An occasional feature of BLM California's News.bytes

Spotlight on Partners: Save the Redwoods League

Save the Redwoods League, a northern California conservation organization, has been honored for its successes in protecting important habitat and forging critical conservation partnerships involving the Bureau of Land Management and other stakeholders on California’s North Coast.

Back row from left: Al Wright, Public Lands Foundation; Ruskin Hartley, executive director, 
Save the Redwoods League; Jim Abbott, BLM acting state director.  Front row from left: Laura Gilmore, 
Save the Redwoods League land program and stewardship associate; Christine Ambrose, 
Save the Redwoods League land project manager;  Lynda Roush, BLM Arcata Field Office manager.

The organization has received the 2010 Landscape Stewardship Award from the Public Lands Foundation, a non-profit group focused on the use, protection and professional management of public lands. 

The award specifically recognizes the league’s work in the Mattole Watershed, the King Range National Conservation Area 
and at Lack’s Creek, which is in the northern protection zone for Redwoods National Park.

“The commitment of a decade-long work effort only hints at the significant influence Save the Redwoods League has directly achieved to permanently protect and enhance the management of public lands on the north coast of California,” the award citation states.   The award further commends the league for its “leadership and a vision for protecting old growth forests, to bring together state and federal agencies as well as numerous non-profit organizations as partners, and to entrust the BLM with permanent management and protection of these wondrous lands for future generations.”

Over the years, the league has acquired important private land tracts and donated them for public ownership under BLM management. 

At Gillham Butte, the organization purchased and donated to the BLM 11,000 acres of forest that includes five tributaries to the Mattole River and three creeks that feed the Eel River.  The work helped consolidate ownership and improve resource management in a project known as the “Redwoods to the Sea” corridor.

A group of volunteers remove structures from lands donated to the public.   

At Lacks Creek northwest of Arcata, the organization led an effort to acquire 4,400 acres of prairies and forest from two private timber owners, donating half of the lands for public ownership and management by the BLM.  The work will enable the BLM to improve management of two Areas of Critical Environmental Concern adjacent to Redwoods National Park.

The league’s efforts also helped the BLM improve management at the King Range NCA by purchasing and donating a key privately-owned parcel which is now managed as wilderness, compatible with adjacent King Range land.

“All of these projects are important because they link together fragmented islands of habitat into interconnected preserves,” said Lynda Roush, manager of the BLM’s Arcata Field Office.  “This expands areas through which animals can freely move and improves dispersal and diversity of plants.”

Save the Redwood League, based in San Francisco, was founded in 1918.  It works on preserving rare redwood trees and redwood ecosystems “to ensure that current and future generations can feel the awe and peace that these precious natural wonders inspire.”
The Public Lands Foundation, founded in 1987, presents its annual Landscape Stewardship Award to individuals and organizations who work to sustain community-based stewardship on landscapes that include public lands managed by the BLM.

BLM-California News.bytes, issue 479