Redwood trek

Writer walks length of forests through public, private lands, lauds preservation, harvesting

At least 1,500 years old, a 300-foot titan in California’s Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park has the most complex crown scientists have mapped. It is rendered on five page flaps in the magazine. (Courtesy National Geographic/Michael Nichols)

Filthy and exhausted, surrounded by hundreds of towering redwood columns that were raining their captured fog on my head, I stood there overwhelmed  by a scene straight out of the Jurassic.

That’s how Michael Fay described Day 323 of his journey from the southernmost redwood tree to the northernmost. On this particular day he was engulfed by the beauty of Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.

Fay’s 333-day trek on foot from south of Big Sur to just north of Brookings is chronicled in the October issue of National Geographic Magazine, which will be in stores Tuesday. An accompanying film “Explorer: Climbing Redwood Giants” will air at 10 p.m. the same day (Channel 57 on Charter Cable; 276 on DirectTV and 186 on Dish).

Fay embarked on what’s been dubbed the “Redwood Transect” to study redwood ecology and to see if there was a way to preserve the ancient giants while keeping the timber industry alive.

He ended up walking about 1,800 miles with his hiking partner, Lindsey Holm, a native of Humboldt County.

Photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols had the job of visualizing what Fay encountered along his walk. He wanted to be involved because of his interest in restoring redwood forests.

“I’m passionate about being a voice for nature,” Nichols said. “Trees don’t have a voice. I can use pictures to be that spokesperson.”

In 2001, Fay wrote in National Geographic about his walk across Central Africa — the “Megatransect” — emphasizing the need for creation of a national park network in Gabon, which eventually happened.

Fay later came to realize that some of America’s own forests could be lost due to mismanagement.

“I was hanging out in the redwoods,” he said, “and I thought to myself, ‘A lot has happen in the redwoods that the world needs to know about.’”

About 95 percent of the original redwood forest was harvested, largely by clear-cutting. The remaining 5 percent is owned mostly by three companies and the state and federal governments.

Fay does not advocate protecting all remaining redwoods, but instead calls for sustainable forestry.

“Maybe in the redwood region, we have found the solution,” he said.

FROM STUMPS TO SUSTAINABILITY

Fay and Holm started in September 2007 and ended in August 2008.

South of Big Sur, they encountered old growth redwoods, but then one of the few industrial logging operations in Monterey County.

“What we were seeing on the ground were big stumps and very small trees,” Fay explained. “We could see the entire basin was gutted. It was our first encounter with a forest that had been logged.”

Moving north into Santa Cruz County they encountered larger and older trees. For several decades, timber companies there have been practicing single-tree selection, Fay said. The 60/40 rule there eliminated clear cutting, he  said, with only six of 10 trees cut down.

Fay and Holm talked with foresters and loggers on private land, giving them an inside look into the timber industry.

“We had this great opportunity to pick the brains of people living on the land and who had been practicing forestry for a long time,” he said.

When trees are allowed to grow larger, their wood becomes more hearty and rot-resistant and therefore  more valuable. Redwoods grow for so long partially because their bark naturally protects itself from disease.

“When they started looking at trees as individuals,” Fay said, “all of sudden they have this beautiful stand of quality trees and more and more lumber. My God, this is the holy grail for forestry.”

In younger redwood stands, the forests were not as healthy, Fay said. Rivers and streams were in poor shape  and fish populations were low.

He said he noticed a change as they walked north: The notion of sustainable forestry was spreading.

They witnessed the takeover of Pacific Lumber Company in Humboldt County by Mendocino Redwood Company, which had seen the “benefits for forest growth” and was working to restore its forests, Fay said.

The new Humboldt Redwood Company will only selectively cut its trees.

An article accompanying Fay’s essay notes that Green Diamond Resource Co., which has holdings in Del Norte County, “is now the largest clear-cutter in the redwoods, with more than 70 percent of its 430,000 acres given over to uniform stands that are logged roughly every 50 years.”

Michael Fay watches a passing log truck during his odyssey. (Courtesy National Geographic/Michael Christopher Brown)

“We don’t want to get rid of nature, it’s intricate to our survival,” Nichols said. “We have to find the balance and dance with it.”

Redwood is not worth what it used to be because timber companies have been cutting down relatively young redwoods that don’t have high-quality wood.

“This is crisis time,” Nichols said. “The bottom line is no one wants to buy redwood because it doesn’t have good quality wood.”

Fay wrote an essay for the magazine describing how he think the sustainable forestry happening in California could be a model for the rest of the world to preserve its trees.

On Oct. 3, Fay and Nichols will be at Humboldt State University with redwood stakeholders to not only talk about the walk and show photos, but to discuss how to move forestry forward.

“We think that there is an incredible opportunity in the redwood region,” Fay said. “We can bring back forest capital and produce a lot more lumber that’s higher quality.”

Fay found an example of what a redwood forest can be right here in Del Norte County just before ending the transect.

“I had my most enjoyable day walking in Jed Smith,” he said. “It’s a masterpiece of a forest — a truly amazing place.”

An old-growth redwood dwarfs younger redwood growth in California's Bear Creek Watershed on the northwest side of Bear Creek Ridge. Peavine Ridge sits in the distance in Rockefeller Forest, the world's largest continuous old-growth redwood forest, measuring more than 10,000 acres. (Courtesy National Geographic/Michael Nichols)