The story of large timber corporations in Mendocino County reads like a case history of what is happening in every industry, everywhere in the world. The pre-corporate situation wasn't ideal, but at least there was some genuine concern for people and the local economy. The behemoths that have dominated forestry in our county for the past few decades have no concern for anything except the charts on their corporate walls.
They see nature only as the provider of raw materials. They see people only as laborers and consumers, to be exploited and manipulated. They see old-growth redwoods, spotted owls, Coho salmon and our erstwhile commercial fishing industry only as incidental casualties. They see politicians, governmental agencies and the courts only as pliable enablers and apologists.
The large timber corporations don't even care about the local forest industry, in the long term. They either cut and run, as with Louisiana Pacific and Georgia Pacific, or cut and transform, as with Masonite and Mendocino Redwood.
Masonite realized that liquidation logging was bringing the demise of profitable lumber production, so they sold their Mendocino County timberlands and now concentrate on wood fiber products. Louisiana Pacific bought Masonite's holdings in the 1970's and presided over a period of intense forest liquidation, then sold out to Mendocino Redwood in mid-1998 and moved on to places like Argentina and Chili. Similarly, Georgia Pacific has finished their local program and is on the verge of cashing out and relocating their pillage elsewhere.*(See note at end)
To the casual observer, our county's forestlands may not look that bad. There are still lots of small treees, and grass, brush, orchards and vineyards mostly cover the large areas that have been denuded of native conifers, maintaining a pleasant "country" feel. However, closer inspection reveals a different picture: one finds only a tiny percentage of trees 24" or more in diameter, and almost no really large, old trees. This situation has spelled disaster for endangered species that depend upon old-growth habitat.
Furthermore, those who take to the air or venture onto corporate timberlands are shocked by the specter of raw clearcuts and near-clearcuts. These are the the harvest practices of choice of corporate forestry, even though they result in the siltation of streams and rivers. Clearcutting on steep slopes also causes "mass wasting" (landslides), which really dumps sediment into waterways.
It is siltation, and the warming that comes with the removal of shade canopy, that have brought once teeming populations of Coho salmon and steelhead trout to the brink of extinction in our rivers. No fish means no fishing industry, and trollers float idly in Noyo Harbor as the families that own them scrabble to make ends meet. Before the era of corporate logging, commercial fishing ranked with forestry as mainstays of our county's economy. Corporate greed has led to the death of the fishing industry, and is running logging down to the same fate.
There are several ways to gauge the health of a forest, and by all measures corporate forestry has cut our county's forestlands down to a truely pitiful state. The most important indicators are based on timber volume, which reflects the size of trees in a stand, not just the number of trees. Lots of small trees do not mean a forest is biologically healthy, or that it can sustain the production of lumber and thus provide long-term jobs for workers, profits for owners and tax income for local governments.
Volume of standing timber is called inventory, and is measured in board feet per acre (bf/acre). A "virgin" mixed conifer redwood forest can contain over 200,000 to 500,000 bf/acre, and a well managed industrial forest might have 50,000 bf/acreÑincluding trees of all sizes and ages. In contrast, corporate forestlands in our county currently contain a pathetic 8,000 bf/acre, mostly in trees 21 inches and smaller in diameter.
Small trees grow faster than large ones, but still the timber corporations persist in cutting much faster than trees can grow. Unsustainable rates of harvest are depleting timber reserves by about 4% per year, leading to the inevitable collapse of our logging industry. When the reserves of merchantable trees are gone, the big timber corporations will also be goneÑto other parts of the world, leaving our county with decimated forests and empty pockets.
Politics and big business are teammates in the money and power game, so it's no surprise that, overall, government has aided and abetted rather than curbed the ravages of corporate forestry. At the same time, there has been increasing popular concern over the fate of the forests worldwide, and occasionally governments have responded with protections. By the early 1970's it was obvious that forests in California were being destroyed, and in 1973 the state legislature passed the Z'Berg-Negedly Forest Practice Act. The intent of this act is very clear: to end resource depletion and restore the forests to "sustained yield of high quality timber products."
What has actually occurred during the past 26 years is a travesty. Despite numerous lawsuits, "emergency rules" and "sustained yield plans," the California Department of Forestry has rubber-stamped nearly every one of the thousands of timber harvest plans submitted by corporate forestry, allowing rates of cut 200%-300% those of regrowth. Frustrated by this malfeasance on the part of state civil servants, a broad-based Mendocino County Forest Advisory Committee worked for two-and-one-half years to draft special County forest practice rules, only to see them shot down by the state Board of Forestry.
Given that forest liquidation has reached the mop-up stage in our county, a large question looms: Why did the billionaire Fisher family branch out from their Gap empire to acquire 235,000 acres of cutover timberlands? One can only speculate, and maybe they were simply naive. More likely, they have plans for big profits.
Two possibilities present themselves: real estate and "sustainably grown" lumber. The Fishers have a history in real estate development, and as the state's population continues to burgeon and move northward, it is inevitable that land values will escalateÑespecially along the Coast and the Highway 101 corridorÑand there is very strong pressure to convert forestlands to subdivisions and vineyards (witness Sonoma County). A recent news story points out that log volumes hauled to local mills are less than 50% of those of only 10 years ago. In contrast, revenues from wine production continue to soar, and county Agricultural Commissioner Dave Bengston predicts they will soon overtake those from timber harvesting.
The other possible motive for the Gap logging connection is to capitalize on the
nascent forestry certification movement. Analogous to organically grown foods, lumber stamped "sustainably harvested" commands high prices. The Fishers' plan could well be to finish converting their holdings to tree farms and market inferior quality lumber from fast growing immature trees as "certified." Rumor has it they have already broached the subject with Home Depot, and with the Gap chain opening over 300 new stores opening per year, the company could bolster the environmentally friendly image they project with "politically correct" shelving.
* Note: As we go to press, Georgia Pacific has announced that they have sold their Mendocino County timberlands to Hawthorn Timber Company, a multinational land management company. Like MRC, Hawthorn is using phrases like "forest stewardship," but they also state that they plan to continue cutting at 4 1/2 % of inventory, far higher than the 1%-2% required for sustained yield of high quality timber products.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1999
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited