LESS THAN TWO WEEKS after a rally at Fort Bragg Town Hall called on lawmakers to pass Assembly Bill 2494 and on Cal Fire to stop logging in Jackson Demonstration State Forest, the bill has cleared the state Legislature. The logging plan is still standing. The group that sponsored the bill says it belongs there.
The bill, brought by state Assemblymember Chris Rogers, D-Santa Rosa, whose district takes in the Mendocino coast, rewrites the mandate that has governed California’s demonstration state forests for decades. There are 14 of them, about 85,000 acres in all, according to Cal Fire. Jackson is the largest, 48,652 acres between Willits and Fort Bragg.
Existing law defines managing those forests as achieving “maximum sustained production of high-quality forest products.” AB 2494 replaces that with a definition built around biodiversity, carbon storage, climate resilience, recreation, watershed health and wildfire resilience. The bill authorizes the state natural resources secretary to enter into co-management agreements with California tribes, and requires good-faith efforts to develop them. It recognizes those tribes as sovereign “regardless of federal recognition status” — language that would reach tribes the federal government doesn’t acknowledge. It also repeals the state’s authority to allow mining on state forest land, with exceptions.
What it doesn’t do is stop a timber harvest plan already on the books. The bill contains no language making it retroactive, no provision addressing plans already approved or under review and no direction to Cal Fire to revisit them. The bill would take effect Jan. 1, 2027.
The Senate amended AB 2494 on the floor Aug. 20 and passed it Aug. 26, 29-10, sending the bill back to the Assembly for a vote on the changes. The Assembly agreed to them Aug. 27, 58-19, according to the chamber’s recorded roll call. The bill is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it.
When harvesting is OK
The bill keeps logging legal in the forests. A new section lists three grounds for timber harvesting — research, demonstrating management strategies to nonindustrial landowners and applying proven or emerging techniques to vulnerable stands to restore them to resilient ecosystems. The section also says it does not limit practices already authorized under the state’s Forest Practice Act.
At the Aug. 15 rally, organizers asked for passage of the bill, an immediate halt to a 2025 timber harvest plan called AMEX, which covers nearly 500 acres near Chamberlain Creek, and to further logging in Jackson until the forest’s updated management plan, a tribal co-management agreement and the bill were all in place.
Tom Wheeler, executive director and staff attorney at the Environmental Protection Information Center, or EPIC, the Arcata organization that sponsored AB 2494, answered questions by email Aug. 27. “The bill does not stop any existing THPs, rather provides clearer direction to Cal Fire for future management of the Jackson and other state demonstration forests,” he wrote, using the shorthand for timber harvest plans.
Asked about AMEX by name, Wheeler wrote: “Specifically to AMEX, EPIC thinks that the substance of this THP conforms to the vision of AB 2494 and the legislation’s focus on fostering solid science on our public lands.”
The version that passed is narrower than an earlier one on accountability. Language requiring the state to report to the Legislature on staffing needs and cost per position for timber harvest plan review was dropped, along with requirements to report how many plans were submitted and returned as incomplete, and what share of preharvest field inspections each reviewing agency actually attended.
The vote broke along party lines in both houses. Every legislator who voted for the bill was a Democrat and every one who voted against it was a Republican. One Democrat, Melissa Hurtado, did not vote in the Senate. Two Democrats, Cecilia Aguiar-Curry and Tina McKinnor, did not vote on concurrence in the Assembly. The Assembly passed an earlier version in May, 58-20.