[env-trinity] Times Standard on Tim McKay
Tom Stokely
tstokely at trinityalps.net
Tue Aug 1 07:50:21 PDT 2006
Article Launched: 08/01/2006 04:30:13 AM PDT
http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_4120789
Mourning McKay
John Driscoll The Times-Standard
Activist, historian, birder left big footprints on North Coast
John Driscoll
The Times-Standard
When Tim McKay got his start in Humboldt County, there were still tepee burners sending plumes of wood smoke from sawmill waste into the fog-heavy air around Arcata and Eureka.
The county's best-known environmentalist died Sunday, shortly after spotting a Cooper's hawk near Stone Lagoon. McKay had spent more than half of his
59 years building the Northcoast Environmental Center from its humble roots in a timber country that didn't exactly embrace his early work.
On Monday, his partner, his friends and colleagues were just beginning to accept the vacuum he left behind.
His partner of eight years, Michele Marta, described Tim as loving and tender.
The two spent Saturday looking at elegant terns and other birds on Humboldt Bay. While birding at Stone Lagoon on Sunday, McKay had a major heart attack and could not be revived. Just before he died, Marta put a sweater under his head.
”The last thing he said to me was, 'I love you, sweetie,'” Marta said. “And then he died.”
”We need to keep our eyes on the prize and not be mesmerized by smoke and mirrors.”
-- McKay, regarding proposed water storage on the Klamath River
Opinionated, thorough, well-spoken -- and so abundantly quotable -- McKay made an impression with his approach and with his size. A gentle man,
McKay nonetheless stood by less imposing people trying to voice their views at sometimes hostile meetings.
Longtime friend and neighbor of the Westhaven man, Lucille Vinyard remembers McKay standing beside her at the podium during a volatile California Coastal Commission meeting, acting as a de facto guard.
Vinyard spearheaded the annual beach cleanup that has since caught on around the world, and which McKay took over after five years.
”He's just been a wonderful spokesman for the environmental community,” Vinyard said. “He's just been an absolutely wonderful asset.”
”If it's a bad idea it's not a NIMBY kind of a thing.”
-- McKay, regarding Calpine's proposal to build a liquefied natural gas plant on Humboldt Bay
Historian, documentarian, photographer, McKay's vast knowledge and experience was backed up by an incredible library of documents that he amassed on dozens of issues over his nearly 35-year term as the Northcoast Environmental Center's executive director.
The Gasquet-Orleans Road, the northern spotted owl, the Siskiyou Wilderness, the Klamath River. He spent many of his efforts on federal projects with ramifications for Northern California, and chronicled the issues in the advocacy newspaper EcoNews and on the longest-running radio show on KHSU. He also salvaged the environmental center after a fire burned it down in 2001.
”Tim was the organization and the organization was Tim,” said his friend and fellow environmentalist Ted Trichilo of Fortuna.
Trichilo said that McKay forged ahead with the fledgling environmental center despite opposition from the powers that dominated the county in the 1960s and 1970s.
Close friend and colleague Connie Stewart, who left the environmental center to work for Eureka Democratic Assemblywoman Patty Berg, was 19 when she met McKay. That was when the G-O Road controversy -- which aimed to build a road between Gasquet and Orleans and bisect a wilderness -- was wrapping up.
The two even regularly donated blood to the same Blood Bank account for years. Stewart's composure faltered after a few minutes into the interview. She said that she loved McKay and will dearly miss him, but that his sudden death while birding may have been preferable to a drawn-out death from recent ailments.
”He couldn't have scripted his exit from this earth any better,” Stewart said.
”Endangered species are not the problem; their plight is only the symptom.”
-- McKay, June 20, 2003, op-ed
In recent years, McKay pressed for more wilderness to be added to existing back country tracts. Just before he died, a wilderness bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, passed the U.S. House of Representatives, its most significant hurdle. If it passes the Senate as expected, it will designate some 273,000 acres of public land as wilderness.
”I'll always remember Tim when I go to the mountains,” said McKay's friend Joe Gillespie with the Friends of Del Norte County.
Gillespie said that people in Humboldt and Del Norte counties will benefit from McKay's work and the work of those who knew him for years to come.
McKay was also heavily involved in the dispute over Klamath River fish and water. His efforts redoubled in 2002 when up to 68,000 adult chinook salmon died in the river. Arranging for a helicopter flight up the river, his photos of thousands of salmon floating dead in the low, tepid water were poignant and distributed around the West.
No stranger to controversy, McKay often rattled cages, but many said that he had become more moderate -- though no less passionate -- in recent years.
Even those who were regularly at odds with McKay's politics or disagreed with him on environmental issues were quick to point out that they respected him.
McKinleyville's Dennis Mayo, who has battled with McKay over vehicle access to Clam Beach, said they were often staunchly opposed during heated, public debates. Still, he said he was sad to learn of McKay's death.
”Whether you like what he did or didn't like what he did,” Mayo said, “you've got to admit that he did something, and that's a good thing.”
”I always think of that biblical admonition, when God told Noah to take two of every species, not just the ones that are worth money.”
-- McKay, regarding federal protection for lamprey
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