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- Written by: Lake County News reports
The assessment came at a Wednesday hearing of the Assembly Select Committee on Native American Affairs.
“This alert is a great tool for Native Americans trying to bring attention to loved ones who are missing and possibly at great risk of physical or even fatal harm. New programs should be assessed to ensure that they are working effectively,” said Assemblymember James C. Ramos, who authored legislation creating the notification system.
He added, “One thing we do know about the Feather Alert is that when there is no alert, there is a much greater chance that we’ll be grieving and not celebrating.”
Ramos said the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, or MMIP, has been an issue since his election in 2018 when he became the first California Native American elected to the state legislature.
“California has the greatest number of Native Americans within its borders than any other state, but we’re also in the top five in the nation with the highest number of unsolved missing and murdered cases for Native people, especially for women and girls. They are victims of domestic violence, human trafficking and murder. One study by the Sovereign Bodies Institute reports 18 new cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people each year in California,” Ramos said.
Ramos noted that one challenge is making tribes and the general public aware of the Feather Alert and another is bridging communication gaps among various law enforcement agencies and the tribes.
Over the past year Ramos said he has conducted summits with tribes, the California Highway Patrol and local law enforcement to foster awareness and understanding of the program, but also to foster better communication among Indian Country and city police departments, sheriffs and the CHP.
Ramos said he has held summits in the counties of Fresno, San Bernardino, Mendocino and Los Angeles and added that he hopes to hold more summits.
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
The roundtable is the first in a series of meetings led by Attorney General Bonta across the state to bring together leaders of nonprofits, churches and community groups to discuss best practices in preventing gun violence.
The primary objective of the roundtables is to formulate effective approaches for addressing gun violence in communities, fostering knowledge about accessible resources for the public, and enhancing partnerships statewide to avert gun violence occurrences more effectively.
Attorney General Bonta stressed the importance of preventing gun violence at the roundtable, which falls a year after the shooting in Half Moon Bay killing seven victims and injuring one on January 23, 2023; and just after another shooting in Monterey Park, California, where 10 people were gunned down and nine injured on January 21, 2023.
“California continues to collectively mourn those lost to gun violence, including those we lost due to the horrific shootings in Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park. We continue to heal together, and we look for ongoing solutions to prevent America’s disease and its effect on our communities. Preventing gun violence must begin in our communities by strengthening relationships and fostering an environment of support and collaboration,” Bonta said.
“I’m proud to stand with our local partners to identify best practices, foster community involvement, and work toward community-driven solutions to eliminate gun violence. As California Attorney General, I am doubling down on California’s gun safety efforts by defending our common sense gun safety laws in court, cracking down on enforcing those laws, and working in collaboration with local community violence intervention and prevention experts to disrupt cycles of gun violence,” Bonta said.
“For too long gun violence has caused tremendous trauma for so many families,” said Kim Williams, Hub Manager at Sacramento Building Healthy Communities. “Preventing gun violence requires a collective effort so we must come together as community organizations, system leaders and residents, allocate more resources, and work tirelessly towards a common goal. By joining forces, we can build safer communities where our loved ones can thrive without the fear of gun violence.”
“Mutual Assistance Network is an essential part of an intentional continuum of violence prevention that seeks community led and racial equity centered solutions to gun violence,” said Danielle Lawrence, Executive Director of Mutual Assistance Network. “As we collectively and collaboratively strive for a safer future, we call on all individuals, organizations, institutions, and policymakers to join hands in addressing the multifaceted challenges and impacts of gun violence to our communities in Sacramento County.”
“We’ve all seen and experienced the impact of gun violence across our state,” said Senior Pastor Les Simmons of South Sacramento Christian Center. “Can you imagine a world without Violence? It is my hope that the Office of Gun Violence Prevention has that very imagination and action towards a collaborative solution, creating space for a deeper understanding between community lead organizations and other public safety entities for a shared vision of ending gun violence.”
In September of 2022, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the launch of the California Department of Justice’s first-in-the-nation Office of Gun Violence Prevention, or OGVP, dedicated to developing strategies and working with stakeholders statewide to address the gun violence epidemic.
This innovative new office — the first Office of Gun Violence Prevention under the leadership of a state attorney general — provides centralized support from DOJ for partners to implement strategic and innovative programs to reduce gun violence.
