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September 28th \u2014 PG&E\u2019s plans to clear cut around power lines on private property are not limited to Mendocino County. This weekend, KZYX paid a visit to Harry Vaughn, a small landowner in Southern Humboldt, just outside Miranda, where crews have been marking trees for removal. Vaughn depends on the income he makes from farming mushrooms in the woods and from small-scale logging, \u201cwhich is one reason I don\u2019t really want the contractors to come in and destroy the value of my forest, where they would cut thousands of dollars of timber, and just leave it on the ground to rot,\u201d he explained.\nVaughn manages his 240 acres of mixed canopy for fire, sudden oak death, and sustainable logging according to a non-industrial timber harvest plan. He also farms more than twenty varieties of mushrooms in frames made from tanoak saplings in a patch of scrupulously maintained dappled shade between a fuel break and a dirt road. He was careful to acknowledge that we were on Wailaki land before we made our way over to a mushroom that looked like a small turtle balanced on a log. It was a bellflower, or winter variety, shiitake. He calculated that he can make upwards of sixteen dollars a pound for mushrooms at market. \u201cI can grow mushrooms and grow trees and harvest trees to provide income for me and jobs for my neighbors,\u201d the local loggers he hires to work on the property. He also uses a local mill to process the wood into lumber.\nAcross the dirt road from the mushroom farm is a patch that\u2019s been judiciously opened up to allow for different kinds of forest foods. But it\u2019s still not nearly as opened up as the PG&E clear cuts in Mendocino County. \u201cOnce you remove the shade from the shaded fuel break, you end up with a brush field that\u2019s more prone to fire, which is basically what PG&E is proposing to do, is create huge brush fields,\u201d said Vaughn, who is a member of the local fire safe council and the prescribed burn association. Pausing at the sunny patch where trees had been thinned, he pointed out the native food-bearing species that thrive in that set of conditions: low-growing blackberries, black raspberries, huckleberries, and acorn-bearing oaks. \u201cIt\u2019s making more food for me and more food for the animals,\u201d he observed. In order to maintain it all, \u201cI don\u2019t want to open it up too much, because then the invasive species will come in and the fire danger really goes up.\u201d\nPG&E\u2019s enhanced vegetation management program received approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in 2018. The stated purpose of the work is to reduce fires, but there was no environmental review, and there\u2019s been no agency oversight. Ag ponds and watersheds downhill of the clear cuts are in danger of getting clogged with sediment when the rain starts, and the four to six inches of chips left in pastures could have an economic impact on ranchers. But for Vaughn, the clear cuts would have a direct and devastating impact on his bottom line.\nUsing the rough estimate of five hundred dollars for a thousand board feet for Douglas fir, he figured that he and his neighbor the logger could each make about two hundred fifty dollars from one high-value fir. One particular tree was marked with an inscrutable set of numbers and different-colored dots, plus a yellow X that seemed to indicate it had been selected for removal. It\u2019s one of seven hundred trees PG&E contractors have marked on Vaughn\u2019s property. He hasn\u2019t worked up the exact loss plus damages he would incur if the company removed all the trees it deemed a danger to its infrastructure, but his estimate of the loss along one power line would be between sixty and eighty thousand dollars. \u201cSeven hundred trees is a lot of trees to lose,\u201d he reflected. \nAs a professional woodsman, he doesn\u2019t have a high opinion of how the company\u2019s contractors work in the forest. \u201cThe contractors that refused to identify themselves told me the yellow X\u2019s mean they\u2019re going to cut that tree,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then they said that the spots were just a trim, but I\u2019ve noticed in some reports that you showed that spots mean trim it to the stump. Trim it to the ground, so nobody quite knows what their marks mean. And they haven\u2019t explained that.\u201d \nA few paces up the road, Vaughn pointed out where he had found several unattended PG&E contractor trucks in a turnout, one of them idling in dry grass. \u201cSo they actually posed a threat to us during fire season,\u201d he reported. \nIt\u2019s not the only way the contractors have already endangered community members. Vaughn says they have come to his door during the pandemic without masks. \u201cAnd I asked if they had been vaccinated, and they got in my face, and said it was none of my business,\u201d he recounted. \u201cThe guy that got in my face actually had a Texas license plate, so he had a, maybe I\u2019m biased, a Texas attitude.\u201d Regional differences aside, Vaughn wondered why contractors are traveling such great distances to perform the work, and speculated that they are incurring massive mileage ...