will be an opportunity to witness an old growth redwood forest coming back–healing from excessive logging and bad corporate management. We will see cutting edge (pun not intended) forest and stream restoration, recovering Marbled Murrelet and Coho habitat, and logging roads being “put to bed”.

Please let us know as soon as possible!

The proposed dates are:

Sept. 26 – 27

Oct. 3 – 4

Oct. 10 – 11

Please let us know your preferences as soon as possible. Information about logistics, including car-pooling, places to stay, etc. will come later.

Come see what your (taxpayer) money, time and campaign energy achieved ! And what the northern Calif. office of BLM has planned.

* Over 10 miles of old Pacific Lumber logging roads, many poorly constructed and sending silt into watercourses have been decommissioned

* In 2008, over 5,000 redwood seedlings were planted in areas previously heavily logged by Pacific Lumber, after thinning of dense Douglas fir regeneration.

* Removal of invasive non-native species, like pampas grass and English ivy, opening the ecological door for recovery of native species and restoration stream bank stability

* Monitoring of at risk species, like Coho salmon and marbled murrelet and monitoring of marbled murrelet predators (corvids) to assess risk to the threatened murrelet. In 2008, two new pairs of spotted owls were detected in the Reserve, bringing the known population to four pair.

* Natural history presentations have been brought to area schools by Headwaters Reserve rangers and other staff in the “Headwaters Habitat and Home” environmental education curricula, reaching several thousand students.

We will present an orientation for those planning to participate in the field trips, to bring you further up to date and answer any pre-trip questions you might have.

At the moment, the Sept. dates seem more likely for a number of reasons, Nailing down the final schedule will take rapid response on your end, and a lot of organization on our end! Please let us know if you can help with the planning and logistics.

You can access more information about the Reserve by clicking on the Headwaters Forest Reserve button on the front page of our website: www.HeadwatersPreserve.org.

We hope to hear from you soon! It would be helpful if you include your phone number.

Thanks!