Forest News: Summer 1997

Headwaters Forest Allies Gear Up for September

For updates on Headwaters Forest news, see later issues of Reclaiming Quarterly

By Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters
copyright 1997

With logging at the 60,000-acre Headwaters Forest halted for the summer due to endangered species restrictions, activists have begun organizing for a massive outpouring of support in September.

Last fall, 7,000 people marched and rallied near the Northern California site, and over 1,000 were arrested in a huge civil disobedience action that increased pressure on both the government and Pacific Lumber to reach a deal which would preserve the world's largest privately-owned stand of old-growth redwoods for future generations.

This year, demonstrations are planned for September 14-15, and friends of Headwaters across the continent are making plans to attend.

Brokered deal jeopardizes forest, endangered species

At six public hearings held throughout the state this winter, outraged citizens turned out en masse to condemn the government's backroom deal to pay Maxxam Corporation. $380 million in public land and cash for just 12 percent of the irreplaceable 60,000-acre Headwaters Forest.

The hearings were jointly conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the California Department of Forestry (CDF), and other agencies to receive public input on issues to be addressed in a combined state and federal environmental impact study for the Headwaters proposal.

Front-line activists who have waged a 10-year battle to save Headwaters from Pacific Lumber's chainsaws and greed warned that the government's accord threatened the survival of several endangered species who make their home in the old growth redwoods.

The September 1996 agreement brokered by Senator Dianne Feinstein -- an inveterate friend to developers and industrialists -- would trade $250 million of federal land and cash and $130 million of state land in exchange for 5,625 acres in Headwaters Forest, including the 3,000-acre pristine Headwaters Grove and adjacent Elkhead Springs Grove.

Yet it would leave unprotected four other ancient redwood groves and residual old growth forest land owned by Maxxam subsidiary Pacific Lumber, which conducted salvage logging in the groves last fall. The government would acquire an additional 1,900 acres of logged-over second-growth forest adjacent to Headwaters Grove from neighboring Elk River Timber Company as a buffer zone.

Public demands: Save all 60,000 acres

The hearings turned into an outpouring of impassioned support for preserving the entire Headwaters Forest -- from feisty "Grandmothers for Headwaters'' to schoolchildren singing songs about trees to religious leaders evoking a spiritual imperative to preserve the ancient redwoods for future generations. Speaker after speaker condemned the government's deal as a blatant sell-out and serious breach of public trust, and called for protection of all six ancient groves and 60,000 acres in the Headwaters complex.

Even government biologists privately conceded that they shared environmentalists' concerns that the deal would not protect enough habitat and biodiversity to ensure survival of endangered species living in Headwaters. The forest is home to the marbled murrelet and north ern spotted owl, which are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, as well as the coho salmon, expected to be listed this spring.

Activists challenged a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) that PL is preparing this spring for its entire 200,000 acres of forest land. If approved by federal wildlife officials, the HCP would exempt the timber company from any further environmental review of its logging operations and allow PL an "incidental take'' of endangered species. PL further retains the option to call off the deal at any point if they think that federal officials have placed too many logging restrictions on the HCP.

Activists charged that Maxxam could hold Headwaters hostage by forcing the government to approve a scientifically unsound longterm HCP that could lead to the extinction of the imperiled coho salmon, spotted owl, and marbled murrelet in Headwaters. With 330 HCPs currently pending or approved nationwide, the process has become a loophole to evade the Endangered Species Act.

Calls for independent environmental review

Environmentalists urged FWS to conduct an independent review of all environmental data submitted by PL, which has a 10-year history of illegal logging, falsifying records, and violating environmental laws and regulations, charged attorney Sharon Duggan, who has litigated several lawsuits against PL.

Activists also criticized the sustained yield plan PL submitted to the CDF this winter, which would enable the timber company to log all of its old growth forests within 20 years, including the four unprotected groves in Headwaters. Environmentalists called on forestry and wildlife officials to evaluate long term impacts of logging on the water quality, wildlife, and north coast economy over a 120-year period.

Instead of expediting logging, officials should require PL to engage in sustained yield forestry, habitat recovery, and restoration of its clearcut forest lands, stressed Tracy Katelman of the Trees Foundation.

North coast forest activists are developing a Citizens Alternative Headwaters Forest Restoration Management Plan that will identify core lands, buffer zones, and wildlife corridors in the 60,000-acre Headwaters complex. The citizens group is designing a longterm land management plan that would allow certified sustained yield logging in the remaining forest land using conservation biology principles and management.