The Office of Gun Violence Prevention’s mission is to reduce and prevent gun violence, firearm injury, and related trauma. OGVP supports DOJ’s ongoing gun violence reduction efforts led by the Bureau of Firearms and DOJ's litigation sections — including the DOJ’s seizure of firearms from dangerous individuals using the Armed and Prohibited Persons System, prosecution of firearms trafficking cases, and defense of California’s commonsense gun laws. OGVP examines a broad range of factors — from firearm availability to effective resources for crisis prevention — to reduce the harm caused by firearms and make Californians healthier and safer.
OGVP aims to reduce gun violence by promoting research and data collection, increasing awareness about effective legal and policy strategies, and collaborating with federal, state, and local partners.
In 2023, the office released its first data report to provide a robust review of gun violence data in California and throughout the U.S. to help guide policy and strategy discussions related to reducing gun violence. The report highlighted California’s successes in preventing gun violence, and it shined a light on successful strategies and further areas for improvements.
For example, over the last 30 years, California has reduced its gun violence rate compared to the rest of the United States; once 50% above average, California’s firearm homicide rate is now 33% below the rest of the United States.
Additionally, if the firearm mortality rate in the rest of the United States had matched California’s between 2013-2022, there would have been nearly 140,000 fewer firearm-related deaths nationwide in that decade alone.
Also In 2023, the office released the second data report that provided an in-depth look at the ties between domestic violence and firearms. The report examined data illustrating the impact of firearms-related domestic violence, including both family and intimate partner-related violence with firearms.
The report documented California’s long-term progress in reducing domestic violence involving firearms, and highlighted California’s efforts to empower and protect survivors by providing a range of support services, offering crisis intervention and safety planning options, providing for domestic violence restraining orders and enforcing laws to protect against gun violence.
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- Written by: Beverly Law, Oregon State University and William Moomaw, Tufts University
Forests are an essential part of Earth’s operating system. They reduce the buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion, deforestation and land degradation by 30% each year. This slows global temperature increases and the resulting changes to the climate. In the U.S., forests take up 12% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions annually and store the carbon long term in trees and soils.
Mature and old-growth forests, with larger trees than younger forests, play an outsized role in accumulating carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere. These forests are especially resistant to wildfires and other natural disturbances as the climate warms.
Most forests in the continental U.S. have been harvested multiple times. Today, just 3.9% of timberlands across the U.S., in public and private hands, are over 100 years old, and most of these areas hold relatively little carbon compared with their potential.
The Biden administration is moving to improve protection for old-growth and mature forests on federal land, which we see as a welcome step. But this involves regulatory changes that will likely take several years to complete. Meanwhile, existing forest management plans that allow logging of these important old, large trees remain in place.
As scientists who have spent decades studying forest ecosystems and the effects of climate change, we believe that it is essential to start protecting carbon storage in these forests. In our view, there is ample scientific evidence to justify an immediate moratorium on logging mature and old-growth forests on federal lands.
Federal action to protect mature and old-growth forests
A week after his inauguration in 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that set a goal of conserving at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 to address what the order called “a profound climate crisis.” In 2022, Biden recognized the climate importance of mature and old-growth forests for a healthy climate and called for conserving them on federal lands.
Most recently, in December 2023, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it was evaluating the effects of amending management plans for 128 U.S. national forests to better protect mature and old-growth stands – the first time any administration has taken this kind of action.
These actions seek to make existing old-growth forests more resilient; preserve ecological benefits that they provide, such as habitat for threatened and endangered species; establish new areas where old-growth conditions can develop; and monitor the forests’ condition over time. The amended national forest management plans also would prohibit logging old-growth trees for mainly economic purposes – that is, producing timber. Harvesting trees would be permitted for other reasons, such as thinning to reduce fire severity in hot, dry regions where fires occur more frequently.
Remarkably, however, logging is hardly considered in the Forest Service’s initial analysis, although studies show that it causes greater carbon losses than wildfires and pest infestations.
In one analysis across 11 western U.S. states, researchers calculated total aboveground tree carbon loss from logging, beetle infestations and fire between 2003 and 2012 and found that logging accounted for half of it. Across the states of California, Oregon and Washington, harvest-related carbon emissions between 2001 and 2016 averaged five times the emissions from wildfires.
