Warren Tindall, a longtime resident of Bayside, died on Aug. 11, 2024 at 97 years of age. Born in Bristow, Iowa on October 23, 1926, to Waldo H. and Velma Bruce Tindall, he was the eldest of five children. Warren was married to Willetta Laurine Clark on August 31, 1947.

He is survived by his wife of 77 years, Willetta, and daughters Janice Pontoni/Murphy, Dyanna Gazzera, and Debra Jones, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Warren joined the army on October 25, 1945, and served in the Philippine Campaign. After the surrender, he was transferred to the 13th Combat Engineers attached to the 7th Infantry Division in Seoul, Korea. Shortly after discharge, on December 8, 1946, he married his wartime sweetheart, Willetta Clark, who had faithfully written to him daily for years. They enjoyed a loving relationship for 77 years.

In 1947, he entered La Verne College and took full advantage of the G.I. Bill. He completed the course work for his B.A. degree and teaching credential and began teaching in 1950. Warren also held a secondary school teaching credential from San Jose State college.

In a teaching career that spanned 33 years, he taught at the elementary, secondary and college levels. The bulk of his teaching career was spent at the Arcata and McKinleyville High Schools.

After retirement from Northern Humboldt Union High School District in 1983 he embarked on a career in real estate which extended over a period of 25 years.

He was an active member of Redwood Gun Club and the Arcata American Legion Post 274 and VFW Post 2542. He was the primary organizer of the Mad River Community Veterans Honor Guard, where he served as Captain and chief training and planning officer.

A traditional graveside military ceremony will be conducted by the Mad River Community Veterans Honor Guard at Ocean View Cemetery on Saturday, August 24, 2024 at 1300 hours (1 p.m.).

Due to family travel restrictions at this time, a celebration of life will be announced at a future date.

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After a long battle with dementia, David Ralston passed away peacefully at the age of 77 in the early morning of July 28. Born in Orange County, David moved to Humboldt County close to 50 years ago where he worked as a carpenter and contractor on many homes and businesses in the local community.

David was a loving, funny, and giving person to all who knew him. He was willing to share and give anything he owned, including giving the shirt off his back, to anyone who needed it.

He had a great love of music with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure songs and bands. No matter what job he was doing, he would sing as he worked. He also spent a big part of his life trying to find a use for old things, and he resisted throwing anything away. He greatly enjoyed the simple things in life. He loved to have the whole family together at home for a good meal, a beer, and a bowl of chocolate ice cream served around the dining table he built himself.

He was greatly loved, and he will be missed. He is survived by his amazing wife and loving partner for over 47 years, Glory Ralston, his two children, Sonja and Jesse, his five grandchildren, and the family yellow Labrador, Keeper.

A celebration of David’s life is planned for Sunday, September 15 at 2 p.m. at the Trinidad Town Hall.

For the first time in more than a century, California condors soared last month over the ceremony grounds of Woo-neek’ ‘we-ley-goo, a ten-day Yurok ceremony also known as the Jump Dance. Akin to a new year, the name more directly translates to “raising up ceremony,” said Yurok descendant and Hoopa member Ryan Matilton, who works as a biologist for the Yurok Tribe. California condors, or prey-go-neesh, are important to the event. 

“During the ceremony we have baskets and we raise them up to the sky, essentially lifting our prayers up to the heavens,” Matilton said. “And that’s where the condor comes in, because in Yurok belief they are the highest flying in the sky, and they are thought to carry our prayers to the heavens. So, you know, we can only lift them so far. They take it the rest of the way.”

“Having them back is a huge deal.” 

They’re back because of the Northern California Condor Restoration Program, which began reintroducing prey-go-neesh to Yurok ancestral territory in 2022. Thousands of years ago, the scavengers thrived in California and beyond, but their numbers drastically dropped with settler colonialism. By 1982, there were only 22 California condors left in the wild, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

The Northern California Condor Restoration Program is a collaboration between the Yurok Tribe, Redwood National and State Parks and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and oversees a restoration site in Redwood National Park. Of the six facilities reintroducing California condors in the state, it is the northernmost site by about 450 miles.

Thanks to the program, our region’s prey-go-neesh population of 11 birds will soon increase by more than 50 percent. 