In the face of such concerted resistance the deadline for the Headwaters deal has been extended until February 17, 1998 in order to complete the HCP and environmental review.

Rallies and direct action

With the advent of spring, Headwaters activists everywhere are gearing up for more lobbying, rallies, and direct action to keep the remaining forest standing.

Especial energy is focused on the second weekend of September, 1997. With logging stopped until mid-September by the endangered marbled murrelet's mating season, activists have begun planning for another round of rallies and protests beginning with a rally and march September 14, and direct action starting on September 15.

For more information on these events, call the Headwaters Hotline, 510-835-6303, sponsored by the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters. Donations and support are also urgently needed. Donations can be sent to BACH, c/o the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley CA 94702. Ask for the latest issue of the BACH newsletter for detailed updates.

Headwaters contacts

Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH) Hotline, 510-835-6303

Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), 707-923-2931

Earth First! Hotline, 510-848-8724

Rainforest Action Network, 415-398-4404

Trees Foundation, 707-923-4377

The coastal temperate rainforests of North America once blanketed the West Coast in a continuous band from northern California to southeast Alaska. Today, not a single rainforest watershed remains unlogged south of the 49th parallel. Only a few valleys remain intact in southern British Columbia.

Clayoquot Sound, located on Vancouver Island, is the most southerly extent of any significant remaining rainforest valley in North America. In 1993, the B.C. provincial government announced that 74% of the ancient forests in the sound would be open to clearcut logging.

Clayoquot, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. The largest concentration of ancient, temperate rainforest in the world is found on the central coast of B.C. Environmentalists refer to this vast, roadless wilderness area as the Great Coast Rainforest. It is a labyrinth of deep- water fjords and steep, narrow valleys pushed up against a backdrop of granite mountain peaks and glistening ice fields. The forests here contain some of the oldest and largest trees on earth. They also provide critical habitat for grizzly bears, salmon, and other species.

The government of B.C. has now given logging rights to this area to a handful of corporations. At the current rate of logging, most of the remaining ancient rainforests will be gone within a decade. A major concern is the extent to which forest streams continue to be clearcut up to both banks. In most case, the destruction is legal and approved by the provincial government.

You can help by writing the provincial government and telling it to permanently protect key ecological areas in the ancient rainforests, to stop road-building in these areas and to stop clearcutting everywhere. Mention also that you support First Nations' rights to safeguard their traditional territories and ensure the survival of their cultures. Write Premier Glen Clark, Rm. 156, Parliament Bldgs, Victoria, BC, Canada, V8V 1X4, or fax 250-387-0087.

For more information on the defense of these rainforests,, contact PO Box 2241, Main Post Office, Vancouver BC, Canada, V6B 1H2, 604-669-4303, email: crn@helix.net

[excerpted from the Earth First! Journal -- see resource info below.]

The Elk River flows into the ocean a few miles north of Port Orford, Oregon, in the far northwest corner of the Siskiyou National Forest. The North Fork of the river flows form the pristine forests of the Copper Mountain Roadless Area, and includes some of the finest old-growth Douglas Fir and Port Orford Cedar in the Northwest. The timber is worth untold millions of dollars, and there are very powerful interests out there who want it logged.

The Elk is also one of the most productive Salmon fisheries in the nation. Although much of the river is protected, the North Fork of the Elk remains largely unprotected.

It seemed as if President Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan would protect the watershed. However, he later caved in and signed the so-called "Salvage Rider" that ordered the Forest Service to clearcut over 200 acres in the watershed.

This resulted in the Elk being named one of the Ten Most Endangered Rovers in the U.S. by American Rivers. Thanks to good organizing by both grassroots groups and organized lobbyists, the worst units of the area were exchanged for timber in a more benign area.

The only protection the North Fork currently has is under the Northwest Forest Plan. This could be overruled by Congress again.

Among the groups working to preserve the Elk River watershed is the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, 415-627-6700.

[Excerpted from Forest News, 84 Fourth Street, Portland OR 97520, 541-482-4459.]

To stay in touch with forest and wilderness defense across the continent, read Earth First! Journal, $25 a year (8 issues), P.O. Box 1415, Eugene OR 97440.

For an overview of forest defense as well as nuke news, Native American news and other grassroots organizing throughout the U.S. and Canada, call 415-255-7623 for a free sample of GroundWork magazine. Ask for Issue #6, with a theme section on forest activism.