Logger Bruce Berry stands on the far western edge of his property overlooking Penny Island at the mouth of the Russian River in Jenner, Calif. Critics are worried his plan for future logging could impact water supplies.
Erik Castro/For the S.F. Chronicle
In the chilling shade of a redwood forest, landowner Bruce Berry and his forestry consultant revved a pair of off-road quads up an old logging road cut along a steep canyon near the Sonoma Coast — the latest flashpoint in a longstanding debate over whether California’s coastal forests should be logged at all.
They drove up into the sunny warmth of a ridgetop meadow overlooking the Russian River. A thick bank of fog was retreating fast, revealing ocean waves crashing on Goat Rock and the sun-baked town of Jenner.
Sensitive to false rumors he plans to clear cut the property, Berry was quick to explain the meadow has always been there, to his knowledge. He insisted that his longtime logging family has always used careful selective harvesting methods so their forests will always look healthy.
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“You’re just going to see trees, trees, trees,” Berry said.
The Berry family has logged various tracts of land in and around Cazadero in the coastal mountains north of the Russian River for about 85 years, including 47 years on nearly 1,200 acres near Jenner dubbed Berry’s Knotfarm. The family opened Berry’s Sawmill in the 1940s but stopped milling trees about eight years ago and put it up for sale. They are still looking for a buyer for the mill, but plan to continue periodic logging.
Several generations of Berrys have harvested timber from these lands roughly every ten years or so in batches of between 50-to-100 acres on average. Each time, they’ve gone to the state for permission to take a selection of trees, leaving certain state-mandated percentages of the board feet within their forests intact.
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But, now, Berry is seeking a different type of state approval that would allow logging in perpetuity on Berry’s Knotfarm. Designed for smaller scale operations on less than 2,500 acres, these permits require environmental analysis of the entire property rather than piecemeal reviews of the portions to be logged that they used previously.
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Berry said the change is administrative and “doesn’t mean an increase in harvesting — it’s a decrease in paperwork.”
But the unlimited timeframe has stoked concerns among local residents and environmental groups that the plan, as proposed, doesn’t do enough to protect sensitive fish habitat and drinking water for 123 households and businesses in Jenner (whose water source crosses Berry’s land).
Bruce Berry, standing near Jenner Creek, said his logging plans will be aware of water sources.
Erik Castro/For the S.F. Chronicle
“This is one of the last chances to think about doing something other than logging here,” said Mike Keller, whose family owns 14 acres near Berry’s Knotfarm on Sheephouse Creek, which crosses through both his and the Berry properties.
Berry’s Knotfarm shares a border with the 5,630-acre Jenner Headlands Preserve and stands at the nexus of a remarkable transition that has unfolded on the Sonoma Coast over several decades. Vast tracts of once privately-owned land are now public.
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San Francisco was built from redwoods cut from California’s coastal ranges, and though logging has met a sharp decline up and down California’s North Coast, redwood lumber is still prized for its durability and natural resilience against rot and pests.
The stunning Sonoma Coast may look wild with its steep cliffs, beaches and coastal mountains, but it has been logged, bulldozed, grazed and blasted apart for more than a century. In the 1920s, industrial quarry operations created Goat Rock’s iconic outcropped shape. And humans have altered the Russian River’s path time and again across generations.
But development’s heavy hand has, in some respects, had a lighter touch in recent decades. A grassroots campaign in the 1960s that successfully blocked PG&E’s plans to build a nuclear power plant on Bodega Head is widely agreed to have dawned a new era.
A view of Bruce Berry’s forested property in Jenner. His family has been logging the area for decades.
Erik Castro/For the S.F. Chronicle
In the decades since, efforts to restore and preserve natural landscapes have helped create a 34-square-mile contiguous patchwork of public and preserved lands that span from the Jenner Headlands south to Bodega Bay and inland following the Russian River’s southern banks.
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Keller said the region is still recovering from the scars of large historical logging, which continue to choke local waterways with sediment. Keller recalls his grandfather telling stories about hearing the water-splashing cacophony of coho salmon coming up Sheephouse Creek — a phenomena he never experienced first-hand.
“It blows me away that in such a short period of time, that whole population that frequented the Russian River basin has disappeared,” he said.
Keller, a Windsor resident who manages his family’s rental properties and works as a handyman, has been doggedly protesting and questioning the Berry family’s timber plans for decades — a singular thorn in their side.
But more critics have joined Keller in protest of this latest timber plan.
Sebastopol resident Elsa Sze and her husband created an artificial intelligence-based system to help people who share their concerns easily generate public comment letters. Their platform has so far helped generate 446 comments about the Berry plan to Cal Fire, she said.
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“For a lot of us in Sebastopol, who take our children to the forest and to Jenner, just hearing this breaks our hearts,” Sze said.
