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Sign a Petition
Petition opposing destruction of redwood forests
Please encourage our elected officials to help us stop Codorniu's Artesa Napa Winery and Premier Pacific Vineyards from destroying coastal redwood forest and Native American heritage for financial gain.
90,000 signatures so far!
Read and sign the petition!
"Pídele a Codorníu que no destruya los bosques para producir sus vinos"
[Google translation:]
Ask Codorníu not to destroy forests to produce their wines
Over 40,000 people have signed a petition on Spanish website Actuable
asking Codorníu [based in Spain] not to destroy redwood forest in Sonoma County to produce their wines.
Read and sign the petition!
Codorníu's statement & our response
Following a tidal wave of negative publicity (over 125,000 signatures on petitions opposing their project - see below), Codorníu issues a statement defending their project, and Friends of the Gualala River responds.
Vineyard Conversions
Artesa Vineyards & Winery
Artesa's Facebook page has a description of their vineyard "conversion" project in Annapolis, but it doesn't match what they say in their draft Environmental Impact Report.
Fermented Fallacies
Debunking the myths of Preservation Ranch forestland vineyard development.
Coalition asks Spanish corporation to withdraw proposal to clear-cut
coastal redwood forest for vineyards
Friends of the Gualala River has joined with national, California, and regional environmental organizations in asking the international wine corporation, Codorniu of Barcelona, Spain, to withdraw its controversial proposal to destroy nearly 150 acres of coastal redwood forest by clear-cutting and converting the area for new vineyards to produce wine grapes.
Artesa ("Fairfax") vineyard conversion
CAL FIRE has released a
Partially Recirculated Draft Environmental Impact Report, to address
inadequacies in the Cultural Resources and Climate Change sections of the DEIR.
Deadline for public comments was April 27, 2011.
Multinational Targets the Gualala River
What if the third largest winery in the world, based in Spain, chose the recovering Gualala River watershed for a large vineyard project?
Artesa ("Fairfax") vineyard conversion EIR
The Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) released in 2009 claims that the proposed destruction of 171 acres of coastal redwood forest to plant a vineyard would have no significant environmental or cultural impacts.
Mega-vineyard begins quest for permits
"Preservation Ranch" is the largest conversion of coastal forestland to vineyards ever proposed in California. If approved, it would transform the rugged and remote landscape of northwestern Sonoma County.
The so-called
"Preservation" Ranch
is a 19,300 acre development in
the heart of the Gualala River watershed. Premier Pacific Vineyards
plans to destroy and fragment coastal redwood forest to plant grapes
on the ridgetops - and call that "preservation."
"Vineyard development is a real threat"
to recovery of Gualala steelhead, according to Craig Bell, and is "the last thing I'd want in my watershed." He argued that vineyard threats are cumulative impacts, not due to single vineyards in isolation, but the aggregate effect of many of them in the same watershed.
"Worse than a Clearcut"
The Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club produced a short video to educate the public and decision-makers about the proposed Preservation Ranch vineyard development project.
Pomo heritage threatened
The Artesa vineyard project area is "very possibly the Kashaya Pomo village Kabatui" where "human remains may be present," and which contains rich archaeological areas that are eligible for listing in the National Registry of Historic Places.
Pomo elders speak out about vineyards
Where we used to live, no one can see anything now. It is time we open our mouths. Those vineyard people are interfering with our ancestors' area...
Erasing Native American history?
As an early morning mist filters through the Redwoods in the village of Annapolis in NW Sonoma County, a Pomo elder of the Kashia band walks through the forest toward an ancient settlement site...
"The Wrath of Grapes"
How a Goldman Sachs executive is helping to kill Mark West Creek - and what the county isn't doing about it.
January 2011, North Bay Bohemian
"The Murder of Mark West Creek"
Out of control vineyard development by a Goldman Sachs executive
devastates critical salmon habitat on Mark West Creek.
November, 2010, Anderson Valley Advertiser
Stop-work order on Pocket Canyon timber conversion
Sonoma County code enforcement officials inspect a 10-acre timberland conversion project near Pocket Canyon, just east of Guerneville, owned by winemaker Paul Hobbs.
May, 2011, Press Democrat
Other Topics
Gualala River Watershed Council
People sometimes confuse Friends of the Gualala River (FoGR) and Gualala River Watershed Council (GRWC)
- two very different organizations. Here's a comparison. Who do you support?
Gualala River Forest Conservation Easement
The Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) approved funding a conservation easement for a 14,000 acre parcel in the Gualala River watershed at its meeting on September 13.
Retaining wall above the estuary?
Destroying coastal bluff, native vegetation and the Gualala Bluff Trail
for a project that hasn't even been reviewed makes no sense, and violates California law.
Coastal Commission hearing on the proposed retaining wall project has been
postponed.
Wave energy project off the Gualala coast?
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
has canceled permits issued to the Sonoma County Water Agency
for investigation of wave energy projects off the Sonoma Coast,
including one offshore of Gualala and the Sea Ranch.
Gualala River Steelhead Studies
"Preserving any sizeable steelhead population in the river into future decades will require preserving and protecting summertime stream flows from reductions caused by a myriad of developmental activities, including grape vineyards."
- Ten Years: Ten Revelations
Tribe buys coastal forest in Humboldt County
"The Tribe has long sought the return of ancestral land to create a salmon sanctuary and restore tribal cultural management practices, which benefit fish, wildlife and the ecosystem as a whole," Yurok Tribal Chairman Thomas O'Rourke said.
Your rights to access and enjoy CA streams & rivers
The beds and banks of California streamcourses below mean high water are subject to the California State Lands Commission's policies on public trust. Public trust uses include, among others, ports, marinas, docks and wharves, buoys, hunting, commercial and sport fishing, bathing, swimming, and boating.
"Psst... Groundwater and Surface Water Do Mix"
An article published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters describes a new and simple way of measuring groundwater's contribution to small streams on the surface.
- NYTimes, February, 2011
Gualala River photo tour
A photo tour of the Gualala River watershed,
showing its natural beauty as well as damage caused
by unsustainable human activity.
No fireworks over Gualala estuary without permit
The Gualala Festivals Committee canceled their controversial plans to detonate fireworks
over the Gualala River estuary in 2008, after the California Coastal Commission ordered them to
cease and desist. In March, 2010, the Court of Appeals upheld the Commission's jurisdiction.
Gravel Mining in the Gualala River
Many criticisms and recommendations Friends of the Gualala River (FoGR) has issued inpast public comments appear to be matched by NMFS findings and opinions.
The NMFS biological opinion resulted in negotiations that modified the gravel miningpermit application, and significantly improved environmental protection, monitoring andregulatory agency supervision, and mitigation.
Expand Gualala Point Park
The choices we make now and the actions we take will determine what
type of river our grandchildren and their grandchildren will inherit.
Unauthorized diversion by North Gualala Water Co.
NGWC has pumped water from its wells near the Gualala River
during low flow periods in violation of its permit for many years,
which could reduce critical habitat for threatened coho and steelhead,
according to the State Water Resources Control Board.
Update: June, 2009: Settlement Agreement reached.
North Coast Stream Flow Campaign
The Gualala River, once famous for steelhead and coho salmon fishing, is now choked with sediment from logging and depleted of flow by expanding wineries.
Foundation Grant Boosts Fundraising Effort
Friends of the Gualala River has embarked on a drive to raise$35,000 to engage scientific and legal experts in its efforts topreserve the quantity and quality of water in the Gualala River. Thefund-raising received a welcome boost with the award of a $5,000grant from the Rose Foundation.
Video
"Worse than a Clearcut"
The Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club has released a short video designed to educate the public and decision-makers about the proposed Preservation Ranch vineyard development project.
Rivers of a Lost Coast
Rivers of a Lost Coast is a new documentary that looks at our relationship to nature through the eyes of the most fabled angling community in American history.
This surprisingly touching film was recently labeled a must see by the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Times. Narrated by Tom Skerritt.
California's Lost Salmon
Because of a sharp decline in their numbers, the entire salmon fishing season in the ocean off California and Oregon was canceled in both 2008 and 2009. At no other time in history has this salmon fishery been closed. - KQED Quest
Measuring Redwood Giants
Forest ecologist Steve Sillett is leading a team of scientists as they climb and measure every branch of some of the last and tallest old growth redwoods in California. - KQED Quest
River otter in the Gualala River
Short video taken by a friend of the Gualala River, just west of the Green Bridge, near the confluence of the North & South Forks, in July 2009.
Legal cases
Protecting old growth redwoods
Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Gualala River and Coast Action Group file a lawsuit to protect the last remaining stand of old growth redwoods in the northern part of the Gualala River watershed from logging.
See: Press Release
Lawsuit Imminent Over Water Diversions
The Center for Biological Diversity, Northern California River Watch and Coast Action Group intend to sue the State Water Resources Control Board for authorizing water diversions that harm federally protected salmon and steelhead trout in the Russian River and Gualala River watersheds.
Court rules EIR required for vineyard conversion
In Sierra Club and Friends of the Gualala River v. CA. Dept. of Forestry, the appellate court rules that "...there is substantial evidence to support a fair argument that thetimberland conversion project may have a significant effect on the environment, thusrequiring the preparation of an EIR [Environmental Impact Report]."
Court upholds jurisdiction over Water Co. wells
Appeals Court rules that the State Water Resources Control Board has jurisdiction over the subterranean water flows under Elk Prairie, where the North Gualala Water Comapny's wells are located.
Court upholds denial of floodplain logging plan
The Superior Court of Mendocino County upholds the California Board of Forestry's denial of a timber harvest plan in the floodplain of the Gualala River because it was likely to cause harm to endangered coho salmon.
Court tells CDF to prepare vineyard conversion EIR
Friends of the Gualala River joined the Sierra Club in a successful legal action to strike down the
Department of Forestry's approvals of three forestland to vineyard conversion projects, because
CDF had approved the projects without the thorough analysis of environmental impacts required by law.
Friends of the Gualala River
PO Box 1543, Gualala, CA 95445
email:
info@GualalaRiver.org
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Gualala River mouth opens during rain storm
Forest lands eyed for vineyards
