As of Wednesday, Redtail Hawk landed in Condor’s nest and has roosted there. Condor has gone flying out in the Valley. Redtail brought a 25 foot banner with him that reads, ‘Save Our Water. Stop Caltrans NOW!’ The banner is visible from 101.
Redtail Hawk also goes by the name of Will Parrish. Parrish is a Ukiah resident who has been an instrumental part of the Bypass campaign. He is an activist and well known local journalist, who has written about and worked on forest and water protection, indigenous peoples land rights, nuclear weapons abolition, immigrant justice, and many other issues. He hasi written aabout dozen articles on the bypass and the resistance to it. To read Parrish’s most recent article on Caltrans mitigation debacle, click here.
This tree sit is in an Oregon ash grove just east of Highway 101, roughly a mile north of Willits High School. The tree is perched in one of the grove’s only oak trees. It is a valley oak at least 200 years old, one of precisely 1,815 oaks CalTrans inventoried to cut down.
This is the first tree sit in the wetlands area of the bypass construction zone, and has been strategically nested to bring attention to the activity happening in the wetlands currently. In a phone call with Redtail Hawk, he described the scene he is witnessing: Caltrans has brought in the wick drains and wick drain machine they will use to install the 55,000 wick drains to drain the wetlands, and they have begun test pile driving 100 foot steel tubes into the wetlands.
The current tree sit, and Condor and Redtail’s nesting in it, is to block destruction of this grove of trees in the wetlands, and to call attention to the destruction of the wetlands that is now beginning. More…
