Battle Creek watershed
Science has been writing about the detrimental effects of clearcutting for decades. This is a 1989 Scientific American Article by Edward O. Wilson. Even though this article is about the tropics, it can be applied to the deforestation that is occurring in California today.
Cut areas close-up on the ground in the Battle Creek watershed 2020.
Take a deep breath and scroll down to see what the California State Board of Forestry and Cal Fire, (California Department of Forestry), as state agencies that approve logging plans, are allowing Sierra Pacific Industries and other industrial logging companies to do to California's forests.
The thousands of regularly spaced brown patches in these images are ~20 acre clearcuts, aka deforestation
20 acres = 4 city blocks
When you put all these images together you see clearcut mountain ranges from the Oregon border to central California.
According to recent reports in the news, the west is getting hotter faster than the rest of North America. No surprise when you look at the path of forest loss.
As the lead agency, Cal Fire has approved all of these contiguous logging plans without considering the damaging cumulative impacts these hundreds of thousands of acres of clearcuts have to water, air, temperature, and biodiversity.
Clearcuts in Siskiyou County surround Mount Shasta. Mount Shasta, one of the tallest mountains in the world, is losing year round snow cover.
The clearcuts continue from the southern Cascades south along the spine of the Sierra Nevada.
Cal Fire and the logging companies continue to insist that there are "no significant impacts" from all of this loss from perpetual logging.
Yeah, there are people who insist the world is flat also.
The images are from Arc GIS in 2021.
Clear cuts near Highway 50 in El Dorado County
Aerial Views
Lassen County, east of the Caribou Wilderness and Lassen
Volcanic National Park and Lassen National Forest.
Mt. Shasta
Rock Creek Rd. Manton, CA 96059
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