Credit: Caltrans
April 30, 2026 – SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Letters signed by more than 60,000 people urging a stop to the Richardson Grove Project are being delivered this week to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Highway 101 realignment project would accommodate oversized commercial trucks while cutting into the sensitive root networks of old-growth redwoods, harming Richardson Grove State Park’s iconic trees.
“Californians don’t want to pay for an unnecessary project that threatens the lives of our iconic redwoods, and it’s time for Gov. Newsom to step in,” said Peter Galvin, director of programs at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Caltrans has other options. It’s unfathomable that they’d ram a highway expansion through a grove of 1,000-year-old trees. The governor needs to hit the brakes on this reckless roadwork and save our state’s ancient trees.”
A coalition of environmental groups and community leaders, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, filed the first legal challenge against the project in 2010 and have been fighting the project ever since. This coalition includes, among many others, Trisha Lee Lotus, the granddaughter of the Devoy family, who first transferred the land to the state for preservation in 1922.
“My great-grandfather Henry Devoy entrusted 120 acres of old-growth redwoods here in 1922 at the inception of Richardson Grove,” said plaintiff Trisha Lotus, who is intent on maintaining her family’s legacy to protect Richardson Grove State Park. “That’s why we’re fighting Caltrans’ plan to cut into their roots, which may compromise their health and could kill these trees.”
On March 26, 2026, the First District Court of Appeal upheld Caltrans’ environmental review on a technicality, rather than the adequacy of the analysis of impacts to the ancient redwoods’ root systems. The environmental organizations are now asking Gov. Newsom to overrule his Caltrans highway department and take executive action to stop this project, which may start construction as soon as next month.
Richardson Grove State Park is home to one of the last protected stands of accessible old-growth redwoods in the world, with some trees as old as 1,000 years. Caltrans’ proposal to straighten a section of Highway 101 through the grove would cut into and pave over the root systems of thousand-year-old trees. Peer reviewed studies show that harming the root system of old-growth redwoods harms the trees themselves.
The letters note that the project is unnecessary because there are other viable ways to improve the movement of goods on the North Coast.
“Tens of thousands of people are calling on Gov. Newsom to protect California’s legacy trees, and I hope he’ll listen and order a halt to this incredibly destructive project,” Galvin said.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.8 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Source: Center for Biological Diversity