29 April 21
2 Days to Go, Help With This Fundraiser!
We have two days to go in April and we are really hurting for basic funding. Slow down, pull over and help out.
It really matters.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
28 April 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
You Don't Actually Need to Reach Across the Aisle, Mr. Biden
John Lawrence, The New York Times
Lawrence writes: "There is nothing wrong with being partisan."
resident Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress, on Wednesday night, will be scrutinized to assess his commitment to working with Republicans. There is nothing wrong with reaching across the aisle to seek common ground.
But insisting on bipartisanship — given the major policy divide between the parties on economic recovery, tax reform, climate change and health care — usually guarantees gridlock (which promotes voter cynicism) or actions that are watered down and ineffective (which are condemned by everyone, right and left).
There is nothing wrong with being partisan. Over a century ago, Representative Jacob Fassett, a New York Republican, counseled, “We were all elected by partisans because we were partisans, and as such represented party purposes as expressed by party platforms,” adding that a politician should “have opinions and convictions” and not “be a political chocolate éclair.”
The search warrants mark a major turning point in the long-running investigation against Rudy Giuliani. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
Federal Investigators Raid Rudy Giuliani's Manhattan Apartment
Kelly McLaughlin and Sonam Sheth, Business Insider
ederal investigators raided former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's Manhattan apartment on Wednesday and seized his electronic devices, The New York Times reported. The Associated Press has since confirmed the news.
Investigators executed the raid after obtaining a search warrant, and it was part of an ongoing criminal investigation into Giuliani's foreign dealings in Ukraine, sources told The Times. The outlet reported that investigators had been trying to secure a search warrant against Giuliani for months but that former President Donald Trump's Justice Department quashed their efforts.
The investigation into Giuliani, who serves as Trump's personal lawyer, resumed in earnest last month, and the Justice Department lifted its objection to the warrant after Merrick Garland was confirmed as attorney general.
Prosecutors have been scrutinizing Giuliani's activities in Ukraine since at least 2019 and are said to be examining if he broke foreign lobbying laws while working as Trump's lawyer. The FBI's investigation also includes a counterintelligence aspect that veteran prosecutors said suggests the FBI may see Giuliani as a national security threat.
Two sources familiar with the investigation told The Times that investigators are looking into Giuliani's role in the recall of former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch, who was a foreign service officer for 33 years before being abruptly removed from her post in spring 2019.
In October 2019, Yovanovitch appeared for a nine-hour, closed-door deposition on Capitol Hill related to the first impeachment inquiry into Trump. In her opening statement, she said that then-Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told her she "had done nothing wrong" but that there was a "concerted campaign" to oust her, and that the department had been "under pressure from the President to remove [her] since Summer of 2018."
Shortly before news of the investigation into Giuliani broke, two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were arrested — also in October 2019 — on suspicion of trying to funnel foreign money into a pro-Trump super PAC and other entities to gain leverage in US political circles. Prosecutors also allege Parnas and Fruman tried to influence US-Ukraine relations.
CNN reported that investigators from the Manhattan US attorney's office approached Kevin McCallion, an attorney in New York, earlier in 2019 to ask about Giuliani's link to Parnas and Fruman.
Giuliani has admitted that he sought dirt on political adversaries, including President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, along with Yovanovitch, and had contact with former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko. He has also been instrumental in amplifying the lie that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election — a bogus talking point that was started by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.
And last year, The Washington Post reported that US officials warned the White House that Russian intelligence services were using Giuliani to funnel disinformation to Trump.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) stipulates that American citizens notify the Justice Department of any contacts they have with foreign governments or officials, and if they interact with the US government or media at the direction of those officials.
Giuliani has denied any wrongdoing.
Alameda Police Department officers attempt to take 26-year-old Mario Gonzalez into custody, April 19, 2021. (photo: AP)
Police Asphyxiate Another Unarmed Man by Kneeling on Him, This Time in CA
Juliet Williams, Associated Press
Williams writes: "Police in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Alameda have made public body cam footage showing officers pinning a Latino man to the ground for more than five minutes during an arrest last week that ended in his death."
Mario Gonzalez, 26, stopped breathing after an April 19 scuffle with police at a park in Alameda.