Five new younglings – aged 14 to 16 months – arrived last month from a Los Angeles zoo and have been acclimating in a closed pen with an older mentor condor. Two of them will be released on Tuesday, and the others will join in the following weeks. You can view the group hangin’ out on this live feed. 

Two more zoo transplants will arrive later this month and are expected to take to the skies around the end of September. 

Though the first of the flock were released just two years ago, the Yurok Tribe has been working to reintroduce condors to the region since the early 2000s, said Chris West, a senior wildlife biologist for the tribe who manages the program. After years of securing grant funding, navigating bureaucratic hurdles and scouring the habitat for contaminants, it was finally time to construct and populate a reintroduction site. 

Reintroducing California condors isn’t as simple as unleashing a newborn onto the landscape, though.

“Condors are a really unique species,” West said. While many birds can survive on their own instincts after fledging the nest, condors rely on their parents to learn and survive for the first year and a half of their lives. After that, juvenile birds flock and learn from one another for years, and don’t start breeding until age seven or so.

“Because of that, it makes releasing them a little trickier,” West said. “You’re now trying to release a young bird that doesn’t have mom and dad, and so you have to take the place of [them], and at the same time do it from behind the scenes where they can’t see you and imprint on you.”

Restoration programs have spent decades figuring out how to best replicate that environment, West said. A proper release site is a social hub for young and naive birds.

“It brings the birds together,” West said. “You can provide resources for them, you can provide safety for them, and you can do it all from hiding in the bushes, hiding behind the scenes so the birds don’t see you, don’t know that it’s happening.”

Even following release, the condors continue to rely on the site as a home base. Staff provide food year-round and lure each bird into traps twice a year for physical exams and to test for avian influenza and lead exposure. 

Fragmented lead bullets are the biggest threat to Condors these days, even though the ammunition has been illegal in California since 2019. In the two years since reintroducing condors to the northwest, at least five poaching events have put the birds at risk, West said, noting that there could have been more. In 2023 one condor had to be treated for lead poisoning at the Sequoia Park Zoo after scavenging a poached elk carcass.

The most recent (and extreme) case was the killing of four elk near Bald Hills Road just last month. Matilton, who was participating in Woo-neek’ ‘we-ley-goo not far from the poaching, was one of the first to arrive at the scene after the elk were discovered. Condors found the dead elk first. 

“It was pretty horrible,” Matilton said. “I’ve lived here my whole life and honestly never seen anything of the like.” It was an unusual case because the four elk were shot but left otherwise untouched. Everything about it upset Matilton: the threat to the condors; the disrespect and waste of the elk; and the blame tribe members face after poaching events, he said. 

Soft, dense and malleable, many types of lead bullets mushroom and fragment when they hit an animal, shedding energy and shattering into tiny pieces. 

“All of those little pieces are toxic,” West said. “If you can see the piece and pick it up – of which there are hundreds – then that’s going to be enough lead to kill a condor or an eagle or a vulture.”

In this case, West said that none of the local condors appear to have ingested lead fragments before people intervened. 

Not everyone knows about the lead bullet ban, and the tribe wants to get the word out about why the ammunition is dangerous to wildlife. “Regulation seems easy, but it’s not easy, and I don’t think you win the hearts and minds of the people that you really need to be engaging with,” West said.

But reaching one sector of the audience – poachers – is a challenge.

“How do you engage with a poacher who’s already doing an illegal activity and get them to make a transition to a less impactful form of take?” West said. “That’s something we haven’t totally figured out.”

Permitting for the Yurok Condor Restoration Program is set for two decades, but the program may be extended. Obviously, the hope is that the California condor population will eventually be self-sustaining. 

“A lot of it is going to be dependent on lead,” West said. “A lot of the other sites are saying: ‘Wow, we could just stop doing this tomorrow, if we didn’t have birds dying from lead all the time.’ […] If it ended today, I would feel pretty confident that 20 years is all we would need. But it’s not going to end today.”

Folks who see anything suspicious are encouraged to call the California Department of Fish and Wildlife at (888) 334-2258. 

“The condor restoration program, to the Yurok people, it’s more than just the reintroduction of a bird, of an animal to the landscape. It’s like the reintroduction of a piece of our culture,” Matilton said. 

