REDWOOD NEEDLES Presented by the Sierra Club Redwood Chapter Newsletter, The REDWOOD NEEDLES Return to Article Menu From the Chair . . . Dear folks, I just got back from the Delta Waterfowl Research Station in Manitoba, Canada. I did’t go to monitor any waterfowl research. I went to see my first grandchild, whose Daddy is the scientific director thereof and whose Mommy is my daughter. My grandchild is cute. If I could get away with slipping a picture of her into the paper as an environmental cause, I surely would. Maybe I should. Because she and all her fellow kids ARE the environmental cause. We get all wound up in the politics and battles of our various environmental issues and can begin to lose sight of WHY we are actually doing it. Because we love nature. Because gross greed is wrong. Because the earth feeds us, gives us spiritual sustenance and we destroy ourselves by destroying the natural functionings of our planet. Grand thoughts. I think we’re doing it in the hope that the kids can watch and be amazed by the same critters and waterfalls and mountains and trees that we’ve been amazed by. And can still find a place to discover the wonders to be found by digging in healthy dirt I sure hope so. Enough mushy stuff. Right now, our northern folks are working with the Bureau of Land Management to try to be of some help in defining how the Headwaters Forest is to be managed. We’re all hoping to keep it as a reserve, with absolutely minimal usage. Apparently some of the first phone calls to BLM involved wanting to have a wedding in one of the groves, other calls involved when off-road vehicles could get in there&emdash;and so on and so forth. I think we need to do our best to keep this as one of the wildlands that preserves wild creatures and helps to clean up the air that we breath. The Bureau of Land Management seems to be in agreement, so that’s good news. We all need to remember that if we didn’t have trees we wouldn’t have oxygen. So the current effort to completely decimate the pitiful remainder of the forests of Mendocino County is one that should be fought hard. The damage creeps ever northward. Clearcut, sell, build houses, drain the river for the water, and pollute it with the sewage. Get the money, so you can have the biggest house, the biggest car, and your own private hill. There are different, more communal, more moral, ways to live in a society. We need to start to teach ourselves and our children about those different ways. Pass it on. - Marianne de Sobrino, Chair, Redwood Chapter   Return to Article Menu Last updated on 3/02/99 Comments or suggestions? Drop us a line at heyneedles@aol.com