Tribes could co-manage ancestral forests under bill heading to Newsom’s desk
California lawmakers have voted to shift a state forest system away from commercial logging and pave the way for tribal co-management, delivering a win to a movement rooted in the historic timber wars.
Managed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, the state’s 14 demonstration forests are required to produce and sell timber to show — or “demonstrate” — sustainable practices, while considering factors like recreation and wildlife.
Assembly Bill 2494 eliminates what’s often cast as a logging mandate, instead prioritizing values such as carbon storage, wildfire resilience and biodiversity conservation. There still could be logging, but it would need to support those principles.
It also directs state officials to seek agreements with Native American tribes to integrate their traditional knowledge into managing the land. The bill now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.
“We don’t need more demonstrations of what clear cutting does to a forest — we have plenty of those,” said Assemblymember Chris Rogers (D-Santa Rosa), who authored the bill. If the forests are being used to show how to boost commercial logging gains, “then that is not how we want to use our public assets.”
At the center of the discussion is Jackson Demonstration State Forest, spanning nearly 50,000 acres in Mendocino County. For decades, loggers and environmentalists have clashed over the fate of its stately redwoods.
About five years ago, tensions reignited when community members caught wind of plans to cut towering trees near the coastal town of Caspar.
Tribes whose historic homelands fall within the forest became leading voices in the effort to halt logging, with the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians’ Priscilla Hunter emerging as a major force. She has since died, but her legacy looms large in the movement.
While running for his assembly seat representing the North Coast, Rogers heard from constituents and local politicians who wanted to see the forest run differently. The bill grew in part out of those discussions.
Polly Girvin, Hunter’s former partner and a retired lawyer focused on Native American issues, called AB 2494’s passage by the Legislature “nearly miraculous.”
“We’re at a time right now where scientists are going to have to reach across the table to the Indian voice,” she said. “They feel they have a sacred obligation to manage their forest, not for commercial logging per se. So I think it’s really a meeting of science and the sacred.”
Some backers say the bill offers a new economic path forward for communities behind the so-called redwood curtain. With the decline of logging and cannabis as livelihoods, they see income from tourists attracted by ultramarathons, mushroom foraging and other outdoor activities as a financial savior.
But the push to reshape forest management is fiercely opposed by loggers and mill owners, who say their work is sustainable and provides blue-collar jobs in a region where they’ve dwindled. Already California imports most of its wood from Oregon, Washington and Canada.
The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors has supported the bill, but it’s opposed by the Rural County Representatives of California, an advocacy group representing 40 counties.
Staci Heaton, senior policy advocate for the organization, said they’re concerned that the new management goals are so vague that they would expose forest projects — including wildfire research — to costly lawsuits.
“We’ve experienced the majority of the largest wildfires across the state over the last decade, and it is paramount that research and forest management knowledge be fostered in these demonstration state forests so that it can be used statewide,” Heaton said.
Money from logging — roughly $8.5 million a year — pays for management of the demonstration forests. Under the latest iteration of AB 2494, it will remain one source of funding but not the only one, Rogers said.
Cal Fire’s Kevin Conway believes that if the bill becomes law, it will, in practice, limit funding. So they’d likely look to bring in money by charging day-use and other new recreation fees.
Conway, who is the agency’s chief for resource protection and improvement, added that some aspects of their mission wouldn’t change; the land would remain “actively managed.” For instance, he called wood products “a big part of our climate strategy in the built environment” and suggested it still would be prudent to understand how they’re produced in California.
“We don’t think that just locking up your forest and making a tree museum long-term will deliver biodiversity, carbon, recreation — all these things,” he said. Cal Fire has not taken a position on the legislation.
Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill.