Climax Corridors

Re-establishing

the River and Stream system Tree of Life

The California Reclimax Plan

(1991)

"Reclimax": Restoration of damaged climax ecology systems

Imagine if you will the land and the life of the land of the State of California as a body alive, the skin of which is thoroughly slashed and gouged by careless human activity resulting in degradation and loss of life-supporting natural habitat and eventual species extinction. It is unknown at present how far human beings can go in destroying the natural ecology of bio-regions of the planet and still survive but there are now more than enough environmental danger signs for common sense to call for a halt to further eco-destructive human development. I am proposing here a healing vision of environmental protection and restoration that is based on similar healing processes of our bodies. Past and present unregulated timber harvesting and subdivision developments have cut our land to shreds, fouled our waterways, and destroyed vast areas of natural habitat causing topsoil disappearance, species disappearance, and disruption of delicate planetary climate systems.

When our bodies heal cuts and gouges, new tissue grows out of branch networks of living fibrils that form first across the wound. In this same manner let us begin to establish a healing network of watercourse climax corridor "fibrils" along all year-round streams and rivers throughout California beginning with the 200,000 acres of Pacific Lumber Co. land as a model for environmental responsible commercial resource management. The elements are in place for a precedent setting working relationship between Pacific Lumber, mainstream environmental organizations and the California Dept. of Fish & Game, to establish cooperative guidelines for climax corridor wildlife and stream protection zones. Pacific Lumber Co. represents the private sector and EPIC (Environmental Protection Information Center) and the Calif. Dept. of F & G, the public sector, thus uniting commercial and community needs with the biological needs of the life of the land. If such an alliance can be forged it will become the model for land use management that can be extended beyond commercial forest management into rural subdivision planning and regulation where the major environmental damage takes place. Eventually, the climax corridor system can be extended into suburbia and the cities tying in with greenbelts and parkways to form a statewide watercourse "fibril" network for the healing of California through "reclimaxification" of damaged or lost climax ecosystems.

Only climax biological communities can provide protection for many endangered species, and only climax corridors provide natural linking ecosystems within a landscape becoming increasingly man-made. For the preservation and regeneration of species, for the stabilization of the land, for the watershed alliance of conservationists and commercial timber working together to heal the environment, please consider the California Reclimax Plan as a unifying vision and vehicle for successful cooperation.