Three of the four members of Siskiyou Land Conservancy’s Board of Directors collectively bring to the organization 75 years of conservation activism in Northern California. The fourth board member has spent the past 25 years immersed in “green” politics as an award-winning environmental filmmaker. All Siskiyou Land Conservancy directors actively contribute to management of the organization’s programs.
Executive Director and President Greg King founded Siskiyou Land Conservancy in 2004. He has been active in California resource protection efforts since 1985. That year he investigated and exposed illegal logging by Louisiana Pacific Corp., which led to legal action and the eventual inclusion into the California State Park system of nearly 10,000 acres of forestland in western Sonoma County. In 1986 King, an award winning writer and photographer, began investigating the holdings and logging practices of the Pacific Lumber Co., in Humboldt County, which that year was taken over by Houston-based Maxxam Corp. In 1987 King discovered and named Headwaters Forest, containing the largest unprotected ancient redwood groves in the world, 3,000 acres of which were permanently protected in 1999. That year, King founded the non-profit Smith River Project, dedicated to protecting California’s wildest river; the Smith River Project merged with Siskiyou Land Conservancy in 2004. King is a fifth-generation native of Northern California whose pioneer ancestors settled in Mendocino and Sonoma counties during the 1860s and owned one of the largest redwood mills in the region. The King Range Mountains, in Humboldt County, and the King Ranch and King Ridge in Sonoma County are named for his ancestors.
Secretary/Treasurer Dr. Ken Miller was a founder of both the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters and the Humboldt Watershed Council, organizations that were instrumental in tracking and opposing Maxxam Corp.’s old-growth redwood liquidation. Miller, a retired physician, devised and implemented many of the legal and legislative strategies that eventually halted Maxxam’s old-growth redwood liquidation, and which encouraged the California Department of Forestry and the state Water Quality Control Board to take action against harmful logging practices in California.
Director Ali Freedlund has been a resident and activist in Humboldt County since 1977. She created and now coordinates the Mattole Restoration Council’s Forest Practices Program, which monitors and comments on all timber harvest plans within the Mattole River watershed. She has also coordinated numerous restoration and conservation projects.
Director Frank Green is a former bureau chief and producer for NBC News. Frank’s environmental films have earned several international and national awards, including two Emmy Awards. Green has served as board president of a preschool in a disadvantaged neighborhood in San Francisco, and as a board member of his non-profit environmental production company. He currently manages a ranch and a winery in Mendocino County.
Research Associate Colin Fiske has been instrumental in shaping several North Coast programs, including efforts to prevent CalTrans from widening highways through Richardson Grove and along the Middle Fork Smith River, and passing a GMO ban in Humboldt County. Colin is also on the steering committee of the Humboldt Permaculture Guild, and he’s a director and board secretary for the North Coast Co-op.