Prairie
Creek State Park
Prairie
Creek State Park sits approximately 40 miles north of
Eureka and features a spectacular old growth forest.
"Old growth" forest refers to a forest that
has not been logged by humans.
Much
is made of the rain forest of the Amazon Basin, but a measurement
of the bio-mass/acre showed that old growth redwood forests
hold 9 times that of the Amazon. It is for this incredible
profusion of life that Prairie Creek State Park has been classified
by the United Nations as a World Heritage site and an International
Biosphere Reserve.
In
this case, some of these trees have been alive for over 1,000
years. This is one of the few remaining old growth forests
still in existence in the United States, and it features the
incredible coastal redwood, sequoia sempervirens. These are
the tallest living things on earth.
John
Steinbeck said of these trees, "The Redwoods, once seen,
leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always
they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors
from another time."
I
also like the way the some of the first Europeans living here
in the late 19th Century described them. These trees were
so tall "it took two men to look all the way to the top".
When
Europeans first arrived, there were two million acres
of old growth forests. In 1993, there were less than
90,000 acres of old growth left. This means that more
than 90% of these forests have disappeared and the loss
is much higher for the redwoods.
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