'A Really Cool Asset' 

When McKinleyville Community Services District Board President Scott Binder was a kid and he had some free time, he'd take his BMX bicycle to the timberland east of town, where he'd spend hours traversing the dirt roads and jumping over small water breaks.

Decades later, the district took a monumental step forward in its years-long effort to turn that property into a community forest, officially taking ownership of the land from Green Diamond Resource Co., becoming the first special district in the state to hold the title to a community forest. While a community forest has been on the wish lists of unincorporated McKinleyville's residents for at least 30 years and staff, working with the Trust for Public Land, had the ball well rolling toward landing a $3.8 million California Natural Resources Agency grant to fund the purchase, Binder says the chance to have a hand in bringing the effort to fruition inspired him to run for a seat on the district's board of directors in 2020.

"I wanted to do what I could to make one of my favorite childhood recreation areas open, beautiful and available for the public to use," Binder, a McKinleyville native, says, adding he realizes the heavy lift of realizing the property's potential now begins. "I won't personally be able to enjoy its full splendor in my lifetime. But my children and my grandchildren will, and that's why I'm doing it."

The nearly 600-acre property, which runs east of McKinleyville from Murray Road south to Hunts Drive, and east until it abuts a natural resources break separating it from timber lands that extend to Fieldbrook, is already open to the public, albeit in a rugged form. Its dirt logging roads and makeshift trails aren't well maintained, and Binder described it as a "use at your own risk type of scenario." But Binder says he and his fellow board members felt it was important to open it up to the public as soon as it became public land.

"Essentially, that property has always been open to the public — not legally, but people have always used it," Binder says, adding it's popular for everything from hiking and horseback riding to mountain biking and riding dirt bikes. "We felt that just to close it off to the public while improvements were being made wouldn't make sense because people would trespass anyway and it would generate bad feelings toward the district and the project."

Plus, it seems substantial improvements are still years away.

Parks and Recreation Director Lesley Frisbee, who has watched the community forest conversation blossom from hypothetical wish to complex reality over her 16 years with the district, says the MCSD will consider an ordinance at its March 6 meeting paving the way for the district to form a community forest committee, a working advisory committee that will work to create management and trail plans for the forest. Those plans, she says, will guide the forest's development, with the vision of it including a network of multi-use recreational trails ultimately maintained through revenue from selective timber harvests.

The district doesn't have to look far for an aspirational model, as the Arcata Community Forest sitting 6 miles to its south stands as a nationally acclaimed example of what's possible, even becoming the first municipal forest certified in the United States under the Forest Stewardship Council.

Originally created in 1955, the Arcata Community Forest has grown to comprise more than 2,300 acres, with 19 miles of trails that bring steady streams of hikers, bikers, runners and equestrians. Much of the forest was selectively logged in the 1960s to generate revenues needed to overhaul Arcata's infrastructure and provide city services. At the time, there wasn't a robust market for second-growth redwood lumber, so those trees were bypassed in favor of harvesting Douglas fir, grand fir and Sitka spruce. That period left a largely homogenous, even-aged second-growth redwood forest. Selective logging — with trees individually designated for removal to improve forest health or recreational safety — brings in roughly $250,000 to $400,000 in annual revenue, typically more than needed for management and maintenance of the forest to be self-supporting.

But that model will remain out of reach for McKinleyville for years, if not decades.

The McKinleyville property consists of a mix of second- and third-growth Sitka spruce, redwood and Douglas fir, but about a third of its trees are relatively young, 20 years old or less. A quarter of the forest's stands are more than 60 years old, but most — if not all of those — are located in stream zones that cannot be harvested, according to a framework plan created by MCSD. That framework plan advises that timber harvests of the scale needed to fund maintenance and improvements won't be possible for decades.

With that in mind, Frisbee says the immediate plan will be to pursue grants, seek community support and set up volunteer work days to begin wrangling the property into something that's a bit better maintained and more user friendly. She also notes that district property owners recently approved an annual property tax assessment increase — from the $30 per single-family dwelling unit originally approved in 1992 to $94 — that will provide some additional revenue.

The plan, she says, will be to start small, improving public access points to the property — two gates along Murray Road — and a small parking area. But she says her department has just seven full-time employees, herself included, so it will be a heavy lift.

"It's a really cool asset for this community — a great project and a great thing to preserve and be able to develop for recreation for generations of McKinleyville residents," she says. "It's also a really big project for a really tiny parks and recreation department. It's a little bit overwhelming."

Frisbee says there will be avenues for the public to help right off. One of the concerns with the change of ownership of the property is that in addition to the recreational trespassers that have historically frequented it, it's also a popular place for encampments of houseless people — remote enough to allow them to tuck away and avoid being bothered, but close enough to town to access services. Green Diamond had security crews that would patrol the property but MCSD does not, so Frisbee says her parks employees will walk its trails periodically to act as the district's eyes and ears. But she says their reach is limited, so she asked that if anyone recreating on the property sees anything amiss — an encampment, illegal dumping, other illicit activity — they notify the district.

Long-term, Fifth District County Supervisor Steve Madrone says he'd like to help the county and the district work together, using the resources of the Department of Health and Human Services and potentially area nonprofits, to relocate anyone living in encampments on the property.

While acknowledging the challenges that lie ahead, Madrone said the district's acquisition of the property is a "fantastic" forward-looking effort that will benefit the community for generations.

"What a wonderful community asset," Madrone muses, adding that it will provide recreation opportunities and carbon sequestration, all while preserving an important ecological area.

Both the Widow White Creek and Mill Creek watersheds — both tributaries to the Mad River — and corresponding riparian areas run through the McKinleyville Community Forest. A host of rare or threatened species have been document on or adjacent to its lands, including the Pacific fisher, coho salmon, coastal cutthroat trout, northern red-legged frogs, northern spotted owl, great blue heron and southern torrent salamander, while others' ranges overlap with the community forest, including bald eagles, Cooper's hawks, marbled murrelets, golden eagles, ospreys, Sonoma tree voles, steelhead trout, western pond turtles and foothill yellow-legged tree frogs.

Frisbee says she's excited for the public to get more involved in charting the property's future. The first chance, she says, will be through signing up to serve on the Community Forest Committee, noting there will be seats open for McKinleyville residents, foresters, natural resource professionals and tribal representatives. Folks who don't feel they have the time to commit to serving on the committee, meanwhile, are encouraged to show up at its meetings to provide input, and then to show up for work days and fundraisers, she says.

And, Frisbee says, she hopes community members will be patient, with each other and the district. The property's trails will be used by dirt bikers, dog walkers and equestrians, so she asks folks to be courteous — and to keep those dogs on leash. And because the district's plans will take time, those trails will likely be undeveloped — and maybe even a bit unsafe in places — for some time.

"We want to be mindful and really thoughtful about how we go through development," Frisbee says, adding the hope is to get the Community Forest Committee seated and meeting sometime this summer. "We don't want to rush things."

Thadeus Greenson (he/him) is the Journal's news editor. Reach him at (707) 442-1400, extension 321, or [email protected].