As I See It: Corvallis Public Works and its new Zen Forestry

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by Betsy Herbert published in the Corvallis Gazette-Times, February 29, 2024

Ah, the joy of living in the present! Zen practitioners tell us that by being in the moment—not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future—we can relieve stress and live happier lives. After practicing this habit on a personal level, say, by savoring every morsel of that chocolate fudge brownie—we can then extend mindfulness to larger aspects of everyday life.

Apparently, Corvallis Public Works has adapted the art of living in the present by inventing a new kind of Zen Forestry for managing the Corvallis Watershed Forest, which supplies about 1/3 of the city’s drinking water.

Zen Forestry inspires Public Works and City Council to forget about the city’s shameful past history of clearcutting old-growth, degrading endangered species habitat, and using timber revenues to subsidize water rates. Why think about those things? Just breathe, concentrate on the Now, and insist on keeping the present failed policies in place.

Why should Public Works and City Council dwell on this past history, just because the water quality of the streams supplying the Rock Creek Treatment Plant has steadily gone downhill for the past 15 years? Zen Forestry inspires Public Works and City Council to let the opportunity to learn from past mistakes. . . reverently melt away.

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Speak up to Save the Corvallis Rock Creek Watershed

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by Betsy Herbert, Ph.D. Published February 7, 2024 in the Sierra Club Oregon Chapter newsletter

If you live in Corvallis, you may not know that the Rock Creek Watershed, just east of Marys Peak supplies about one-third of the city’s drinking water. The heavily forested, 10,000 acre Rock Creek Watershed is owned partly by the city and partly by the Siuslaw National Forest. Both the city and the Forest Service acquired these properties with public funding for the purpose of protecting the drinking water for the city of Corvallis. Instead, they’ve focused on logging, raking in the big bucks since 1955. In the process, they seem to have forgotten all about protecting the water supply . . .

Continue reading the article here.

Trekking with “Tree Jenny,” founder of Costa Rica’s Community Carbon Trees

by Betsy Herbert, Ph.D. Published February 7, 2024 in the Sierra Club Oregon Chapter newslettter

It’s a hot and humid December morning in southern Costa Rica, where my niece Alys and I are sipping coffee at our lodge in the tropical jungle of Perez Zeledon. The howler monkeys have finished their morning serenade while giant Blue Morpho butterflies—with wingspans of 6 - 8 inches—drift iridescent in the sunlight amongst towering trees.

An old, dusty 4WD SUV barrels up the steep dirt driveway, and out bounds Jennifer Leigh Smith, aka “Tree Jenny,” who is about to take us to the Eco-Chontales Community Reforestation Project, where we would see first hand what makes her organization, Community Carbon Trees, such a groundbreaking endeavor. “Greetings, ladies!” she exclaims…”Are you ready for a beautiful hike today?”

We pile into the SUV. The back is loaded with 4” pots of native tree saplings. As Jenny drives us a few miles down the road into the forest, she stops to wave and chat with local farmers (she’s fluent in Spanish and seems to know everyone who lives here). She pulls off to the side of the road where a friendly middle-aged farmer is waiting for her alongside his quadruped. We get out of the SUV and meet Alvaro Cerdas Alfaro, one of the projects’ farmers who supervises a paid planting crew. He smiles while I snap his photo, loads the trees on his quad and drives on.

Alvaro Cerdas Alfaro, a Costa Rican farmer who is committed to reforesting his land with Community Carbon Trees

A little about Tree Jenny (read more about Jenny and her group here.)

Jennifer Leigh Smith is originally from Louisiana, where she was raised on a family farm that practiced sustainable agriculture. After earning an environmental law degree at Louisiana State University, she found that employment opportunities in Louisiana were mostly limited to corporations seeking legal help to maneuver around environmental regulations, rather than to move toward sustainability.