“A lot of the elders now – their grandparents, and some of them themselves […] – they went to boarding schools. They were sent away. And the fact that they were able to come back and help my generation bring the culture back … I feel like they feel akin to the condor in that respect – that the condor was extirpated from this area, but it came back. We brought them back.”

With Gav and Eleni out of town on *cough* business, who stays home and holds down the fort?

Once again, our own state senator — Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire — is not gonna abandon the world’s fifth-largest economy just for some fun and games and speeches and deep-dish pizza. No, sir! He’s gonna stay right here and sit in the big seat, to make sure that you will survive the next wildfire and your children will be fed.

Statement from McGuire, sent by McGuire’s people:

“It’s an honor to serve as Acting Governor of our great state, and a privilege to serve more than 39 million Californians. This week, countless families are sending their kids back to school, an exciting rite of passage for all and let’s be candid, a week of nerves for some. Here in California, we have worked hard to ensure that every student is given the same opportunities to learn and thrive in the classroom by being the first state in the country to offer universal free breakfast and lunch to every student – because we know you can’t have a good day at school on an empty stomach. We’ve also funded K-12 public schools and California community colleges at record levels, which is a big boost for student success.”

“And as summer winds to a close, we know fire season continues to ramp up in the hot fall months – stay safe, remain vigilant and make sure you have an evacuation plan. We’ll remain in constant contact with CAL FIRE and the state Office of Emergency Services in the coming days, ensuring communities have the resources they need during these hot, dry days.”

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PREVIOUSLY:

• TODAY: Mike McGuire is the Governor of the State of California
• With a Swoop of His Pen, Governor Mike McGuire (Acting) Makes Bills From the Legislature the Law of the Land, Places $20 Billion in Bond Measures on Fall Ballot

It is once again brain update time, people! FYI: The next time you see Chinese acrobats, or Pink Martini, or Paula Poundstone up at ye olde Van Duzer Theatre, it will not be a CenterArts show you are attending. CenterArts is dead, but don’t you fret. In its place will rise the equally mighty Cal Poly Humboldt Presents, which you can learn more about in the Cal Poly Humboldt release below:

CenterArts is being renamed Cal Poly Humboldt Presents to more directly connect the University with a cultural institution of the North Coast. Since its founding in 1980, CenterArts has been a leading presenter of diverse performances in Humboldt County. Cal Poly Humboldt Presents will build on this legacy while showcasing contemporary artists and performers.

The program will continue to offer a wide variety of live music, dance, theater, family-friendly shows, and comedy to North Coast audiences. Cal Poly Humboldt Presents will expand offerings for University students and coordinate major events like the annual Lumberjack Weekend Block Party, held on the third Saturday in October. Additionally, the Artists & Schools program will keep providing thousands of local children with access to cultural events.

Cal Poly Humboldt Presents offers student employees valuable real-world experience in the arts. Alumni have gone to work in professional theaters or toured around the world with acts like The National. 
Cal Poly Humboldt Presents collaborates with faculty to provide opportunities for students to work with and perform alongside musical masters. For example, students will have the chance to perform with Jason Marsalis when he leads the Cal Poly Humboldt Jazz Orchestra in a special end-of-year event.

The Cal Poly Humboldt Presents’ 2024-25 season has been announced and tickets are now on sale. The lineup features the legendary Peking Acrobats; Emmy Award-winning comedian David Cross, Grammy-nominated country music star Elle King, local favorites Pink Martini, the Broadway hit “A Year With Frog and Toad,” and the comedic ballet troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.

“The new name makes clearer the connection to the campus while still honoring the legacy of performing arts on the North Coast,” says Michael Moore, Jr., associate director of the Gutswurrak Student Activities Center who also directs programming for Cal Poly Humboldt Presents.

See the full Cal Poly Humboldt Presents’ 2024-2025 season here.

If you’ve spent any time on local social media channels in the last couple of weeks, you’ve probably come across the San Francisco Standard article about San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s latest effort to alleviate the city’s homeless crisis by bussing people out of the area. The article has drawn local attention because it claims Humboldt County is among the “top three destinations” for homeless people being sent out of the city. 

According to the article, since August 2022, San Francisco “has sent at least 857 homeless people to other states and California counties” through one of the city’s three relocation assistance programs. 

“While the city is unable to say where hundreds have gone through its longstanding Homeward Bound program, newly obtained data from the Journey Home program — which launched in September 2023 — show 27% of 92 clients were sent to other California counties,” the article states. “After California, Oregon is the second-most-popular destination, making up roughly 10% of the 92 clients in the program, according to data collected from the time of its launch to Aug. 2.”

That means in the last year approximately 25 homeless people were sent to live elsewhere in California, with Humboldt, Los Angeles and Sacramento counties being the “top destinations.” Unfortunately, the article does not link to the data it’s referring to, nor does it include any specifics on exactly how many people were sent to Humboldt.

The Outpost contacted the San Francisco Human Services Agency (SFHSA) for more detailed statistics but was told that the information was confidential.

“Due to client privacy, we are unfortunately unable to share specific numbers of people who have traveled back to Humboldt County, because in some cases, the number of people traveling back to destination counties are quite small and only one person may have traveled there, which could be identifying,” according to an emailed statement from SFHSA. “However, please note that as with every person served as part of the Journey Home program, these individuals are either from the destination county — in this case Humboldt — or have family and friends who our staff spoke with directly.”

We also contacted the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for additional information but spokesperson Christine Messinger said the county “do[es] not have information about how many people experiencing homelessness have been sent to Humboldt through other jurisdiction’s transportation assistance programs.”

(Messinger did note that, since 2021, the county has helped relocate “an average of nine people a month” through the county’s Transportation Assistance Program, launched in 2006.)

At this week’s meeting, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors will consider sending a letter to Mayor Breed that asks for more information about the city’s policies and procedures for the Journey Home program, as well as “all program and outcome data collected since September 2023.”

The letter says the county was “dismayed to learn that our small, rural county was among the top three destinations in the state where people experiencing homelessness” are sent through the Journey Home program. The letter acknowledges the “urgency with which San Francisco intends to act to alleviate homelessness” but asks that the city do more to work with the county to “alleviate homelessness across the state.”

“We are concerned that providing bus tickets to other jurisdictions without verifying access to housing, family support or employment does not alleviate homelessness; it simply shifts the person to another county,” the letter states. “We urge you to ensure that Journey Home participants have the support they need to obtain housing and employment before they receive transportation assistance to Humboldt County.”

If this request sounds familiar, that’s because a very similar situation played out between the county and San Francisco officials almost 20 years ago. 

Some of our readers will recall back in 2006 when the Board of Supervisors found out San Francisco had sent at least 13 homeless people to Humboldt County through the city’s Homeward Bound program, which provides a one-way bus ticket to folks who want to return to their families or home communities. 

Local officials were able to work out an agreement that required San Francisco to alert the county whenever someone was being sent to Humboldt and verify beforehand that the person was actually from the area before sending them up here. It’s not clear what happened to the agreement.

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DOCUMENT: Letter to Mayor London Breed

California has given America a glimpse at what running one of the world’s largest economies on renewable energy might look like.

The state recently hit a milestone: 100 days this year with 100% carbon-free, renewable electricity for at least a part of each day, as tracked by Stanford University engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson.

The state notched the milestone while — so far — avoiding blackouts and emergency power reductions this year, even with the hottest July on record.

That progress is largely due to the substantial public and private investments in renewable energy — particularly batteries storing solar power to use when the sun isn’t shining, according to energy experts.

“California has made unprecedented investments in our power grid in recent years — and we’re seeing them pay off in real time,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement to CalMatters. “Not only is our grid more reliable and resilient, it’s also increasingly running on 100% clean electricity.”

The state faces a huge challenge in coming years: A series of mandates will require carbon-free energy while also putting more electric cars on roads and electric appliances in homes. California, under state law, must run on 60% renewable energy by 2030, ramping up to 100% by 2045.

Signs of progress are emerging. From January to mid-July of this year, zero-carbon, renewable energy exceeded demand in California for 945 hours during 146 days — equivalent to a month-and-a-half of 100% fossil-fuel-free electricity, according to the California Energy Commission, the state agency tasked with carrying out the clean energy mandates.

