Art Harwood joins panel discussion
at the National Geographic Society

for the world premiere of their documentary
"EXPLORER: Climbing Redwood Giants"

September, 2009

Art Harwood, Executive Director of the Redwood Forest Foundation (RFFI), will speak on a Panel on September 21, 2009 at 7:30 PM at the National Geographic Society's headquarters in Washington D.C in conjunction with the world premiere screening of their documentary "EXPLORER: Climbing Redwood Giants."

Mr. Harwood was invited by National Geographic to respond to the public interest in RFFI's work that has been generated by the October issue of National Geographic Magazine and the documentary. The documentary will be aired on Tuesday, September 29, 2009.

Tune In "Climbing Redwood Giants" National Geographic EXPLORER Tuesday, September 29 at 10PM

The October issue of National Geographic magazine will be on the newsstands in September with a 45-page article about the redwood region.

J. Michael Fay, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, walked the 700 miles that constitute the redwood region - starting in Big Sur, Monterey, California and ending his journey in Curry County, Oregon. He photographed and mapped the area, interviewing residents, environmentalists, scientists, timberland owners and harvesters along the way. Fay's "Redwood Transect" focuses attention on the critical economic and environmental conditions in the redwood region of northern California.

This is the fourth time in a 110 year period that the National Geographic Society has focused on this extraordinary landscape. The Society's first trip and article on Redwoods appeared in 1899. The Society's second trip and resulting article "Saving the Redwoods," (1920) made an impassioned plea to the public to encourage their elected representatives to save these trees; this resulted in the formation of the Save-the-Redwoods League. In 1964 National Geographic revisited the Redwood Region again, finding the tallest tree on earth, and this resulted in congressional action that created Redwood National Park and was largely responsible for the founding of many state parks and reserves in California.

Mike Fay points out that this is a different era. Almost 40 years have passed - 40 years of intense logging, settlement and road building. Ninety-five percent of the original forest has been cut. Fay's transect documents, first-hand, the enormous damage of past uses, land fragmentation, decline in forest productivity and ecosystem function. These losses are directly felt by landowners, local residents and the State of California and are seen in fishery declines, stream sedimentation and regional economic difficulties.

Fay also sees many reasons for hope. Through innovations in practices and regulation, a new reality of forest management is developing. Private landowners along with regulators and local people are working together in a process of restoration and a new, innovative kind of management. Fay tells us this process is not just about restoring and protecting ecosystems and ecosystem values, but bringing full productivity back to these forests.

The Redwood Forest Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, has been in the forefront of this new and innovative type of management that Fay discovered on his trek. After working for eleven years to unite residents, scientists, environmentalists, economists and corporate interests who held widely disparate points of view, we purchased the 51,000 acre Usal Redwood Forest which has become a living laboratory for demonstrating unique environmental, economic and community based management practices.

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