The Earth Island Institute is just another Sierra Club, a goodie goodie sounding organization that does more harm than good. Watch, they’ll probably end up killing all oak trees. EII, is responsible for delaying logging of burned forest areas, thereby encouraging the bark beetle and hurting the timber industry and ultimately hurting our economy. More fraudulent so called “scientists” who manipulate data for grant money.

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LS I assume the “boo” is for BrianC above for his irrational fear of conservation and actual science, though his last name begins with a C not an S. Global warming is real BrianC. The bark beetle is devastating forests throughout our country and the world because they are able to live and breed longer as the climate changes. No freeze or later freeze means more beetles. Also, deforestation and the cutting of old growth forests for profit is real.
I commend Brian Holly and the scores of volunteers I’ve seen working to restore the Ojai Creek in Libbey Park. It is hard and good work.
One would think that in a town like Ojai, a project to remove non-native, invasive species and to replant native species in the downtown watershed would go over big. Especially if the project were to be completely funded by grants and private donations using volunteers. Turns out, quite the opposite is the case. When Brina Holly, as the chair of the Ojai Valley Green Coalition Watershed Committee, first announced this goal and went out and found funding to get it done, he was immediately heckled on all sides. On the OVN blog, for instance, he was attacked by right-wing nuts like BrianC above. On what passes for a blog over there they went so far as to actually accuse him of embezzlement(!) before the editor thought to take the whole sorry thread down. Brian Holly has volunteered his own time throughout this whole process from writing the grant, organizing the project, getting the permits from State and local officials, all the way down to pulling out the periwinkle and arundo himself for the last three weekends. He has not paid himself one thin dime for his trouble. As his friend I found this attack by the anonymous freaks that haunt the OVN blog to be an outrage.
Shortly thereafter he was criticized by what many would think of as the left in the form of Pesticide Free Ojai(PFO). Their concern was that the project was going to spray herbicide everywhere to get rid of the arundo and other more pernicious non-native vegetation in the creek. (It continually amuses me that an organization calling itself Pesticide Free Ojai would be so preoccupied with the use of herbicides as in their campaign against the spraying of glycophosphate in Matilija Canyon and their strident criticisms of the Ojai Creek Restoration months before the project even began. Seems like they might want to change their name.) To allay the fears of PFO Brian met with their leaders and told them that he would rather not use any herbicides, but that it would take a lot of volunteers to hand remove the arundo and other non-native species infesting the creek; he asked them to join him by getting their membership to volunteer so herbicides wouldn’t have to be used to get the job done. To date, after three weekends of removal in the creek, only two self identified PFO members have come and volunteered. And that was on the first Saturday only.
Even without the help of the highly vocal but mostly absent Pesticide Free Ojai, Brian has gone out of his way to get volunteers to hand remove the non-native vegetation rather than using herbicide. In addition to the volunteers, with the generous grant from the Earth Island Institute, he’s employing The Crew to do a lot of the heavy lifting. He has also employed a teacher to help coordinate the volunteers and teach them what needs to be done, how and why. To date, over the last three weekend Saturdays, the Ojai Restoration Project has been helped by more than 100 volunteers form all over and even outside the Ojai Valley. They’ve had groups from CSUCI, Nordhoff, Happy Valley, Thatcher and other local schools.
Now that the majority of the clean up is completed the Ojai Creek Restoration Project will begin planting native species, willow cuttings and mulefat(I don’t know what this is either, Brian told me it’s one of the species they’ll be planting) on Saturday, January 16th. They will again need volunteers for the effort to replant with native species. So instead of snipping, how about coming down to Libbey Park and volunteering. I know I’m going to try and make it.

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if it is true that Brian Holly et al have NOT been spraying poisons, or showing off a Gangster-Unconsciousness by threatening to do so, I will happily spread the word of the PLANTING of plants, of their REFORESTATION, in contrast to the DEFORESTATION practiced by our Forest Service and other alleged ‘nature’ agencies.
those of us who do this work everyday, of the REFORESTING, don’t really need to feel obliged to support the works of the Green Coalition and other fakirs who, to date, have shown themselves just to be arms of the Monsantos and Bankster Industrialists.
if the Green Coalition has turned around to become Green, to honor Mother Bear, Mother Earth, Mother Community — and not be a continuing agency of the Killer Korporates — then we can all celebrate this season of giving TRUE thanks for our collective evolution of consciousness, towards truly demonstrating the loving harmonies that Wind and Water, Deer and Bear, Oak and Willow, have always taught us, always been here teaching us …
a lesson that we have finally learned, an awakening, adulthood, consciousness that has finally arisen in each and every one of us …
the Songline, Dreamtime, DIVINE LANDSCAPE (Nature) of All Our Sacred Relations …

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Just so everyone knows:
This is the story that Brian is referring to:
CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released
And here is an exhaustive point-by-point refutation of the talking points Brian uses:
The SwiftHack Scandal: What You Need to Know

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Hide the Decline
Enjoy ! Happy Thanksgiving – turkeys

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