NYT feature on the consequences of California redistricting on rural northstate

Kellen Browning reports for the New York Times under the headline, "They Wanted a Conservative State. They Might Get a Democratic Representative Instead."  The story is a richly textured look at how the residents of far northern California feel about the November passage of Proposition 50, which adopted new congressional districts that will temporarily override the decisions of the state's independent redistricting.  As I've written about previously here, here, here and here, this means residents of the current District 1, an inland district stretching from Butte County, about 80 miles north of Sacramento, all the way to the Oregon state line, are likely to be represented by a Democrat after the 2026 midterm elections.  This is because parts of current District 1 will be combined with a strip of coastal wine country stretching down into Marin County, just north of San Francisco.   The current 1st District is shown in lavender in the map below.  Much of it will be subsumed into a new 2d District, outlined by the dotted orange line. 

Source: We Draw the Lines California, California Legislature
Credits: Jeremia Kimelman, CalMatters

Excerpts from Browning's story follow.  Some highlight rural-urban difference and others highlight the feelings of rural voters in California' north state.  

For decades, residents in the rural north have longed for a political earthquake that would cleave their region out of California and allow them to create their own fabled “State of Jefferson” with conservatives in Southern Oregon. They have increasingly felt underappreciated and misunderstood by the liberal Democrats who run California and dominate the congressional delegation — who, in their telling, siphon away their water and prioritize environmental regulations that undercut farmers’ livelihoods.

Now, they not only lack a conservative State of Jefferson, but their entire region is also likely to lose its Republican congressman and have him replaced by a Democrat after next year’s midterm elections. 

“People in the cities don’t have a clue what it takes to survive out here,” said Terry Williams, a 75-year-old rice and walnut farmer who moved to Richvale in 1974. “I don’t think people that were born and raised in the cities can represent us to the same extent.”

Here's a quote from Gene Lifur, a 52-year-old from Orland, population 8,2998, which claims to be the "Queen Bee Capital" of North America for its role in raising the pollinators:  

There was definitely a feeling of throwing up your hands.  You’re going to lose a lot of the interest for voting in the North State.

Another resident, DaNell Millerburg, 62, who manages the Richvale Cafe, "said the idea of her small town being represented by someone from the Bay Area was 'scary.' ...'They want to save the opossums and the beavers and the snakes.  But it’s not good for the farmers, because those animals dig holes in their ditches.'"

Browning meet many of those he interviewed at the cafe, "a nonprofit kept afloat by locals, who wanted to ensure that the area’s solitary farmers had a place to meet."  Richvale, population 234, is the home of current District 1 Congressperson Doug LaMalfa who asserted, "I understand people here far better than a Bay Area interloper."

Rural residents, Mr. LaMalfa said, grew crops enjoyed by California’s cities but were scorned by those living in cities. He said that Democrats were passing expensive pollution regulations, tearing down crucial dams in the name of protecting salmon populations and introducing wolf packs that attacked their herds. Proposition 50 was the latest affront.

“Their voice is being silenced on how they feel about the issues here, because Newsom and the three-to-one ratio of Democrats wanted to see if they could steal five seats,” Mr. LaMalfa said of the governor and state lawmakers.

* * *

“I’m furious,” [LaMalfa] added, “because I’ve had my people kidnapped from me.”

* * *

The Democrats running against Mr. LaMalfa agreed that rural Californians have been neglected by many in their party. But they also argued that Republicans like Mr. LaMalfa have hurt farmers and agrarian communities with their policies.

Those Democrats include Mike McGuire of Geyserville, in Sonoma County, who until recently was president pro tem of the California Senate, and Audrey Denney, who grew up on a coastal cattle farm but has lived and worked for 20 years in Chico, a college town in the same county (Butte) as Richvale.  Denney has already run twice, unsuccessfully, against LaMalfa.  McGuire's California Senate district stretches from Sonoma County all the way to the Oregon state line, but hugs the coast, a more progressive region.  I have observed over the years that he takes the needs of his region's very rural reaches very seriously.  Read about that here and here.  Denney will presumably vie to represent the new 1st District, and McGuire will seek to represent the new 2d District.  

I'll close with this quote from another resident, Chris Culp, 62, a retired Navy officer, who Browning found at the Last Stand Bar and Grill:  

Somebody from Santa Rosa, Oakland, they’re not going to understand, and honestly I don’t think they’re going to take the time to get educated about what’s going on up here.  We’ve got different needs than the people in the dense cities and the coast.

Other posts highlighting the different needs of rural and urban California and long-standing agitation related to the would-be State of Jefferson are here.   

More on gerrymandering and its impact on far nothern California

Several stories have been published about California's Proposition 50, which would permit re-districting immediately, between the decennial censuses.  It's a topic I first blogged about here, in late August.   

The first is Jeanne Kuang's deeply reported story for CalMatters, from mid-September.  

The headline is a telling, "These rural Californians want to secede. Newsom’s maps would pair them with Bay Area liberals."  Here's the lede: 

Over several rivers and through even more woods, flags advocating secession from California flutter above hills dotted with cattle, which outnumber people at least sixfold.

This ranching region with a libertarian streak might have more in common with Texas than the San Francisco Bay Area.

But it’s not Texas. Five hours northeast of Sacramento on an easy day, Modoc County and its roughly 8,500 residents are still — begrudgingly — in California.

And California is dominated by Democrats, who are embroiled in a tit-for-tat redistricting war with the Lone Star State that will likely force conservative Modoc County residents to share a representative in Congress with parts of the Bay Area.

Modoc County and two neighboring red counties would be shifted into a redrawn district that stretches 200 miles west to the Pacific Coast and then south, through redwoods and weed farms, to include some of the state’s wealthiest communities, current Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman’s home in San Rafael and the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge, all in uber-liberal Marin County.

“It’s like a smack in the face,” said local rancher Amie Martinez. “How could you put Marin County with Modoc County? It’s just a different perspective.”

* * * 

Though Modoc County supervisors have declared their opposition to Prop. 50, there’s little else locals can do. Registered Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats statewide nearly two-to-one. Rural residents represent an even smaller share of the state’s electorate.

