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As former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s health worsens in prison, so do prospects for democracy in Georgia.
Nor can anything other than malice—organized, official, state-sponsored malice—explain why Saakashvili is on a strange medical regimen that includes 14 different drugs, some addictive, some not approved for sale in the United States. Or why he has mild brain damage. Or why he has seizures. Giorgi Badridze, a former Georgian ambassador who keeps in constant touch with Saakashvili’s family, told me that “nothing has been exaggerated. He is doing really badly.” At age 55, Saakashvili is declining rapidly. And as he declines, so do the prospects of a sovereign, democratic Georgia.
Georgia is a former Soviet republic, and to those who live in the former Soviet empire—the same empire that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, now seeks to re-create—Saakashvili’s accumulated prison illnesses form a familiar pattern. The slow prison death was a Soviet speciality: not a murder, not an assassination, just a well-monitored, carefully controlled, long, drawn-out decline. Most of the people who died in Soviet prison camps were not executed; they were merely starved until their heart stopped beating. In Putin’s Russia, torture and the deprivation of medical aid famously killed Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who uncovered an infamous corruption scandal at the highest levels of the Russian regime. Isolation, withholding of food, and other punishments are right now being inflicted on Alexei Navalny and other political prisoners too.
The readoption of this old Soviet practice in Georgia, a country that has, or had, aspirations to be part of NATO and the European Union, represents a symbolic return to the old Soviet empire. The decision to inflict this form of torture on Saakashvili carries even more symbolic weight. As president from 2004 to 2013, he was notable mostly for pushing his country, which borders Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, in the direction of Western liberal democracy. In his years in office, he broke the power of the post-Soviet mafia, battled corruption, fought back against a Russian invasion, and opened the economy. Putin loathed him and his political program so much that he reportedly once said Saakashvili should be “hung by his balls.” He hated Saakashvili for the same reason he now hates the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky: because he used the language of liberal democracy; because he talked about a European, Western future for his country; and because he rejected Putin’s kleptocratic, illiberal ideology.
Saakashvili angered plenty of Georgians too. He made enemies not just among the mafiosi whose careers he destroyed, but also among Georgian liberals and democrats. He cut corners and crossed the edges of legality several times himself. Extravagant stories about him (and there are many) involve Munich nightclubs, Ferris-wheel rides, and late-night, high-speed drives through Tbilisi. His life story is not a black-and-white morality tale of any kind.
But when Saakashvili lost an election, he did step down, which is not typical behavior in the former Soviet world. He left Georgia in 2013, and spent several years in Ukraine—he speaks Ukrainian, having studied there—and enjoyed what can best be described as an exceptionally controversial term as governor of the Odesa region. He received Ukrainian citizenship, was stripped of it, and then got it back again. Finally he went back to Georgia in October 2021, clearly hoping to reenter politics.
This, his supporters believe, is the real reason he was arrested on what his lawyer describes as trumped-up charges, based on cases from years ago investigated in absentia. They also say this is the reason for the slow torment, and perhaps for the slow poisoning of Saakashvili, and indeed leaders of the ruling Georgian Dream party have said, in so many words, that he is in prison because he would cause trouble for them if he were free. Irakli Kobakhidze, the party’s chairman, recently put it like this: “If Saakashvili gets out, he will immediately engage in political processes and will try to take in his hands the function of leadership of the radical opposition.” The government can’t let him out, in other words, because he might try to win. Or he might at least make what Kobakhidze calls the “radical opposition” into a unified and coherent force.
At the moment, that opposition, although it probably represents the majority of the voters, is deeply divided, as so often happens in democracies that have been slowly dismantled by an illiberal political party. Georgian Dream is certainly that: Backed and controlled by Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s wealthiest man, the party has not only locked up Saakashvili but also imprisoned Nika Gvaramia, the director of an independent television station; put pressure on judges; and repeated wearily familiar nationalist, homophobic, and anti-Western themes borrowed from Russian propaganda. The party’s leaders, many of whom are former Ivanishvili employees, have verbally attacked the U.S. ambassador, even falsely accusing her of trying to force Georgia to go to war with Russia. All of that helps explain why, in June, the European Union formally recognized Ukraine and Moldova as candidates for membership but spurned Georgia.
