by Helen-Teri Shore, Redwood Chapter Conservation Chair
While celebrating the defeat of the Timber Harvest Plan for never-ending logging in the redwood forest of Sheephouse Creek in Jenner, forest defenders learned that the operation appeared to be directly linked to advancing dirty biomass generation in Sonoma County and beyond.
Author, activist and top-notch researcher Greg King who wrote the illuminating and devastating history of our redwoods in his book The Ghost Forest was the featured speaker at the gathering at the Jenner Community Center on Friday, June 12. The event brought together a “who’s who” of West County activists that was originally set up as a legal fundraiser to challenge logging plans for 1,099 acres of private land surrounded by the Jenner Headlands Preserve. Instead, we shared an unexpected win for the land and habitat for spotted owls and coho salmon after a strong grassroots campaign to stop it by the Sheephouse Creek Alliance https://agora.co/campaign/save-sheephouse-creek and many supporting groups including Sierra Club. See related article in this issue of the Needles.
King leveraged his decades of forest defense dating back to the timber wars and protection of Headwaters Forest to help stop logging of Sheephouse Creek’s remaining forest. As he joined in the celebration and in-person good energy, he opened his talk with an overview of the various extractive proposals for the Sonoma Coast defeated by community organizing, such as the nuclear plant at Bodega Head. He then revealed the close ties between Sheephouse Creek logging and the polluting biomass industry.
King discovered that the old sawmill in Duncan Mills is owned by the same entity that wants to log in Sheephouse Creek and Jenner Gulch. Whatever “waste wood” from logging would be hauled to the mill for processing, including as conversion to fuel for bioenergy production—that is, burning wood for fuel in powerplants to make electricity that is dirtier than coal.
The push for logging to profit off the last of our county and state’s forest lands for biomass fuels is part of a widescale effort in Sonoma County and across California and the West from timber interests, claiming that it benefits “forest resilience.” King cited a report by a group called Regenerative Forest Solutions that claims that about half of Sonoma County’s remaining forests would be a target for logging and wood biomass.
Another entity called Timbershed has received millions of dollars from CalFire, the US Forest Service and the state of California that have directly decimated our forests to purchase the local sawmill from Sheephouse Creek owners to process wood from all over the county in the name of forest health.
“Logging in the guise of “forest health” is a rapidly growing business model in the country and now especially in the West,” King told us. “.Assertions that the action is not logging but “thinning,” that the forest will become more “resilient” against wildfire, and that the “waste wood” can be turned into “green products,” particularly “green energy,” are themes that suffuse the recent literature.”
The facts prove otherwise. Biomass energy is known to produce high levels of air pollution and climate emissions, threatens public health, and is expensive compared to cleaner energy. See the Center for Biological Diversity’s “Debunking the Biomass Myth” for more details. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/debunking_the_biomass_myth/#
Sierra Club has a clear policy against using wood from our forests to make fuel for biomass energy generation. See https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/default/files/2025-06/sc-forest-biomass-policy.pdf
King said he is not against all forest management. He has found that careful removal of some trees and bushes is beneficial such as in the Arcata Community Forest. There the land is managed for long term ecosystem benefits and wildfire resistance, not commercial logging profits.
To read the full text of King’s talk and research on the links between commercial logging, thinning and biomass, see his newly published piece “Giant Sticks of Coal—that’s logging in the 21st Century” here: https://medium.com/@siskiyouland/giant-sticks-of-coal-thats-logging-in-the-21st-century-14db531da596
While we can all be relieved that Sheephouse Creek is safe for now, and hope that it might be protected forever in the future, we need to continue to be vigilant in forest defense and cautious about proposals for thinning, forest resiliency and ties to dirty biomass energy.