Summer 2019 ForestLife

Back to the land at Green Gorge

Garcia River in Green Gorge Working Forest

The second-growth redwood forest at Green Gorge provides habitat for diverse wildlife.

In 1971, Hugh Brady was ready to leave San Francisco once and for all. As one of the original “back to the land” pioneers, he and his then-partner Nancy Dawson found what they hoped was a perfect place where they could live simply and self-sufficiently, raise a family and their own food, along a picturesque bend of the Garcia River, a few miles inland from the Mendocino County coast. They called the spot “Green Gorge,” honoring the deep redwood forest rising steeply from the beautiful floodplain. Today, Hugh and his family continue to practice organic agriculture, undertaking selective timber harvest and doing their own small-scale wood milling.

As a cousin of Jud Parsons and part owner in the Mountcrest Forest—conserved with Pacific Forest Trust in 2017—Hugh came to appreciate how a working forest conservation easement could help preserve his beloved Green Gorge, and support his two children in continuing his legacy of stewardship. So, he reached out to PFT to help him protect this beautiful and ecologically valuable landscape in perpetuity. Together, they have crafted a conservation easement that Hugh plans to charitably gift to PFT later this year.

The 341-acre Green Gorge Forest includes nearly a mile of essential habitat for Chinook salmon and steelhead in a broad, sinuous curve of the Garcia River, as well as an intact, older redwood forest ecosystem supporting two northern spotted owl activity centers and potential habitat for a host of threatened, rare, and endangered fish and wildlife. The river channel is surrounded by riparian woodland, more than twenty acres of floodplain terrace, and a network of eight shaded, cool-water streams flowing through the 263 acres of second-growth redwood forest. Situated on the San Andreas fault, Green Gorge also has a string of fascinating fault-line sag ponds with potential habitat for California red-legged frog and foothill yellow-legged frog.

The Green Gorge conservation easement now in the works with PFT will ensure these important habitats are conserved in perpetuity, by protecting basic river processes on the Garcia River—including sensitive in-stream habitat, floodplain connectivity, cool water sources, and water quality to benefit recovery of Coho, Chinook, and steelhead—and by guiding management of the well-stocked, relatively mature redwood forest for its rare habitat value, increased carbon sequestration, and recovery of imperiled wildlife and plant species. This project will benefit water quality for the impaired Garcia River, complementing other long-term conservation efforts in this key salmon watershed.

“We are honored by Hugh’s generous intent to donate the conservation easement on Green Gorge, assuring its permanent conservation,” says Connie Best, Co-CEO of PFT. “This is an extraordinary expression of his enduring commitment to conserving and restoring the Garcia River and its forests.”