Officially, the Georgian government regretted that decision. Unofficially, maybe not so much. Ivanishvili’s fortune was earned in Russia, and under his leadership, Georgia’s relationship with Russia has evolved into something very hard to explain and understand. On the one hand, Georgians continue to fear a further Russian invasion, which is unsurprising: Russian troops, some stationed less than 40 miles from Tbilisi, occupy about 20 percent of the country. Georgians are vocally supportive of Ukraine, and large majorities say they want to join NATO.
On the other hand, the quantity of what appears to be sanctions-busting cargo flowing through Georgia to Russia surged in the first half of 2022. The Georgian government doesn’t support Russia, but it doesn’t like to say it doesn’t support Russia, or at least not too loudly. And by deliberately antagonizing Georgia’s Western friends, it is slowly making Georgian membership in Western clubs an impossibility. “The reality is that it looks like Putin is winning in Georgia,” Badridze told me.
The slow torment of Saakashvili is a part of that project. His lawyer and his family are asking the government to release him on humanitarian grounds and let him transfer to a hospital in Europe or the U.S. If not, he may well die in prison. But that may be what Putin and his proxies in Georgia are hoping for. If the man who still symbolizes Georgia’s old aspirations to join the liberal democratic world succumbs to a Soviet-style prison death, then those aspirations will die along with him.
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Israelis hold flags as they protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new right-wing coalition and its proposed judicial reforms to reduce powers of the Supreme Court in Tel Aviv, Israel, February 4, 2023. (photo: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
Tens of thousands brave heavy rain in Tel Aviv to protest against government plans to weaken Israel’s Supreme Court.
Protesters in the central city of Tel Aviv braved heavy rain for Saturday’s protest, carrying blue and white Israeli flags and chanting slogans against Netanyahu’s justice minister.
“I’m here tonight protesting against the transition of Israel from a democracy to an autocracy,” Dov Levenglick, a 48-year-old software engineer, told the Reuters news agency in Tel Aviv.
“It’s a disgrace, it shall not stand.”
The proposed changes, which the government says are needed to curb overreach by judges, have drawn fierce opposition from groups including lawyers and raised concerns among business leaders, widening already deep political divisions in Israeli society.
Critics say Israeli democracy would be undermined if the government succeeds in pushing through the plans, which would tighten political control over judicial appointments and limit the Supreme Court’s powers to overturn government decisions or Knesset laws.
“They want to tear up the judiciary system of Israel, they want to tear up Israeli democracy, and we are here every week in every weather … to fight against it and to fight for Israeli democracy,” Hadar Segal, 35, told Reuters in Tel Aviv.
Local media reported protests in some 20 cities across the country.
Among the crowd in Haifa was former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who said in a video posted to social media: “We will save our country because we are unwilling to live in an undemocratic country.”
Netanyahu, on trial for corruption, has dismissed the protests as a refusal by leftist opponents to accept the results of last November’s election, which produced one of the most right-wing governments in Israel’s history.
Last month, he was forced to remove a top minister, Aryeh Deri, who leads the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, due to a recent tax evasion conviction.
In addition to the judicial changes, his government has announced its intention to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, as well as social reforms that have worried the LGBTQ community.
Dania Shwartz, 44, from the city of Ramat Gan, told AFP news agency that protesters were “reclaiming” the Israeli flag.
She expressed concern that, as a member of the LGBTQ community, “this new government will try to pass laws that will affect my children”.
“For example the Noam party wants to delegitimise families like ours and it’s very scary,” she said, referring to one of Netanyahu’s coalition partners known for its virulently anti-gay stance.
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy walks through Statuary Hall on his way to a vote at the Capitol on Jan 25. (photo: Ricky Carioti/WP)
Yet the discussion needs to happen sometime, and sooner rather than later. These entitlements — which already account for about a third of federal spending — remain on unsustainable trajectories, and protecting them for future generations is too important to keep reform off the table indefinitely.
Medicare’s trust fund is projected to run short by 2028, and Social Security will exhaust its reserves by 2034. When that happens, seniors face an immediate 25 percent cut in benefits. Clamoring for bailouts will be intense, but the country will struggle to afford them — especially in the looming era of higher interest rates, which make it more expensive to service the national debt. The longer Congress puts off fixes, the more painful they will become for the 66 million seniors, and growing, who receive monthly Social Security payments and the approximately 59 million people enrolled in a Medicare plan.
