Two bills in congress are aimed at creating preserves for vanishing redwood ecosystems. In Northern California, HR 2866, known as the Headwaters Bill and championed by Rep. Dan Hamburg, proposes to set aside some 44,000 acres of Coastal Redwood, or Sequoia Semper Virens, land which is now in the hands of Maxxam via its takeover of the Pacific Lumber Company (PALCO). Although all but some 5,000 acres of this land, the now famous Headwaters Grove, would still be available for some sort of logging under the proposal, the bill has elicited bitter and scathing rhetoric from the WUM. The Alta California Alliance, Candy Boak and her WUM group Mother's Watch, and John Campbell of the Pacific Lumber Company itself have all issued tirades against the bill. John Campbell even went so far as to threaten that PALCO would sue bill supporters if they did not retract newspaper ads supporting the Headwaters proposal. However, no retraction is going to happen.
Down in the Southern Sierras of California, the WUM is also rising up against the Giant Sequoia Preservation Act, HR 2153 by Rep. George Brown. This bill proposes to establish a "no-logging" preserve of some 422,000 acres of land bearing Giant Redwoods, or Sequoia Gigantum. The WUM group People For The West is leading the charge against this bill. Sierra Forest Products has the only mill in the entire area and it employs about 190 of the 150,000 people employed in the county. Bill supporters say they believe People For The West is bussing in people from Nevada and other areas in order to create small crowds of 100 or so at opposition rallies. Bill supporters also say they are being harassed for supporting HR 2153. One activist even had a dead owl hung to his front door.
The same People For The West group that is opposing HR 2153 is also opposed to S 21, the California Desert Preservation Bill. This group is also organizing to oppose listing the Willow Flycatcher as an endangered species in Kern County. In fact, the WUM has had a lot of trouble with various declining species lately and is presently attempting to gut the Endangered Species Act itself.
In Northern California, the WUM is opposed to the listing of the Marbled Murrelet, a sea bird which comes ashore to nest in the broken tops of old growth trees. The WUM is also waging a campaign to get the government to de-list the Spotted Owl in the state. We can expect to see similar WUM opposition to the listing of Coho Salmon as the time draws nearer for the fish to obtain Endangered status.
Finally, the WUM, by way of its timber industry contingent, has filed a host of lawsuits in an attempt to block implementation of President Clinton's Option 9 Forest Management plan. Of course, environmentalists are not too pleased with the Option 9 plan either, but do not be swayed into thinking that Option 9 is a place where environmentalists and WUMmies agree with each other. Environmentalists dislike the forest management plan because it does not regulate the timber industry enough, while the WUM (and the timber industry itself for that matter), is opposed to the basic idea that the timber industry can or should be regulated at all. In fact, the Option 9 plan as it stands now would change very little of what the timber industry is already doing and would offer the industry new opportunities as well. The WUM is probably making such a big stink about the Option 9 plan because it simply cannot let any attempt to regulate the timber industry slip by without a fight.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
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