“It’ll be very hard to fight back,” said Tim Babcock, owner of a general store in Lassen County, a similar and neighboring community that’s proposed to be drawn into a different liberal-leaning congressional district. “Unless we split the state. And that’s never going to happen.”

Here are some key quotes highlighting the rural implications of the proposed redistricting.    

County Supervisor Geri Byrne said she knew it was a longshot — but thought, “when’s the last time The New York Times called someone in Modoc County?”

Byrne, who is also chair of the Rural County Representatives of California and of the upcoming National Sheepdog Finals, said the secession resolution was about sending a message.

“It wasn’t conservative-liberal,” [Byrne] said. “It was the urban-rural divide, and that’s what this whole Prop. 50 is about.”  

Even a Democratic resident running a produce pickup center in Alturas observed that her neighbors are “not that Trumpy.” Instead, there’s a pervasive general distrust of politics on any side of the aisle.

* * *

Flourishing wolves are a problem

At the moment, all anyone can talk about is the wolves.

The apex predator returned to California more than a decade ago, a celebrated conservation success story after they were hunted to near-extinction in the western U.S. Now they’re flourishing in the North State — and feeding on cattle, throwing ranching communities on edge. Federally, they’re still listed as an endangered species under the landmark conservation law signed by President Richard Nixon.
Under California rules, ranchers can only use nonlethal methods to deter the wolves, like electrifying fencing or hiring ranch hands to guard their herds at night.

* * * 

Few Republicans in the state and nation understand “public lands districts,” said Modoc County Supervisor Shane Starr, a Republican who used to work in LaMalfa’s office. “Doug’s the closest thing we’ve got.”

“This whole thing with DEI and ‘woke culture’ and stuff,” he said, referring to the diversity and inclusion efforts under attack from the right, “it’s like, yeah, we had a kid who goes to the high school who dyed his hair a certain color. Cool, we don’t care. All of these things going on at the national stage are not based in our reality whatsoever.”

At a cattlemen’s dinner in Alturas one recent evening, Martinez said she once ran into LaMalfa at a local barbecue fundraiser for firefighters and approached him about a proposal to designate parts of northwestern Nevada as protected federal wilderness. Her 700-person town of Cedarville in east Modoc County is 10 minutes from the state line.

Martinez worried about rules that prohibit driving motorized vehicles in wilderness, which she said would discourage the hunters who pass through during deer season and book lodging in town. Even though the proposal was in Nevada, LaMalfa sent staff, including Starr, to meetings to raise objections on behalf of the small town, she said.

“I know we won’t get that kind of representation from Marin County,” she said.

Reached by phone, Huffman defended his qualifications to represent the region.

Adding Siskiyou, Shasta and Modoc counties would mean many more hours of travel to meet constituents, but Huffman pointed out his district is already huge, covering 350 miles of the North Coast. And it includes many conservative-leaning, forested areas in Trinity and Del Norte counties. A former attorney for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, he’s the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, where [first district congresswoman Doug] LaMalfa also sits.

Then there is this more recent story by Bloomberg's Maxwell Adler, which features the following lede: 

California’s Marin and Modoc counties lie more than 200 miles apart — and several worlds away.

Modoc, tucked into the state’s remote northeast corner, lacks a single traffic light. Many of its 8,500 residents once lost internet service after squirrels chewed through a fiber-optic cable. Ranchers fear wolf attacks on cattle.

Tech-industry wealth, meanwhile, has transformed Marin from a bohemian refuge outside San Francisco into one of California’s richest communities. Traffic regularly jams the freeway into the city, and residents fight over efforts to build more homes.

On the same day, the New York Times published this story about Kevin Kiley, a Republican congressman from greater Sacramento who represents a very rural district stretching down the eastern Sierra.  He would almost certainly lose his seat if redistricting occurs.   

Here's coverage from the California Farm Bureau, "In Rural Districts, Backlash Mounts Against Prop. 50." 

In contrast to these rural-focused stories, Politico published this September 7, 2025 piece  covering the California GOP meeting.  It does not even acknowledge the concern regarding lack of representation of rural concerns.  It includes no use of the word "rural." 

Will proposed California redistricting undermine rural interests?

The answer most folks from rural California would give to this question is "of course."  But I want to look a bit deeper than that in this post and consider how it is that rural interests will lose ground if gerrymandering runs amok in California, depriving rural interests of the representation they currently enjoy in the U.S. Congress.  I'll begin with some of the coverage of the proposed re-districting, coverage that does justice to the rural concern. 

The most comprehensive coverage I've seen was in the Sacramento Bee, where Nicole Nixon and Lia Russell reported from Redding.  The August 22 headline was "What’s in a district? Rural Californians react to Democratic gerrymandering play."  Here's an excerpt that provides the big picture on what's being proposed: 

To help Democrats win, the proposed congressional map would carve up rural Northern California areas — which are heavily represented by Republicans — and put them in bluer urban and suburban districts.

State Sen. Megan Dahle, R-Bieber, called the proposed map “a straightforward attempt to disenfranchise rural voters.”

Dahle represents the North State, with many of the same constituents as LaMalfa. The proposed map creates more compact congressional districts by breaking up large rural ones to include voters in more urban areas. In particular, it would carve up two sweeping districts in Northern California into four new ones, each with an arm stretching to the coast or into Sacramento-area cities, to include higher concentrations of Democratic voters.

“Nobody who claims to represent rural California can support this,” Dahle said.

Newsom’s office declined to comment on the consequences for rural Californians and directed questions to members of the Legislature.

Nixon and Russell also quote Darek Velez, who recently moved to Redding, the county seat of Shasta County and long the largest city in the "north state."  Velez calls himself a centrist. 

Redding is its own area. It’s been fought for. People have a lot of pride in calling it the North State up here.

* * * 

Redding, which often serves as a stopping point for visitors on their way to Mount Shasta and Lassen National Park, would be included in the new second district — a cockeyed gerrymander that would bring conservative corners of the North State together with northern parts of Marin and Sonoma counties, one of the wealthiest and most liberal areas in the state.

