Albert Elwood Beach of Eureka passed away on January 2 at home with his wife by his side. Albert was 92. Albert had been enjoying life in retirement for 29 years, including reading, salmon fishing, poker, cribbage and good whisky and scotch. He was an Elk and a Native Son of the Golden West. Throughout his life he enjoyed telling stories, cooking, hunting, gardening, junking and antiquing. Those who knew him enjoyed eating and listening. Albert’s family and friends remember him as being strong and kind.

He was raised in Fort Bragg and later Fortuna. As a boy he didn’t always have shoes to wear to school and bigger children would step on his toes. In 4th grade he survived tetanus, which he called lockjaw. He overcame adversity and as an industrious child he picked apples for Clendenen’s and set bowling pins. As a school boy he repaired and drove vehicles. He parted ways from his high school following a small explosion in shop class.

As a young man he enlisted in the Air Force and chose to serve in Korea. In the Air Force as an A & E Mechanic he maintained J-47 Jet Engines, F-86 Sabres, and B-47 Bombers and suffered considerable hearing loss associated with those activities. While in Korea a Mig-15 was surrendered to him. Having hunted since childhood he was rated a sharpshooter despite having been accidentally blinded in one eye as a child. He was trustworthy and held a SECRET clearance and served in England supporting Strategic Air Command activities. After four years he was honorably discharged from the Air Force having obtained the rank of Staff Sergeant.

Upon his discharge he built his parents a house, marking their first homeownership. Later he built himself a cabin in Dinsmore with the help of his nephew George. Albert had a number of jobs around Humboldt including upholsterer, bodywork, owning a body shop, and at times prospector. He was clever and invented his own mining equipment to prospect on the river bottom. In the 1960s he refurbished a ’26 Star Touring Car and toured around Humboldt in it, becoming the president of the Eureka chapter of the horseless carriage club. After the body shop, he had a full career as an insurance adjuster for 30 years after which he retired.

He leaves behind his wife Glenna, sons David and Samuel (April), grandchildren Charles, Benjamin, and Margo, great-grandchildren Gianna and Cassai, and sisters Ramona and Mary Louise. He will be greatly missed. Albert’s passing is preceded by the passing of his father Sumner, his mother Elsie, and his siblings Jim, Dorris, and George. A private memorial will be held for Albert including family and close friends. Albert will be interred with his mother and father at Sunrise Cemetery in Fortuna.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Albert Beach’s family. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

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Several readers reached out to the Outpost this morning with a heads-up about this news story in The Guardian, which concerns a federal security contractor that hired a prominent neofascist leader to work on its security patrols last year.

The white nationalist in question is a man named Ian Michael Elliott. He’s a senior figure with Patriot Front, one of the most prominent white nationalist hate groups in the country. The company that hired him, Knight Division Tactical, has been awarded millions of dollars in security contracts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Federal records show that two of those contracts, worth a combined $1,031,506, were processed through the USDA’s Eureka office, which hired Knight Division Tactical to provide security and patrol services during last year’s Dillon and Orleans Complex wildfires in Six Rivers National Forest. 

A federal spokesperson pleaded ignorance, telling The Guardian, “Companies contracted by the US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service manage their own hiring, background checks and oversight of personnel, independent of the agency.”

But scholars who study white supremacy aren’t surprised. Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the program on extremism at George Washington University, told The Guardian, “When officials are flooding the zone with the most racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, antisemitic and Islamophobic messages ⁠— take your pick ⁠—⁠ it’s going to embolden groups like Patriot Front. It’s going to tell them: ‘You have an ally in the White House, you have an ally in the Department of Justice.’”

Click on over to The Guardian to read more about Elliott, Patriot Front and their connections to the federal government. 

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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Law enforcement raided the illegal cannabis operation in Shasta-Trinity National Forest months before, but rotting potatoes still sat on the growers’ makeshift kitchen worktop, waiting to be cooked.

Ecologist Greta Wengert stared down the pockmarked hillside at a pile of pesticide sprayers left behind, long after the raid. Wild animals had gnawed through the pressurized canisters, releasing the chemicals inside.

