The logging plan that is being amended (THP 1-95-315 MEN, Amendment No. 10) was a compromise plan coming out of the "Breakfast First!" protests in Elk in 1990, and a community lawsuit. It was one of the few low-impact logging plans that Louisiana Pacific ever filed. But L-P never logged it. They sold it, along with all their lands and operations, to the Fishers in July 1998. The Fishers now want to abandon the more restorative "commercial thinning" and take out the old growth.
They failed to survey for Marbled Murrelet, though the area contains this rare seabird's habitatÑand failed to do new Spotted Owl surveys. The hastily filed amendment also creates great potential for landslides and sedimentation that will impact the Elk town water supply, and may wipe out a salmon spawning stream that is misclassified as non-fish bearing. The roads that are already in are falling apart. There are big road failures and other landslides all over the plan area.
The Fishers sent a full crew of fallers into the Albion River Kaisen Gulch area to log residual old growth and second growth trees in FebruaryÑin the rainÑin an apparent effort to beat the March 1 startup date for Spotted Owl surveys. The California Department of Forestry approved the plan (THP 1-98-350 MEN) on Feb. 17. The Fishers' logging company (Mendocino Redwood) called in their notice of operations that day, and sent the crew out the next morning. People in the community hadn't even received the CDF notice that the plan had been approved. Linda Perkins and the Albion River Watershed Protection Association, represented by attorney Rod Jones, took this plan to court. The hearing was April 2. As we go to press Judge Cox has not issued his decision.
The Fishers have a blitz of logging plans lined up for this year's logging seasonÑenough plans to remove the last merchantable timber from these severely cutover forestsÑand they've already begun, a month before the logging season normally begins. The Fishers and their spokesperson, Sandy Dean, have often stated that they want to be "good stewards of the land." One wonders when that good stewardship is going to begin.
The sad truth of the matter is the Fishers are logging just like L-P, and in some ways worse than L-P. And they have, in addition, engaged in a sophisticated "green-washing" campaign (including five full page ads in one local newspaper) trying to "sell" the L-P logging program as something new.
Take the word "clearcutting," for instance. Fifty percent of the Fishers' logging plans contain all or partial clearcuttingÑthe same percentage as L-P. But now they're calling it "variable retention," by which they mean that they are going to clearcut 90% of the trees instead of 100%. Leaving scraggly little patches of trees dotting a clearcut ridgeside will do nothing for wildlife (such trees afford no protection) and their isolated, damaged root systems cannot hold these steep ridgesides together. Many of the trees will blow down in the next big storm, and will then be salvage logged. The foresters can also easily expand the size of the logging plans, to accomodate the extra 10%, so there will be no net loss of money. "Variable retention" is merely a cosmetic measure, intended to fool people who know nothing about forests.
Another Fisher "green-washing" item is their absurd "old growth policy." They say they will not log trees of 250+ years of age and 48+ inches diameter in unentered stands of 20+ acres, or stands of 5+ acres with 6 such trees per acre. The absurd part is that there are almost no such stands of trees left in these cut over L-P forests. (The Barn Gulch area of Greenwood Creek is one of the last.) What's left are scattered residual old growth trees. And here's what the Fishers' "old growth policy" says about those: "MRC evaluates residual old growth trees on a case by case basis and attempts to preserve single old growth residual trees that have significant wild life value." (See www.mendocinoredwoodco.com.)
In other words, they've left themselves a great big loophole by which they can remove every last old growth tree on these lands. We see just how this "old growth policy" works in the Greenwood Creek logging plan amendment, which is being rushed through the review process. The plan contains no information whatever on the numbers of old growth per acre, the age and size of the trees, or their "significance" to wildlife.
If you want to learn more about these matters, visit our web site at: http://www.elksoft.com/gwa. If you want to do something about it, boycott the Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy!
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1999
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited