Stop Clearcutting CA

Stop Clearcutting CA Join Sierra Club's campaign to stop clearcutting in California's forests and protect old growth and mature forests on public land.

Stop Clearcutting CA is Sierra Club's campaign to end clearcutting in California. Our page also seeks to provide information and photos related to other Sierra Club initiatives, such as the recent initiative to protect old growth and mature forests on federal land. The clearcutting of hundreds of thousands of acres of forests is harming water quality, forest health and communities throughout the s

tate. Help protect California's communities and natural resources by ending this outdated and destructive practice once and for all. Please JOIN our Addup Campaign and SIGN our Petition to Gov. Newsom at https://addup.sierraclub.org/campaigns/take-action-tell-gavin-newsom-to-stop-clearcutting-in-california. Also, sign up for our newsletter at: https://goo.gl/forms/yTEMsYZkAstXpYdz1

Learn more and find out about other events and actions you can take at:
https://linktr.ee/noclearcuts

06/11/2026

Part 1 in a 3 part series:

As said by Olivia Anderson in “Reducing Wildfire Risk: A Practitioner's Perspective,” “Without understanding how fire spreads through communities, it's very difficult to prioritize the right actions to reduce that risk.”

In this forum, we learn from MO's Defensible Space that fast-moving wildfires cause the vast majority of home losses. About 88% of home losses are a result of the fastest 3% of fires. Our current community defenses are built for slower, fuel and terrain-driven fires, but wind and ember-driven fires spread differently and can often overwhelm those safeguards. This forum teaches us that to truly reduce risk, people need to understand how wildfires spread, not just that they live in fire-prone areas. By doing so, communities can take targeted, effective action. Mike and Olivia, aka “MO,” are optimistic that disasters can be prevented, but only if we focus on what truly reduces community risk.

3 examples of strategies to reduce community risk from fast fires:
1. Fortify ember entry points with ember-resistant vents and seal gaps around windows and doors.
2. Remove dry leaves, mulch, dense shrubs, debris under decks, decorative evergreens, right next to buildings, as they accelerate fires.
3. Strategically retrofit the exteriors of clusters of closely spaced homes (25 feet or less apart) to make them ember resistant, to reduce the chance that one burning home will ignite its neighbors.

For more information:
-Follow and watch for Part 2 and 3 of our series on fast fires & your community
-Check out the full version of MO’s Defensible Space’s Forest Protection Forum on our YouTube

📽️Canva
🎞️Editing by Stop Clearcutting CA Volunteer Samantha

For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has protected over 4 million acres of roadless national forest just here in California. ...
05/19/2026

For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has protected over 4 million acres of roadless national forest just here in California. The Roadless Rule has helped keep our drinking water clean, wildlife habitat intact, and wildfire risk lower by limiting new roads into beloved areas from the Sierra to Los Padres to Klamath. The current Administration plans to take this protection away. A federal proposal to repeal this rule will open the door to more logging, more human-caused ignitions, and more pressure on wildlife.

The Forest Service is expected to release a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on repealing the Roadless Rule as soon as next week. Along with the DEIS, we expect a short public comment period to open up.

We want decision-makers to see large-scale opposition to repealing the Roadless Rule.

These forests are some of the last places where nature remains intact, and once they’re opened to development, we can’t get them back.

Here is how you can take action:
🔗 You can start sending public comments now, before the DEIS drops, so we can enter the comment period with a large base of comments ready. Add your personal comment at the link in the comments. We encourage you to add your own voice and your own words. Personal stories and connections to these lands are especially powerful.

📞You can also call the US Forest Service (USFS) national headquarters at (800) 832-1355 or email the agency at [email protected]. Tell them to keep the Roadless Rule!

🔗 Take-action at the link in the comments!

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, also known as the Farm Bill,...
05/14/2026

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, also known as the Farm Bill, and it contains some unacceptable provisions that could harm our land and forests.

Per Sierra Club, “Every five years, the Farm Bill shapes how America's land is managed, what's in our food, and whether communities can protect themselves from pollution and pesticides.”

The House approved version of this bill cuts critical funding for conservation and weakens protections for national forests and according to Oregon Wild, includes “new loopholes for logging.” In this version, the bill would take away the authority of states to regulate harmful pesticides and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), and reduce support for rural energy programs that benefit farmers and small businesses. Also, despite the recent victory with the Endangered Species Act being removed from the House voting floor on Earth Day, this bill would remove key Endangered Species Act review requirements, “dismantling…wildlife protections,” per Oregon Wild. The current version of the Farm Bill heading to the Senate also codifies the cuts to SNAP that could harm communities across the country.

In good news, the forest biomass expansion amendment was taken out of the Farm Bill in the version that was passed by the House. But, the Senate still needs to reject the current version of this bill and push for one that strengthens American agriculture and conservation without compromising public health or the environment.