The journalists call Velez a "rural resident" (a stretch given the 95,000 population of Redding), and quote him as saying the new maps would take away "rural voters’ 'freedom of speech.'"  Here's a further quote from Velez:  

To change our minds and call (the North State) the mid-state just doesn’t really reflect what everybody wants.  And I think people come up to Redding too from all over the state that like the solitude and what it represents up here. Going to Marin County, like being part of San Francisco, doesn’t make sense.

Nixon and Russell also quote Congressman Doug LaMalfa, who has represented CA-01 since 2013 and whose seat would become more more competitive:

So now, as a Bay Area representative, are you going to care that much that the wolves are devastating the wildlife and the livestock in Modoc and Sierra and Lassen County?  Are they going to care that much? Or are they going to listen to Marin constituents and say, ‘Well, wolves are great. They’re wonderful.’

James Gallagher, Republican Assemblyman from Yuba City and chair of the Republican caucus, has also focused on the consequences of the re-districting for rural Californians.  Indeed, Gallagher has called for a "two-state solution" that would divide California.  

My Rural Travelogue (Part XLII): Promoting local food, including wild edibles, in Japan

Ad for ice cream at a Teshikaga (Hokkaido) ramen house
features a photo of the farm family (4 children!) who produce the milk--
and, of course, one of the cows.

During my recent trip to Japan, I noticed a lot of promotion and advertising that played up the origin of food--usually its local origin. In this photo-dense post, I'm going to feature some of what I saw.  (All photos are (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025) 

I first noticed the attention to local food in Kanazawa, on the west coast of Honshu, where the breakfast place mats at our Hyatt Centric hotel noted local milk products and featured the label, "Kanazawa Local Style" (lower left quadrant).  It mentioned local eggs and some other local produce.  

Breakfast placemat Hyatt Centric Kanazawa

Then, in Osaka, which is known as the food capital of the country, the cafe in a private library touted dairy products from Hokkaido, the northernmost island.  When I asked why an establishment in the southern part of the main island, Honshu, was promoting products from the north, I was told that Hokkaido has more space than Honshu--it's less crowded--and thus most of the nation's milk and dairy products are produced there.  Hokkaido seems to be associated with farm-fresh food, especially dairy.

Live chickens outside a restaurant in Osaka; 
now that's local food

The next week, I visited northern Hokkaido and saw for myself many dairy farms.  Near Kushiro and the surrounding marshlands, which are habitat for the iconic Japanese Cranes as well as dairy cows, the two species often share space.  I also saw in that region greenhouses where strawberries were grown.

To the northwest of the Kushiro area, closer to Shire and en route to Shiretoko National Park, I was driven past fields of yams and sugar beets.  My driver pointed out a sugar beet processing facility.  

Crops near Memanbetsu airport, northeastern Hokkaido. 

Then, between Shiretoko and Memanbetsu, I saw apple and cherry orchards.  A wild fox crossed my taxi's path very near there, just a few miles from the Memanbetsu airport.  This seems noteworthy because I'd not seen a fox in the far more wild and remote Shiretoko National Park. 

Fried sweet potato balls are associated with Bihoro Pass, above Lake Kussharo, and are sold at the roadside station there.  I can attest to their deliciousness, but also their greasiness.  

Raised beds for student gardening at a primary school in Wakato, on the shores of Lake Kussharo.

This woman is preparing bracken, a wild, fern-like plant, outside a restaurant at Lake Akan. I noticed a significant focus on wild edibles, including fiddle-head fern, at restaurants in Japan, especially when outside major cities. I had wild edibles as part of tempura meals in Takayama and on Hokkaido. My Hokkaido guide and drivers also pointed out to me places (some at relatively high elevation) where wild edibles were growing. Collecting these foods seemed almost a hobby, especially among older residents, as my Hokkaido guide and drivers were.

Below is a Japanese Crane across the road from the cattle pictured in the lower photo.  These were taken  near Tsurui village, in northeastern Hokkaido.  I found that the iconic cranes frequently occupied the same habitat as cattle in the region's marshes.  In fact, a barely visible crane is behind the cattle in the lower photo.  The third photo below is of a Sapporo Co-op delivery truck in the small town of Utoro, at the entrance to Shiretoko National Park. Sapporo is the largest city and seat of Hokkaido Prefecture, which is co-terminus with the Island of Hokkaido.  The co-op sells food and daily essentials, e.g., detergent, toiletries.

I enjoyed a lovely lunch at Heart 'n Tree guest house and restaurant in Tsurui Village, Hokkaido, where I was served this varied and colorful appetizer plate (above).  I also had a delicious soup curry with shrimp.  Pizza and a pork stew were among the other entrees on offer.  Among the items you can get for breakfast is "fresh squeezed milk."  

I also took a cheese-making class at Heart 'n Tree, where I made string cheese with the owner, Sachiko.  

Photos above from Heart 'n Tree, Tsurui, Hokkaido, Japan. 

The Heart 'n Tree website says it is "a supporter of dairy farmers" and that its "menu lets you enjoy fully the deliciousness of milk and vegetables."  

Here is a placard promoting local dairy products, with Holstein cow stylized art, at a hotel buffet in Utoro, near entrance to Shiretoko National Park.

These Okhotsk Bean Factory products were for sale in Utoro, near Shiretoko National Park, Hokkaido.  (This area is adjacent to the Sea of Okhotsk). I saw the storage tower for this company near the Memanbetsu Airport when I was leaving the region. 

My prior post about my May 2025 trip to Japan is here.

California deploys new plan to prevent wolf attacks in north state

Grey wolves returned to California more than a decade ago, and conflicts between ranchers and wolves are becoming more common, especially in far northern California, where most of the state's wolf packs are.  Jack Dolan of the Los Angeles Times reported in April on wolf attacks on livestock in far northern California here, and a recent story about Shasta County declaring a state of emergency over wolf attacks is here.  (Prior posts about wolves in California are here.)  

Now, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has announced plan to help ranchers, who have lost 58 livestock to wolves in the past year.  Here's an excerpt from Manola Secaira's story for Capital Public Radio: 

The CDFW’s plan, guided by endangered species regulations, currently only allows ranchers to ward off wolves using non-lethal tactics, like making loud noises,shining bright lights or electric fencing. But Weston Roberti and other ranchers say this isn’t working.

