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Officially a month into developing a regional climate change assessment, Cal Poly Humboldt professor Rosemary Sherriff said she wanted as much community input as possible about “what’s important for Del Norte.”

For District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard, mentioning the fuel load on public land in Del Norte County as well as the local dairy industry, maintaining that communication is necessary to alleviate the impacts policy change can have on the community.

“We’re always at the bottom of the wave and getting buried every time there’s a policy change in the State of California,” he told Sherriff on Tuesday. “And then we’re left with the ramifications to our community, more importantly the demographics in creating pretty much a place of poverty and being at the bottom of the totem pole.”

Sherriff, a geography professor, is part of a team of Cal Poly researchers developing an 80-page assessment focusing on how climate change is impacting five counties in northwestern California. The focus area ranges from parts of Lake County in the south to Trinity County in the east and Del Norte and Siskiyou counties in the north.

During her presentation to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Sherriff showed a list of climate change-fueled trends relevant to the North Coast region her team is focused on. Those trends include sea level rise, drought, flood and wildfire.

The assessment will also touch on local social systems including indigenous knowledge, tribal communities, agriculture, water supply and quality and ocean and coastal issues.

Sherriff told the Wild Rivers Outpost that her team’s goal is to make the assessment accessible to the public, including policy makers like Del Norte County supervisors. But, she told Howard, she and her colleagues aren’t making policy.

“What we want to do is to put in those kinds of examples that point out the uniqueness [and] also the importance of our region,” she said. “For example, in Northern California we have more forest than in all of California. Farming is really important… we need more information about the agricultural components of things.”

Funded through the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment is the latest in a series of reports focusing on the impacts of climate change in the Golden State. Climate change assessments have been released at least every five years with the fourth assessment released in 2018, according to the Office of Planning and Research website.

According to a description about the Fifth Climate Change Assessment, it will “support on-the-ground implementation and decision-making at the local, regional, tribal and state levels” focusing on communities most vulnerable to climate change.

Development of the Fifth Climate Change Assessment began in 2022, though Sherriff said she and her team, and others around the state, are just getting started on a “regional synthesis report.”
This regional report focuses broadly on natural and working lands and water, built infrastructure and social and cultural systems.

“Our role is to oversee this report for the North Coast. We each have specific expertise,” she said. “We also want community engagement. We want to hear from you about what’s important to Del Norte.”

Sherriff’s team includes Professor Andrew Stubblefield, who teaches hydrology and watershed management at Cal Poly; environmental law professor Jen Marlow; Indigenous Science Professor Daniel Lipe; David Narum, director of community development for the California Center for Rural Policy; and fisheries biology and Native American studies professor Keith Parker.

Narum also works for the Blue Lake Rancheria and Parker is a senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe.

“We represent, in general, science, social science, indigenous knowledge, indigenous context and so we’re trying to reach very broadly and be a really collaborative group,” she said. “And so far we’re really excited, and I would say our region is the only one that has the level of coordination rather than just one or two people at the top.”

Sherriff encouraged supervisors to reach out to any of the Coordinating Team members saying they meet weekly.

The development of the North Coast climate change assessment will also include group meetings and public workshops, Sherriff said. This includes being present at community events. They also have a survey they plan on sending out, she added.

Howard said he wanted to continue to communicate with Sherriff and her team as they continue to develop the climate change assessment. He said he was pleased to see her presentation address wildfire. He pointed out that timber on public lands in Del Norte County are “locked up in perpetuity” leaving the local community unable to use that resource.

Howard, who works for Alexandre Dairy, also brought up the dairy industry and its relationship regulators like the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

“Some of those policy decisions have made it difficult, if not impossible, for dairymen to operate on the North Coast of California,” he said. “Yet we know the model that’s essentially been developed from Marin County to the Oregon border through a more pasture-based management system — allowing the cows to be out with nature not being in a confined space like they are in a majority of these confinement operations through the Central Valley — creates more of a climate neutral approach to farming, something that I don’t see talked about a lot. I see a lot of policy that’s hurting those types of operations.”

Howard said policymakers should be supportive of pasture-based dairying. He said he hopes to have those conversations with Sherriff and her team.

Howard’s colleague, Board Chairman Dean Wilson, who represents District 5, said he spoke with Sherriff about climate change impacts that are concerning to Del Norte County. This includes last year’s wildfire, coastal erosion challenges as well as latest plan to build a tunnel to re-route U.S. 101 around Last Chance Grade.

Sherriff said they want to create a report that is useful for policy makers to understand issues North Coast residents are concerned about the most.

“We want interaction all the way through, so you’re informing what this report will include,” she said.

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