A police statement said Gonzalez had a medical emergency after officers tried to handcuff him, but his family contends he was killed by police who used excessive force.
The nearly hourlong video from two officers’ body cameras released late Tuesday shows police talking to Gonzalez in a park after receiving 911 calls that he appeared to be disoriented or drunk. Gonzalez seems dazed and struggles to answer questions.
When Gonzalez doesn’t produce any identification, the officers are seen on video trying to force his hands behind his back to handcuff him but he resists and they take him to the ground.
The officers repeatedly ask him for his full name and birthdate even as they have him pinned on the ground.
“We’re going to take care of you, OK, we’re going to take care of you,” one officer says on the video.
“I think you just had too much to drink today, OK? That’s all,” the same officer says. Later, he adds, “Mario, just please stop fighting us.”
Gonzalez, who weighed about 250 pounds (113 kilograms), is seen on the video grunting and shouting as he lies face down on wood chips while the officers restrain him. One officer puts an elbow on his neck and a knee on his shoulder.
“He’s lifting my whole body weight up,” an officer says at one point.
One officer also appears to put a knee on his back and leaves it there for about four minutes as Gonzalez gasps for air, saying “I didn’t do nothing, OK?”
Gonzalez’s protests appear to weaken and after about five minutes he seems to lose consciousness.
Shortly before he stops breathing, one officer asks the other: “Think we can roll him on his side?”.
The other answers, “I don’t want to lose what I got, man.”
Apparently seeking reassurance, the first officer asks “we got no weight on his chest?” then repeats “No! No weight ... no weight.”
“He’s going unresponsive,” one officer says.
The video shows officers rolling Gonzalez over and performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
The incident happened a day before former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter for pinning George Floyd to the pavement with his knee on the Black man’s neck in a case that triggered worldwide protests, violence and a furious reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S.
Gonzalez had a 4-year-old son and also was the main caretaker of his 22-year-old brother, who has autism, his family said.
An autopsy is pending to determine the cause of his death but family members of Gonzalez on Tuesday told reporters that the officers were to blame, saying they escalated what should have been a minor, peaceful encounter with the unarmed man.
“The police killed my brother in the same manner they killed George Floyd,” said his brother, Gerardo Gonzalez.
“He’s a lovely guy. He’s respectful, all the time,” said Mario’s mother, Edith Arenales. “They broke my family for no reason.”
Alameda “is committed to full transparency and accountability in the aftermath of Mr. Gonzalez’s death,” the city said in a statement.
Gonzlez’s death is under investigation by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, the county district attorney’s office and a former San Francisco city attorney hired by the city to lead an independent probe, the statement said.
The three officers involved in the arrest have been placed on paid leave during the investigation.
US Border Patrol agents conduct intake of border crossers at the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas. (photo: AP)
ACLU Calls on Biden Administration to Close Dozens of ICE Detention Facilities
Nicole Sganga and Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News
Excerpt: "The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday urged the Department of Homeland Security to close dozens of immigration detention facilities as part of a renewed push for President Biden to follow through on several campaign pledges now that he's been in office for 100 days."
he American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Wednesday urged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to close dozens of immigration detention facilities as part of a renewed push for President Biden to follow through on several campaign pledges now that he's been in office for 100 days.
In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas shared first with CBS News, the ACLU identified 39 detention centers used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that it believes should be shut down due to reports of abuse against detainees, limited access to lawyers and insufficient justification for opening them.
"With lower ICE arrest rates and already-reduced levels of detention arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, ICE is currently paying to maintain thousands of empty beds, at enormous taxpayer expense — wasting hundreds of millions of dollars that would be better spent on alternatives to detention and other programmatic priorities," the ACLU wrote in its letter Wednesday.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Biden vowed to utilize alternatives to holding immigrants in detention and to end contracts with for-profit prison companies, which operate many of the more than 200 facilities ICE can use to hold detainees.
The ACLU's letter urged Mayorkas to "dramatically downscale" immigration detention "in light of the historically low number of people in ICE detention."
The number of ICE detainees has reached a historic low under the Biden administration, dating back two decades. Currently, there are roughly 15,000 people in ICE detention, including about 1,500 parents and children in holding facilities for families, according to government data.