* * * 

The state compensates ranchers for proven losses. But Axel Hunnicut, the state’s gray wolf coordinator, says this uncertainty still carries weight for ranchers.

“You could imagine someone wondering, like, ‘Shoot, what is my future?’” Hunnicut says. “Especially when that compensation pot is not well funded.”

And it’s not the only cost. Hunnicut says wolf attacks can stress out cattle. That can lead to weight loss, and fewer calves, which also hurts ranchers’ bottom line.

* * * 

Although ranchers aren’t currently able to harm wolves when scaring them off, that could change. Earlier this year, the state’s conservation plan for gray wolves entered into its second phase. As part of that shift, the state now has the option to allow more aggressive tactics, called “injurious harassment.”

“Injurious harassment means the animal can actually be harmed,” Hunnicut says. “Not harmed to the point that it could be lethal, but harmed in that it would get a negative stimulus.”

He says that could include the use of rubber bullets and bear spray.

Amaroq Weiss, the Center for Biological Diversity’s senior wolf advocate, says she understands the need to move to more aggressive tactics – but only if ranchers have already tried the non-harmful ones.

“For me, what's most important is to first of all, not have that be your first reaction,” she says.

* * *

[California] is home to nearly 40 million people. Kaggie Orrick, a researcher with UC Berkeley’s California Wolf Project, says this makes California a unique case when dealing with wolf conflicts.

“There’s a lot more people here. There’s a different prey base. There’s a lot less open area,” Orrick says. “While we are able to draw support and understanding from other states that do have wolves … California might be a little bit different.”

Since April, four counties in Northern California have declared a state of emergency due to the increasing presence of wolves: Modoc, Sierra, Plumas and Shasta.

Paul Roenn, a supervisor with Sierra County, says some community members have reported seeing wolves walking around outside their homes.

“The interactions have escalated to the point where you can see that it's going to become a public safety issue,” Roen says. “We have to get some expanded deterrence because what we're doing isn't working.”

* * * 

On June 9, the CDFW launched a summer strike team as part of a new pilot effort to curb gray wolf attacks on livestock. The agency says the team will provide round-the-clock aid for ranchers experiencing frequent conflicts with wolves. They’ll also be providing training and help livestock producers create management plans to mitigate future conflicts.

The pilot also allows CDFW staff to use more aggressive tools when handling wolves, like the rubber bullets and bear spray, although these options are still currently unavailable to ranchers.

Here is the Sacramento Bee's coverage of the new CDFW plan.  Read here about how Colorado is dealing with inevitable conflicts between ranchers and wolves.  

Wolves in Colorado

In the 1940s the Grey Wolf was hunted to local extinction in Colorado by locals who were fearful of the dangers wolves poised to livestock, and for the overhunting of Elk populations by the wolves. 

80 years later, in 2020, Colorado voters in a close election voted to reintroduce wolves. Proposition 114, which aimed to reintroduce wolves was passed by a split of 50.91/49.09. It was not the first attempt to reintroduce the apex predator to the centennial state. Previous measures to bring wolves back to Colorado had failed in the years prior, crucially in 2016 when the Colorado Parks and Wildlife commission had voted against reintroducing wolves (citing the impact it might have on big game hunting and ranching in the state). The election was crucial and historical- it was the first time a state, not the federal government, had taken steps to reintroduce wolves into their natural habitat. 

Wolves had already been in Colorado when Proposition 114 was passed. In 2021, a few months after the measure, but well before the first reintroduction took place, Colorado reported that the first grey wolf pups were born in the state since the 1940s (the pack had migrated from Wyoming). In the winter of 2020/2021, the state also had its first confirmed killing of a livestock by a wolf since the 1940s, due to the pack that migrated from Wyoming.

The 2020 vote on reintroducing the wolves, in a presidential election year, was the closest statewide vote of the night. Other results from the night showed big partisan swings that made it clear Colorado was now a strong blue state-the presidential election went 55.40/41.90% in favor of President Biden and the senate race went 53.5/44.2 in favor of Democrat John Hickenlooper. 

But the wolf measure did not follow the general trends of partisanship. Instead, it followed geography. On the mostly rural Western Slope (population around 590,000), the only counties that had a majority of votes in favor of the wolves reintroduction were Pitkin, Summit, San Miguel, San Juan, and La Plata. This is in stark contrast to the presidential race where 15 counties went for Biden.  Further, across the 5 counties that voted for Biden and the wolves on the Western Slope, the wolves measure on average lost around 10 points of support compared to the President. There were no counties on the rural Eastern Plains (population around 160,000) that voted in favor of the wolves.

This degree of separation between urban and rural carried clear implications in this vote. The rural areas are where the wolves will be reintroduced. 

Colorado immediately set to work on how to devise a plan to reintroduce the wolves. It involved the recommendations of two groups-a stakeholder group (comprised of ranchers, outfitters, and others speaking for communities in Colorado affected) and a technical working group (composed of wildlife experts and professionals). Colorado state officials took rural concerns seriously when it came to reintroducing the wolves, not just relying on experts but also those in communities affected. Adam Gall, a member of the stakeholder group, gave high praise to Colorado’s work, saying that Colorado Parks and Wildlife had done their due diligence in gathering diverse opinions for the stakeholder group and was respectful when it came to hearing how the stakeholders wanted reintroduction to take place. 

On Dec. 18th, 2023, three years after voting for the measure, Colorado Parks and Wildlife released the first five wolves into Colorado on the Western Slope. Colorado then released five more wolves four days later, again on the Western Slope. The state plans to release ten to fifteen wolves each year for the next three to five years, having just released the second set in January 2025.

The wolves in Colorado raise major questions about the role of rural areas, and the burdens placed on them. As one rancher put it, “Colorado livestock producers are now carrying the burden for America’s interest in wolves.” Wolves however provide many benefits to ecosystems in rural areas. Reintroducing wolves, as an apex predator, means that local prey populations are likely to not reach overcapacity, allowing fauna to flourish, and will allow other species to return to areas. 

