Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Good evening and welcome to the local news. Today is Tuesday, February 24th. I'm Gabriel Zucker reporting for KMUD. In tonight's news, data in the undergrowth Cal Poly Humboldt Research Targets Powerline Wildfire Risks Ag Land Loss Debated as Elk River Valley Project Gets County Approval. Stay tuned. Those stories and more coming up.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: Redwood Community Radio acknowledges that its transmitter
[00:00:33] Speaker D: sites are located on the unceded territory
[00:00:36] Speaker C: of the Sinkion, Wailaki, Wiat, Wilkut and Kato people.
[00:00:40] Speaker D: We honor ancestors past, present and emerging,
[00:00:43] Speaker C: and acknowledge the ongoing cultural, spiritual and
[00:00:46] Speaker D: physical connection that these tribes have to this region.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Recently, a team from Cal Poly Humboldt, including associate forestry professor Lucy Karhulis, partnered with a major utility company. Their study, recently published in the Journal of Environmental Management, looked at tree failures and power lines in Northern California. Karulis explained the research to kmud.
[00:01:07] Speaker D: My colleagues and I did a study with graduate students where we investigated trends in tree failures and fuels along power lines in rural counties of Northern California.
So we looked at Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity and Shasta counties, and we looked at redwood, Douglas fir, mixed conifer and oak vegetation types in this region. In Northern California, there are a lot of residents that live rurally, and there's a lot of forest lands and there are a lot of winter storms. And so all of the that kind of combined means that there's high likelihoods for power outages due to trees kind of falling or dropping branches on power lines. And this can be inconvenient for residents and then also kind of dangerous for residents if they depend on power for sort of medical equipment at home or heating their homes.
And then in the summer, these types of tree failures in these heavily forested areas can also be cause for concerns for fire ignitions if trees fall or drop branches onto power lines. So it's kind of this junction of all of these different things that led us to do this study.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: They sent field crews deep into the woods over two summers. They weren't just looking at trees touching the wires. They were also looking at the control groups nearby to see if the power lines themselves were changing the forest behavior.
[00:02:52] Speaker D: We had over two summers, field crews of graduate and undergraduate students that went out.
And we had 60 locations throughout these four counties in northern California.
And they had at each of these locations. So we had 15 locations in each vegetation type. So redwood, Douglas prayer, mixed conifer and oak.
And so at each of these study sites, the field crew set up two plots.
And the plots, one plot was around power line infrastructure, and then there was a paired comparable plot nearby that wasn't associated with a power line. And so we could kind of compare the data from those, those two types of plots across all of our study sites to try to get a better understanding about what was causing tree failures and where there might be high likelihoods of tree failures and also high likelihoods of fuel. So in these plots, we measured a bunch of stuff about the tre, about the understory, and about fuels.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: The data revealed two major red flags. First, not all trees are created equal when it comes to falling. While we often think of massive redwoods as a primary threat, turns out the deciduous oak are the ones we should be watching. Second, the very act of maintaining the lines might be creating a secondary fuel buildup.
[00:04:22] Speaker D: There was a lot, you know, that we found in this work, and we still have one graduate student who is finishing. So, like, you know, half of our data aren't. Aren't finished being analyzed yet. But thus far, our findings, the two that I could easily talk about in a short time period would be that we found that for the oak vegetation types, the oaks had significantly higher damage accumulation in them compared to the coniferous vegetation types that we looked at, which was an indicator that these trees, the deciduous oaks, might be more prone to tree failures compared to the coniferous forest types. And so if there are limited, you know, time and resources available for vegetation management treatments and efforts, it might be beneficial and strategic to focus some of those in deciduous oak vegetation types, because it did seem like those had measurably higher damage rates, both biotic damage and structural damage.
And then another finding that we had was just that along the power lines, due to kind of like tree felling and pruning. We did measure higher large woody fuels compared to, not by, power lines in our paired plots.
And this is to be expected, you know, when power line maintenance treatments are being done, to maintain the power line corridors open of trees that will fall on power lines. But this finding kind of led us to make the recommendation that modifying these types of treatments with more debris removal following these treatments would be a good idea. Try to reduce fuels around these power lines. I'll note that these, these fuels are large, woody fuels, and so they're not flashy, like, they're not going to, you know, be super vulnerable to ignitions. But if fire were to be established and rolled through, they be fuels on the. On the ground.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: It's rare to hear about a utility company and academic researchers working together. Karhulis is a resident in rural northern California and has experienced power outages many times and loves that the power companies are actually trying to improve hers and many others lives.