“They’re just these little death bombs, waiting for any wildlife that is going to investigate,” said Wengert, co-founder of the Integral Ecology Research Center, a non-profit that studies the harms caused by cannabis grows on public lands. For all her stoic professionalism, she sounded a little sad.

For over a decade, Wengert and her colleagues have warned that illegal cannabis grows like this one dangerously pollute California’s public lands and pristine watersheds, with lasting consequences for ecosystems, water and wildlife.

Now, they’re sounding another alarm — that inadequate federal funding, disjointed communication, dangerous conditions and agencies stretched thin at both the state and federal level are leaving thousands of grow sites – and their trash, pesticides, fertilizers and more – to foul California’s forests.

Greta Wengert, co-founder and co-director of the Integral Ecology Research Center, leads a team documenting the chemicals and environmental damage caused by an illegal cannabis site in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest on Nov. 12, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

Dozens of fertilizer bags wept blue fluid onto the forest floor. Irrigation tubes snaked across the craters of empty plant holes. The cold stillness felt temporary — as if the growers would return at any moment to prop up the crumpled tents, replant their crop and fling more beer cans and dirty underwear into the woods.

Wengert has tallied nearly 7,000 abandoned sites like this one on California’s public lands. It’s almost certainly an underestimate, she said. Her team knows of only 587 that have been at least partly cleaned up.

No government agency can provide a comprehensive count; several referred CalMatters back to Wengert’s nonprofit for an unofficial tally.

Most of the sites Wengert’s team identified are in national forests, where “limited funding and a shortage of personnel trained to safely identify and remove hazardous materials” is driving a backlog in clean ups, a U.S. Forest Service spokesperson told CalMatters via an unsigned email.

The federal government, the spokesperson said, has dedicated no funding for the forest service to clean them up. And it’s leaving a mess in California.

A new playbook

The federal government owns nearly half of the more than 100 million acres in California. But it’s California’s agencies and lawmakers taking the lead on tackling the environmental harms of illegal grows — even as the problem sprawls across state, federal and privately managed lands.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s policy is to clean up all grows spotted on its 1.1 million acres of wildlife areas, ecological reserves, and other properties, officials say.

Staff assist with clean ups on federal lands “when asked,” said cannabis program director Amelia Wright — typically on California’s dime. But, she said, “That’s not our mandate.”

Fees and taxes on California’s legalized cannabis market fuel state efforts — supporting the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis program and funding tens of millions of dollars in grants for rehabilitating places damaged by cultivation. These grants can cover clean-ups and sustainable cultivation projects, or even related efforts like fish conservation.

The department has helped remove almost 350,000 pounds of trash and more than 920 pesticide containers from grows on public lands over nearly a decade.

An aerial view of Post Mountain, where cannabis is grown on private land near the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, on Nov. 12, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

But former Assemblymember Jim Wood, a North Coast Democrat, said that as he prepared to leave office in 2024, progress on clean ups was still too slow.

“It doesn’t reflect what I see is the urgency to watersheds, and the water and the people that are served by them,” he said.

In 2024, lawmakers passed Wood’s bill directing the Fish and Wildlife department to conduct a study to inform a statewide cleanup strategy for cannabis grows. The law requires the department to provide regular reports to the legislature about illegal cultivation and restoration efforts on lands both public and private.

To Wright, that’s a path forward, however prospective it may be.

“It just feels like such redemption right now for many of us,” Wright said. “It’s a one of a kind program. So we didn’t have a playbook — we’re still creating it.”

But the study, which Wengert’s organization is conducting on the state’s behalf, isn’t due until next year. Meanwhile, the bloom of illicit pot grows on private land has been demanding California’s attention, a growing problem since voters legalized cannabis in 2016.

“It’s like whack a mole. They pop up in a new location, and then we have to go there — but the impacts are occurring across the landscape,” said Scott Bauer, an environmental program manager with the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis office.

