Redwood National and State Parks

Site information

• Official Name: Redwood National and State Parks
• Location: California, United States
• Type: Natural
• Year of Inscription: 1980

Redwood National and State Parks harbor the tallest living trees on Earth, the Coastal Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens). Redwoods may grow to over 370 feet high and 22 feet wide at the base. A strip of the northern California coast less than two hundred miles long is the only place in the world that has the right combination of climate, elevation, and latitude for these trees to survive.

Redwood trees require a lot of water, hundreds of gallons a day. The damp, cool air coming off the northern Pacific Ocean and over one hundred inches of rain annually help to fill that requirement. Fog is what makes the Redwoods' environment so unique. This fog occurs when heated air from farther inland flows over the cold ocean. As the temperature drops, the air becomes super-saturated and cool. Moist fog is the result. This fog provides the redwood with 40 percent of its water needs.

The redwood descends from an ancient family of trees that covered the temperate regions of the world during the Jurassic Age, 160 million years ago. The Coastal Redwood has been living in its present range for twenty million years. They are an extremely long-lived species. On average, Redwoods live about six hundred years. Some specimens are over two thousand years old.

Another important aspect of Redwood National and State Parks is the coastline. From forested headlands to sand dunes to rocky tidal pools, the coast presents a dynamic and ever-changing landscape. One reason for this is plate tectonics. Tsunamis are prevalent on this shoreline. Northern California is the most seismically active area in the United States. The North American, Pacific, and Gorda Plates meet at the Mendocino Triple Junction, just 100 miles southwest of the park.

History

The lands of Redwood National and State Parks have been home to Native Americans for over forty-five hundred years. When Western settlers invaded the coastal area in the middle of the nineteenth century, the land was well populated by a number of different tribes and villages. The 1800s were a tragic time for these original inhabitants, as greed and the creed of manifest destiny enabled the newcomers to unleash a campaign of massacres and displacements. No treaties were ever ratified with the original peoples, as the California delegation to Congress convinced the U.S. government that there was too much valuable land consigned to the indigenous population. The lack of a land base and the lack of tribal recognition of sovereignty are ongoing challenges still faced by the land's original occupants.

The California Gold Rush in 1849 began the land rush to Northern California. Lumber was in high demand and the redwood country had some of the best. Desirable for its high tannin content, redwood is very resistant to fire, insects, and rot. Land fraud was prevalent as great parcels of public lands became private. A railroad was built to move the lumber out more expediently. By 1910, the two million acres of coastal redwood forest found in 1850 had dwindled down to just a few hundred thousand acres.

At this point, Stephen Mather, who later founded the National Park Service, which helped to begin the Save the Redwoods League. This group of wealthy businessmen raised the money to buy tracts of old growth forest. The State of California offered matching funds and four state parks were created, three of which were incorporated into Redwood National and State Parks when the National Park was established in 1968. The League bought an additional one hundred thousand acres between 1920 and 1960.

World War II and the building boom of the 1950s accelerated the logging in Northern California. By the 1960s, 90 percent of the old growth redwoods were gone. Once again, the Save the Redwoods League rallied and lobbied Congress for a Redwoods National Park. Despite resistance from lumber companies, fifty-eight thousand acres became a national park on October 2, 1968. Logging continued in the private lands upstream, and this logging began to endanger some of the preserved groves as sediment from the eroding logged over areas silted up the rivers. Overcoming protests from the timber industry, an additional forty-eight thousand acres were added in March 1978. Thirty-nine thousand acres of this land had already been logged over, and the National and State Parks collaborated with landowners to begin an ambitious and innovative watershed restoration project.

In September 2023, three tribes along California's northern coast designed the first Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area (IMSA) in the United States. This included the parks region and much of its surrounding land. In 2024, an agreement between the Yurock Tribe and the state government was reached, granting the tribe ownership of 125 acres of land that serves as a gateway to Redwood National and State Parks in 2026. The tribe planned to co-manage the land alongside the National Park Service.

Significance

Although the old growth redwood forest is the most important ecosystem preserved by the World Heritage Site, it's not the only one. Redwood is renowned for its diversity. It protects a multitude of different ecosystems. Redwood National and State Parks were recognized as part of the California Coast Ranges International Biosphere in 1983.

One ecosystem currently undergoing change is the rocky tide pool habitat. Due to changes in logging practices, the environment is changing from one dominated by annual species to one with a higher balance of perennial species. Loggers used to float logs downstream to remove them. Many found their way to the sea and crashed back onto shore, devastating any tidal pool community they encountered. Fewer logs washing up have led to more stable tidal pool communities. The parks maintain an active inventorying and monitoring system to measure these changes.

Redwood National and State Parks provide habitat for a number of threatened or endangered species. One species is the marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus). Approximately four thousand marbled murrelets, 75 to 90 percent of the California total, depend on these forests for their survival. Seabirds of the open ocean, marbled murrelets nest high in the canopy of old growth forests.

Alarmingly, the populations of these birds continue to fall even though habitat fragmentation has been addressed. Recent studies show that a leading cause is nest predation by corvids, primarily Steller jays (Cyanocitta stelleri). Studies show that corvid populations rise with park visitation increases, especially near camp and picnic grounds, where these birds receive food rewards. The parks are committed to intensive public education efforts to alleviate this threat.

Bibliography

Earles, J. Mason, et al. "Bark water uptake promotes localized hydraulic recovery in coastal redwood crown." Plant, Cell & Environment, vol. 39, no. 2, Feb. 2016, pp. 320–28.

Gabriel, Pia O., and Richard T Golightly. "Aversive Conditioning of Steller's Jays to Improve Marbled Murrelet Nest Survival." The Journal of Wildlife Management, vol. 78, no. 5, July 2014, pp. 894–903.

Jenner, Gail. Historic Redwood National and State Parks. Lyons Press, 2016.

Redwood: A Guide to Redwood National and State Parks, California. National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, 1998

sults" Redwood National and State Parks, Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, California: General Management Plan/General Plan. National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, 2000.

State of the Parks: Redwood National and State Parks: A Resource Assessment. National Parks Conservation Association, 2008

"Yurock Tribe Becomes the First to Manage Land with National Park Service." Center for Western Priorities, 2024, westernpriorities.org/2024/03/29008/. Accessed 8 Dec. 2024.