The Bird vs. the Bypass: Tree-Sitter Fights Mendocino Highway Project

By Deborah Svoboda

If you want to talk face-to-face to Warbler, you have to be OK with heights.

Warbler, the name adopted by a 24-year-old farmer, is living indefinitely in a ponderosa pine on the southern outskirts of Willits, up in Mendocino County. She's been up in the tree since the end of January to try to block construction of a four-lane, six-mile, $290 million highway bypass around town.

A couple weeks back, I drove north on U.S. 101 through Marin and Sonoma counties and up into Mendocino to interview Warbler (also known as Amanda Senseman) for a journalism class assignment. I brought along a camera (I'm a photojournalist first) and sound recording equipment (which I was just learning to use). And when I got to Warbler's tree, and she agreed that it was OK, I climbed the 71 feet to her platform--"two rooms," she calls it--overlooking 101.

Why is she up there?

To build the bypass, Caltrans will need to cut down trees along the superhighway-size right-of-way, and that could harm migratory bird species. It will need to fill wetlands along the route, the construction could impact spawning streams for endangered coho salmon and steelhead.

The agency has planned the bypass for decades, and says it's necessary to allow through traffic to avoid the bottleneck of downtown Willits, where U.S. 101 narrows to two lanes. There's debate about whether there's enough traffic through town to justify the project and whether diverting traffic away from downtown will help or hurt the local economy. But Caltrans spokesperson Phil Frisbie Jr. says that as the state's economy rebounds, "Traffic volumes will increase, both for commerce, and people will go out and they'll vacation more, so the need for the bypass as things recover is going to be felt even greater.”

Continued:  http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/03/12/the-bird-vs-the-bypass-tree-sitter-fights-mendocino-highway-project/