As we go into this new era of climate change, destruction from wildfires, efforts to conserve nature, and declining wildlife populations-it seems more and more likely that conservation efforts will involve urban areas voting to pass measures that will need to be enforced in rural ones. It seems crucial to follow in Colorado’s footsteps here. State’s must make sure that rural communities' voices are heard, since they are unlikely to hold as much sway at the ballot box; yet are likely to hold up the hard end of the bargain, such as living with wolves at the doorstep. 

Literary Rualism (Part XLVIII): Barbara Kingsolver's introduction to Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac

Aldo Leopold Shack, near Baraboo, Sauk County, WI
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

A few weeks ago, on a field trip from the Rural Sociological Society's Annual Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, I visited Aldo Leopold's shack in Sauk County, Wisconsin.  This is where Leopold's book, A Sand County Almanac, is set. Leopold wanted land in one of the sand counties, so designated, because the soil had become so degraded by how it had been farmed.   What I want to do here is highlight some bits from the new introduction by Barbara Kingsolver:  

After a reverent passage on wild places, [Leopold] concludes: “It is here that we seek—and still find—our meat from God.” The use of “meat” and “God” in a metaphor for deep satisfaction might irk some modern environmentalists, but the words will find purchase in the hearts of rural readers who are weary of being maligned for their loyalties to meat and God. Weary, also, of urban land-saviors who look to nature for spiritual balm or recreation, and presume a moral high ground over the folks who literally owe their survival to the land. People who hunt and fish to help stock their freezers are astute naturalists, of necessity, and most farmers are well aware that the fields and forests they steward are home not just to crops but to bluebirds and foxes, spring wildflowers and winter wrens. It’s hard to endure ham-fisted judgments against livestock slaughter and crop-spraying from people who have no fields to shepherd or weeds to fight. 

We listen and take our truths—all of us—from people we trust, who know us and have our interests at heart. This is a built-in bias of the human psyche, and the crux of the fix we’re in as we stand in nations divided against themselves. As long as we live in entirely separate worlds, without comprehension of the others’ language or daily grinds, the door between us is sealed. Not a word will pass from one side to the other. 

I’m unusually preoccupied with this deadlock, as an environmentalist who is also a country girl, raised in rural Kentucky, living now on a farm in the Appalachian Mountains. I love this landscape and my neighbors, but I can tell you that it has never been harder to be a rural person in America. Employment is scarce, schools are under-resourced, doctors and other crucial services are overstretched or nonexistent. The main streets of our little towns are rows of shuttered local businesses, all bankrupted by internet sales and box stores. Farm incomes have bottomed out, and just about every economic mover, from industrial employers to airline hubs to professional baseball leagues, have pulled out of the nation’s less-populous regions to concentrate their benefits in cities. Out here in the heartlands we’re still raising kids and crops to feed a nation’s appetites for food and labor, but we’re feeling pretty lonely about it. And invisible. Some 40 percent of Americans live in places that aren’t cities, but we show up virtually nowhere in American TV shows, movies, or major journalism. These are made in cities, by city people. If rural folk appear in mainstream culture, it’s generally in a voyeuristic hit-and-run piece on addiction and poverty, or a degrading caricature intended as entertainment. 

Imagine, then, the novelty of reading A Sand County Almanac, a rural man’s earnest, exultant accounting of his life in the country. He’s not singing his praises to some untouched parcel of pricey wilderness real estate; it’s just a worn-out little farm. Most of its native glory was driven out by previous owners who overcropped its topsoil down to naked sand, then abandoned it with debts to the bank. (xv-xvii)

And I love this next excerpt for its explicit reference to socioeconomic class: 

A written voice is an artifice, of course, even in nonfiction. It occurred to me to wonder whether this book’s class-crossing accessibility was a conscious, crafted choice. A look into his archives reveals a more complicated Aldo Leopold than the cheerful fellow who greets us from his “sand farm.” As an outdoorsy Iowa boy, he shipped off to the newly created forestry school at Yale, then wrote wistful letters home describing the nearby woods where he sought refuge from the classroom. And as early as that, he sounded less like a duck hunter than a sophisticated naturalist. From there, a forestry career took him to a wild and woolly West (in 1909, Arizona was not yet a state) where he climbed mountains on foot and horseback, carrying a sidearm as protection against bears and wolves. He assessed oaks and pines for the board-feet of lumber they contained, and he gradually came to see the forest behind the trees, with unprecedented clarity. Rising through the ranks of the U.S. Forest Service, he developed a comprehensive land-management program for the Grand Canyon and other important wilderness areas, and he applied his remarkable insights on predator-prey interactions to new theories of game and fish management. Eventually he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin as its first professor of wildlife management, to spend the rest of his life as a conservationist, educator, and founding father of modern environmental ethics and the science of ecology. It is remarkably to his credit that Leopold compressed this master class for all time into readable prose that glows with ease and optimism. He knew that compromises between humans and our habitat would never be simple. (pp. xviii-xix). 

The outhouse, so well designed that Leopold 
called it the Parthenon.

Then there's this about the character of rural folks and their relationship to urban folks: 

His gift was to wear his rural roots and humility on his sleeve, and respect the full range of his audience, wherever they lived—a knack that we modern environmentalists have largely lost. He knew how to talk to the good ol’ boys. 

In the heat of modern culture wars, a voice like this could risk getting canceled. Readers quick to judge might just see guns and camo. Some of his language might mark him as old-school, a product of the same era as the cabal of elderly men who now impose mine-and-drill politics on many nations—that is, the time when the earth’s resources seemed in endless supply. Like those men, Leopold was well-churched in the notion of earth-as-property. But unlike them, he found his way to a nuanced idea of the planet as an autonomous collection of lives. He managed to be more inclusive than the best of us.  (p. xix).  

 * * * 

For the urban reader, I hope you will let down your guard with this man as he sits on his rock in the stream, waiting for his trout to rise. If you take him for a redneck, listen anyway, because he’s wiser than most any two of us put together. He may help you see past the frustrating divides that plague the awfullest failure of our day, as we try to reconcile human subsistence with the needs of our damaged biological home. If you’ve lost all hope of finding a common language for that conversation, you might well find it here. (p xx) 

It's a fitting introduction for a classic and a staple of the conservation movement.  The book was first published in 1949, a year after Leopold died helping fight a wildfire near his shack--a shack which, by the way, had been the chicken coop for he farm's prior owner.  That owner had gotten so frustrated with trying to cultivate the land, that he burned his house down before selling the property. 

