Effects of Problem

Short and Long Term Effects

Forest to vineyard conversions carry a whole slew of environmental consequences. They threaten fish and wildlife habitat, reduce the environment’s resilience to climate change, and drain groundwater reserves. According to Chris Poehlmann, director of Friends of the Gualala River (FoGR), "Planting a vineyard requires permanently or indefinitely eliminating the forest as well as the soil, precluding any foreseeable opportunity for second-growth trees. The ecosystem from the treetops to the roots is annihilated as the stumps are bulldozed and the remaining forest detritus and topsoil scraped away, flattening the earth's surface and readying it for vines."

"The forest is like a living sponge that slowly drains water collected during the winter into the streams and keeps fish alive," Poehlmann says. "When you scalp these mountainsides and turn the mountain into a bald bowling ball, that effect is gone, and you have nothing but a biological desert." Without the stabilizing effect of tree roots, rain water gushes down such uprooted slopes like rapids down a waterslide, and erosion can be severe (Bland, 2011).

Since groundwater reserves are depleted, previously stable creeks like Mark West--which was once the main spawning stream for the steelhead and coho salmon that made the Russian River famous--are beginning to run dry. Now steelhead and coho salmon are endangered with threat of extinction (Bland, 2011).

Furthermore, these conversions carry cultural ramifications. The land owned by Grupo Codorniu lies on top of a Pomo village, with artifacts that range from 5,000 to 7,000 years old, including ancestral remains. Though the Artesa conversion had once threatened cultural harm, the Lytton Pomos have since acquired Codorniu’s land and have not ruled out the possibility of putting in their own vineyards (an interesting development, considering how conservation groups tend to use the premise of cultural damage as an argument to protect their cause--even though they do not belong to the culture being threatened. The Starcross Community, which once allied with the Pomos against Artesa, will now "reluctantly take action against the tribe if it had plans like Artesa’s to clear trees on a large scale and plant vines.") (Mason, 2015).

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