Photo: Jeffry Surianto from Canva

🔗 Get more information and take action via Oregon Wild (see comments)

In their op-ed, “This is our chance to transform how Cal Fire manages its forests,” Evan Mills, an environmental analyst...
05/13/2026

In their op-ed, “This is our chance to transform how Cal Fire manages its forests,” Evan Mills, an environmental analyst specializing in energy, forests and climate change and a retired senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, frames AB 2494 as a once in a generation chance to transform California’s Demonstration State Forests into climate-resilient, restoration-focused public lands.

Right now Cal Fire’s 14 Demonstration State Forests are still governed by a 1947 “maximum sustained yield” mandate where “Redwoods and other trees are routinely logged to pay for operations.” In the spirit of moving forward, Mills says that the bill will finally align Cal Fire’s management with modern science, create more jobs, protect communities from fire, and store more carbon. The op-ed presents AB 2494 as an opportunity for a structural reset, moving away from logging-dependent funding and decoupling state forest operations from how much timber is cut. Per mill, “Smaller, heavily-competing trees can still be harvested and sold if done in support of restoration and the forest’s return to old-growth characteristics.”

Mills cites new analysis that shows that the California Demonstration State Forests currently account for just a sliver of the timber industry’s employment, and an exceptionally small share of statewide jobs. Mill says, “In Mendocino County, where the majority of state-forest logging occurs, tourism already provides nearly 20 times more jobs than logging. Yet users find forest maps deficient, trail signs dilapidated, campgrounds closed and information scarce. Industrial logging routinely limits access, and visual blight discourages recreation.” What AB 2494 proposes, an emphasis on restoration, tribal co-management, and climate resilience, could create more stable work in habitat restoration and even increase ecotourism potential.

On March 23rd, AB 2494 was heard by the California Assembly Natural Resources Committee; it now will head to the Assembly Appropriations Committee this Friday, May 15th before a Senate Natural Resources hearing.

In the meantime, here are some ways you can support this bill:
1. Sign EPIC’s petition (link comments)
2. Share this post with your community!

📷 Alicia Bales

“Wildfire must be redefined as a building ignition problem, because defining the wildfire itself as the problem is not w...
05/07/2026

“Wildfire must be redefined as a building ignition problem, because defining the wildfire itself as the problem is not working or realistic.” According to the U.S. Forest Service scientist Jack Cohen, in the timeless article, “Redefining the wildfire problem and scaling solutions to meet the challenge,” by Beverly Law, Ralph Bloemers, Nancy Colleton and Mackenzie Allen.

According to Cohen, the most destructive fires usually don’t burn houses down with a giant wall of flame; they shower neighborhoods with a “blizzard” of embers that can travel more than a mile and slip into roofs, vents, decks, fences, and the first few feet around a home.

According to wildfire scientists Beverly Law and Ralph Bloemers, decades of trying to “control wildfire” with logging, thinning, and backcountry fuel breaks has not stopped communities from burning during wind-driven events. Embers easily leap roads, fuel breaks, and even rivers. Law and Bloemers assert that redefining the problem as a home ignition problem will help us redirect our focus towards what will actually save lives and communities while allowing forests, including older carbon-rich stands, to keep storing carbon. Focusing on solutions to a “home ignition problem” would mean hardening home exteriors, cleaning up the first 0-5 feet outside the house, and designing neighborhoods to avoid house-to-house fire.

Read the referenced articles in the comments and learn more about how you can act to protect your home and your community from fire:

04/29/2026

In this reel from documentarian Maya Khosla, Dr. Monica Bond gives us a glimpse into post fire habitat and some of the creatures that live there - including spotted owls. These creatures can thrive after fire as long as the post-fire forest is not clearcut.

Here is what Dr. Bond says in the reel as she is showing us these post-fire areas:

“There’s a lot of fear out there about fire, and it’s understandable – fire can be a scary thing.

We have some areas where the fire burned really lightly, and there’s some mixed areas where you have dead trees mixed in with some live trees.

So this mosaic of different burn severities is what enables spotted owls to thrive after fire.

We know that the fire has great benefits to forests and species that live in the forest. There’s just millions of trees, seedlings, and saplings growing back, there’s shrubs, insects, flowers – it’s just full of life.”

Credit List
🎥Director - Maya Khosla
🎞️Editor - Sunil Kumawat, Rohit Gusain
📷Camera work - Sanjay Barnela, Maya Khosla
🎵Music - Awaken by Onoychenko, Progress in Life by New West Studios Scoring Colle

Special thanks to Drs. Derek Lee and Monica Bond (our featured speaker) for their pioneering work on spotted owls in post-fire forests

See Related Publications in the Comments.