Senior Forester Harlan Tranmer, left, and Bruce Berry standing on the far western edge of Berry’s property in Jenner.
Erik Castro/For the S.F. Chronicle
Timber operations are regulated by the forest practices division of Cal Fire, which oversees California’s forests in addition to fighting fires.
As of April 1, there were 30,000 acres of active commercial timberland in Sonoma County, said John Ramaley, assistant deputy director of Cal Fire’s forest practice division. Of that, nearly 25,000 acres fall into the non-industrial type of plan that Berry is seeking.
According to a state database, local timber operators include familiar names like San Francisco’s elite and secretive Bohemian Club, which owns about 2,700 acres in Monte Rio on the Russian River, and the Wildlands Conservancy, the nonprofit that owns and manages the Jenner Headlands.
California loggers have two main options for getting state permission to harvest timber. The first is called a timber harvest plan, which allows trees to be cut within a specific area in a short time period, typically under 5 years. The other option is available only to smaller landowners — that less-than 2,500-acre category — and requires a comprehensive review of the entire landscape, including water resources, erosion risks and wildlife. It allows for landowners to log periodically as long as they own the land.
That limitless timeframe gives the impression the Berry would have broader leeway to log on his land.
Anne Schukat, a Jenner resident and water customer, said the logging plan feels like a direct threat to the town’s fragile water supply.
“Imagine the very water you depend on every day for drinking, cooking and showering being polluted by sediment,” she said in an email.
Berry’s Sawmill and Lumber Yard in Cazadero, Calif., on Thursday, March 19, 2026.
Erik Castro/For the S.F. Chronicle
Ramaley said non-industrial timber management plans come with additional restrictions compared to harvest plans meant for industrial operators. Loggers must employ selective harvesting methods, which retain a diversity of tree size and age, and they are prohibited from clear cutting, which is allowed in some cases with timber harvest plans.
Once a project is approved, operators still must submit additional plans to the state in advance of each harvesting operation, undergo periodic reviews and, in some cases, pre-harvest inspections. After a harvest, timber managers are prohibited from logging in the same location again until the subsequent growth is equal to or greater than what was taken.
Berry said his late father, Loren Berry, was a traditionalist who preferred what he called “the old-fashioned way” — filing timber harvest plans for each project. Now, Berry said he wants to do more upfront and pave a more streamlined path for his children and grandchildren. A single 90-acre plan once took more than a decade to win approval, he said.
He said they will honor regulatory buffers that limit the proximity of logging to water, including creeks, and they will cut no new roads and add erosion controls including new culverts to protect the ecosystems downslope. They’ll use cables to lift felled trees out of steep canyons, a method to reduce erosion.
A look at a property map during a tour of Bruce Berry’s land in Jenner.
Erik Castro/For the S.F. Chronicle
They’ve also marked three 100-acre buffers around spotted owl nests.
Berry said he’s frustrated by what feels like a deluge of misinformation being put out by activists, and he called out a group for including an unrelated picture of clear-cut logging on a blog post about his property.
“I think most of the comments are from people that don’t understand,” Berry said.
In a letter, the Sierra Club’s Redwood Chapter claimed Berry was proposing to remove 70 percent of the board feet per acre “at first entry.” Berry’s forester Harlan Trammer said that the claim appears to be a misunderstanding of a carbon calculation required by the state. The plan allows for a maximum harvest volume per year of 6.9%, he said, adding that “no one harvests the maximum … bit would take too long to grow back.”
But in another letter, Arcata-based nonprofit Environmental Protection Information Center raised concerns that the plan is not protective enough against sediment in creeks, and included a detailed list of points needing clarity.
“This area has a documented history of damaging timber harvest practices, its watercourses are already impaired, and fish populations remain at risk,” said Melodie Meyer, conservation attorney with the center.
Debarking machinery that has sat unused for approximately eight years at Berry’s Sawmill and Lumber Yard in Cazadero, Calif., on Thursday, March 19, 2026.
Erik Castro/For the S.F. Chronicle
Cal Fire is the lead agency but the plan also requires input or approval from a variety of other entities including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Regional Water Quality Control Board and Sonoma County, which handles coastal development permits under the California Coastal Commission.
The public has until April 13 to submit comments about the project. From there, Ramaley said that Cal Fire’s forestry division “will review the entire record, recommendations from the state agencies, and public comments” and “the plan, if found in compliance, will be approved.”
For his part, Berry said he vowed to safeguard Jenner’s water source. He said his family ran Cazadero’s water utility for years and they also rely on similarly fragile sources of clean water — local springs and wells in the Austin Creek watershed.
In Berry’s eyes, logging — at least the way his family does it — isn’t at odds with protecting the environment.
“It’s just a big garden,” he said.