At issue in the challenge to L-P harvesting in the Schooner Gulch watershed is the inadequate consideration by CDF and L-P of the cumulative impacts of extensive harvesting operations on the fish and wildlife of the small coastal drainage. The 3,000 acre watershed has been subject to four L-P harvests on over l,500 acres in the last seven years. Despite numerous concerns raised by the watershed community to the damage this rapid rate of logging would inflict, the CDF review of the additional 600 acre harvest plan failed to seriously address fish and wildlife impacts.
The watershed community wants state laws regulating timber harvesting to be meaningfully applied to L-P so that the small watershed's remnant run of steelhead does not join its extinct run of coho salmon, and spotted owls will continue to have sufficient habitat to remain as a reproducing population.
It is now in the hands of the court to determine how environmental concerns are to be balanced with corporate timber policy.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2003
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