After that realization set in, Jenny moved to Costa Rica in 2000, where farmers had been cutting and burning native tropical forests for decades, turning forests into pasture for cattle grazing (to supply beef for Burger King and Wendy’s). Raising cattle on this degraded land turned out to be unsustainable, since the grazing animals compacted the soil, causing erosion and impacting water sources. The forests that were cleared and burned could no longer contribute moisture as a cloud forest. Biodiversity was suffering, climate change was at work, and drought began to set in. After decades of land abuse, studies revealed that raising cattle was a losing proposition, netting farmers only about $60 per acre.

For the past 20 years, deforestation has continued— by both locals and foreigners—who are converting forests into mono-crops, especially the seemingly endless African palm plantations, lined up in rows to produce palm oil. And, of course, real estate developments. Along the highway, we see billboards advertising Re-Max and Coldwell Banker. One of the signs reads, “We sell paradise.”

Once Jenny moved to Costa Rica, she set about finding ways to help Costa Ricans restore native forests, by empowering people to grow native trees on their own land—to create longterm valued-added forest products, and to provide carbon sequestration and opportunities for community based eco-tourism. These alternative uses could realize a return of $2,460 per acre for the farmers that invested their time and land into restoration.

In 2009, Jenny founded the Community Carbon Trees project. The nonprofit uses a tried and true method to restore native forests. First, seeds of some 100 different species of rainforest trees are collected by hand and sprouted in two nurseries. Then the young saplings are planted on degraded farmland owned by local farmers. Paid local crews maintain the young rainforest trees for for four years, using natural methods to clear competing growth. These Costa Rican farmers are trained in sustainable forestry and become leaders in reforestation.

This hillside in Eco-Chontales Community Reforestation Project is typical of pastures where cattle grazing has degraded the land

As we pull up to the Eco-Chontales Community Reforestation Project, operated by the farmers invested in Community Carbon Trees, we pay our entrance fee, which entitles us to take the trail all the way down to the spectacular Chontales waterfall and to enjoy a prepared lunch at the end of the trail.

We start down the trail, as Tree Jenny points out one of the hillsides degraded by cattle grazing. It looks like corrugated cardboard on a grand scale, where cattle have carved hoof paths into the side of the hill. It’s easy to see why nothing but invasive, exotic grass will grow without help on this land. But once the land has been prepared and planted using proven methods with native trees, the forest grows extremely quickly. After twelve years, the forest is more than 20 feet tall, thanks to growth rates in this tropical climate. As we hike back up the trail, Jenny stops to pull native saplings out of the damp soil of the forest. She will bring these back to the nursery where they will be nurtured and later replanted in another site.

Tree Jenny with saplings she pulled from wet soil at Eco-Chontales Community Reforestation Project; she’ll take the saplings back to one of the community’s plant nurseries where it will later be replanted in another site.

To date, Community Carbon Trees has reforested land on 61 family farms in Costa Rica, planting more than 21,700 trees. Jenny is also collaborating with reforestation communities in Kenya.

I left Tree Jenny feeling inspired and encouraged, something that I haven’t felt for awhile back home in Oregon, which is riddled with state-sanctioned massive clearcuts. I’m inspired because Tree Jenny’s work in Costa Rica demonstrates to the world that serious environmental problems can be successfully addressed when communities are directly involved.

Call to Action: Sponsor a Tree in Costa Rica’s Rainforest

Fighting the good fight will never end

Fighting the good fight will never end

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

posted in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 11/23/17

The afternoon of Nov. 1, I took one final look around my house, scanning the empty space for anything the movers might have missed. I was also saying a last goodbye to this little sanctuary that I’d created for myself in the middle of suburban Santa Cruz. I could walk to town, take a shuttle to the UC Santa Cruz campus, and yet, the neighborhood was quiet and I could occasionally hear coyotes and great horned owls at night.

I had planned to live the rest of my life in this beautiful place. But after 30 years in the Aptos hills, Bonny Doon and within the Santa Cruz city limits, I was finally pulling up my roots and moving out of state, to Corvallis, Oregon.

