January 19, 2022 — “No additional timber sales will be offered in Jackson this year,” according to the Board of Forestry Director’s report for this month’s board meeting. A brief item in the written report notes delays in last year’s operations and interruptions by protestors.
Logging in the Caspar 500 Timber Harvest Plan, which was heavily populated by protestors, has been on hold since June. Protests in Jackson Demonstration State Forest have been effective at shutting down logging, halting timber sales, and now, getting protestors arrested.
On January 10, half a dozen activists became the first to be cited since protests began in Jackson, starting with a citizens’ arrest directed by the head of a private security firm. The arrests did not include physical contact, though a logger performing them was filmed asking a female protestor about her recent sexual activity.
An environmental law firm that has been critical of logging practices in Jackson sent out a letter on January 18, demanding that CalFire “reassert control and firmly prohibit private security officers in JDSF.”
John Andersen of Mendocino Redwood Company confirmed to kzyx in October that the company had hired Lear as a safety contractor. Private security has been expressly forbidden by Bruce Crane, CalFire’s chief legal counsel. In a letter last summer, he told a local logging company that the agency cannot cede law enforcement authority to private security companies or other law enforcement entities.
We’ll hear from one of the activists who was cited, a staff lawyer with EPIC, the Environmental Protection and Information Center, and a longtime neighbor to JDSF, describing the area where protestors were arrested, his view of the timber harvest plan, and a photograph he took of Sara Constance Rose, co-founder of the Mendocino County Youth Climate Group, standing in front of a redwood log deck in Red Tail recently.
Audio interviews for "Activists cited for the first time in JDSF"