Redwood Reader

Palco announced new logging plans last week and caused a lawsuit to be filed by the reliable Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), as well as concern from Humboldt Redwoods State Park officials. The plans are unusual in several ways. A hundred year management plan and a fistful of THP’s were approved, apparently without public review or comment. Part of the planning involves clear cutting 35-year-old Douglas fir stands in the Van Duzen, already hard hit by Palco. We can be sure the ground will destabilize after that. The other aspect drawing fire is the clearcutting of old growth timber on the boundary with Humboldt Redwoods State Park 65 acres on steep ground well within the viewscape so highly prized in the State Parks General Plan.
I have informed PL of the role of glomalin if forests. Their only response seems to have been to pull their ads claiming to have the science right, and a need to hurry liquidation even more. They may or may not be studying on their own. It behooves anyone claiming sustainability to be familiar with this critical function of forestlands. Clear cutting 35-year old Douglas fir is driven by the bottom line, the activity of tree farmers rather than foresters. This makes the whole point of certification moot.
State Park officials spent their political capital in the region allowing the arrest of Mattole protesters on State Park lands, and in claiming scattered parcels purchased by Save the Redwoods League adjoining the Park but outside its watershed, rather than giving the entire package to BLM with Gilham Butte and the majority of the scattered parcels for management; and road building in the Park. In the long run the differences are minimal as Parks protects lands, and the purchased lands have conservation easement restrictions against logging, but they managed to anger most everyone in the process. Park officials hoping to “save” the big trees sound like the nineties cry that created the Headwaters Reserve, which gives the company money without assuring any jobs for employees. The HCP and SYP were supposed to protect the rest of Palco’s lands from industrial devastation. And so we know next time we have to preserve the forests functionality.
Saving several thousand acres allows a part of a watershed to operate naturally. Thinning keeps the watershed functioning and fungi spreading and aggregating the soil particles into porous topsoil. Clear cutting stops glomalin production, aggregation of particles into soil, hyphae growth binding the soil laterally, water absorption in rain events and loss of “combs” for summer fog.
Twenty years of liquidation cutting has left little alternatives for the company. They are tree farmers. Paycheck hungry workers continue to destroy the forests and streams and their children’s legacy in the natural world. The damage to our natural resources will continue into the future as water levels and soil moisture drop, more CO2 is released from disturbed ground into the atmosphere contributing to elevated CO2 rather than reducing it.. Much of the problem will be blamed on global warming due to emissions even as large swaths of landscape dry out eventually causing disease, insect and fire problems and eventually desertification.
Douglas fir grows in very dense stands when it regenerates itself and often there are more than a thousand poles per acre at that age. This assures a dense network of fungi conditioning soil to hold water. Most plans for public lands that are restricted against logging include thinning in Douglas fir stands. By age eighty stand characteristics are determined and there is a fine crop of poles beyond the target number of mature trees: about ten to the acre. Management schemes that allow fungi to continue to thrive in an elevated growth environment (warming, CO2, reduced competition from thinning) can restore the ability to function as a forest delivering water year round to our streams while storing carbon in the ground and removing it from the atmosphere. This is where sustainable actually means exactly what it says.

PL's plans to cut little trees litigated
http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,,127%7E2896%7E%7Efilter%7E11_06_2004,00.htmlBy John Driscoll The Times-Standard Saturday, November 06, 2004 -
The Pacific Lumber Co.'s chief nemesis has sued the timber company not just for cutting big old trees, but for logging very young trees -- evidence, the environmental group says, that Palco is over cutting its land.
The Environmental Protection Information Center on Thursday filed suit in Humboldt County Superior Court, claiming a slate of timber plans and a 100-year management plan were approved by the state without public notice or environmental review.
The plans are filed for the Van Duzen watershed, heavily logged in recent years. Most of them call for logging trees as young as 35 years, while others aim to log old-growth redwoods next to Humboldt Redwoods State Park.
In the past five years, Palco has logged more than a quarter of its 24,000 acres in the watershed. The plans it has submitted are to log on another 2,500 acres.
Palco refused to comment for this report, and state officials did not return the Times-Standard's phone calls.
The suit claims the California Department of Forestry and Palco breached the state Forest Practices Act and Environmental Quality Act.
"They're so desperate now they're going out and clearcutting 35-year-old trees," said Cynthia Elkins of EPIC. "They've clearly logged too much, too fast."
Most timber companies don't begin cutting stands until they are 50 years or older, with some exceptions. The California Board of Forestry, however, approved of Palco's program to cut younger trees.
EPIC also sued Palco in federal district court in San Francisco this week, claiming federal agencies should have reexamined Palco's Habitat Conservation Plan after a slew of state and federal violations, and since new information on protected marbled murrelets and salmon now exists.
The environmental group also says those violations show Palco's advertising campaign -- which touts the company as operating sustainably -- is bunk.
Palco is certified with Sustainable Forestry International, an industry led group that heralds an intensive review program. Nearly all major timber companies on the West Coast are also listed as sustainable under SFI's terms.
Environmentalists say SFI's program doesn't come close to promoting the standards of more strict sustainable labels.

Park grapples with PL over logging plan
http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,1413,127~2896~2515884,00.html#
By John Driscoll The Times-Standard
Friday, November 05, 2004 -
Parks officials are voicing strong opposition to the state and the Pacific Lumber Co. over plans to log big trees up to the border of Humboldt Redwoods State Park.
The Southern Humboldt County park has lodged complaints with the California Department of Forestry, which has assured that Palco's plan will get another look.
As it stands, Palco is looking to log 65 acres on a steep slope next to U.S. Highway 101 south of Bear Creek. The logging of both giant redwoods left from historic logging and other trees would abut the largest unbroken stand of old-growth redwood in the world, and the park is concerned it would drastically alter the view coming into the park.
"This one is right in our face," said park landscape architect and planner Roger Goddard. "It's going to be a real impact ecologically and visually."
The plan does not call for a true clearcut, but Goddard said the appearance is likely to be similar, and would add to the scene of heavy logging in the area. Goddard's recommendation was to find a way to leave the remaining old trees and reformat the plan.
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board has also weighed in with concerns about water quality from the proposed winter operations.
Called for a comment, Palco said only that it is working with the agencies on the plan.
Ron Pape, division chief of forest practices for CDF, said he's not sure the operation will be as visible as the park may think. He added that Palco will leave some big trees and other trees in a 200-foot buffer zone up from the road.
But Pape said CDF will be taking another look at the plan on the ground.
"This is nowhere close to being a done deal," Pape said. "We've got a way to go on that one."
Goddard said the park may issue a half dozen "non-concurrences," or complaints to CDF each year.