The most imaginative of our county's new timberland owners is Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC), which a little over two years ago purchased the Mendocino and Sonoma County holdings of Louisiana Pacific Corporation (LP). LP had hacked its forests down to a pitiful 8,000 bf/acre. Mendocino Redwood is an investment of the Fisher family, founders of The Gap clothing empire. These people are all about image, playing word games and often flat-out lying to make themselves look "green." MRC is cutting at a rate of 40 million board feet per year on their 234,000 acres, which they call "sustainable." The Fishers would have us believe that they are trying to be stewards of their forests, concerned not only with trees, but with a healthy forest ecology, endangered wildlife, and the creeks and rivers flowing from their watersheds.MRC's actions prove otherwise. In its first two years of ownership, the company filed 1/3 more timber harvest plans (THP's) than LP in the final years of its tenure; they are bearing down hard on the last pockets of old growth and other large trees in their ownership, and many of their THP's involve clearcutting (which they now call "variable retention" and "group selection"), logging on steep, unstable slopes and spraying the toxic herbicide Garlon. They have consistently tried to block any accountability for the cumulative impacts of their logging; they have suppressed data on endangered Coho salmon, and they have refused to conduct surveys for rare plants within their logging plans.Shortly after Mendocino Redwood arrived on the scene, a respected forestry economist pointed out to company president Sandy Dean that MRC's forests had been reduced to "inventory collapse" and urged them to either let their lands heal for at least 20-30 years, or to reduce their rate of cut to 1% of inventory per year (MRC's plans call for cutting at 2% per year). Along with allowing the forests to recover, these remedies would insure much greater long-term profits for MRC and more jobs for local timber workers. Dean said that they could do neither, because his company has a $120 million debt to service. When the economist reminded Dean that the Fishers are multi-billionaires and suggested that they could simply pay off their debt, he said they could, but that they didn't want to.The Fishers have apparently chosen a greedier, more shortsighted course. Their plan is to obtain Sustainable Forestry certification (analogous to the Organic food label), and make big money selling "certified" lumber. Presently, certified lumber is difficult to obtain and expensive, but the sustainable forestry movement is picking up momentum. As more timberland owners are certified and supplies increase, lumber with a Sustainably Grown stamp will be more readily available, but will no doubt still be relatively expensive. Conscientious people will no doubt be willing to pay a premium price, if they are convinced that continuing to consume redwood lumber need not mean contributing to the demise of the redwood forest.The question is, what does a certification label really mean? Does it mean that a company selling certified lumber sincerely cares about the health of their forestlands, and for the plight of all the innocent creatures that call a forest home? Does it mean that they are helping lands that have suffered decades of abuse return to a healthy balance, or are they only doing the minimum to meet certification standards? What are the certification standards?We are about to find out. A year ago MRC applied to the Forest Stewardship Council for sustainable forestry certification and was evaluated by a joint team from two of its affiliated organizations, Smartwood and Scientific Certification Systems. At that time, the forestry economist who had appealed to MRC to reduce its rate of cut to 1% of inventory wrote to the evaluation team and urged them not to certify the company unless it made this significant change in its practices, and gave his opinion that "certification under the present conditions would be a near criminal act." After reviewing MRC's records and walking over some of the company's lands, the evaluators declined to certify MRC at that time, but essentially told them "You are doing pretty well with what LP left you; keep at it for another year, and we'll take another look."So here we are a year later. MRC has made an effort to look good to the certifiers (mostly with smoke and mirrors), and is undergoing its second evaluation as this Newsletter goes to press. The outcome is uncertain. On the one hand, MRC may be doing maginally better than LP did before them and Pioneer and Hawthorne are doing now. On the other, the company's logging practices fall significantly short of what most environmentally conscious observers would consider ecologically sound. On the one hand, the sustainable forestry movement is laudable in principle and includes many sincere individuals. On the other, there is a built-in bias to approve certification applications (applicants pay for them), and there is pressure to add significantly to the supply of certified lumber, which certification of MRC would accomplish.Some environmental groups are already questioning the integrity of the Sustainable Forestry certification process, and the decision that the Smartwood and Scientific Certification review team makes on Mendocino Redwood Company will be a significant indicator. Everyone wants certification to work, but only if it is real. For many of us, rewarding a company like MRC with a "green" label would force us to withdraw our support of the existing certification organizations.People who have been working hard for a long time to stop the onslaught of industrial forestry are extremely frustrated, feeling we are fighting a loosing battle THP- by-THP, lawsuit-by-lawsuit, treesit-by-treesit. We need some vehicle to bring widespread, sustained, effective pressure on industrial timber corporations to curb their plunder of redwood forests--to either stop logging entirely for at least 20 years, or to do only very light selective cuts until forest ecosystems (including endangered wildlife) have sufficiently recovered.A consumer boycott of redwood lumber may be such a vehicle. A similar boycott saved the gray whales, and the Stop The Gap campaign has already exposed the Fisher family ties to MRC and given them second thoughts about having gotten involved in the logging industry. Some forest preservationists are already considering a redwood boycott, and last spring the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance voted to support a boycott in principle.Activists realize that such a campaign cannot be undertaken glibly. It would affect what is left of timber-related employment in our county, the sustainable forestry movement, and the few timberland owners who really are trying to be good stewards. These concerns would definitely need to be addressed if-and-when a redwood boycott were launched.Our forests are near the point of no return, and some forceful initiative must be undertaken to save them. We will soon find out whether the present sustainable forestry movement is a help or a hindrance, and how concerned we need to be with it if we decide to mount a redwood lumber boycott campaign.
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For a look at Redwood Coast Watershed Watershed Association's detailed proposal for a redwood boycott, check out www.elksoft.com/gwa
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2000
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