But California still has a long way to go to stop burning fossil fuels for electricity. Natural gas, which emits greenhouse gases and air pollutants, remains its single largest source of electricity.

Just over half of power generated for Californians in 2022 came from solar, wind, other renewables and nuclear power, while 36% came from natural gas plants.

Reliability of the power grid is a top concern as the state switches to solar and wind energy. Unpredictable events like wildfires and winter storms also cause outages, while hot summer months, with air conditioners whirring, strain the supply.

In August of 2020 California experienced its first non-wildfire blackouts in nearly 20 years, and in late August and September of 2022, a severe heatwave forced regulators to ask consumers to voluntarily reduce power for 10 days.

Since September 2022 — when California teetered on the edge of those blackouts and the governor pleaded for conservation — nearly 11,600 new megawatts of clean energy have been added to the state’s grid, said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the grid. (That’s enough to power around 9 to 12 million homes although it’s not available all at one time.)

California also now has more than 10,000 megawatts of battery capacity, making it the largest supply outside of China. Battery power from large commercial facilities proved its worth during last month’s heat wave, Mainzer said.

Batteries “were a major difference-maker,” Mainzer said. “The batteries charged during the day, when solar energy is abundant, and then they put that energy back onto the grid in the afternoon and evening, when solar production is rolling off the system.”

California relies heavily on four-hour duration lithium-ion batteries, which come in large, centralized facilities and hybrid facilities paired with solar energy projects. More homes also are installing batteries with their rooftop solar installations, but they supply a small amount of power.

Planning and practicing various emergency scenarios has also helped immensely, Mainzer said.

“Our grid operators are now increasingly experienced at managing these extreme heat events,” Mainzer said. “Our forecasters also did an excellent job of reviewing the next day’s conditions so that the market could respond effectively.”

‘The table is set’ for clean energy

California may need to more than double its energy generation capacity by 2045 to meet the 100% clean energy target while adding electric cars, appliances and other technologies, said Siva Gunda, who sits on the California Energy Commission.

To do that, California aims to build about 6,000 to 8,000 megawatts of new energy resources each year. The state hit a record last year, adding more than 6,000 megawatts, Gunda said. Each megawatt is enough to serve between 750 and 1,000 homes.

“The table is set,” Gunda said. “The pieces are there for success, and it’s about executing it, together with a common vision and collaboration.”

The commission is closely monitoring a new concern: Artificial intelligence technology, which uses large data centers that consume power. “We’re carefully watching where the loads are going to grow,” Gunda said.

Stanford’s Jacobson said running on 100% renewable energy is becoming more common.

Over the July 28 weekend, California marked the 100th nonconsecutive day within a 144-day stretch in which 100% of electricity came from renewable sources for periods ranging from five minutes to more than 10 hours, he said.

On April 8, a solar eclipse reduced solar power generation and increased demand on the grid, which was met by batteries. On May 5, wind, hydroelectric and solar energy reached more than 160% of demand for a significant portion of the day.

California continues to waffle about ending its reliance on natural gas and nuclear power.

“There’s no miracle technology that was developed. It’s just subtle improvements in existing technologies and deployment, deployment, deployment.”
— Mark Z. Jacobson, Stanford university Engineering Professor

Fearing emergency rolling blackouts like the one in 2020, Newsom and the Legislature in 2022 allowed some natural gas plants that were supposed to go offline to keep operating.

And the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant will continue operating while Pacific Gas & Electric pursues federal permission to stay open past 2025. Nuclear power is considered renewable and carbon-free but it creates radioactive waste.

State officials and private investors aim to create an entirely new industry — giant floating ocean wind platforms — to produce 13% of California’s power, enough to power 25 million homes, by 2045. The massive projects will cost billions of dollars.

Some Democratic legislators are hoping to make it easier to build wind and solar projects, since sometimes local obstacles and permitting take years. They are negotiating an end-of-session package of proposed laws that could streamline construction, CalMatters reported earlier this month. California’s legislative session ends Aug. 31.

Jacobson said the cost of large-scale solar power projects has “dropped substantially” in recent decades largely because of “economies of scale — just the huge growth of solar on a worldwide scale.”

“There’s no miracle technology that was developed,” he said. “It’s just subtle improvements in existing technologies and deployment, deployment, deployment.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.