Welcome to the Mendocino Institute as we enter our third decade. Our mission remains much the same as it was when we were founded and this statement will remain unrevised. On a modest scale, with no staff and relying on small grants, we have sought ways to help enhance the ecology and way of life of the communities on the North Coast of Mendocino County. This has involved community oriented educational work, including public conferences on “The Future of Jackson State Forest,” “The Ecology of the Coast,” “The Housing Crisis,” “The Back to the Land Movement” and “The Future of the Fort Bragg Headlands.” In addition, in these years Institute Director Professor William Russell has become one of his fields leading scholars on the subject of Redwood restoration. Several of his path breaking papers are reprinted here. Second, we have worked with KZYX, the county’s community supported public radio station to present scores of programs, bringing to our county the voices of a generation under the heading “Talking about California” — in-depth interviews on subjects of social and environmental justice with the finest activists and thinkers of our time. In these pages you will find examples of this work. And so, we repeat what we said at the beginning, we hope you will find these pages interesting.