Mayorkas said during an interview in March that "a detention center is not where a family belongs." In a March 5 court filing at the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the Biden administration announced plans to wind down the long-term detention of migrant families.
In March, ICE tapped a Texas-based nonprofit to house some migrant families in hotels in Texas and Arizona. Interim ICE Director Tae Johnson said then that the contract would provide more than 1,200 beds.
But 100 days into office, Mr. Biden is yet to keep all of his campaign promises. In January, the Biden administration ordered the Department of Justice to end its reliance on private prisons, but it has yet to make any announcements regarding for-profit immigration detention centers.
"The Biden administration's exclusion of immigration detention facilities in its executive order made no sense given everything we know about human rights abuses occurring at the hands of private contractors who got an incentive to maximize profits in immigration detentions as well as within the criminal legal setting," Naureen Shah, senior advocacy and policy counsel at the ACLU, told CBS News.
"The administration also failed to put under immediate review all of the contracts ICE has with state and local agencies, where we've seen grave human rights abuses in the hands of local sheriffs or county officials," Shah continued.
As of April 10, ICE listed a total of 141 detention facilities in its public database. But in fiscal year 2019, ICE held detention contracts or agreements with 233 facilities, 185 of which it used to hold detainees, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released earlier this year. The GAO investigation also revealed the federal government's procedural missteps, costing taxpayers millions of dollars for unused beds after entering into 43 contracts with guaranteed minimum payments.
"We've got this really new unique moment in time where ICE detention levels are far lower than they were under the Trump administration. And yet we still have this infrastructure that exists to detain tens and tens of thousands of people every day," Shah told CBS News. "So why do we have all these empty beds in this network of more than 200 facilities around the country?"
In its report, the GAO wrote that "[a]s of May 11, 2020, ICE was paying for 12,027 empty beds a day, on average, at a cost of $20.5 million for the month." The report also found that in the same month, ICE forked over an additional $41.2 million in "flat rates" to 11 facilities while using only 38% of the beds it paid for. The result was an average of $1.5 million spent per day on guaranteed minimum bed space not in use by the federal government.
The agency entered into 40 agreements for new detention space between fiscal year 2017 and May 2020, including 28 with guaranteed minimum payments, in addition to new deals with state and local officials who outsourced facilities to private companies.
ICE also put detainees at risk by placing them in potentially inadequate facilities with known histories of detainee deaths, escapes, and excessive force, the report indicated.
"Fiscal Year 2020 was the deadliest year in ICE detention in 15 years," the ACLU said in a statement to CBS News. "Last year alone, we saw reports of increased use of force, solitary confinement, patterns of sexual abuse, forced sterilization, and an utter failure to protect people from COVID-19."
In its appeal to the Biden administration, the ACLU has called on DHS to shut down 39 facilities in the near term. Among the top ten listed is the La Palma Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona.
Earlier this month, DHS' top watchdog found widespread mistreatment of immigrants at the facility in Eloy, citing nearly 1,300 grievances from immigrants held there.. DHS' Office of the Inspector General said detainees depicted "an environment of mistreatment and verbal abuse."
After immigrants held at the for-profit prison company held peaceful protests in April 2020 over concerns that staff were not providing the necessary personal protective equipment, migrants told inspectors detention center personnel deployed pepper spray to quell one of the protests on April 13, which was also captured by surveillance footage.
The ACLU argues that while mistreatment at ICE facilities pre-dates the pandemic, COVID-19 outbreaks among detainees exacerbated already tenuous health and hygiene practices. "ICE just didn't take COVID seriously enough," Shah said. "That's why we've seen facilities where dozens, sometimes hundreds of people with COVID-19." As of April 23, 1,147 detainees currently in custody tested positive for COVID-19, roughly 7% of the overall population in ICE facilities, according to data published by the agency.
Also on the list are the Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, Florida, and Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California. An internal audit by ICE's Office of Detention Oversight (ODO) in February 2021 found the former had "inoperable" telephones and toilets, as well as a blanket ban on all marriage requests, preventing at least one migrant from tying the knot.
Seven out of 12 detainees interviewed by ODO officials at the Calexico facility in a February 2021 inspection characterized contact with ICE officers as "irregular and sporadic." One immigrant interviewed told inspectors that while in a medical facility for treatment of his mental health challenges, he was twice placed in "observation," and kept in a room naked for two to three days at a time. At least one detainee required immediate suicide prevention and intervention following allegations of self-harm.
The letter signed by the ACLU also calls on the Biden administration to close facilities in remote locations with limited access to legal counsel, a step the non-profit believes aligns with the president's frequent refrains on restoring human dignity. "We think a lot of people — including a lot of people in this administration — agree that if you're seeking asylum, you should at least have a lawyer who can help you navigate this Byzantine system," Shah noted.
The availability of immigration attorneys within 100 miles of detention centers opened under the Trump administration ranked among the lowest of all detention facilities nationwide, a 2020 report by the ACLU found, deeming the remote locations "justice free zones." Under U.S. law, immigrants in removal proceedings are not guaranteed a lawyer at the government's expense.
CBS News has reached out to DHS and ICE for a response to the ACLU's letter.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., walks through Statuary Hall at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 10, 2021. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
Contributions to Swing District Democrats by AOC Add Obstacle for Challengers
Eva Putzova, The Intercept
Putzova writes: "The contributions also signal a retreat from the theory of change upon which Ocasio-Cortez originally ran."
uring the last election cycle, I challenged my member of Congress, ex-Republican-turned-Blue-Dog Tom O’Halleran, in a Democratic primary. Primary challenges are notoriously difficult, and getting a campaign off the ground is often impossible. And while I fell short, winning more than 40 percent of the vote in the district signaled to me the people in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District are ready for more progressive representation.
As I’m considering my second attempt for the congressional seat, encouraged by the support we garnered, hardened by the previous experiences, and enlightened by a better understanding of how the establishment machine works, I’m concerned that a new development is adding yet another obstacle. At the end of March, approaching the first quarter fundraising deadline, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used her Courage to Change PAC to make political contributions to dozens of Democrats who had won close races in 2020.
We take these contribution exchanges among members of Congress as normal. To change the policies, we have to change the rules of politics. Our electoral politics are so corrupted by corporate money that we don’t even pause at the money laundering practice among the members of Congress.
The contributions also signal a retreat from the theory of change upon which Ocasio-Cortez originally ran. The idea then was that progressive and populist ideas had mass appeal and could win not just in deep blue districts, but in red seats and swing districts too. That was the animating idea behind Brand New Congress and its offshoot, Justice Democrats. Do we no longer believe that?
The most fundamental problem I see, when you solicit contributions for your congressional campaign or a leadership PAC like Courage to Change, is that supporters have every reason to believe it’s to get you reelected or to fulfill your PAC’s mission. The Courage to Change PAC is quite specific about the use of the funds: “Contributions will be used to make early investments in progressive challengers that can even the playing field against established incumbents, and bolster progressive leaders in Congress who take difficult but righteous stands. All endorsees will embody the ideals of racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. Courage to Change will refuse all corporate PAC donations, as will our candidates.” There’s no question that Ocasio-Cortez’s leadership PAC’s recent contributions go against the PAC’s stated purpose.
To be fair, you’d be hard pressed to find any member of Congress who has not given or received contributions from their colleagues’ candidate committees, but just because the practice is so widespread (and legal) doesn’t make it right. I have yet to see any member of Congress stating in their fundraising letters, social media ads, or any solicitation that the money will be used for a contribution to another candidate’s campaign. In 2020, my anti-war heroine Rep. Barbara Lee contributed her congressional campaign money to my opponent just as Ocasio-Cortez did in 2021. Ironically, before these contributions were made, I listed both representatives as my role models on Ballotpedia’s 2019 candidate connection survey. I share many, if not most, of their policy positions but disagree with their approach to transforming the political system by supporting those who work actively against our political agenda.
If you want to give contributions to your colleagues to support them, you can use your personal funds. Or you can use your fundraising power to make a case to your supporters to contribute to your peers in Congress directly. There’s something extra troubling about bundling small-dollar contributions from progressives into $5,000 checks to members of Congress raising much of their campaign funding from corporate PACs. As a campaign, we have never accepted and would never accept a contribution from any political action committee or candidate committee no matter their ideology, because the source of the money is no longer transparent. If we want to fight money in politics, we should live by the standards we claim to support.