[00:06:51] Speaker D: This was unique in the sense that a power company came to us wanting our scientific expertise.
And that was really neat because it made it feel like this work was really applied and that this scientific knowledge was really sought after and desired. And so it was neat to be working on a project where it felt like the findings were going to be really important and help kind of advise management prescriptions along power lines. And as a resident of north of rural Northern California, that's cool to see because I lose power a lot in the winter and, you know, turn on the generator and stuff. And so it was nice to see that power companies taking such a sincere, you know, investment in trying to improve kind of our lives up here in rural Northern California in terms of power outages and the risk of wildfire.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Looking ahead, the team wants to scale these findings. You can't put a graduate student on every acre of the north coast, but you can use satellites. They are looking at ndvi, the normalized difference vegetation index, which NASA uses to measure greenness or plant health.
[00:08:08] Speaker D: We haven't used the normalized vegetation or normalized difference vegetation index yet in our analyses. That was sort of an idea for our next steps. So we have these hard fought, you know, field based data that we collected across two field seasons.
And those were really labor intensive to get and so and also analyze in the lab and crunch all the numbers on the computers.
And so it would be great if we could take our field based findings, which are based on 120 plots, and kind of scale those to larger landscapes. But it would be unrealistic to think that we could, you know, scale our field operations to larger landscapes.
So if we compare some of our field based data, say one of the things that we measured was tree growth or vigor rates, tree growth rates to assess tree vigor. If, for example, we could pair our tree growth rates with the ndvi, we could then use NDVI to evaluate tree vigor across a larger landscape. And our preliminary findings are showing that for some species, tree loss of tree vigor or low tree vigor is associated with a higher likelihood of tree failure. And so if you could use ndvi, for example, to identify areas with low tree vigor, those again might be targets for more focused kind of vegetation management efforts in terms of being more efficient with where resources are deployed for maintaining power line corridors.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: As the study enters its third year, recommendations are already hitting the desks of decision makers. The message is clear. Small changes in debris removal and focus on oak health can prevent the next big fire or the next week long outage. For the researchers, the independence of the study was key to its success.
[00:10:14] Speaker D: The project is still in progress. Right now we're in year three of a three year study. And so we've presented our first round of findings to the power company and made kind of our two major recommendations. Recommendations thus far are that, you know, efforts might want to be focused on deciduous oak vegetation types up here due to what seems like a higher likelihood of failure compared to coniferous forests. And two, that, you know, tree pruning and felling along power lines should try to remove more of the debris out of the power line corridor and not leave it on site to reduce fuels. So those are kind of like the two big things that we've recommended so far in a presentation to the company and then also via a scientific peer reviewed publication.
And then we have ongoing a second master's thesis that's about to wrap up this spring.
And so we'll present those findings to the power company and publish those findings in a scientific peer reviewed journal and make further recommendations based on that second round of findings.
Our team was really grateful for the support to do this work from the power company and that we really, it was a great collaboration, like very productive and the power company was really hands off. Like they came to us and wanted scientific expertise and wanted us to kind of do our thing independent of them and their inputs. And so that was just again like a really neat working relationship where we had licensed to put on our scientists hats and try to get answers for these questions that they were interested in using our own methods and our own expertise and then just kind of report back and that was unusual and again just a really rewarding and neat work opportunity that was sort of unusual for our research team.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: As they scale these findings to the larger Northern California landscape, the goal remains clear. More research must be done to keep the lights on and the wildfires at bay.
An ecological rehab of the Elk River Valley's estuary area has many benefits, but potential impacts to ag land was concerned during a Humboldt County Planning Commission permit hearing. Daniel Mintz reports.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: The first phase of an ecosystem wide Elk River Valley restoration project has gotten a go ahead from Humboldt County's Planning Commission, but some commissioners have doubts about its long term viability and loss of ag land.
Maintenance of the project area's tide gates and loss of 11 acres of farmland were the prime issues as the commission reviewed the project at its Feb. 19 meeting.
