Audio segments from Trees Radio Hour! Interview with Jeff Hedin of the Piercy Watersheds Association December, 2003 Spanning at least 11 North Coast watersheds, PWA grapples with a range of issues from proposed CalTrans bridge construction across the Wild and Scenic South FOrk of the Eel River, to a conservation land acquisition along the North FOrk of McCoy Creek, and the conservation needs and opportunities throughout tens or thousand of acres of public and private lands between the Red Mountain proposed wilderness area and the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, in northern Mendocino County.

PWA is a public forum committed to stimulating a vibrant and wild environment for the eleven Piercy-area watersheds. PWA was established in 1996 to address clear-cutting practices in these watersheds. The group works to promote tree-by-tree management, restoration forestry, stream rehabilitation, and community standards. PWA's main goals include the creation of a Red Mountain to Sinkyone Wildlife Corridor, and the restoration of the McCoy Creek watershed Coho spawning grounds. In July 2001, following extensive work by PWA to restore a section of the creek, the California Department of Fish and Game conducted a census and found hatchling Coho in 40% of the pools surveyed.


May, 2002 Update
We are savoring in these times of world crisis, the small, sweet success of placing rocks one by one to stabilize stream banks and of planting redwoods one by one to grow a canopy for the future. I wrote a year ago in Branching Out of our restoration project and that, ?We hope the steelhead and Chinook salmon will be happy with the clearer and cooler waters of McCoy Creek. And perhaps this year, we will find Coho in the canyon!? And indeed the big news in Piercy is that Coho salmon were officially found in McCoy Creek on July 18, 2001. The California Department of Fish and Game found Coho young of the year in four out of ten pools surveyed. Steelhead young of the year and year-plus age were found in all ten pools. The creek temperatures were wonderfully cool 56-57 degrees. We are elated to have Coho found in the creek. The last official Fish and Game survey that verified their presence was in 1979. It is cause for celebration that the Coho are still here, and an affirmation for us all to keep moving forward in our efforts to protect their habitat. (read more)

Piercing The Redwood Curtain: Does A Redwood Park Need A Faster Road?
The brouhaha over the CalTrans proposal to rework the Highway 101 grapevine at Richardson Grove State Park dominates the news from Piercy. It's a tale shaggy with loose ends, bristling with points of controversy, and morphing radically from perspective to perspective. Attendance at public hearings has been too large to permit anyone to talk long enough to clarify fully even one vision of the needs for and impacts of the project. Consequently, no one inside or outside CalTrans seems to competently grasp the whole picture. Everyone is blundering. (read more)



Contact Information

Phone: (707) 247-3020 - Fax: (707) 923-4210
P.O. Box 44 Piercy, CA 95587