The second issue with these contributions as gestures of support is the motivation. These representative-to-representative contributions are certainly not about actual funding of campaigns. In addition to the in-district name identity advantage and access to voters and various institutional constituencies, every incumbent has a substantial fundraising capacity and an extensive donor base. It’s about signaling — but what and to whom?
Why would one member of Congress have a need to formalize their support for another through a contribution? Are they expecting support for their bills, and is it right to buy the support this way? Are they signaling to the Democratic Party that they stand by the electoral strategy to support the incumbent? Are they sending a message to potential challengers to stay away from primarying the incumbent? By refusing to pay Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dues when first elected, Ocasio-Cortez bravely declared that she would not play by the party rules that hurt primary progressive challengers, but the effect of supporting corporate Democrats individually seems awfully similar to just paying DCCC dues.
Ocasio-Cortez’s contribution to my former opponent and the incumbent in Arizona’s 1st District has definitely had a chilling effect on me as I get closer to my decision on whether to run or not. It’s still very early in the election cycle, but with such a strong first campaign showing, we might be up for a second round. Still, when the entire ecosystem of organizations behind the party establishment is joined by a progressive superstar like Ocasio-Cortez, all tipping the scales in unison in favor of incumbents, it’s very hard to take this message as anything but that a progressive challenger is not welcome in this race against a Blue Dog. The contribution from Ocasio-Cortez sends a signal to voters that my former opponent holds similar enough values that it’s worth it for her to support him. In some races, Democrats considered that message a political liability and angrily returned her money. In a Democratic primary, however, the signal can only aid an incumbent, making it harder for a challenger to cut through the noise and draw clear distinctions in the minds of voters.
If we progressives are serious about fighting money in politics, we should model transparency, integrity, and consistency in politics to shape the political culture into one where corruption, including the kind that’s institutionalized and legalized, is unacceptable. Unless we change the rules of politics, we will not get rid of profit in health care, bring about economic justice to our communities, act fast enough to stabilize the climate, deinstitutionalize racism, nor will we question U.S. hegemony as the guiding foreign affairs doctrine.
Monument to the victims of the massacre of El Mozote. (photo: Ernesto Zelaya/Wikimedia)
US Government Hid Presence of US Advisor in El Mozote Massacre, Expert Says
teleSUR
Excerpt: "U.S. expert witness Terry Karl Monday revealed in El Salvador that a U.S. military advisor witnessed the massacre of some 1,000 unarmed people at the hands of the Salvadoran Army in the El Mozote locality, in 1981."
This revelation exposes U.S. involvement in the Salvadoran civil war and the reasoning behind Washington covering up the massacre perpetrated by the Salvadoran Army.
.S. expert witness Terry Karl Monday revealed in El Salvador that a U.S. military advisor witnessed the massacre of some 1,000 unarmed people at the hands of the Salvadoran Army in the El Mozote locality, in 1981.
This revelation given during pretrial hearings in El Salvador exposes U.S. involvement in the Salvadoran civil war and the reasoning behind Washington covering up the massacre perpetrated by the Salvadoran Army.
According to Karl, U.S. Master Sergeant Bruce Hazelwood was at El Mozote with Salvadoran Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa, who led the massacre on the ground.
"The presence of a U.S. military advisor was illegal," the expert said and assured that the U.S. and El Salvador covered up the massacre, in which most of the victims were children so that aid from the U.S. would not be cut off.
"I won't say Monterrosa didn't order it," Hazelwood testified under seal in 1982, before the United Nations (UN) Truth Commission that investigated crimes against humanity perpetrated during the Salvadoran civil war (1980-1992).
According to Karl, the Salvadoran Army had as a "main target" the Morazan Department, where El Mozote is located, because it feared that the territory would become The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrilla's rearguard.
"El Salvador implemented a strategy of extermination, without differentiating between combatants and civilians," Karl condemned.
California State Parks District superintendent Chris Spoher, center, walks through Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Boulder Creek, Calif., Thursday, April 22, 2021. (photo: Nic Coury/AP)
Resilient Redwood Forest a Beacon of Hope for California
Martha Mendoza, Associated Press
Mendoza writes: "Eight months after a lightning siege ignited more than 650 wildfires in Northern California, the state's oldest park - which was almost entirely ablaze - is doing what nature does best: recovering."