Commissioners lauded the project's aim to restore 400 acres of the estuary to the condition it was in prior to agricultural installation of tide gates, levees, and drainage ditches that impair fish habitat and are now dysfunctional but recently ceded. Commissioner Todd Fulton is concerned about ag land being subject to tidewater.
Darren Moreau of caltrout, the project applicant, said ag land is already out of production due to flooding and groundwater rise. But Fulton argued that burdensome permitting has discouraged maintenance of flood control infrastructure. The issues were discussed in this exchange between Fulton and Moreau.
[00:13:50] Speaker E: Because the infrastructure is so dysfunctional, we have now allowed the brackish water, I guess we could say, to come into those lands and ruin that grassland.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:13:59] Speaker F: I would say that's part of the process, but it's not the overriding factor of the process. So groundwater. Groundwater is coming up regardless of how you surround it with dikes and levees.
[00:14:10] Speaker E: So I guess what my point is is basically your proposed restoration project will essentially take that ground out of ag use.
[00:14:21] Speaker F: It's already out of ag use.
[00:14:22] Speaker E: Not all of it.
[00:14:24] Speaker F: Those parcels have been retired from ag use.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:29] Speaker E: I just want the county to realize that once you lose ag ground, you will never get it back. Agricultural is a huge commodity in this county still, so once it's gone, it'll never come back.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: During his presentation, Miro described the project, which is in the greater eureka area of the elk river valley, as an effort to steer the area, quote, toward more ecological conditions.
He said the tide gates and other flood control infrastructure aren't working anymore, and the goal is to replace it with ecologically sound versions.
[00:15:00] Speaker F: The community infrastructure hasn't been maintained over time, so all those culverts and tide gates and ditches and bridges that were in there, that were placed over a century ago, haven't been maintained. And so we want to come in and help with that drainage infrastructure, which will result in improving and protecting the agricultural lands that are still viable.
And so that community infrastructure is at risk, and we hope to help it along and help the other agencies prepare for improvements as well. And then that relic drainage infrastructure is really impairing the recovery of habitat in this area. And so we're trying to give it a head start and bring it along so it can recover and maintain the viable habitat. As sea level rise comes in, climate change and so forth, it can evolve with those conditions.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: The goals of the project were praised, but some commissioners reiterated concerns about loss of ag land. Acknowledging the issues, commissioner Noah levy noted that a finding has to be made that there's no net loss of ag land. He asked county planner Andrew Whitney about it and got this response.
[00:16:08] Speaker E: It is a very interesting question because you talk about the loss of agricultural lands and typically you would think of that loss being to development.
But in many ways this project is the opposite of development. In other words, it's the reversion of development to a natural state. For instance, Orton Creek was culverted and I'm not sure when, but this is a creek that comes down from, I guess, the Herrick Road area neighborhood up there and it was culverted and it's been culverted for a long time and it's silted and it backs up and it's a failing drainage situation which leads to upstream impacts.
The project includes the daylighting of that creek and the restoration of that creek bed for habitat use.
Unfortunately, that restoration will result in fencing off up to 11 acres of lands that may have been used for agriculture in the past.
So is it a loss or is it an ecosystem gain?
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Whitney added that areas within the project will still be viable for agriculture.
He said, although agricultural use won't be happening.
There's nothing stopping a future civilization from doing that necessarily with this project.
It's not like it's getting paved or concreted or built into housing or whatever.
After some in depth discussion, the commissioner unanimously approved the project's Phase one permit. Work on it will begin this summer. And in addition to the ecological restoration, the project includes land return to the Wiat tribe and and public access through development of several trails and a parking area in Eureka. For KMUD News, this is Daniel Mintz.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: In national news, ICE training agents to violate Constitution according to ice whistleblower testimony, KPFA's Christopher Martinez reports.
[00:18:17] Speaker G: As the Trump administration continues its immigration sweeps in cities across the country, it has sharply expanded the number of ICE officers and at the same time cut back on their training. On Monday, congressional Democrats held a forum on recent ICE actions. Witnesses included an expert testifying on judicial warrants versus the kind of warrants ICE is using, and a woman who experienced an ICE raid with no judicial warrant. But the biggest news came from a former ICE lawyer turned whistleblower.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: I am here to convey to the public the danger that is being created at the ICE Academy.
