Save Tomales Bay - SIGN OUR ALERT
A massive, multimillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded, industrial deforestation project — using chainsaws, masticating machines, chippers, toxic chemical herbicides, and slash pile burning — is about to begin in the lush, dense, fire-resistant, coastal forest of Tomales Bay State Park in Marin County, California, under the false pretenses of poor forest health and wildfire danger.
Ten years of tree felling, plant-killing, and herbicide applications is being sold to the public as “management” and “thinning” and even as a “health initiative” — but it will only damage a thriving coastal ecosystem and increase the likelihood of wildfire ignition by destroying and desiccating moisture-retaining trees, plants and soil.
This is a logging project which ignores wildfire science and ecology. It is driven by ideology, ignorance, and self-interest. State agencies, pursuing millions of dollars in state wildfire-reduction funds, cry, “Fire danger!” in a healthy, fog-enshrouded coastal forest which hasn’t burned in years precisely because it is so damp year-round.
Chainsaws, Masticators and Herbicides Damage Forests — and INCREASE Wildfire Danger
Herbicides don’t “heal”
Chainsaws don’t “restore”
Masticators don’t “treat”
This decade-long assault will increase wildfire danger to surrounding communities by making the forest sunnier, barer, hotter, drier, and windier — factors which increase the likelihood of wildfire ignition, as well as uncontrollable, wind-driven fires.
Equally disturbing, the project ignores the most effective fire protection treatments: home “hardening” to make houses ignition-resistant, and creating defensible space from the house-out.
“Thinning” Increases Wildfire Danger
Cutting down hundreds of trees and masticating (shredding) thousands of understory plants makes forests sunnier, hotter, drier, and windier — and more prone to wildfire ignition and faster-burning, wind-driven fires.
Endangering Communities, Degrading a Forest
The most effective wildfire protection for communities is home hardening and creating defensible space — not cutting into forest beyond the 100 ft. Home Ignition Zone. Treat houses, not forests. Work from the house-out, not the forest-in. Cal Parks will waste millions of taxpayer dollars to damage and degrade a wet, fire-resistant coastal forest — and increase its flammability and wildfire danger to surrounding communities.
Inadequate Environmental Review
Cal Parks and Cal Fire bypassed CEQA requirements, rushing to obtain state “wildfire resilience” funds under false premises, with minimal public awareness, and without a thorough, site-specific, peer-reviewed scientific study as required under this essential legal environmental protection.
10 Years of High-Decibel Chainsaws, Masticators
Precious quiet in this rare, unmanaged forest will be shattered for a decade by gas-powered industrial “management” tools. Birds and thousands of other animals will be driven off their homes. The park’s human visitors, who visit Tomales Bay for peace and quiet in nature will be subjected to the assault of high-decibel power tools.
Gallons of Herbicides
Toxic chemicals like glyphosate (Monsanto Roundup®) and triclopyr (Dow Garlon®) will poison this wild forest’s soil, non-target plants, insects, streams, and thousands of animals who live in a fragile web of interconnected life — which this project simply ignores.
Animal Habitat Destruction and Terror
Thousands of native understory plants will be shredded (“masticated”), eradicating the habitat of thousands of sensitive forest animals, including endangered birds and fish. Nesting songbirds, owls, ospreys, bats, hawks, raccoons, woodrats, opossum, foxes, badgers, rabbits, deer, skunks, mice, and frogs will be homeless. Many will die as the blight of industrial “active management” rolls across 1,000 acres of forest “treatment areas.”
Money Drives Deforestation Projects
Exploiting Wildfire Fear for Funding
State agencies exploit public fear of wildfire to obtain millions of dollars for destructive, counter-productive “wildfire resilience” and “forest health” and “active management” projects.
Cal Parks, Cal Fire, and the U.S. Forest Service are pursuing public wildfire reduction funds to decimate wild forests for endless make-work deforestation projects like this one at the lush, coastal forest of Tomales Bay.
The “Overgrown Forest” Myth
Ecologists know that everything in a wild forest, both living and dead, plays a vital role in a complex, interconnected, living ecosystem. There is no waste, no “mess” to “clean up” with chainsaws and poisons. Bark beetles feed birds. Fungi decay downed trees and create soil. Dead trees provide precious bird and wildlife habitat.
Nothing needs to be fixed, “healed,” “thinned,” cut down, “cleared,” “opened up,” or poisoned. Forests have thrived for millions of years without human “help” or “stewardship.” The stress forests are under today is due to climate change and constant deforestation projects for timber, so-called “biomass” energy, and “thinning” projects — like this one.
Corporate Appropriation of Tribal Ecological Knowledge
For-profit companies claim to draw upon (and even collaborate with tribes on) tribal ecological knowledge (TEK) and traditional Indigenous land stewardship to justify their own modern, industrial logging. These destructive practices — including the use of chainsaws, chippers, masticating machines, and toxic herbicides — have no basis in Indigenous traditions, which emphasize harmony with the land, not domination of it.
None of this is a respectful integration of Indigenous knowledge — it is appropriation for profit.
The Same Old Fire Suppression With a New Spin
“Thinning,” “management,” and “stewardship” are all logging, rebranded. Agencies falsely claim that past fire suppression practices have created a build-up of “fuel loads.” Dense, lush, wild forests which store the most carbon, cool the planet, and mitigate global warming are demonized.
The public’s very real fear of wildfire is being exploited to brush aside wildfire science, ecology, and common sense — to be awarded wildfire suppression funds.
The Forester’s Orwellian Lexicon
| Euphemism | True Meaning |
| Thinning, management, stewardship | Logging wild, healthy forests |
| Forester | De-forester — contractor hired to deforest public lands |
| Fuel loads | Living forests and wildlife habitats |
| Overgrown | Thriving, dense forest ecosystems |
| Removed | Cut down and killed |
| Opened up | Cleared of life — logged, exposed, and degraded |
| Treatments (with herbicides) | Plant poisoning with toxic chemicals |
| Competitors (plants) | Native vegetation that supports biodiversity |
| Flammable (dead/dying trees) | Vital habitat and nutrients for animals, fungi, and soil health |
Managing Wild Forests, to Death
Agencies and contractors sell multimillion-dollar make-work projects by insisting almost all wild forests must today be cut (“managed”) to prevent wildfires — despite numerous studies showing “thinned” (logged) forests burn faster.
Ecological, biological, and wildfire science all prove “thinning” makes forests sunnier, hotter, drier, and windier and thus more fire-prone, and faster-burning. Any wildfire is used to justify more “treatments” — a destructive, profit-driven feedback loop that increases global warming… and fire risk.
In our era of global heating — which is caused in large measure by deforestation — agencies are promoting and pursuing even more deforestation.
What YOU Can Do
Learn More About the Plan for Tomales Bay
Sign the Alert to Fight Federal Deforestation
