Redway homeowner cuts down protected old-growth redwoods, sparks county enforcement questions

Five old-growth redwoods, estimated at 200 to 300 years old, are gone from a small Redway parcel where county rules were supposed to shield them. The trees stood on a 0.43-acre lot at the corner of Oakridge Drive and Briceland Road, directly across from homeowner Robert Scarlett’s house, in a Lower Redway neighborhood created to protect the redwoods surrounding the John B. DeWitt State Natural Reserve.

The removals have ignited a central question in Humboldt County: if a decades-old ordinance was meant to protect these trees, how did they come down anyway? Lower Redway’s Q Zone, created in 1996, generally bars removing trees more than 12 inches in diameter unless there is a clear threat to people or property. In those cases, the county requires a special permit. Residents and environmental advocates say that protection should have stopped the cutting. County planners, however, had been operating under the belief that a Cal Fire hazard-tree exemption could override the local permit requirement.

Scarlett, who also works for Cal Fire, said he bought the house for his mother and believed the trees posed an immediate safety risk because branches had been hitting the roof. That explanation has done little to quiet the backlash. At a Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting in January, residents called the cutting a dangerous precedent and an affront to community values. One speaker described it as a “real middle finger to the community,” while others said the site, once known for its scenery, now looked like “a big pile of mud” and stumps.

The dispute has also exposed uncertainty over who is actually enforcing redwood protections in Southern Humboldt. Cal Fire has opened an investigation into the tree removal, and county planning officials have said they may have misread the overlap between county rules and state forestry law. Environmental Protection Information Center activists pushed the county to enforce the 1987 ordinance, and more than 620 people responded to that call. By March, supervisors were still hearing public outrage over the case, and by mid-April they were weighing stronger protections for old-growth trees in Lower Redway’s Q Zone.

For Redway and the wider Southern Humboldt region, the stakes go beyond one property line. The case has become a test of whether a homeowner can invoke hazard concerns to remove protected ancient redwoods on private land, and whether county rules have any real teeth when they collide with state authority. Until that question is resolved, neighbors across Lower Redway are left wondering how much protection the Q Zone truly offers.