The politics of guns in Maine, before and after a mass murder

New York Times screenshot from Oct. 27, 2023

Maine has been very much in the headlines for nearly a week, prompted by the nation's worst mass murder of 2023.  It began at about 7 pm Eastern time on Wednesday night, October 25, when Robert Card, 40, entered a bowling alley in Lewiston (population 37,000) with a semi-automatic weapon and began shooting.  Less than half an hour later, Card entered a bar and grill and used his weapon to kill and wound many others.   

Lewiston, with a population of 37,000, is the state's second largest city (after Portland), and it sits across the river from Auburn, population 24,000, and the county seat of Androscoggin County.  Based on the size of the population cluster, the area hardly sounds rural, but rural is a descriptor that's often been used in coverage of these events.  More often still, I have heard the word "forested" used, which is perhaps more salient with regard to the hunting theme, which I'll unpack below. 

I didn't know much about Maine's gun laws when this disaster began to unfold in the media, but we were soon to learn more.  In short, Maine's gun laws are quite lax, in part because of the state's culture, which values self-reliance and enjoys hunting, two things that happen to be related, to at least some degree.  

In the days since the mass murder, hunting has been very much a part of the story of how officials have responded to this tragedy.   For example, even after the shelter-in-place order was lifted on Friday, hunting was prohibited in the towns of Lewiston, Lisbon, Bowdoin, and Monmouth.  As the New York Times reported (see screenshot above), deer-hunting firearms season had been scheduled to begin on Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023, but it was initially postponed after Wednesday night's events--at least in the Lewiston-Auburn area. 

New York Times Screenshot, Oct. 27, 2023
following the discovery of gunman Robert Card's body 

We've also seen plenty of mentions of the state's "gun culture" in coverage of Wednesday night's events.  One New York Times headline was "After Shooting, Maine Senators in Spotlight on Guns," which included this tidbit.   

The carnage in Lewiston came as a shock to Maine, which the F.B.I., in a statistical update on crime Monday, called the safest state in the country. It also has one of the largest percentages of gun ownership.

The story quotes U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine):  

Our state has a long history of responsible gun ownership.

But the most momentous political statement about guns came from Maine's congressman for the state's second district, Jared Golden.  That district is massive, stretching from Lewiston all the way to the Canadian border.  (The state's only other district, the 1st,  includes Portland, just 40 miles south of Lewiston, and points south to Massachusetts). Some would say that Golden, a former Marine, is barely a Democrat.  Certainly, he is a centrist who has straddled a fine line between the two parties--and between rural and urban interests--with his constituents.  That is reflected in these August comments about student loan forgiveness, which he vigorously opposed as in the interests of elites and not in the interests of working-class Mainers who choose not to go to college.  

Well, less than 24 hours after the shooting, Golden, who grew up in Lewiston and attended Bates College there, grabbed the headlines by doing an about-face on his previous position on assault weapons.  As the New York Times reported it, Golden "stunned constituents in his traditionally pro-gun district by "declaring that it was time for him “to take responsibility” for his “failure” to back a ban on assault weapons, “like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing.”  The full comments, as reported in the (Portland) Press-Herald follow: 

I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war, like the assault rifle used to carry out this crime. The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the U.S. Congress to ban assault rifles, like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine.

For the good of my community. I will work with any colleague to get this done in the time that I have left in Congress.

Interestingly, Senator King  acknowledged Congressman Golden's "courage" in shifting his position on assault weapons, but neither he nor Maine's other U.S. Senator, Susan Collins, changed theirs.  In this NPR story, Collins is quoted as suggesting that the state's "yellow flag" law should have caused the shooter's guns to be seized.  We've since learned more about the failure of officials to act adequately on multiple reports that Card was having mental health challenges.

Back to hunting:  It's interesting that a significant aspect of the local news once Card's body was found Friday night was that hunting could resume.  It merited this "public security alert."

Screenshot from New York Times breaking news stream
at 7:55 PM Pacific, Oct. 27, 2023

Cellphones across Lewiston area just dinged with a public safety alert:  "The search is over for Mr. Card.  The caution is over.  Hunting may resume."

Postscript:  On Oct. 31, the New York Times reported under the headline, "After Mass Shooting in Maine, No Clarity on Whether Gun Laws will Change."  Here's a salient excerpt: 

Maine has a strong hunting tradition and high rates of gun ownership. It has also long had one of the lowest murder rates in the country. There were 19 firearm homicides in the state last year — just one more than the number of people who were shot to death in Lewiston in a single day. (Guns were also used in 159 suicides last year, out of 183 total gun deaths in the state.)

Unleashing the river: The Klamath dam removal project

The Klamath River, flowing through California and Oregon, is not just a waterway but a lifeline for people and wildlife. For decades, the river has faced numerous challenges, including water diversions, pollution, and four hydroelectric dams that have significantly altered its natural flow. Now, however, a remarkable endeavor is underway to restore the Klamath River to its former glory: The Klamath dam removal project is the largest dam removal in the world. You can read prior posts about the Klamath dams here and here.  

The Klamath River holds deep cultural significance for indigenous tribes, particularly the Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa Valley tribes. These tribes have relied on the Klamath for thousands of years to provide salmon, steelhead, and suckers. However, the river’s ecosystem began to deteriorate in the 20th century with the construction of four hydroelectric dams: Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2, and J.C. Boyle. The four dams were built for power generation and disrupted fish migration, sediment transport, and nutrient cycling. Annelia Hillman, a traditional food coordinator for the Yurok tribe, commented,

This river is our lifeline. It’s the foundation to our people, for our culture.

In 2001, two cases brought national attention to issues between farmers who relied on the dam’s water for irrigation and the Coho salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act: Kandra v. United States and Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations v. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. In these cases, locals and agencies fought over who deserved water during a historically dry year. The Bush administration ultimately sided with the irrigators, diverting water to farmers during the drought year. These water diversions drained critical river habitats, culminating in salmon populations plummeting during the 2002 Fish Kill. Outrage over the 34,000 dead salmon supercharged the campaign to remove the dams (See also Yurok Tribe v. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Baley v. United States).  