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Selection cutting: Panacea or damage in disguise?

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Selection cutting: Panacea or damage in disguise?

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 10/26/17

t’s not difficult to convey the environmental impacts of clear-cut logging; just look at the big, ugly bald patches of scarred earth after a clear-cut and you get it. But too often, an alternative to clear-cutting — known as selection logging — is offered as a panacea. Wow, it looks so much better than a clear-cut, especially when you’re looking at photos taken by timber companies doing the logging.

But if you get down into the weeds, so to speak, as forest scientists do, you start finding that selection logging also has problems…they’re just not as visible. One of the biggest problems of selection logging is the ground disturbance from the haul roads and skid trails cut into the forest to take the trees out.

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Plastic pollution now found in drinking water all over the world

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Plastic pollution now found in drinking water all over the world

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 9/14/17

Sometimes reading a science article can be downright scary. On September 5, I read a piece in the Guardian, “Plastic fibers found in tap water around the world, study reveals.” U.S. scientific researchers analyzed tap water samples from more than a dozen nations for an investigation by Orb Media (orbmedia.org), a non-profit journalism group. The Orb study, entitled “Invisibles: The plastics inside us,” concluded that billions of people on five continents are drinking water contaminated by plastic micro-particles.

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California state parks do more than provide public recreation

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California state parks do more than provide public recreation

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 8/17/17

Have you noticed all the mountain bikes strapped on cars traveling over Highway 17, especially on weekends? Demand for biking and other forms of recreation in the public spaces of Santa Cruz County is steadily increasing and much of that demand is coming from “over the hill” in the San Francisco Bay Area. Apparently, people increasingly need to escape from the stress of living in Silicon Valley.

At the same time, California State Parks has cut way back on acquiring new parklands in Santa Cruz County and throughout the state, following a complete reorganization of state parks beginning in 2013.

As demand steadily increases for recreation, sometimes people forget that state parks — as well as county and city parks and other public spaces — were originally set aside to do more than provide trails for public recreation. They were also established as natural areas to preserve habitat for other lifeforms and to ensure that natural processes — part of our planet’s life support system — function properly.

 

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Is wilderness real? Is it worth restoring?

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Is wilderness real? Is it worth restoring?

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

posted in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 7/27/2017

One evening last fall I nearly had a panic attack as I read the now famous 2003 article, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” by Nick Bostrom, a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford. Bostrom’s theory has convinced many physicists and futuristic thinkers like Elon Musk that the natural world — the Universe — is actually a computer simulation created by some advanced post-human civilization. I’m not exactly a sci-fi aficionado and I had to force myself to watch “The Matrix,” but Bostrom made a strong, logical argument that for a brief moment shook my life-long belief that nature is the baseline for everything else that exists.

As an environmentalist, I’ve always held to the notion held by deep ecologists that wild nature, as it evolved through the eons, needs to be preserved as the foundation for life on the planet. Wilderness areas (Earth’s least disturbed places) are a priceless storehouse of our planet’s biodiversity. We need to protect wilderness — or else humans, along with other species that we share the planet with — will perish.

 

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Travel pastime provides clues to the state of the world

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Travel pastime provides clues to the state of the world

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 6/15/17

While traveling around the world during the past two years, I reported in this column about many disturbing environmental issues that I encountered. I had to find ways to keep myself amused during this sometimes depressing investigation of air and water pollution, deforestation, overfishing, sea level rise, ocean acidification, garbage dumps, poaching, erosion, and habitat destruction, etc.

Keeping lists turned out to be a simple and entertaining way to pass the time. I kept lists of people I met, foods I ate, wines and beers I drank. But the most interesting list I kept was what I called the “Ubiquitous List.” Things I entered on this list had seemingly nothing in common except that they kept popping up everywhere I traveled. As soon as I noticed something in one country that I had previously noticed in another, I’d add it to the list ... and I didn’t bother listing the most obvious things like people, buildings and cars.

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Crete: A beekeeper’s story

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Crete: A beekeeper’s story

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

It’s May 4 — the height of spring in Crete, the largest Greek island. Crete is laid out like a ribbon across the southern Mediterranean Sea. Because of good rains last winter, wildflowers are in full bloom across lush green plateaus that stretch beneath the snow-capped peaks of Crete’s three picturesque mountain ranges.

Much of Crete’s landscape is underlain with karst limestone. Some 1,700 species of wildflowers — one tenth of which are found nowhere else on earth — thrive here on these limestone soils

Over the eons, water has carved out Crete’s limestone mountains to form spectacular deep gorges and caves. That morning, my friend Georgia and I set out to explore one of these gorges. We drove her Citroen rental car from the coastal city of Rethymno up into the Psiloritis mountains to find St. Anthony’s Gorge.

Along the twisting mountain road, as we gawked at the spectacular wildflower bloom, we spotted clusters of beehive boxes in the traffic turnouts. The bees must be having a field day.

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Synthetic clothing crisis: Microfibers mucking up our oceans

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Synthetic clothing crisis: Microfibers mucking up our oceans

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel April 20, 2017

Those warm, cuddly fleece jackets and quick-dry synthetic fabrics that fill so many of our closets now have created a big problem for the world’s oceans. Every time they get washed, clothes made from synthetic fabric shed thousands of tiny microfibers. Carried along with dirty wash water to the sewer and on to the wastewater treatment plant, many microfibers are so small they pass right through wastewater filters and are carried all the way out to our bays and oceans.

Tiny microfibers have turned into an enormous problem. In 2011, British ecologist Mark Anthony Browne published research describing the discovery of microfibers—mostly synthetic polyester and acrylic—on beaches worldwide, but most highly concentrated near wastewater disposal sites. Suspecting that these microfibers came from laundered clothing, Browne filtered the water used to wash a single fleece jacket and retrieved 1,900 fibers.

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Super Bloom: On the hunt for wildflowers in Anza-Borrego and Joshua Tree

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Super Bloom: On the hunt for wildflowers in Anza-Borrego and Joshua Tree

by Betsy Herbert, features@santacruzsentinel.com

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 03/30/17

It was March 14. For weeks California State Park botanists had been predicting a “super bloom” of wildflowers — the best in twenty years — to peak across southern California deserts sometime in the middle of March, and the best would be in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, east of San Diego. After record winter rains, Anza-Borrego was already experiencing 80 to 90 degree temperatures — perfect conditions for a super bloom. I’ve lived in California most of my life and missed these gorgeous blooms in the past. This time I was determined to witness the show.

I set out in my hybrid SUV from Santa Cruz to hike and photograph in Anza-Borrego and then head northeast to Joshua Tree National Park, where I could expect to see those signature Joshua trees in full bloom.

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Conservation group’s winning strategy to protect island communities

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Conservation group’s winning strategy to protect island communities

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 3/16/2017

Seacology, a Berkeley-based non-profit, got its start in 1990 when the island of Samoa’s government ordered the remote village of Falealupo to either build a new school house or lose its state-funded teachers. Desperate to continue their children’s educations, the cash-strapped community saw only one way out: Sell the logging rights to the 30,000-acre ancestral rainforest surrounding the village.

It just so happened that Dr. Paul Cox, an American ethnobotanist, was conducting field research in that same rainforest when he learned of the villagers’ dilemma. Shortly afterwards, Cox made a proposal to Falealupo’s leaders: If he could raise the money to build the new school, would the village agree to forever protect its surrounding forest?

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Cuba natural areas: From rainforests to desert islands

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Cuba natural areas: From rainforests to desert islands

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 2/24/17

Turkey vultures soar above in clear blue skies as I write from a hotel lobby on one of the 2,500 islands in the Jardines del Rey Archipelago off the north coast of Cuba. It’s day 13 of a 16-day tour focused on Cuba’s natural areas.

