Pomo – Enviro Updates

California tribes could help oversee ancestral redwoods again

May 12, 2026

Lila Seidman, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Daniel Felix, 10, looks out from atop a gargantuan stump of an old-growth redwood on his tribe’s ancestral land. Once, this forest on California’s North Coast was replete with the ancient behemoths that can live beyond 2,000 years.

Only a fraction are left now, depleted by a logging company before the state acquired the forest in the 1940s.

This is unique public land, Jackson Demonstration State Forest, spanning 50,000 acres in Mendocino County. Trees are plentiful here, but they might not live a millennium. California’s 14 demonstration forests are required to produce and sell timber to show — or “demonstrate” — sustainable practices. Money from logging — roughly $8.5 million a year — pays for management of the forests by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

Daniel’s tribe, the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, has pushed to rein in the cutting — spearheaded by his late great-grandmother, Priscilla Hunter. They’re part of a diverse coalition that includes environmental activists, local politicians and other tribes.

Now they may finally get their wish. Assembly member Chris Rogers, D-Santa Rosa, has introduced a bill that would nix the forests’ logging mandate, instead prioritizing values such as carbon storage, wildfire resilience and biodiversity.

ForestsAB2494, carbon sequestration, forest management, forest regeneration, Jackson Demonstration State Forest, logging, Pomo, prescribed burns, redwoods

Mendocino museum highlights injustices, resilience of Pomo people

Karen Misuraca, PRESS DEMOCRAT

The Kelley House Museum showcases the history and resilience of the Northern Pomo people through artifacts and contemporary art.

Thousands of years before Russian fur trappers, Spanish missionaries and American settlers arrived to the Northern California coast, the Northern Pomo Indians called area from the Noyo River to the southern part of Mendocino County home.

With the influx of immigrants in the 1800s, the lives of the indigenous tribes were forever changed, and their population decimated.

Today, there are about 5,000 Pomo people living in several rancherias and reservations, comprising 11 Pomo bands in Mendocino County, according to Visit Mendocino County’s Land Acknowledgement.