Big Basin Redwoods State Park is closed, but during a backcountry guided tour earlier this week, clusters of chartreuse shoots were budding on blackened redwood branches and trunks. Bright yellow bush poppies, white violets and star lilies dotted the scorched landscape. Hillsides of purple California lilac shrubs were fixing nitrogen in the soil. And new Knobcone pine trees, which need temperatures above 350 degrees to pop open their cones and drop their seeds, were sprouting.
“I think nature is finding a way,” State Parks senior environmental scientist Joanne Kerbavaz said.
Scientists, parks advocates and conservations say the resiliency of Big Basin Redwoods State Park is cause for hope well beyond the Santa Cruz mountains. In California, COVID-19 infections and deaths have dropped rapidly as a widespread vaccine rollout appears to be turning the corner. And in the burned communities that lost homes in last year's fires, construction vehicles crowd narrow roads to lay new foundations.
At first glance, Big Basin Redwoods State Park is a mess. The entire 18,000-acre (7,284-hectare) park, which has about 1 million visitors a year, burned hard and fast for 24 hours and is still smoldering in a few spots, causing nearly $200 million in damage.
More than 100 structures were destroyed, including the historic park headquarters, tent cabins, picnic tables, viewing platforms and trail railings. Dozens of bridges are gone, and logs litter the forest floor. In some places, smoldering subterranean root balls are still smoking, leaving dangerous underground ash pits, Kerbavaz said.
Since last August, damage assessors have been trying to identify what toxins, hazards and other waste needs to be removed. The park doesn’t look much different than it did a week after the fire, when an Associated Press reporter and photographer hiked the renowned Redwood Trail and confirmed that most of the ancient redwoods, about 2,000 years old and among the tallest living things on Earth, had survived.
The next eight to 10 months will be spent cleaning up the park, hauling out hulks of charred vehicles, rubble from collapsed roads and bridges and damaged campground structures. It will be up to a year before the public is allowed any safe access on trails beyond a small coastal area of Rancho Del Oso, which should open around Memorial Day, State Parks District Superintendent Chris Spohrer said.
But no one should expect a straight rebuilding of what was lost, he said.
“Everything is on the table,” Spohrer said. “We need to be setting expectations for the public that when they come back, it will not look the same.”
When Big Basin opened in 1902, it marked the genesis of redwood forest conservation. But ideas about buildings, layout and land use have changed over 119 years.
“Think of it as reimaging and re-envisioning, not rebuilding,” Spohrer said.
Conservationists and advocates support a wide open planning process. They also urge quick action because state and federal officials are currently funding wildfire recovery efforts and new infrastructure projects, a rare opportunity to tap into taxpayer dollars for public lands.
“I’d hate to ever suggest we think that a fire is a good thing, but there is no question it wiped the slate clean — and that’s something you just don’t see in any other existing park,” said Sara Barth, executive director of Sempervirens Fund, which in 1900 spearheaded efforts to protect six square miles (15.5 sq. km.) of old-growth redwood forest that is now in the center of Big Basin.
The state now can consider ways to make it more equitable and accessible to people who haven’t, in the past, been visiting, Barth said.
“When Big Basin was established, it was a beacon for the state parks system,” she said. “In this fire and rebirth, you have an opportunity again.”
Sam Hodder, president of Save the Redwoods League, said the public can take inspiration as the forest quickly recovers.
“The trees themselves will tell about resilience and recovery and the broader California landscape,” he said. “While this is a difficult and heartbreaking situation to be in, it does give us an opportunity to think about doing things differently, that takes into consideration climate resilience and acknowledges that fire is an inevitable inhabitant of this landscape.”
Redwoods are designed to be fire resistant. In old-growth forests, most trees have burn scars dating back hundreds of years.
On Aug. 19, 2020, as trees ignited and animals fled, the only sounds in Big Basin were the roar of wildfire and the thundering crash as large trees fell.
These days, tree tops are filled with birdsong. And on the forest floor, the lizards, skinks and salamanders that buried themselves deep in decayed organic matter as fire rolled by above are clambering back into the creeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.