Diggin’ In
The Richard Gienger Report
There’s been time for a lot to happen between the Spring 2023 edition of Forest and River News and this Fall/Winter 2023-24 issue. This column will be a little longer than usual, and I’ll have to dredge my memory and hope key issues are covered. All FRN contributors are being encouraged to emphasize instances/examples of…
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Nancy Peregrine and the Fight for Sally Bell Grove Remembered, Paying Attention to Local Forestry, Enacting Good Stewardship, Book Nook Once again, some things to share: Part of my last column was dedicated to Nancy Peregrine, Fred “Coyote” Downey, and Lon Mulvaney, all lost by the community recently. This column is being drafted just before…
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Time moves fast, stalwarts in mirror reflections, and we anxiously wait—while trying to prepare—for what Winter and Spring will bring. I feel daunted, almost swept away, in the layers of complexity of “all the relations,” the history, and realities we face. Remembering Influential Community Members Along with the joy of life-returning rains in September has…
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The record October 2021 rains are a distant memory, but those rains seemed to have triggered some very good coho spawning numbers in many North Coast streams. Then we had basically no rain from January 1st through March, and we started getting frantic. April and May rain came as a real blessing and changed our…
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In the beginning of my column in the Winter 2021 issue of Forest and River News, I ecstatically described the record October rainfall. Turned out that the zero measurable rain from 1st January 2022 until well into March was a record for at least the last 130 years. Hella scary. At least some significant Chinook…
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Got the existential blues these days, except for the wonderful return of the rains since the 15th of October. From dry or barely damp stream and river beds to record flows for the month of October. Bursting optimism for salmon migration and spawning and for continued rains through the fall, winter, and spring. Lingering concern…
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Then from Trees Foundation’s Branching Out, Winter 1998-99, first Diggin’ In It’s hard to know where to start in the midst of so many pressing issues about the forestland watersheds and people of California’s North Coast. Perhaps it is best for me to go back to some of the personal perspectives that I and others…
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Sort of getting claustrophobic, whether it’s North Coast, West Coast, Western Hemisphere, or the World. I just reread “Diggin’ In #65” (F&R News, Winter 2020/21). Hecka lot of information there. Don’t know how I managed that, and now there’s even more to consider and navigate. I should start with younger times when I was engaged…
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Sort of tangled up in blues, threats, and complexities here. It’s not just some huge-impact fires in California, but all along the West Coast—with flames, floods, severe storms, melting icecaps elsewhere and ongoing COVID-19 with manic and destructive attitudes and actions. A “rethink and redo” moment needs to spur us on multiple levels or else.…
Read MoreDiggin’ In: The Richard Gienger Report
Insist on California setting a course that will take generations of commitment to return healthy, high-quality forests to our region—and not settle for 5 years of “stepped-up pace and scale” of thinning and prescribed fire. Attaining larger and older trees is integral to fighting climate change and as necessary as human communities’ need to reform settlement patterns and impacts. See Why Forests Matter’s website, and for California’s emergency moving parts, processes, documents, and recordings, go to
fmtf.fire.ca.gov