The California Department of Justice told CalMatters it recently identified a “substantial increase of illicit cannabis cultivations on or adjacent to public lands.” Of the 605 sites where a multi-agency state and federal task force ripped out illicit cannabis plants, roughly 9% were on public lands — up from an average of 3 to 4%.

“Everybody thought with legalization that a lot of these problems would go away,” said Wood, the former assemblymember.

But, he added, the sites remain. “It’s a ticking environmental time bomb.”

And the contamination, new research confirms, lingers.

‘This site will sit on this landscape’

On a cold November morning, down one dirt road and up another, ecologist Mourad Gabriel led a safety briefing at the grow site in Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Gabriel, who previously spearheaded a U.S. Forest Service effort tackling trespass grows on public lands, co-founded the research center with Wengert and now co-directs it with her. He’s also her spouse, and a foil to her calm watchfulness — dismayed by the state of the forest one moment, and bounding off to investigate an interesting mushroom or animal scat the next.

“Please don’t push the red shiny buttons, or lick the big pink things,” Gabriel joked at the mouth of a well-worn path growers had carved into the woods. (Carbofuran, a dangerous and illegal pesticide often found on grow sites, is bright pink.)

The team, Gabriel explained, wasn’t there to clean up the grow. They didn’t have the money for that. Instead, he said, shouldering his backpack and strapping on a first aid kit, they were there to document the contaminants as part of a U.S. Forest Service-funded investigation into wildlife around cultivation sites.

“This site will sit on this landscape until someone acquires some level of funding,” Gabriel said. “And no one can really push it, until we actually get that data.”

Jenna Hatfield, a member of Wengert and Gabriel’s team at the Integral Ecology Research Center, takes notes and recovers a pesticide sprayer that was hidden under brush at the Shasta-Trinity trespass grow on Nov. 12, 2025. Photos by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

A cannabis plant grows alongside irrigation tubing at the illegal grow site in Shasta-Trinity National Forest on Nov. 12, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

Wengert and Gabriel have spent years collecting data at grow sites like this one. They’ve found carcasses of creatures so poisoned even the flies feeding on them died, and detected dangerous pesticides in nearby creeks more than a year after raids.

In recent work they published with scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the team found that illegal grows pulsed pollutants from plastic, painkillers, personal care products, pot and pesticides into the soil that could be detected months or even years later. Some contaminants also showed up in nearby streams.

The pollutants diminished over time — absorbed into the landscape and washed into waterways. By the time the researchers tested for them, the concentrations had declined to levels lower than those found in agricultural soils.

But, they point out, remote habitats and sensitive headwaters are not where these chemicals are supposed to be. Past a marshy flat cratered with holes and piled with poison-green insecticide bags, Gabriel, Wengert and ecologist Ivan Medel trailed an armed U.S. Forest Service officer to a massive trash heap cordoned off by barbed wire.

Medel wedged himself through the strands and handed empty fertilizer bags dripping blue liquid out to Gabriel.

Force-feeding waterways the excess nutrients in fertilizer can upend entire ecosystems and spur algae blooms. The site is in the greater South Fork Trinity River watershed — vital, undammed habitat for protected salmon and other fish species.

An aerial view of a scientist walking through empty planting holes at the illegal Shasta-Trinity cannabis site, where growers chopped away brush and laid irrigation lines for their crop. Nov. 12, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

“That was pretty nasty,” Gabriel said, as one bag spilled liquid over his gloved hands. He counted up the haul. “Twelve bags right there.”

By day’s end, the team discovered enough empty bags and bottles to have held 2,150 pounds of fertilizer and more than 29 gallons of liquid concentrate. All of that, the growers had poured into the land.

A federal void

In 2018, a federal audit lambasted the U.S. Forest Service for failing to clean up — or even document — trespass grows in national forests.

The agency was finding and eradicating cannabis grows in national forests effectively. But its failure to consistently clean them up, the audit said, put “the public, wildlife, and environment at risk of contamination” and could allow growers to return more easily.

Little has changed. From 2020 through 2024, when Gabriel worked for the agency, a spokesperson said the Forest Service “prioritized reclaiming sites over investigating active grows.”

Mourad Gabriel, co-founder of the Integral Ecology Research Center, looks at an alcohol bottle found in the abandoned camp of the illegal cannabis site in Shasta-Trinity National Forest on Nov. 12, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

But the agency said it still has received too little funding and has too few personnel trained to work with often hazardous materials. And the backlog persists. How big it is, the Forest Service wouldn’t say. After declining an interview request and taking two months to reply to emailed inquiries, a spokesperson said CalMatters must submit a public records request.

The Forest Service now is shifting the responsibility for cleanups to individual forests. That, too, contributes to the backlog, the spokesperson said.

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he has tried repeatedly to direct more funding to cleaning up trespass grows on federal lands, but with little success in Congress.

“We have tried just about everything,” said Huffman. “It’s clearly not enough.”

Now, under the Trump administration, the Forest Service is even more understaffed. A spokesperson said while law enforcement staffing “has remained steady,” roughly 5,000 non-fire employees “have either offboarded or are in the process of doing so” through “multiple voluntary separation programs.”

Huffman put it more starkly. “They’ve been gutted,” he said. “The Forest Service right now has a sign on the door that says, ‘We’re out of the office. We’re not sure when we’ll ever be back.’”

Cleaning it up

The Shasta-Trinity grow stretched for more than 6 acres through national forest land. Trash, and the smell of pot, were everywhere.

Greta Wengert and Mourad Gabriel, with Integral Ecology Research Center, follow an irrigation pipe that leads to the water source that growers used to water their cannabis crop in Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Nov. 12, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

Law enforcement officers had removed the mouth of the irrigation tube diverting water from a nearby creek, but all the piping remained. It slithered over downed trees, past the craters of another abandoned grow to a waterfall where leaves and black tubing snarled in the rocks.

Gabriel clambered up the waterfall, where he discovered a sock and a plastic bottle with the top sliced off — a makeshift filter the growers used to keep the line clear of debris. He hung the bottle on a tree branch, like a ghoulish Christmas ornament.

Few organizations are qualified to do science-informed cleanups, and none work as widely as Wengert and Gabriel’s.

California’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program is paying the team more than $5.3 million to conduct the legislatively mandated study on cleaning up grow sites, and also to train and support tribal teams and other organizations to do this work.

The study, and the training, include best practices for handling and disposing of hazardous waste, Gabriel said. More teams means more competition for the pot of state-allocated money, but he wants more allies in the fight.

“Until someone cleans it up, it stays out here,” Gabriel said from his perch in the waterfall, surrounded by a tangle of black irrigation pipes. He expected it could take years.

But that’s not what happened.

Two weeks later, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife choppered away nearly 1,500 pounds of trash, 4,000 feet of irrigation pipe and 7 pesticide containers — restoring the rugged, remote forest.

The department had offered to help out the U.S. Forest Service and take the lead on the clean up, with its own helicopter, on its own budget, according to spokesperson Sarah Sol.

Months later, when Gabriel learned about it, he was shocked — and concerned. Sol said that fish and wildlife staff did not encounter any banned or restricted pesticides, and all had masks and nitrile gloves available to them.

But Gabriel’s team found residue in the pesticide sprayers on the hillside from a class of chemicals that includes banned and dangerous carbofuran. He worried that the clean up team could have unknowingly put themselves and others at risk.

“There is a proper way to do it, and there is a cowboy way to do it,” Gabriel said.

It’s one site down — one patch of forest cleared. But thousands like it remain, littering California’s landscape.

Jerrie Anne Nelson
March 8, 1956 – January 12, 2026

Jerrie Anne Nelson, age 69, passed away on January 12, 2026, surrounded by love. She was a deeply caring and spirited woman whose warmth and generosity touched many lives.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Dana Nelson; her mother, Virginia Daily-Sherman; her sister, Patty; and her brother, Tommy.