We applaud anyone in either party who works in good faith to help shore up the solvency of these old-age programs, whether or not they identify as fiscal hawks. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Angus King (I-Maine) have reportedly been talking about creating some kind of sovereign wealth fund that would be separate from the Medicare trust fund but could create future cash flow. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) has expressed openness to raising the taxable wage cap for the program and perhaps creating a “supercommittee” to hash out a potential deal that could get an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
These politicians take political risks to advance such ideas. Former president Donald Trump, who allowed the debt to grow by $7.8 trillion while he was in office, says that “under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.” Meanwhile, President Biden savaged Republicans during the 2022 midterms for trying to “deny seniors” the benefits he says they are owed. Conventional wisdom is that lawmakers will keep kicking the can down the road until a crisis arrives.
The potential trade-offs aren’t painless, but some mix of benefit reductions and tax increases is necessary. Think about raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 to match the existing Social Security retirement age for those born in 1960 or later. Perhaps raise premiums for Medicare beneficiaries with higher incomes. And maybe reduce Social Security benefits for those with higher incomes. Many of the Trump tax cuts expire in 2025. This could be leverage to negotiate tweaks to the payroll tax.
Mr. Biden was among 88 senators who voted in 1983 for a bipartisan grand bargain, negotiated by a commission led by Alan Greenspan and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, that rescued Social Security. Forty years later, if he and Republican leaders are willing to work in good faith, Mr. Biden could safeguard the greatest legacies of both the New Deal and the Great Society.
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Diakine Sambou, queen of the sacred forest of Kaoupoto, on Feb. 23, 2021, in Mlomp, Senegal. (photo: Ricci Shryock/NPR)
Karworo says the spirit of the sacred forest stopped the truck.
But he also remembers his aunts and relatives physically protesting to protect what they say is their priceless community forest.
"[The logging company] said the government already gave them papers to enter the forest," he recalls nearly 20 years later. "The people said, 'No, this is our traditional forest. We are reserving it for our great-grandchildren. We are protecting it for them.'
Despite the residents' pleas, the loggers' large machine went in to cut down the timber. Karworo says it got stuck in the mud for months.
In areas throughout West African countries such as Liberia, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, communities have designated biodiversity hotspots, including forests and lagoons, as sacred. They believe no price can be placed on the plants and animals that live there. Many are forbidden from entering the areas, where traditional rites of passage and justice ceremonies take place. This system has served as a conservation tool respected by these communities for generations.
The amount of land that is conserved might be small in sacred spaces — typically no larger than 10 acres — but the system is built on communities living within protected lands and developing and nurturing their symbiotic relationship with nature. The system starkly contrasts with some current, non-Indigenous North American methods of prohibiting humans from living in certain protected areas.
At a small lagoon between the ocean and mangroves in Barconie, Liberia, people can swim and wade, but they are prohibited from killing a single fish.
"All of the fish that you see in the water there, they are all the people in the community," says the town chairman, Alphonso Dennis. "They are the children of the community. That's how we were taught. If you kill one of those fish, someone in the community will be affected."
In nearby David's Town, Borbor Kealeh has protected a small area of traditional forest for more than 40 years — as he says his parents did before him. "The love of the human side, and of the forest on this side — we love both sides. We cannot pick one side," he says.
In southern Senegal, women are often the "queens" of sacred forests. Diakine Sambou, who has guarded a sacred forest in the country's Casamance region for decades, says her role is to act as an interlocutor between nature and the community.
"It's a strong relationship," she says. "We don't do anything without nature's permission, and if you don't take care of the trees, the environment will remind you of what you have done. No one enters the sacred forest to cut down the trees there, never, never. It's sacred."
Guardians like Sambou often speak in vague terms when describing their forests. One reason is because an essential element in keeping the forests sacred is ensuring their traditions stay secret.
But another reason the descriptions are hard to translate is that when people like Kealeh speak about their forests, they describe time in terms of generations instead of days or years. They measure value in an invisible feeling of peace of mind, rather than in dollars and cents.
While the terms and words may be different, the message is clear: The community's existence is intricately linked to the well-being and survival of the biodiversity and natural resources surrounding it.
Communities far beyond these countries' borders benefit from the conservation-minded relationship these communities in West and Central Africa have with nature, says Ranece Jovial Ndjeudja, Congo Basin forest campaign manager for Greenpeace Africa.
"Those forests have the capacity to capture carbon from the air, which is one of the key areas that is being used at the international level to ensure the fight against climate change," Ndjeudja says. He is critical of efforts to monetize the carbon captures from communities who have long-term, valued relationships with forests.
Placing a dollar value on conserving these areas risks destroying the very belief system and way of thinking that have ensured their survival in the first place, researchers say. Their value cannot be translated into monetary terms, says Aby Sene, professor and researcher at Clemson University in South Carolina.
"The example of the Casamance, these sacred forests are maintained by the Diola people, who maintained their way of life and resisted colonial and capitalist structures, and that is precisely why these lands are rich in biodiversity for so long," Sene says.
She says it is essential to reinforce communal stewardship of the land, rather than ownership.
"My dad is Serer," she says referring to a Senegalese group of people, "and in the Serer culture, there is this thing that says land is not owned by the people who are on it right now. We have borrowed it from the ancestors, and we must preserve it for the unborn."
Sene says, "People are taking care of the land because they understand that it is borrowed — borrowed from the ancestors and preserved for the unborn."
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Spy Balloon Cold Open - SNL with Bowen Yang. (photo: SNL/YouTube)
The U.S. military shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday — a move that the Chinese government called an overreaction. Hours later, the downed balloon became the subject of the SNL cold open.
The sketch starts with Chloe Fineman playing the role of MSNBC host Katy Tur and detailing the criticism from Republicans who said President Biden should have authorized the balloon's demise sooner.
A Pentagon official, played by Kenan Thompson, struggled to keep a straight face as he retold the shooting while using a happy birthday balloon as a prop. The sketch ends with an exclusive interview with the downed balloon, portrayed by Bowen Yang.
Yang, who previously portrayed the iceberg that sunk the Titanic, quipped that Americans would miss his presence in the sky.
"You've made it very clear that I'm not welcome here, so good job," Yang said. "But let me tell you something: you're gonna miss this Chinese spy balloon — I mean, normal balloon, damn it."
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Januaris, Syria. (photo: Rami Al Sayed/AFP/Getty Images)
A powerful earthquake has struck south-eastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, killing more than 1,700 people as they slept and trapping many others.
Hours later, a second quake, which had a magnitude of 7.5, hit the Elbistan district of Kahramanmaras province.
So far, more than 1,000 people have died in Turkey and 780 in Syria.
Seismologists said the first quake was one of the largest ever recorded in Turkey.
Many thousands of people were injured - with at least 5,385 people hurt in Turkey and 2,000 in Syria.
Many of the victims are in war-torn northern Syria, where millions of refugees live in camps on both sides of the Syria-Turkey border. There have been dozens of fatalities reported in rebel-held areas.
Many buildings have collapsed and rescue teams have been deployed to search for survivors under huge piles of rubble in freezing and snowy conditions.
Shocking images show buildings that were four or five storeys high flattened, roads destroyed and mountains of rubble.
Among the buildings destroyed was Gaziantep Castle, a historical landmark that had stood for more than 2,000 years.
And a shopping mall in the city of Diyarbakir collapsed, a BBC Turkish correspondent there reported.
The second quake, which struck at 13:24 local time (10:24 GMT), had its epicentre about 80 miles (128km) north of the original tremor in the Pazarcik district of Kahramanmaras province.
An official from Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said it was "not an aftershock" and was "independent" from the earlier quake.
Hours after the first earthquake, a toddler was pulled from the rubble in Azaz, Syria, dirty and bloodied but alive. Video shows rescuers running to get her out of the cold.
The Turkish Red Crescent has called for citizens to make blood donations, and the organisation's president, Kerem Kınık, said on Twitter that additional blood and medical products were being sent to the affected region.
Following an international appeal for help, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 45 countries had offered support.
The European Union is sending search and rescue teams to Turkey, while rescuers from the Netherlands and Romania are already on their way. The UK has said it will send 76 search and rescue specialists, equipment and rescue dogs to Turkey.
France, Germany, Israel, and the United States have also pledged to help. Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered help to both Turkey and Syria, as has Iran.
Turkish Interior Minister Suleymon Soylu said 10 cities were affected by the initial quake, including Hatay, Osmaniye, Adiyaman, Malatya, Sanliurfa, Adana, Diyarbakir and Kilis.
School has been suspended in those cities for at least a week.
'We need help'
In Turkey, President Erdogan said the death toll from the quake was 912 and was expected to rise further.
The Syrian health ministry said 371 people had died in the provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Tartus.
A volunteer with the White Helmets rescue group, which operates in rebel-controlled areas of north-western Syria, fought back tears as he described the devastation in Sarmada, near the border with Turkey.
"Many buildings in different cities and villages in north-western Syria collapsed," he told the BBC.
"Still now, many families are under the rubble. We are trying to save them but it's a very hard task for us.
"We need help. We need the international community to do something, to help us, to support us. North-western Syria is now a disaster area. We need help from everyone to save our people," he added.
The earthquake was powerful enough to be felt as far away as Cyprus, Lebanon and Israel.
"I was writing something and just all of a sudden the entire building started shaking and yes I didn't really know what to feel," Mohamad El Chamaa, a student in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, told the BBC.
"I was right next to the window so I was just scared that they might shatter. It went on for four-five minutes and it was pretty horrific. It was mind-blowing," he said.
Rushdi Abualouf, a BBC producer in the Gaza Strip, said there was about 45 seconds of shaking in the house he was staying in.
Turkey lies in one of the world's most active earthquake zones.
In 1999, more than 17,000 people were killed after a powerful tremor rocked the north-west of the country.
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Bald eagles are protected under state and federal laws. (photo: Fred Thornhill/AP)
The fight to save the birds’ habitat ignites old frustrations over California’s engagement with tribal communities
Everyone was waiting for a pair of bald eagles to swoop into their nest, an orb of twigs and branches balanced amid the tree’s scraggly branches. The elusive raptors have nested here for years, renovating and upgrading it each year in preparation for hatchlings in the spring.
But this year, unless the eagles – who spend the fall and winter months away from their nests – were observed back at their tree by mid-January, they’d lose it.
That’s because Pacific Gas & Electric, the largest utility company in the US, had obtained a permit to chop down the ageing pine, arguing that it could fall on the company’s nearby power line and spark a catastrophic wildfire. Environmentalists and the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians countered that PG&E – which is facing increasing pressure to stop its equipment from starting fires across the state – should move their power lines instead.
Lawyers for the tribe beseeched the utility company to reconsider. Locals printed up signs to save the nest. In recent weeks, activists and tribal elders protested, prayed and physically barricaded themselves in front of the tree as PG&E crews came – alongside sheriff’s deputies – to cut it down.
“They had their cherry picker and their wood chipper ready,” said Polly Girvin, an environmental and Indigenous rights activist. “But we weren’t going to back down.”
Now, armed with binoculars and cell phones on a misty January morning, they were on watch. Bald eagles are protected under state and federal laws, and PG&E could only take down the tree so long as the nest was unoccupied or abandoned. “We need to keep proving that this is an active nest,” explained Girvin.
The eagles did come that day, arriving just as a thick rain began to roll in. A few days later, PG&E said it would back down.
But the showdown over this lone tree, near an electrical line that serves just a single property, has raised difficult questions about PG&E’s approach to fire safety and its fraught relationship with the communities it serves, many of whom live in rural, wildland areas.
The company is under growing legal and financial pressure to act after its power lines have been blamed for sparking multiple fires, including a deadly 2020 fire in northern Shasta county. Last year, it reached a $55m settlement with six counties over several other fires, including the Kincade fire and Dixie fire.
As PG&E rushes to trim trees and remove brush near its power lines to avert future catastrophes – and avoid liability – environmentalists worry that local nuances are being overlooked.
“PG&E says that the tree is dangerous, it’s a hazard – but that’s not right. It’s their lines that are the hazard,” said Naomi Wagner, a local activist with the environmental group Earth First!. “So why is it the tree that needs to go?”
During their recent bald eagle watch party, Wagner, Girvin and half a dozen other activists settled around to a small campfire that fizzled in the rain. Old-time environmentalists who’d been agitating since the 1960s were joined by their kids, grandkids and dogs. Coffee, muffins and binoculars were passed all around, along with warnings not to squeal or shout to avoid startling the eagles.
Priscilla Hunter, the former Coyote Valley chair squinted up and shifted closer to the fire. “It’s a miracle that they are here,” she said. Michael Hunter, the tribe’s current chair, jumped up. “Hey, birds, where are you at?”
Activists and tribal leaders, to whom the eagle holds cultural significance, have alleged that the power company and US Fish and Wildlife Service failed to properly inform and consult with the tribe in deciding to remove the tree, which could remain standing and serve as a habitat for this eagle couple, or their offspring, for years to come.