[00:18:50] Speaker G: Ryan Schwank joined ICE in 2021 as assistant chief counsel.
He was hired five months ago to train new cadets at the ICE Academy in Georgia. He resigned 10 days ago so he could testify at the ICE Forum.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: On my first day, I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant.
For the last five months I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 584 hour program.
Classes that teach the Constitution, our legal system, firearms training, the use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention, and the limits of officers authority.
[00:19:39] Speaker G: He's especially concerned about those hours that were cut from the training.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: What was taken out of the training were classes on use of force, specifically class classes taught by the legal department as well as classes taught by other units. What was taken out was almost 16 hours of firearms training classes to teach them how to use their weapons correctly and safely. What was taken out were classes on how the Constitution works, what the constitutional requirements are for their job, and the constitutional limits on their authority. In fact, the class where we talk to the officers and teach them about the rights of protesters was cut from a two hour program into about 10 minutes. They got shoehorned into a lecture on what the concept of seizure is.
[00:20:18] Speaker G: He said. Without reform, ICE will graduate thousands of new officers who do not know their constitutional duty, don't know the limits of their authority, and do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order.
Another witness testified about an ICE raid where her husband was taken away without a judicial warrant. A third witness, a former general counsel at the Homeland Security Department, recently co wrote a New York times column opposing ICE's use of administrative warrants to enter a home and make an arrest instead of using a judicial warrant signed by a judge. That point struck home with California Congressmember Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. He says ICE and DHS are, in his words, operating like Donald Trump's personal and private military force.
[00:21:06] Speaker C: Now, Donald Trump cannot legally send his private police force to smash down your door and take you away or to enter your house without a legal warrant. Right now, the Trump administration is trying to take away that right instead of getting a warrant approved by an independent judge.
Under his worldview, he believes it's his right to go into any house, in any city and do what he pleases.
ICE wants to write its own permission slip without a judge, to break down your door and to violate your rights. And this should terrify everyone.
[00:21:42] Speaker G: Garcia hosted the forum together with Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Blumenthal says he hopes the hearing will lead to bipartisan support for legislation to reform ice.
[00:21:53] Speaker E: The truth is that ICE and DHF have deliberately and purposely trained their agents
[00:22:04] Speaker C: to break the law.
[00:22:07] Speaker E: I am shocked as I say those words, but they are the truth.
ICE has trained officers of the United States government to disregard the Constitution and violate people's fundamental rights, breaking down doors, detaining them with mass sweeps, engaging in brutal and violent conduct that directly contravene our laws.
[00:22:37] Speaker G: Another Democrat, Rashida Tlaib, talked about a report on investments in private prison companies involved in ICE detentions.
[00:22:45] Speaker D: There are people behind the scenes saying, go, go buy more. You know, cage up more people because we make more money off of it.
[00:22:52] Speaker H: Do you know what this says, Ms.
[00:22:53] Speaker D: Gibson Brown, in this report? It describes how even through ICE is
[00:22:58] Speaker H: locking up more neighbors than it ever has before.
[00:23:00] Speaker D: Record number, 70,000 people that we know of.
[00:23:03] Speaker H: Investors in these private prisons companies Corecivic
[00:23:08] Speaker D: and Geo Group are frustrated that, quote,
[00:23:10] Speaker H: ICE's record immigration detention numbers aren't high enough.
[00:23:14] Speaker D: They're not high enough.
[00:23:14] Speaker G: The Democratic lawmakers vowed to keep on working for reforms to ICE and homeland security. Democrat Yassamin Ansari of Arizona put it in a nutshell.
[00:23:24] Speaker H: What we are seeing around the country is an authoritarian police state, the kind created by a shameless authoritarian Donald Trump to preserve and expand his power at the expense of our constitutional rights.
I will not stop fighting against, against this fascist paramilitary force.
[00:23:43] Speaker G: Reporting for Pacifica Radio News, kpfa, I'm Christopher Martinez.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: In National Native News, Antonia Gonzalez reads today's headlines.