Jerrie is survived by her son, Howard Croy, his wife Kristine, and their daughters India and Georgianna; her daughter Heather, her husband Gabe, and their children Sophia and Izaiah; her sister, Binky, and Binky’s loving family; as well as many extended family members and dear friends.

Born in Sacramento, California, Jerrie attended Grant High School and from an early age embraced caring for others. Her home was always a gathering place, especially on Wednesday taco nights — a tradition she proudly carried throughout her life. She was happiest wearing her 49ers apron, cooking for and laughing with family.

Jerrie spent several years in Anchorage, Alaska, helping run a birch bowl business. She later returned to California and married Dana Nelson in 1992. In retirement, they moved north and eventually settled in Humboldt County. After Dana’s passing in 2022, Jerrie continued to live with resilience and openness, and in the final year of her life, she found love again with her girlfriend, Janine Lynn.

Professionally, Jerrie worked as a grant writer for the Ronald McDonald House, supporting families during some of their most challenging moments. Her most treasured role, however, was being a grandmother. Known proudly as “Nanny Granny,” she poured her heart into her four grandchildren and lovingly embraced many others who simply knew her as “Granny.”

Jerrie was deeply involved in the AA community, offering steady support, honesty, and encouragement. She loved nature, dogs, the Arcata Marsh, the beach, and the redwoods—places that reflected her spirit and appreciation for beauty.

Jerrie was a survivor in every sense. She faced life’s challenges with strength, humor, and grace.

She will be remembered for her kindness, her laughter, and the way she made people feel welcome and deeply loved.

A memorial gathering to celebrate Jerrie’s life will be held on March 8, 2026, her 70th birthday, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Bayside Grange in Arcata.

The family extends special thanks to Jason Orlandi and Lucas Anderson for their unwavering support during this difficult time.

Please light a candle for Jerrie and let her light live on.

Roads are a significant barrier to wildlife movement, whether you are a small salamander or a wandering wolf. Environmental activists like guest Steve Blackledge of Environment America have been advocating for the construction of wildlife crossings — physical structures, from big bridges to small culverts — to help mitigate the impact of roads.

But in this advocacy strange bedfellows have emerged, like motorcycle clubs, whose members want to avoid hitting animals when out riding and insurance companies who want to reduce claims. Now there is a bipartisan effort at both the federal and state government to identify hot spots where roadkill is common, and to create new structures to help both wildlife and drivers more safely get to their destinations.

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ED. NOTE from 2026: The story below was first published in 1973, and offers an account of the people who brought the invasive yellow bush lupine — Lupinus arboreus — to Humboldt County, and spread it up and down the dunes and beaches of the county thereafter.

The story below reads as generally laudatory, making it its own historical artifact. Today the consensus — not universally accepted! — is that the lupine is undesirable, being a nasty invasive species that wreaks havoc on native ecosystems. If you’re of that opinion, Friends of the Dunes organizes an annual volunteer event that attempts to keep its continued spread in check. See here for details and volunteer opportunities.

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The barren sand dunes on the north spit of Humboldt Bay posed quite a problem in 1908, when the late George D. Cobb was appointed keeper to open and operate the new fog signal station. The area was wind-swept in both winter and summer and caused the dunes to shift aimlessly.

To alleviate the situation, and to prevent damage, the Lighthouse Department sent in small trees to act as a windbreak around the area.

Mrs. Cobb (Theodora), in a 1956 communication, reported that when she and her husband were at the Presidio in San Francisco in 1908 they gathered yellow lupine seeds on the premises there and brought them to their new station. Cobb’s previous assignment was Fort Point in the San Francisco area. Mrs. Cobb, 93, resides in a Masonic Rest Home in the Bay Area.

The couple planted the lupine around the station on July 1, 1908. Up to this time only species of blue and blue-and-white lupine were native locally. The plants grew and spread around the buildings and nearby dunes holding the sand as expected.

During World War I (1917) the Northwestern Pacific Railroad logs made a nightly visit to the North Jetty with rock loaded during the day at Trinidad. The railroad and track ran from the jetty to Samoa and Trinidad.

