ENVIRONMENT: Redwood Logging Remains in Limbo

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

HEADWATERS GROVE, California, Sep 20 1996 (IPS) - A light fog often veils the 2,000-year-old giant redwood forest that plays host to the coho salmon, the marbled murrelet bird, and hundreds of other species.

The rare marbled murrelets this month left their nests and flew out to sea for the winter, but all is not quiet at their summer home on the northeastern tip of California.

Environmental groups have launched a major protest against logging in Headwaters, the 232,000 hectare forest that is also home to the largest chunk of coastal redwood trees in the world. The forest is the last major holding of redwoods in private hands.

Groves of the giant trees that date to the biblical era are on land owned by Pacific Lumber, a 127-year old San Francisco company that is a subsidiary of Maxxam Inc. The timberland was acquired by Maxxam head Charles Hurwitz in a junk bond deal more than 10 years ago.

Since then, there have been a number of lawsuits over logging on the land.

“We’re protesting the outrageous logging carried out by Pacific Lumber,” said Tracy Katelman of the Trees Foundation, an environmental coalition that helped bring activists to these woods last weekend. “We need to save an ecosystem.”

Environmental groups have battled for 10 years to save Headwaters through government lobbying, lawsuits, rallies and other measures. They say that because of logging, the species in the forest have dwindled to four percent of the 7.7 million hectares that they covered about a century ago.

In the past month, ‘Save Headwaters Forest’ become the centre of a national campaign that has received support from Zen Buddhist monks, Jewish rabbis, and Methodist ministers.

The campaign has also focussed attention around a practice called ‘salvage logging’, by which companies receive waivers of environmental laws to go into a forest to remove dying or fallen trees. They claim that these trees present a fire hazard or pose a threat to the health of the forest itself — an argument contradicted in recent studies .

Although Maxxam’s plan to log the redwoods is technically not a ‘salvage’, Headwaters is surrounded by other forests which are being cut for that purpose.

Across the country, ‘salvage’ has been used as an excuse to log in places ranging from Thunder Mountain in the Okanagon national forest in the north-western state of Washington, the Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon, the Gila national forest in the southern state of New Mexico, and the forests of Maine in the north-east.

Some of the companies that have faced stiff challenges from the environmental groups have moved their operations elsewhere. But not Hurwitz. Despite several full-page advertisements in the New York Times, stories in California papers, Hurwitz has dug in his heels. He has, however, agreed to abandon his logging plans if he can get compensated.

Hurwitz, meanwhile, is at the centre of legal disputes and faces potential liabilities to the federal government as a result of the governments 1980s bailout of small banks.

Negotiations currently on with Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, focus on possible exchanges that would allow the government to take over the Redwood forest while the company acquired other federal property that is suitable for logging. There have also been efforts to swap the lands for the debt, thereby allowing the redwoods to move into the hands of the government.

Jill Ratner, a lawyer at the Rose Foundation in Oakland, points out that this is unnecessary.

“The federal government has#already paid out an estimated 1.6 billion dollars to bail out Hurwitz’s previous operation,” she says. “What they should offer him is a debt-for-nature swap in return for Headwaters.”

Pacific Lumbers tractors were poised to log in Headwaters one year ago, when a local judge stopped operations by serving a one- year injunction. The court order expired at midnight last Sunday, but a last-minute deal arranged by Feinstein staved off logging for another two weeks.

Environmentalists were, however, taking no chances. Monday, the gates to the forest were blocked by an abandoned car. Two activists chained their hands together to a metal pipe that had been embedded in the floor of the car. Others padlocked themselves to the gates and threw away the keys.

The day before, more than 1,000 people were arrested following a peaceful rally against logging in the town of Carlotta. Those arrested included Bonnie Raitt, a Grammy award-winning musician, who grew up close to the forests. Her father, brother and husband, who also joined the protests, were also arrested.