Our small group has been waiting here four hours to check in. Hotels in Cuba — even those billed as “four star” — seem completely overwhelmed by the booming influx of tourists from all over the world. Plumbing often leaks, Wi-Fi is sporadic at best, lights flicker, toilet seats are commonly missing, and towel racks dangle from the walls. But never mind, the music is infectious, the beer and rum flow freely, and the Cuban people are relaxed and friendly.

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Cotoni-Coast Dairies — The long path to monument status

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Cotoni-Coast Dairies — The long path to monument status

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 01/19/2017

Who could imagine that the Cotoni-Coast Dairies property — once proposed by PG&E as the site of a nuclear power plant — would eventually become a national monument? But it’s true. On Jan. 12, President Barack Obama granted national monument status to this 5,875-acre property on Santa Cruz County’s North Coast.

Unquestionably, this iconic landscape is truly worthy of monument status ... for its scenic beauty and natural resources and as a tribute to the dramatic history of the land and the people who have dedicated themselves to protecting it.

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When the going gets tough, local high school kids get going

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When the going gets tough, local high school kids get going

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 12/15/2016

When a colleague telephoned the other day, I asked him how he was doing. “In and out of depression,” he said. He’s not usually down in the dumps, but I understood. He’s a scientist. He’s deeply concerned about things like climate change, drought, sea-level rise and mass extinctions. The planet’s future is looking downright scary right now, especially as climate-change deniers assume power in Washington.

I’ve been wondering how aspiring young scientists are coping with this gloomy situation. That’s why I attended the San Lorenzo Valley High School’s Environmental Conference last night, hosted by science students Julianna Manseau, Kate Ussat and Haile Davis. Jane Orbuch, an acclaimed science teacher at the high school, sponsored the conference. But, she insisted, “The girls organized the whole thing — from setting up speakers, getting permissions, publicizing, and working with school personnel — it was entirely their gig.”

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Full STEAM ahead: Artist creating a business to return art to schools

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Full STEAM ahead: Artist creating a business to return art to schools

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 11/17/2016

What would happen if our nation’s schools embraced the teaching of art to enhance student understanding of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects? According to local artist and entrepreneur Ed Martinez, integrating hands-on art projects into the widely accepted STEM curriculum would result in nothing short of an educational paradigm shift.

“Decades ago art was isolated from the academic environment. That made it easy to eliminate the arts from the curriculum, and that’s what we have now,” Martinez says.

“Many kids are lost along the way because their curiosity is not stimulated by book learning alone. When hands-on art projects are added to the STEM curriculum, students begin to recognize and tap their own genius,” he adds.

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Playground art: More than meets the eye

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Playground art: More than meets the eye

by Betsy Herbert, Earth Matters

Published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel 10/19/2015

Just weeks before the start of October rains, art teacher Sue Friedland engaged 35 young students in painting a 25-by-36 foot map of the United States in the middle of their asphalt playground at Our Lady of Angels School in Burlingame. They are now embellishing the map with paintings of all the state flowers. But this is not graffiti!

“This project teaches children some basic geography and nature observation skills,” said Friedland, “and they learn to work together.”

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Calling all earthlings: Planet at the crossroads

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Calling all earthlings: Planet at the crossroads

I spent the past 10 days in Honolulu with some 9,500 conservationists from 192 countries, attending the IUCN Worldwide Conservation Congress, “the most important conference going on in the world today, but most people don’t know about it,” according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

“We tend to think that the biggest threat is ISIS or interest rates ... amazing that we don’t think about the state of our biosphere,” Friedman added.

Conference attendees didn’t need any convincing. The 2016 conference theme “Planet at the Crossroads” highlighted the urgent need to change humankind’s path toward irreversible climate change and unprecedented species extinction.

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