And here was a bird that was not only sacred to Native American tribes, but also a symbol of the United States. And still, crews had come to take down the tree on 9 January – a day before National Save the Eagles Day. “I mean how clueless could PG&E be,” said Wagner.
Moreover, the owner of the property where the tree stands, as well as the residents who live there, all supported alternative solutions – including rerouting or burying the electric line, or setting up a solar microgrid.
In TV advertisements, PG&E has been promoting its plans to bury 10,000 miles of power lines underground to reduce the risk of them hitting trees, so why not do the same here? “I mean, come on,” Girvin said. “They just want to take the fast and easy route.”
Meanwhile, PG&E contended in public statements the tree “contains an inactive bald eagle’s nest, is a hazard and is at risk of failing and striking a PG&E line in a high fire-threat area”.
Ultimately, the company was proven wrong when eagles finally swooped in. They first arrived as activists and tribal elders sang and prayed beneath the tree, hours before PG&E crews arrived. And they returned each day afterwards. “It was magical,” said Girvin.
A few days later, PG&E issued a statement saying that it would bury the lines, after all. “This solution allows us to protect our hometowns while also taking into account the values of our local tribe, property owners and environmental advocates,” said Ron Richardson, vice-president of PG&E’s north coast region, in a statement to the Guardian.
It was a hard-won concession – one that the activists will remain wary of until they receive a legally binding commitment to leave the tree standing. Though the company can’t take down a tree with nesting eagles, they could return if the eagles leave again. “It seems like you just have to expose how inefficient this is,” said Hunter, the Coyote Valley band chair.
This was already the second year that PG&E had tried to take down this tree. In 2022, as well, the eagle couple returned to their nest just in the nick of time to call off the saws. “And they had a baby!” said Joseph Seidell, a cannabis farmer who lives on the property and led early protests against PG&E’s plans. “I mean just look at this,” he gestured. “This giant pile of beautiful woven twigs holds this beautiful, sacred bird.”
In August, the utility company de-energized the overhead electrical line, just in case the tree did end up falling and sparking a blaze, and asked for Seidell’s agreement that he wouldn’t impede crews when they came to take down the tree in the future. “It was devastating,” he said.
The ordeal has left tribal leaders and environmentalists concerned that the utility company – and the government agencies that oversee and permit its fire safety plans – have failed to properly communicate and consult with communities before undertaking work that impacts important wilderness areas.
Although the Fish and Wildlife Service had sent a letter informing Hunter of PG&E’s intention to cut down the tree in December, lawyers representing the tribe alleged that authorities didn’t wait for a response and didn’t give tribal authorities enough time to review the permit over the holiday season.
The agency was unable respond to the Guardian’s request for comment before publication.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, which has a codified “trust responsibility” – a binding moral obligation – to tribes, could do more to engage with and consult with tribal governments, said Don Hankins, a pyrogeographer and Plains Miwok fire expert at California State University, Chico.
“There clearly needs to be better coordination on these sorts of things,” he said. After a two-year fight over one tree, he noted, it’s unclear why government officials and PG&E didn’t coordinate with tribal leaders sooner.
PG&E and the Fish and Wildlife Service do have policies to ensure that they don’t impact vulnerable species, Hankins said – but those laws and policies don’t always account for the complexities of specific environments.
In Mendocino county, where there is a dark history of logging in the 1800s, which decimated old-growth redwoods and violently displaced some Native villages, a lack of proper communication and care by PG&E and the Fish and Wildlife Service brings an extra sting.
And even now, the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians are involved in a protracted fight to curb commercial logging in the nearby Jackson Demonstration state forest, a nearly 50,000-acre area managed by the California department of forestry and fire prevention, or Cal Fire.
And although various government and private operators in this region have made some gestures toward working with local tribes with crucial, generational knowledge about the fragile landscapes here – they’ve often failed to meaningfully follow through, Girvin said.
Crews for various agencies have operated “willy nilly for years”, she said. “They haven’t cared at all about putting skid trails through sacred sites, or thought carefully about habitat protection and the species affected in the area.” These incursions can feel especially frustrating when the government for decades ignored, denied and criminalised traditional stewardship practices of tribes up and down California, she noted.
“To the settlers, whatever or whoever was in the way of doing business, they’d just cut down,” said Priscilla Hunter. “That’s what these eagles reminded me of.”
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