Redwood forest conservation: where do we go from here?
This article is part of a larger document. View the larger document here.Abstract
One hundred and nine years after the first redwoods were set aside in public ownership, the redwood movement has come a long way. For most of the public, "saving redwoods" has meant placing threatened giants in parks and reserves—Big Basin State Park (1902), Muir Woods National Monument (1908), Humboldt Redwoods State Park (1921), Redwood National Park (1968), and the Headwaters Forest Reserve (1999). But after a century when more than 95 percent of the ancient redwoods were felled and most of the large groves are protected in public parks and reserves, what does it mean to save the redwoods today? If for the first 100 years saving meant buying and placing in public ownership, I argue that for the next 100 years, saving will mean working together to restore the forest, whether in public or private ownership. In a time of rapid climate change, it also means the arbitrary lines we’ve drawn on a map to denote public and private ownership become increasingly irrelevant. We’ll need a new paradigm to think about building resilience and adaptability to climate change into the system to benefit public and private owners. What science is needed to guide these efforts? Do practitioners have the tools they need? How can we do this in a way that makes economic sense for private companies and the public good? And most importantly, how can we engage and gain the support of a skeptical public more used to liquidation lumbering than restorative forestry? If we do it right, it can be a model for how forests around the world are managed; if we fail we risk losing the redwood forest we all love.