The Congressional Review Act (CRA), enacted in 1996 as a means for Congress to overturn rules and regulations created by...
04/23/2026

The Congressional Review Act (CRA), enacted in 1996 as a means for Congress to overturn rules and regulations created by federal agencies, has now been used by the current administration to overturn an established public land protection. H.J. Res. 140 uses the CRA to overturn the federal ban on toxic copper and sulfide mining in the Boundary Waters, a beloved and highly visited wilderness area in Minnesota. This use of the CRA is creating a new precedent. According to Earthjustice, “Prior to the Trump administration, Congress successfully used the CRA only once before, to overturn that OSHA rule in 2001.”

The Boundary Waters is a place for recreation and conservation, but without the federal ban on toxic copper and sulfide mining, the doors will be open for these mining projects. You may be wondering, without the federal ban in place, can anything else be done? Friends of the Boundary Waters reports that because Twin Metals are not “actively engaged in mining” and have not “paid Minnesota at least $100,000 in royalty payments during a single calendar year”, the state still has legal authority to cancel one of the Twin Metal’s state mineral leases.

Once a land use plan (for example this ban) has been overturned, the federal agency cannot enact any bans that are “substantially the same,” unless they authorize a new law, making the Congressional action absolute with very little recourse available to the federal agencies, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

More public lands are at threat of becoming stripped of their environmental protections. There may be an upcoming vote to overturn the protection of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, an area of 1.9 million acres with diverse wildlife, cultural significance for Tribal communities, and a place for people to recreate in nature.

The public land protections that are actively being pursued for reversal were developed over the years by scientific research, environmental impact analysis, public comments, Tribal consultation and collaboration with state and local governments.

These potential reversals will put more public lands at risk of oil and gas drilling, as well as mining of resources such as uranium, copper, and sulfide-ore copper. Resource drilling and mining on public lands have many negative impacts on the earth, wildlife, and the people who inhabit these areas.

Join us in demanding that the Senate change course and defend the public lands and waters we all love.

Find sources and other ways to take action in the comments section below.

Photograph: Lia Jacobs

Efforts to sell off U.S. public lands put a resource that the average American has enjoyed for hundreds of years at seri...
04/21/2026

Efforts to sell off U.S. public lands put a resource that the average American has enjoyed for hundreds of years at serious risk, Kirsten Stade wrote in a March 5 piece for the Steady State Herald.

Collectively the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manage hundreds of millions of acres of federal public land (about 650-650 million today). These lands protect water sources, provide recreation, and keep important cultural/recreational spaces safe. According to Kirsten Stade, the public status of these lands is the result of more than 150 years of strong public involvement, conservation work, and activism.

Stade’s article describes how recent government policy seeks to expand the sale and use of these public lands into private hands. Per Stade, economic arguments are often used to seek to justify these policies. Stade argues against this, suggesting that public lands provide much more long-term benefit than privatized lands. Per Stade, large-scale transfer of public land to private hands would be a big mistake. We agree!

Stade also states that even when land is not sold directly, changes such as shifting control to states, weakening federal protections, or increasing activities like logging and mining can lead to a form of informal privatization. These approaches may draw less attention, but they can still reduce oversight and increase environmental damage over time.

Stade clarifies that the important public lands aren’t limited to grand tourist sites like Yellowstone or Yosemite; famous public lands are part of a much larger, interwoven system, where surrounding public lands help support entire ecosystems, habitats, and communities.

Read more at the linked article in the comments section.
Photo credits: Unsplash

Since being passed in 1973, The Endangered Species Act has protected and restored America’s biodiversity. The Act was bi...
04/15/2026

Since being passed in 1973, The Endangered Species Act has protected and restored America’s biodiversity. The Act was bipartisan, passing almost unanimously in Congress to act as a safeguard for species like the grizzly bear, bald eagle, and southern sea otter. Not only do these species increase the productivity and stability of their ecosystems, they also serve as symbols of national pride and unity. Currently, the ESA protects over 2000 species of plants and animals.

The proposed “ESA Amendments Act of 2025" (HR 1897) would completely gut the ESA, reversing decades of progress by removing and replacing portions of the Act that facilitate protective measures. HR 1897 would allow for a delayed protection timeline for new listings while accelerating delisting through lowered scientific analysis standards that make delisting before recovery more likely. The bill would also limit mitigation required for federal projects, allowing actions that jeopardize threatened and endangered species and their habitat. With this change, agencies would also be required to perform less robust analyses of catastrophic risks to endangered species posed by their projects.

However, a recent ruling offers some hope. On March 30, 2026, A California federal court ruled that regulations from the first Trump administration violated the ESA, reinforcing the statute’s status as a bedrock environmental law. The ruling is a positive step, yet attempts to subvert the ESA continue.

To take action you can:
1. Send a message to your Representative at the link in the comments.
2. Call your Representative or Senator at 1-202-684-2465. Ask them to oppose the “ESA Amendments Act” (HR 1897).

Photos: Canva, Sierra Club (iStock)

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