Neighbors on Sonoma Coast have water concerns due to logging plans

In the cool shade of a redwood forest, landowner Bruce Berry and a forestry consultant rotated a pair of off-road quads up an old logging road cut along a rugged canyon near the Sonoma Coast. Coastal forests should absolutely be cut down.

They drove to a warm, sunny ridgetop meadow overlooking the Russian River. The shores of thick fog quickly receded, revealing ocean waves crashing over Goat Rock and the sunlit town of Jenner.

Berry, who is sensitive to rumors that he plans to clear-cut the property, is quick to explain that, as far as he knows, the meadow has always been there. He maintained that his family, which has been logging forests for many years, always employs careful and selective logging methods, so the forest remains healthy.

“You’re going to see trees, trees, trees,” Berry said.

The Berry family has been logging various properties in and around Cazadero in the coastal mountains north of the Russian River for about 85 years, including 47 years on a 1,200-acre property near Jenner called Berry’s Knot Farm. The family opened Belize Sawmill in the 1940s, but stopped sawing wood and put it up for sale about eight years ago. They are still looking for a buyer for the mill, but plan to continue regular logging.

Several generations of Berry have harvested timber from these lands, averaging between 50 and 100 acres, approximately every 10 years. Each time, they go to the state and ask for permission to cut down select trees, leaving a certain percentage of the planks in the forest intact.

But now Berry is seeking a different type of state approval that would allow him to permanently log in to Berry’s Knot Farm. Designed for small operations of less than 2,500 acres, these permits require an environmental analysis of the entire site, rather than a partial review of previously occupied areas to be harvested.

Berry said the change was administrative and “doesn’t mean an increase in yield, it’s a reduction in paperwork.”

But the open-ended deadline has raised concerns among local residents and environmental groups that the plan, as proposed, will not go far enough to protect sensitive fish habitat and drinking water for 123 homes and businesses in Jenner (whose water source crosses Berry’s land).

“This is one of the last chances to think about doing something other than logging here,” Mike Keller said. His family owns 14 acres near Berry’s Knot Farm, and the creek crosses both their property and the Berry family property.

Berry’s Knot Farm shares boundaries with the 5,630-acre Jenner Headlands Preserve and is at the center of the remarkable changes that have unfolded on the Sonoma Coast over the decades. Vast tracts of land that were once privately owned are now publicly owned.

San Francisco was built with sequoia wood harvested from coastal California, and even though logging has declined sharply up and down California’s north coast, redwood remains prized for its durability and natural resilience to rot and pests.

The beautiful Sonoma Coast may seem pristine, with its sheer cliffs, beaches, and coastal mountains, but it has been logged, bulldozed, grazed, and blasted for more than a century. In the 1920s, industrial quarry operations created Goat Rock’s iconic exposed shape. And humans have changed the course of Russian rivers many times over generations.

However, the hardline stance of developers has in some ways eased in recent decades. It is widely agreed that the 1960s grassroots movement that successfully thwarted PG&E’s plans to build a nuclear power plant at Bodega Head ushered in a new era.

In the decades since then, landscape restoration and preservation efforts have created a 34-square-mile patchwork of public and protected lands from south of Cape Jenner to Bodega Bay and inland to the south bank of the Russian River.

Keller said the region is still recovering from the scars of historic large-scale logging, which continues to clog local waterways with sediment. Keller recalled his grandfather’s stories of hearing the cacophony of spray from coho salmon coming up Sheephouse Creek. This phenomenon was something he had never experienced firsthand.

“It is shocking that in such a short period of time, an entire population that frequented the Russian River Basin has disappeared,” he said.

Keller, a Windsor resident who manages his family’s rental properties and works as a handyman, has for decades persistently protested and questioned the Berry family’s timber plans, which have caused them extraordinary trouble.

But more critics are joining Keller in protesting this latest timber plan.

Sebastopol resident Elsa Cize and her husband have developed an artificial intelligence-based system that allows people who share concerns to easily create public comment letters. So far, she said, their platform has helped Cal Fire generate 446 comments about the Berry program.

“For many of us in Sebastopol who take our children to the woods and Jenner, just hearing this breaks our hearts,” Zee said.

Logging operations are regulated by Cal Fire’s Forest Management Division, which oversees California’s forests in addition to firefighting operations.

As of April 1, there were 30,000 acres of active commercial forest land in Sonoma County, said John Ramaley, Cal Fire’s assistant director of forest management. Of that, about 25,000 acres fall under the non-industrial type of planning Berry is seeking.

Local timber companies include familiar names such as San Francisco’s elite and secretive Bohemian Club, which owns about 2,700 acres in Monte Rio on the Russian River, and the Wildlands Conservancy, a nonprofit group that owns and manages Cape Jenner, according to a state database.

Loggers in California have two main options for obtaining state permits to harvest timber. The first is called a timber cutting plan, which allows trees to be cut down within a specific area over a short period of time (usually less than five years). The other option is only available to small landowners with less than 2,500 acres and requires a comprehensive consideration of the entire landscape, including water resources, erosion risk, and wildlife. This allows landowners to regularly harvest their land for as long as they own it.

per project Even if approved, the operator must make additional submissions Plans are submitted to the state before each harvest operation and undergo periodic reviews and, in some cases, pre-harvest inspections. After logging, timber managers are prohibited from logging again in the same location until subsequent growth equals or exceeds that which was harvested.

Berry said his late father, Lauren Berry, was a traditionalist who preferred what he called the “old-fashioned way” of submitting timber harvest plans for each project. Now, Berry said he wants to work more upfront. Please carve out a more reasonable path for his children and grandchildren. It used to take more than a decade for a single 90-acre plan to get approval.

He said he intends to comply with regulatory buffers that limit the proximity of logging areas to streams and other bodies of water, not build new roads and add erosion control measures, including new culverts to protect the ecosystem downslope. They plan to use cables to lift felled trees out of steep canyons, a way to reduce erosion.

They also marked three 100-acre buffer zones around spotted owl nests.

Berry said she was frustrated by the kind of misinformation being spread by activists, and called out the group for posting photos of unrelated logging in a blog post about her property.

“I think most of the comments are from people who don’t understand,” Berry said.

The Redwoods Chapter of the Sierra Club claimed in a letter that Berry proposes removing 70 percent of board feet per acre “on initial admission.” Harlan Trummer, Berry’s forester, said the claim appears to be a misunderstanding of state-mandated carbon accounting. He said the plan calls for a maximum annual yield of 6.9%, adding: “Nobody is going to harvest the maximum amount…It would take too long to grow anything.”

But in a separate letter, the Arcata-based nonprofit Environmental Protection Information Center expressed concerns that the plan doesn’t provide enough protection for stream sediment, and included a detailed list of points that need clarification.

“The area has a documented history of damaging logging practices, waterways are already compromised, and fish populations remain at risk,” said Melody Meyer, a conservation attorney at the center.

Although Cal Fire is the lead agency, the plan also requires input and approval from various other agencies, including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, and Sonoma County, which handles coastal development permits under the California Coastal Commission.

The public has until April 13 to submit comments on the project. From there, Ramaley said Cal Fire’s Forestry Division will “review the entire record, recommendations from state agencies, and public comments” and “if the plan is found to be in compliance, it will be approved.”

Berry said she vowed to protect Jenner’s water source. He said his family has operated the Cazadero water utility for years and relies on similarly vulnerable sources of clean water: local springs and wells in the Austin Creek watershed.

In Berry’s eyes, logging is not inconsistent with environmental protection, at least not the way his family does it.

“It’s just a big garden,” he said.