A superior court judge ruled today that there is sufficient evidence to hold Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District Commissioner Aaron Newman to stand trial on poaching and perjury charges. Newman was arrested June 8 and has pleaded not guilty to a total of eight charges in the case, which alleges that he lied […]
Environment / Natural Resources
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Park Service: Burl Poacher Pinched
An Orick man was arrested recently on suspicion of hacking burl out of redwood trees on public land a year ago and selling them to a nearby burl souvenir shop. Danny E. Garcia is facing charges of grand theft, vandalism and receiving stolen property stemming from the discovery of a badly damaged tree in Redwood […]
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Off the Tracks?
The Upstate RailConnect Committee will meet hold its meeting in Weaverville on Wednesday, but will do so without a highly-anticipated presentation from Robert Martin. Martin, a Tehama County business man, sent waves of curiosity and excitement through rail circles last month when he addressed the committee and unexpectedly urged it to back away from its […]
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Dry April Worsens Water Woes
After some better-than-average rainfall in February and March, April was a dry month in Humboldt County, with precipitation coming in at just 42 percent of normal, underscoring the fact that we’re still in a drought. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Eureka recorded 1.37 inches of precipitation in April, less than half the […]
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The Condors Are Coming
The Yurok Tribe could be releasing some California condors into the wild somewhere along the lower reaches of the Klamath River within the next three years, according to the Associated Press and a news release from the Yurok Tribe (see below). It’s been about a century since the huge, ponderous condor — called Prey-go-neesh in Yurok — soared […]
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McKay Tract Community Forest: Five Thumbs Up
The state’s first county-owned community forest is nearly a reality, after the board of supervisors voted unanimously to accept grant funding to purchase a 1,000-acre portion of the McKay Tract on Tuesday. There’s much to do before the land is accessible to the public, though. “The immediate next steps are processing the property transaction and […]
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Northwest Forest Plan’s 20th
Twenty years after the Northwest Forest Plan’s birth, lawyer/writer Daniel Jack Chasan looks at whether the plan has done all it was cracked up to do. Did it save Northern Spotted owls? Did it protect the logging industry from utter devastation? Chasan concludes, in part one of his story at Crosscut.com, that “[n]either the owl nor the […]
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Big Bad Burl Biz
The New York Times has a piece this week on the despicable business of illegally sawing big hunky burl chunks off of our massive redwood trees — our elders, as the Times elegantly notes — and selling them for profit on an apparently quite healthy global market. Says the story: “The poachers, known locally as the ‘midnight […]
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Rain, But Not Out of the Drought
Above average rainfall in February and March is helping Humboldt County climb out of its precipitation deficit. We’re still in a drought, and the grasslands of Southern Humboldt in particular will suffer the dry effects, folks from our local branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warn. But there are good signs as well. […]
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First Liquor Trucks Leave the Pulp Mill
The very rain soaking reporters and government officials at the Samoa pulp mill this afternoon could have overflowed tanks of toxic chemicals near Humboldt Bay, Environmental Protection Agency coordinator Steve Calanaog said, had his agency not installed temporary overflow tanks. EPA bigwigs, Congressman Jared Huffman, members of the U.S. Coast Guard Strike Team and others […]
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Tyrone Kelley Is Leaving Six Rivers NF
After mid-April, we won’t be seeing the familiar helmet-clad figure of our Six Rivers National Forest Supervisor, Tyrone Kelley, riding his bicycle home through Eureka after work. Nor can we expect to see him at those sometimes contentious fire-safety meetings in our mountain communities. He’s moving to Vallejo for a new job: director of engineering at […]
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Bay Trail nabs $2 million
Dreams of a Humboldt Bay Trail connecting Eureka and Arcata got a major boost Tuesday, when the California Transportation Commission voted to allocate $2 million to the county for engineering design and environmental permitting for the trail’s southern portion. Humboldt County Deputy Public Works Director Hank Seemann said the funding is expected to come online […]