Webinar Report: Emerging Technology – LiDAR in Forestry

April 15, 2013

The University of California Cooperative Extension sponsored Dr. Maggi Kelley in a fascinating talk on the uses of LiDAR in forestry. LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) is an emerging technology that hold the promise of completely revolutionizing the way forests are measured.  The use of LiDAR can greatly facilitate gathering the data for timber cruises […]

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Webinar Report: California’s Carbon Market – Panacea or Pandora’s box for landowners?

April 15, 2013

The American Tree Farm System hosted a webinar on the California Carbon Market and its associated Forest Project Protocol.  The talk was presented by Charles Kerchner who works for Spatial Informatics Group, LLC, developing offset projects based on the protocol. The projects Mr. Kerchner discussed were implemented in the northeast (Maine, Vermont, and often involved […]

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Sudden Oak Death Lecture: How to identify symptoms on bay laurel before it infects your oaks

April 9, 2013

The U. C. Santa Cruz Arboretum will be sponsoring a lecture on Sudden Oak Death and what the local community can do to identify the disease in their area and mitigate its effects in the early stages, while it is primarily on its host plant, the bay laurel. This is a topic that is immediately […]

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California Legislation Update April 6 2013

April 6, 2013

The legislature is back in session, and with that came a blizzard of status updates, hearing dates, and a smattering of legislative analyses and amendments.  All of the details are in our legislation table.  Do read the analyses for those bills that have passed through committee hearings; they are very illuminating. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers […]

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California Legislation update 3/27/13

March 29, 2013

This week the legislature is taking their spring break, which means we get our breather too. We previously covered the reasons for our stances on the various SRA fee bills.  This week we will look at some of the others. CCFA supports the following bills: AB 245 will lift the exemption from the Bagley-Keene Open […]

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SRA fee collection suspended

March 25, 2013

The Associated California Loggers reports that the Board of Equalization is suspending collection of the SRA Fire Prevention Fee (Fire Tax) due to the heavy workload of processing the very high level of appeals filed for the fee.  The duration of this suspension currently undetermined. CalFIRE reports that they have received 87,000 appeals so far […]

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Survival Strategies, a study in contrasts between two salmonid species and their implications in land management

March 23, 2013

Cate Moore All salmonids are not created equal; this is becoming more apparent as studies continue into the life cycles of coho salmon and steelhead trout in the Scott Creek watershed.  The participants in the northern field trip of the Redwood Symposium got a fascinating update of the latest observations of the life cycles and […]

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CCFA and coho 2013: The state jumps back into the fray while NMFS begins execution of plan

March 23, 2013

California Fish and Wildlife stuns Scott Creek residents with an attempted hijacking of their water rights The CCFA Board heard the first rumblings of this at our 2012 November Board meeting when Scott Creek resident Barbara McCrary reported all the locals had been told they would be prevented from drafting from their springs if the […]

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CCFA and coho 2012: NMFS latest recovery plan released

March 23, 2013

In September 2012, NMFS released the “Recovery Plan for the Evolutionary Significant Unit of Central California Coast Coho Salmon”.  This is a massive four-volume document that lays out the measures that NMFS recommends as the prescription for recovering coho salmon south of San Francisco. CCFA learned of the document’s release through a Santa Cruz Sentinel […]

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CCFA and coho 2011: In which NMFS finally responds to the delisting petition

March 23, 2013

CCFA heard little substantive back from NMFS after we submitted our comments about their draft coho recovery plan. Homer T. (Bud) McCrary received the following response to his separate petition from NMFS, which rejected the points of the petition and added on a few more streams to the list for good measure.  Here is the […]

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