Iron Gate Dam (Photo: Katie Eng, September 29, 2023)

Last month, I had the privilege of hearing from the CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, Mark Bransom. Bransom spoke about FERC’s decision to decommission and acknowledge the social and cultural impacts of the dams  for the first time. FERC also banned the Klamath’s hydroelectric license. For more about FERC’s approval of the four dams, see this blog post. 

Today, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation is working to blast holes through the base of the dams, dredging out the accumulated sediment and flushing the sediment and accumulated algae (muck) into the ocean. When I visited the dam last month, Bransom commented, 

The river needs to go through a little more pain before it heals again.

Meanwhile, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation is working closely with indigenous tribes to cultivate seeds from over 90 species of native vegetation. They hope to plant over 19 billion seeds over 8,000 acres. With such aggressive efforts, the Renewal Corporation anticipates a 24-month timeline for the project to be complete, with returning adult salmon inhabiting the river by next October. 

It would be surprising, of course, if a project of this size had zero opposition. In fact, Bransom says the Renewal Corporation has struggled with balancing the interests of environmentalists and local property owners —he calls them the “way of life” people versus the “quality of life” people. 

Driving along the roads of rural Hornbrook, California, where Iron Gate Dam lives, it is typical to see signs protesting the dam’s removal. Bransom says locals are worried about the noise, the future lack of a lake for recreational activities, and the impacts on property values. He spoke about the difficulties in telling senior locals, whose retirement money is wrapped up in their waterfront property, that the removal will affect their estates for the next decade. Bransom believes that ten to fifteen years from now, the Klamath River’s restored wildlife and salmon populations will positively impact property values and the lives of those that’s live beside it.

J.C. Boyle Dam (Photo: Katie Eng, September 30, 2023)

The possibility of salmon returning to the Upper Klamath raises questions about whether the dam removal project could inspire other changes in Oregon and California. One such place a dam removal project may be warranted is the Snake River, where tribes and farmers suffer from water shortages and related environmental issues. Under the direction of his legal team, Bransom was unable to comment on whether he thinks similar efforts would be successful in California. However, Bransom has hope that the lessons learned from the Klamath dam removal project will be used for years and decades to come—including in other locales facing similar quandaries.

Rural responses to corporate utility disasters (Part II): Dam removal lessons from the Klamath

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the August 10 PG&E canal failure that sent millions of pounds of sediment into Butte Creek, a Sacramento River tributary, threatening the spring-run chinook and overall ecosystem health. (You can read my first post about the incident and initial community response here.) I left off wondering how rural community members might reclaim land and power (of both the political and electric varieties) from PG&E and I decided to go looking for ideas based on strategies already employed by rural communities in other places.

Big, investor-owned utilities overlooking rural people and land is nothing new. In the 1930s, while most cities and towns had been electrified, only 10 percent of rural America had been. Utility companies hesitated to extend services to sparsely populated places because they doubted they’d receive a return on investment. More recently, rural California communities have borne the brunt of utility-caused wildfires and rolling blackouts. Utility-owned dams and diversions have caused massive fish kills and other ecosystem impacts in the places rural people call home.

The Butte Creek Canyon community is no exception; the 2018 Camp Fire swept through much of the canyon, diversions and low water flow caused a tragic 2021 fish kill, and now, the 2023 canal breach has further damaged the ecosystem and threatened this year’s salmon. The area has also suffered a number of blackouts; the ones from 2017-19 are documented on this interactive map.

When I began researching how other communities have responded to big utility oversights, I thought perhaps I’d find a blueprint from another rural community that could apply to Butte Creek Canyon. Though I didn’t find anyone who had dealt with the exact combination of dam removal and local energy control (if you know of any, please let me know in the comments), I did find two projects that could serve as inspiration to canyon residents: the Klamath dam removal project and the Blue Lake Rancheria low-carbon microgrid project.

Based on what I’ve learned so far about energy, dams and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), I'll explore how adapting strategies from these projects could benefit the Butte Creek Canyon community over my next two posts.

Let’s begin with the Klamath dam removal project. For a more detailed history and background of the Klamath dams and subsequent removal campaign, you can check out this timeline, listen to this episode of Future Ecologies and read this past blog post. In brief, four dams, Copco 1, Copco 2, Big Bend and Iron Gate were constructed along the Klamath River between 1918 and 1962. The dams prevent(ed) salmon from reaching the Klamath’s upper waters, where they historically spawned. In 2002, diversions for irrigation during a drought year resulted in low water flows and the death of as many as 68,000 salmon. Though the Karuk, Yurok and Klamath tribes opposed the dams since they were constructed, the historic fish kill was the catalyst for a 20-year campaign to remove the dams.

The first and smallest dam, Copco 2, was removed this summer. The remaining three are slated to come down by the end of 2024, according to this CalTrout article. The removal of these four dams constitutes the largest dam removal in U.S. history, so how did it happen? As it turns out, via a corporation.

After years of negotiating and coalition-building, as well as political setbacks, the tribes and other stakeholders formed a not-for-profit corporation, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), to obtain the dam licenses and oversee removal. PacifiCorp, the utility that owned the dams, had acknowledged that the dams were no longer economical but was reticent to take on the liabilities of dam removal. KRRC negotiated a license transfer agreement and, with FERC approval, took ownership of the dams in 2021. To make the transfer possible, the states of California and Oregon agreed to serve as co-licensees.

The story of the Butte Creek Canyon dams has many parallels to the Klamath River, albeit on a smaller scale. Both are stories of Indigenous people, salmon, old dams, and corporate utility neglect. Butte Creek sits on the ancestral homelands of the Mechoopda people. Every spring, the river and its people welcome one of the last wild populations of Central Valley spring-run chinook salmon, but the salmon have been threatened by a hydroelectric project. And, like PacifiCorp did for the Klamath dams, PG&E has conceded that its DeSabla-Centerville hydroelectric project, of which the failed canal and Centerville Dam are a part of, doesn’t make economical sense. Yet it has not seriously pursued decommissioning and removing the project.