[00:23:55] Speaker H: This is National Native News. I'm Antonia Gonzalez. A Lake Superior tribe wants a court to halt construction of a Canadian energy firm's $450 million plan to reroute an oil and gas pipeline around its reservation in northern Wisconsin. As Danielle Kading reports, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa asked a court last week to review a decision that upheld state permits for Enbridge's Line 5 relocation project.
[00:24:22] Speaker I: The Bad River Tribe is challenging a recent decision by an administrative law judge that upheld wetlands and stormwater construction permits for Enbridge's Line 5 reroute. Attorneys representing the tribe also filed a motion to put construction on hold until an Iron county judge hears their case. The tribe's chair, Elizabeth Arbuckle, said in a statement that the Bad river watershed is not an oil pipeline corridor and the tribe must protect its homeland. An Enbridge spokesperson said it would be unreasonable to halt construction following the judge's decision and years of state review. Enbridge has said state permits contain extensive environmental protections and restoration plans. The company says construction would not cause significant harm to water quality or wetlands. The Bad River Tribe disputes that the project would involve blasting and drilling to install the pipeline. The Line 5 reroute would cross close to 200 waterways and more than 100 acres of wetlands. Enbridge has said it would create 700 jobs during construction. For national Native News, I'm Danielle Kading.
[00:25:20] Speaker H: Declining snowpack is affecting tribal agriculture and traditional food systems across the West. A new webinar series is helping Indigenous communities adapt for the Mountain West News Bureau. Daniel Spalding has more.
[00:25:34] Speaker C: Across the region, snowpack is below average heading into spring runoff. That has major implications for tribal producers who rely on snowmelt for irrigation, livestock and traditional foods. The Native Resilience Project is a four year effort to build resilience in tribal agriculture. This year, the project evolved to address the ongoing snow drought. Dr. Kyle Bocinski is a partner on the project and the director of climate Extension at the Montana Climate Office. It's going to be variable across communities,
[00:26:00] Speaker B: but I think the biggest takeaway is just that what we're seeing right now
[00:26:04] Speaker C: is, at least for the last 25 years, a historically low snowpack situation. And it's going to tax a lot of our systems. The webinars cover snow conditions, drought assistance programs, drought planning and new pathways for tribes to directly request federal disaster declarations. There are three more webinars in the series, which ends in May. I'm Daniel Spaulding.
[00:26:26] Speaker H: An Alaska Native family from Wasilla is sheltering in place outside Puerto Vallarta. They became stranded along with about 500 other tourists at their resort after the Mexican military killed a notorious drug lord known as El Mencho. Suspected cartel members torched businesses, buses and cars in retaliation. Hannah Bissett says she and her mother, grandmother, 10 year old brother and a family friend had just arrived in Mexico.
[00:26:51] Speaker D: We had like half a day of
[00:26:53] Speaker H: normalcy and then as we were going to bed, things started turning upside down and got pretty intense pretty quickly, bissett said. She and her family have not left the resort. Stores around them, along with the hotel's restaurants, are closed. Assuming things are closed still, like the major grocery stores nearby or even local markets, in the next three or four
[00:27:15] Speaker I: days we're going to run out of
[00:27:16] Speaker H: food if things don't change, bissett says. The resort has been serving an evening buffet once a day. Overall, Bissett says she and her family are staying calm yet vigilant.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Encouraged.
[00:27:26] Speaker H: Traffic seems to be moving again. She says she received a phone call from Congressman Nick Begich and calls from the offices of Alaska's two senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. All said they're ready to assist if necessary. Bissett is a former reporter at KMBA and currently a graduate student at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I'm Antonia Gonzalez.
[00:28:09] Speaker E: Native Voice 1, the Native American radio network
[00:28:16] Speaker B: that's all for tonight's broadcast. Thanks for listening. Thanks to our engineer, Katie Phillips, and thanks to our reporters Daniel Mintz, Christopher Martinez and Antonio Gonzalez. KMUD News is online. You can find us on kmud.org and now streaming on most podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, where you can download our stories and newscasts for offline listening during your rural commutes. You can also follow us on social media. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can give us a call at 7O-792-32605 or send an email to newsmud.org Redwood Community Radio, Inc. Is funded by Press Forward, the national movement to strengthen communities by reinvigorating local news.
Learn more at PressForward News.
Reporting for KMUD, I'm Gabriel Zuckerberg.