The NWP Railroad and the Hammond Lumber Company used the same tracks in Samoa but each had its own railroad from Samoa north up the peninsula. Much vegetation (blackberries, willows and trees) kept the tracks relatively free from sand in this area.

From Samoa, south, there was no vegetation to speak of and sand either covered the tracks periodically or blew the sand under the tracks. These difficulties kept track repairmen quite busy.

It was at this time the government decided lupine along the tracks could be the best answer and hired a peninsula woman, Mrs. Alexander McLean, to head a small group of women to gather and sow the seed. She was assisted by Mrs. James Robertson, Mrs. Eula Wilkerson and Miss Ida Keisner. Mrs. Inga Torgerson (now Mrs. Logan of Arcata) was a schoolgirl and worked only on school holidays.

Mrs. McLean and Mrs. Robertson collected the dry seeds in pods and filled several gunny sacks. Mrs. McLean threshed the seeds and staked out planting areas adjacent to the tracks. Each woman received four dollars a day for her work.

The ladies who planted the seeds rode the empty rock train north each morning with their sacks of seeds and corn planters and soon had the entire right-of-way from Samoa to the jetty sown with lupine. On Thanksgiving Day that year Miss Torgersen took her corn planter and seeds and worked all day in the pouring rain. For this one day she received a double day’s pay of eight dollars.

Today the lupine can be seen spread far beyond the tracks and covering much of the peninsula.

In 1938 the Hammond Lumber Company was logging in the Crannell woods and hauled their logs from Crannell to Clam Beach south to Samoa, an area then known for shifting sand dunes — really no place for a railroad. The company called for volunteers in August to gather seeds for which they would pay one dollar per pound.

Several Samoa boys started picking the seeds only to find it took too long a time to gather a pound of them. They found the sand annoying as it constantly this seeped into their shoes. After a day or two most of them quit.

Two boys decided to stick it out with the help of Andy “Mac” McCormick, brother-in-law of one of the boys. They were Derald Jones of Salyer and Paul Jadro of Fortuna. They gathered the pods and brought them home to Mac who utilized a blanket and the wind from an electric sweeper to separate the seeds from the chaff.

Equipped with coffee cans of seeds the boys made several trips to the warehouse office of Henry Palmrose (uncle of President Robert Palmrose) before the company cried, “Enough.” These seeds were planted by Hammond crews along the tracks and are most showy in May at Clam Beach State Park.

Much discussion has taken place as to the origin of yellow lupine (Lupine arboreus). Sunset’s Western Garden Book lists it as native to California coastal areas.

To substantiate this Dr. Doris Niles, a doctor of botanical science and instructor with the University of California Extension Division at Davis, reported an illustrated manual of California shrubs lists one thousand species of lupine native to the United States. Of these fifty are native to California. Out of the fifty, five are shrubs and include our yellow lupine. The manual lists the shrub as native to the California coast from Santa Barbara northward. Dr. Niles resides in Loleta.

It is surmised that the lupine reached no farther north than the Golden Gate until man intervened. Beside our stands in Humboldt, a Manchester, Mendocino County dairyman secured seeds in San Francisco and planted them around his dairy on the coast many years ago.

The manual further revealed that lupine is native to all continents with the exception of Australia. Our yellow lupine shrub was cultivated at Kensington, England in 1803 from seeds gathered earlier on the California coast.

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Press release from the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association:

On Saturday, February 7th, the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association will be assisting a local landowner with a prescribed burn in the Fickle Hill area. We will be broadcast burning around 1 acre of mixed redwood forest to improve forest health, promote biodiversity, and generate quality habitat. Smoke may be visible from Eureka and Arcata.

All plans and dates are subject to change or cancellation depending on weather conditions, resource availability, air quality, regional wildfire activity, and other factors.

All of our burns are carefully conducted by a diverse mix of community members, prescribed fire practitioners, and fire professionals in accordance with CAL FIRE and North Coast Unified Air Quality Management District regulations.