I'd driven through California's Redwood State Park a number of times, but it wasn't until a few weeks ago when I rode through the trees on my bicycle that I truly appreciated them.
Spinning down the Avenue of the Giants and then southward on Highway 101, it was hard to keep my eyes on the road. With no roof overhead or windshield filtering the view, I could just tilt my head back and peer higher and higher into the canopy. Towering on all sides, the trees seemed like something from another age, silent giants oblivious to the cars and trucks rushing underneath them.
Oblivious or not, right now, the redwoods are threatened by the vehicles careening around their trunks. The California transportation agency, CalTrans, has begun planning to widen Highway 101 through Richardson Grove, a state park just south of the Avenue of the Giants, to accommodate larger commercial trucks. In order to expand the highway, CalTrans would "remove" 54 trees from the park and excavate the shallow roots of 66 additional trees.
The fight over the grove is emerging as a David vs. Goliath struggle to save one of the most treasured natural resources in the country.
With less than 3% of the ancient redwoods still remaining in California, each remaining tree is precious, part of our natural heritage that can never be restored (at least not for the next few thousand years). Logging and agriculture has wiped out nearly all of the 2,000,000 acres of redwood forest that once covered California. Now, highway expansion threatens one of the remaining groves.
"This project will cause major damage to one of our most prized state parks," wrote Gary Hughes of the Environmental Protection Information Center in a press release opposing the project. "For Caltrans to railroad this multimillion-dollar project by grossly understating its impacts is a violation of the public's trust and a wasteful use of taxpayer money."
A coalition of groups in Humboldt County and across the state have come together to help protect the grove. Protests and demonstrations are taking place up in the redwoods. A number of organizations have filed a legal complaint in San Francisco Superior Court challenging the plan. And a petition up on Change.org has garnered over 17,000 signatures of support.
There's no guarantee the activists will win, but in the age of Occupy Wall Street (maybe an #occupyRedwoods is next?) you never know. For my part, I hope to take many more rides through the trees, breathing in the smell of the ancient groves rather than sucking down the fumes of a modern economy that hasn't learned to value what truly matters.
Follow Jamie Henn on Twitter: www.twitter.com/agent350
CALTRANS: Hands off the Redwoods!
Trees are vital to their ecosystem, to the atmosphere, fresh water and for taking care of heat trapping gases that will be released into the atmosphere when they are sliced down. Trees provide food, habitat/homes, shelter, cover and nurseries for the strands in the web of all life or biological diversity.
Upon deforestation, the climate grows hotter and drier. All ecosystems have direct ties to the atmosphere and to the climate, and all ecosystems altogether, create the very life zone of the Earth, the biosphere. Trees are in the eco-nomics of life, life itself. If all the trees were gone, Earth would be another Mars. Does Mars boast of these glorious redwoods?
Science maintains the most vital evolutionary event was the appearance of plants and trees on the land, all the reasons you exist and are breathing.
short lived projects. Lose these trees, and you lose your history.
ALL cutting of old growth forest should be stopped worldwide.
Ecosystems and their trees release oxygen, balance the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, regulate and moderate the climate, sequester heat trapping gases, provide the nitrogen cycle, the hydrological system and create and renew the soil, provide decomposition, seed dispersal, pollination, purify the air and water, provide 75% of all new medicines [the yew tree gave us a new cancer fighting drug] 99% of all pest control and the regulation and checking of disease pathogens in the food chain with man that cause global, disease pandemics.
All ecosystems are integrated, and they all have feedbacks to the climate and the atmosphere, and trees and their ecosystems create the very life zone of the Earth, the biosphere.
I can not tell you about something that you can only experience. You must go to the Redwoods, to feel them and smell them and see them. They can not be replaced, for these were born 80 human generations ago, when your ancestors hunted with spears or arrows, and fought with iron and fire, and worshipped nature's spirits or the pantheon of gods.
Google the Environmental Protection Information Center and find out what you can do to help protect the Redwoods. There are always those who hope you won't notice them stealing centuries in exchange for a quick payoff or personal advancement. We will not allow that to happen, we will conserve, we will protect, we see a different future, with the Redwoods standing for the next 80 generations as they have for the last.