A 2016 study found that nationwide, between 2006 and 2010, total carbon emissions from logging were comparable to emissions from all U.S. coal plants, or to direct emissions from the entire building sector.
Logging pressure
Federal lands are used for multiple purposes, including biodiversity and water quality protection, recreation, mining, grazing and timber production. Sometimes, these uses can conflict with one another – for example, conservation and logging..
Legal mandates to manage land for multiple uses do not explicitly consider climate change, and federal agencies have not consistently factored climate change science into their plans. Early in 2023, however, the White House Council on Environmental Quality directed federal agencies to consider the effects of climate change when they propose major federal actions that significantly affect the environment.
Multiple large logging projects on public land clearly qualify as major federal actions, but many thousands of acres have been legally exempted from such analysis.
Across the western U.S., just 20% of relatively high-carbon forests, mostly on federal lands, are protected from logging and mining. A study in the lower 48 states found that 76% of mature and old-growth forests on federal lands are vulnerable to logging. Harvesting these forests would release about half of their aboveground tree carbon into the atmosphere within one or two decades.
An analysis of 152 national forests across North America found that five forests in the Pacific Northwest had the highest carbon densities, but just 10% to 20% of these lands were protected at the highest levels. The majority of national forest area that is mature and old growth is not protected from logging, and current management plans include logging of some of the largest trees still standing.
Letting old trees grow
Conserving forests is one of the most effective and lowest-cost options for managing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and mature and old-growth forests do this job most effectively. Protecting and expanding them does not require expensive or complex energy-consuming technologies, unlike some other proposed climate solutions.
Allowing mature and old-growth forests to continue growing will remove from the air and store the largest amount of atmospheric carbon in the critical decades ahead. The sooner logging of these forests ceases, the more climate protection they can provide.
Richard Birdsey, a former U.S. Forest Service carbon and climate scientist and current senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, contributed to this article.
This is an update of an article originally published on March 2, 2023.
Beverly Law, Professor Emeritus of Global Change Biology and Terrestrial Systems Science, Oregon State University and William Moomaw, Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy, Tufts University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
At its Jan. 16 meeting, the council unanimously approved an agreement with Bob Hall and Associates to conduct an executive recruitment to find the successor for Chief Brad Rasmussen, who intends to retire later this year.
The $27,000 agreement was approved along with a budget amendment to allow for the expenditure.
Last spring, Rasmussen announced his plans to retire at the same time as he revealed his intention to run for District 4 supervisor. He’s now in the midst of a four-way race that also includes Scott Barnett, Laura McAndrews Sammel and Chris Read.
Administrative Services Director/City Clerk Kelly Buendia told the council that after Rasmussen’s announcement, staff discussed the recruitment and decided that it “quickly gets out of our scope,” and that “hiring an executive recruiting firm makes most sense in our opinion.”
Her written report explained that the firms were asked to “conduct a comprehensive outreach campaign aimed at producing the highest quality candidate pool; coordinate the interview selection process; assist in compensation negotiations and conduct a POST-level background investigation.”
Buendia reported that the city issued a request for quote and qualifications and received five proposals to do the work.
A selection committee that included Buendia, Rasmussen, City Manager Kevin Ingram and Assistant City Manager Nick Walker interviewed the top three firms and decided that Bob Hall and Associates was the best overall fit for the city, demonstrating the strongest law enforcement experience and credentials.
“They also exhibited experience in understanding and working with the challenges of small agencies,” Buendia’s report explained.
Buendia said Bob Hall and Associates’ bid was in the middle of the amounts proposed by the other firms.
Todd Freitas of the Lakeport Police Officer’s Association said he believed the city has a very good vision for how to move forward. He also noted that the contract amount will cover the background investigation cost.
Freitas lauded Rasmussen for doing “a very good job of running the ship over the years.”
He credited the police department’s strong staffing position to current police administration, adding, “We hope that this hiring firm will assist us in continuing that vision in the leadership.”
Councilwoman Kim Costa moved to approve the agreement, with Councilman Brandon Disney seconding and the council voting 5-0.
The contract commences on Feb. 1 and continues until Jan. 31, 2025. It will be overseen by Buendia.
Rasmussen has been chief since May of 2011, and was promoted to the position from within the police department’s ranks after the departure of Chief Kevin Burke, whose hire resulted after a recruitment begun in 2005 when Chief Tom Engstrom retired.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