PG&E did attempt to withdraw from the project in 2017, but the FERC denied permission to do so until a notice period had been held to allow the public an opportunity to express interest in acquiring the license. PG&E then continued to apply for annual licenses to operate the project. The utility has recently applied to transfer the project to its subsidiary, Pacific Generation, according to an action alert from advocacy group Friends of Butte Creek.

Friends of Butte Creek is encouraging advocates to write to the FERC, urging them to disallow the transfer and require PG&E decommission the project and remove the Centerville dam, or to alternatively require Pacific Generation to do so after a transfer. I agree that PG&E should absolutely take responsibility for its actions and remove the outdated and harmful infrastructure on its own.

However, if that effort fails, I wonder if a not-for-profit corporation created by canyon residents, tribal members and conservation groups like CalTrout might succeed in an endeavor similar to the KRRC. By creating a non-profit to obtain the hydroelectric project licenses and remove the harmful infrastructure, community stakeholders could forge coalitions, protect the environment, return agency to rural communities and save the Butte Creek salmon.

In my next post of the series, I’ll write about how an entity like this could also provide safer, more reliable energy, taking cues from municipal power districts and tribal microgrid projects.

Rural responses to corporate utility disasters: Reimagining the future of Butte Creek Canyon after PG&E canal breach

Residents of Butte County, California are no strangers to PG&E-caused disasters. The latest of the vast corporate utility’s mishaps occurred August 10, when a breach of Butte Canal sent millions of pounds of sediment careening into Butte Creek, which runs through Butte Creek Canyon. The sediment turned the water orange and silty, threatening the survival of this year's salmon class and causing deep concern for ecosystem and human health.

The breach happened above Helltown and Centerville, two very small, unincorporated canyon communities about a half hour northeast of Chico and located on the ancestral homelands of the Mechoopda tribe.

I first learned about the breach through the Instagram of a Helltown local, who posted devastating videos of the murky orange waters and documented river otters desperately trying to find the end of the pollution. In the weeks since, I’ve observed that much of the clean up effort responding to this catastrophe is coming from rural canyon residents who have a deep connection with the land and water in their backyards.

For many canyon residents, their biggest concern revolves around the creek’s salmon population. Butte Creek, a 93-mile tributary of the Sacramento River, supports the state’s largest population of wild spring-run Chinook salmon and is one of only three tributaries that still support a self-sustaining salmon population. This makes the creek critical to saving the state’s endangered salmon population. The conservation group California Trout explained in a blog post about the incident:

Sediment in a stream is natural, but if sediment levels get too high, like they are currently at Butte Creek, it can be extremely dangerous for fish and other wildlife. Sediment blocks light that allows algae to grow, harms fish gills, fills or blocks important habitats, and stops fish from seeing well enough to move around or feed.

CalTrout also noted that the impacts on fish and other wildlife can’t be fully assessed until the creek flushes out.

The more I learn about the canal breach, the sadder and angrier I am, feelings I know are shared by many other people from the area.

Allen Harthorn, a canyon resident and founder of advocacy group Friends of Butte Creek, told ChicoSol, “This event is essentially an underwater Camp Fire — there’s no fire, but it’s killing everything in its path.”

Harthorn is referencing a devastating wildfire that burned much of Butte Creek Canyon in 2018. State fire investigators determined it was started by PG&E transmission lines and in litigation over the fire, PG&E settled with the town of Paradise and Butte County for $522 million in 2019. It also settled with individual fire victims from the Camp Fire and other Northern California fires for a total of $13.5 billion. You can read more about the Camp Fire here. 

Community frustration with PG&E is palpable (and aligns with statewide trends). I’ve heard and seen it voiced by residents in comments on news articles and social media posts about the breach, in my own conversations with friends and family in the area, and by Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who facetiously referred to PG&E as his “favorite punching bag” in the recent community meeting discussed below. A Friends of Butte Creek post about the incident reads, “We must not let PG&E continue to get away with destroying our watershed. The District Attorney and California Department of Fish and Wildlife are investigating the incident and potential legal actions are possible.”

As I see it, this anger, alongside hope, is fueling powerful community response and creating opportunity for meaningful change.

Following the breach, canyon residents organized a community meeting at the old Centerville Schoolhouse on August 24, and the community showed up in force. A recording of the meeting can be viewed here.

One of the organizers set the tone of the meeting in two meaningful ways. First, she asked everyone who was angry about the incident to raise their hand, her own hand going up first. With those feelings acknowledged, she asked for the meeting to center on solutions, rather than grievances. She also asked explicitly for people to leave partisan politics at the door. I’ve long felt that environmental action and sense of place can transcend partisanship (and the urban-rural divide), and it was refreshing to see that play out.

The meeting then turned toward understanding the problem and thinking about solutions. He-Lo Ramirez, environmental director and member of the Mechoopda Tribe shared the significance of salmon and the Butte Creek Canyon watershed to the Mechoopda people. A video created by canyon residents showed the site and effects of the breach. Harthorn talked about the creek’s salmon runs and the history of the canal project, which is connected to the DeSabla-Centerville hydroelectric project.

Harthorn envisions decommissioning the hydroelectric project and replacing it with a fish restoration project. He noted in the meeting that even PG&E has recognized the power project makes no economic sense. PG&E even tried to withdraw its long-term licensing application for the project in 2017, but the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denied that request. Since 2009, PG&E has operated with yearly permits.

Harthorn talked about how removing the energy project would allow for the removal of power lines as well. This would benefit the area via less clear-cutting around lines and reduced fire risk, a topic of equally great concern to canyon folks.

Ramsey promised accountability and talked about litigation options, before welcoming some "boots-on-the-ground" PG&E officials to the podium to talk about their response to the breach. The PG&E representatives at the meeting voiced their own deep concerns over the breach and emphasized the utility's prompt response. Residents were respectful of the PG&E employees but insisted on corporate accountability.

As residents move forward with holding PG&E responsible and advocating for solutions that protect the canyon and fish, I’m curious what roadblocks stand in their way and what a reimagined and more sustainable future for the canyon might look like. Can community-based solutions, or even community-operated power, reduce both stream pollution and wildfire risk? In my next post, I’ll explore ways other rural communities are responding to big utilities mistreating or overlooking them and how those responses might transfer to Butte Creek advocacy.