Mary Pjerrou(707) 877-3405 - fax (707) 877-3887June 10, 1999BioDiversity CouncilWATERSHED PROTECTION: MYTH AND REALITY
My name is Mary Pjerrou. I am President of the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance - an alliance of 12 community watershed groups and projects in Mendocino County, founded in 1989.
Among the goals in our mission statement are these:
o to educate the general public, industry and government on the need to preserve genetic diversity within the natural environment, as well as to show the irreversible environmental damage that occurs when species and their habitats are heavily altered or eliminated; and
o to make credible environmental review an integral part of [the timber harvest review process.
One of the activities of this Alliance and its member groups is reading Timber Harvest Plans. We are the only organization in Mendocino County that does so on a regular basis, covering many watersheds. It's possible that we are the only people in the state of California who read the cumulative effects portion of Timber Harvest Plans for Mendocino County. These are the portions of the Timber Harvest Plans where the foresters state that there are no Marbled Murrelets, no Northern Spotted Owl, no Northern Goshawks, no Bald Eagles, no Golden Eagles, no Peregrine Falcons, no Great Blue Herons, no Egrets, no Ospreys, no hawks, no swifts, no martins, no warblers, no frogs, no salamanders, no turtles, no endangered plants and no Coho salmon, in, or anywhere near the plan area; that there is no habitat for any of these creatures, or, if there is a bit of habitat, none of these creatures has been seen; that, in addition, there are no old growth trees - let alone old growth forest - in, or anywhere near, the logging plan area, and finally, that the logging proposed in the given plan will have no significant impact on any forest resource including wildlife and fish.
We've been reading these statements for over ten years - in hundreds of logging plans, covering tens of thousands of acres of forest: No wildlife seen, no Coho salmon, no old growth - no cumulative effects.
The California Department of Forestry - which sits alone at the table, in the so-called Multi-Disciplinary, Multi-Agency Timber Harvest Plan review process - has nothing whatever to say about the absence of all of these creatures and their habitat, and always agrees that more logging would be a good idea.
There is a standing joke among Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance members. We advise people not to read Timber Harvest Plans, until you have formed a THP support group -people you are not embarrased to cry in front of - people who will help put you back together after the excruciating torment of seeing the Department of Forestry justify yet another depletion logging plan in Mendocino County.
Possibly these foresters are not telling the truth about wildlife, fish and old growth in Mendocino County. Foresters have been known to lie in Timber Harvest Plans. However - and what is far worse - the evidence is that, overall, they are telling the truth. The bio-diversity of the forest is almost gone here. In addition to the logging plans that say there is no wildlife, and the federal listings of numerous forest species, we now have some data from the owners of these forests, the timber corporations - from studies conducted, for instance, by Louisiana Pacific, before it sold out of the redwood business, when there was still talk of "Sustained Yield" Plans. What these studies reveal is as follows:
In three years of fish surveys, involving hundreds of instances of data collection, the coho salmon were absent in 19 of 27 watersheds - formerly belonging to Louisiana Pacific, now belonging to the Mendocino Redwood Company. In the 8 (of 27) watersheds where any coho at all were found, the coho were absent in 75% of the streams. This as yet unapproved Sustained Yield Plan further reveals that 97% of these forests were in average stands of 1 to 21 inch diameter trees, in 1996 - and only 3% contained average timber stands with trees of 24 inch diameter or greater - the only decent wildlife habitat left.
The public has had to fight hard for this information - ten years of struggle and grief for "Sustained Yield" Plans, that are yet to be approved; and on the fish data, a year of effort just to get the data sheets. Industry has tried its best to suppress, hide, debunk and "green-wash" this information. CDF has gone along with this. But we don't really need the L-P fish surveys to tell us that there are almost no fish left in our streams. We can see that for ourselves. And we can go down to the Harbor, and see that the salmon fishing fleet is gone. And we don't need the L-P tree size data to tell us that there are hardly any decent sized trees left in these former L-P forests. We live here. We know that. And we can see their log trucks going by, and go and see their log decks, with their piles and piles of pecker poles.
Conditions are only slightly better on Georgia Pacific forest lands - the other major forest liquidator in Mendocino County. A third company, Coastal Forest Lands, has so overcut its forests that it now wants to convert 10,000 acres of redwood forest into vineyards.
Given the current levels of logging in Mendocino County, there is no prospect for improvement. We all know - although it is a very difficult thing to face - that the old forest and its creatures are nearly gone in Mendocino County, that the timber resource itself is nearly gone - and that we are fast approaching the point of no return.
In fall 1997, when L-P announced that it was selling out, former CDF Director Richard Wilson said, "It's sad but it really should be no surprise. Everybody knew they were cutting themselves out of business."
"Everybody knew" - but nobody in government did anything about it. The California Board of Forestry acknowledged the depletion logging in Mendocino County as long ago as 1988. Forest activists, numerous organizations all over the state, the general public, and even Mendocino County asked for relief, in the early 1990s. The state's response was the bogus "sustained yield" rules we have today - by which every major timber land owner in Mendocino County is cutting itself out of business.
Coastal Forest Lands now has only 3 to 4,000 board feet per acre of standing timber left on its forest lands. Mendocino Redwood Company (former L-P) forests are down to 7 to 8,000 board feet per acre. Georgia Pacific - which started out with more timber than L-P - has about 10,000 board feet per acre left. By comparison, the coast redwood forest is capable of producing 100,000 board feet of standing timber.
These three companies - CFL, MRC and G-P - are lined up, 1, 2, 3, like lemmings at the edge of a cliff. They are right now taking the last merchantable timber - the very last old growth, the last decent wildlife habitat. CFL has pretty much finished up the liquidation - they are moving on to the next step, vineyards and subdivisions. Mendocino Redwood Company and Georgia Pacific are not far behind them.
To give you a specific example: In July, 1998, Lousiana Pacific notified the California Department of Forestry of the transfer of 104 Timber Harvest Plans to Mendocino Redwood Company. MRC has now added plans of their own, for a total of about 140 logging plans so far (with an average size of 170 acres). In 1997, L-P submitted logging plans for a yearly total of about 4,000 acres of logging. In 1998, L-P and MRC, combined, submitted logging plans also for a total of about 4,000 acres. As of the end of May, 1999, MRC has filed plans on almost 3,000 more acres. If MRC keeps up this pace, they will have filed plans for 6,000 more acres of logging by the end of this year - one third more than L-P's total acreage per year, in its final two years.
The new MRC logging plans are identical to the 104 plans that they bought from L-P in almost every way. Fifty percent of these plans include all or partial clearcutting. Seventy percent include clearcutting or clearcutting-type logging. Stream protections, the same. Road construction, the same. The only difference is MRC's so-called "variable retention" - a 90% clearcut for new plans only. However, MRC's overall increase in plan acreage for the year will make up for the retention of 10% of the trees in clearcut areas. The same amount of timber, or more, will be cut. The fact of the matter is that MRC is completing the L-P logging program - one of the most notoriously unsustainble logging programs in northern California - despite everything they say about "good stewardship." The "good stewardship" line is just that - a P.R. line, a line of baloney - to cover up what they are actually doing.
Both of these companies - MRC and G-P - are filing logging plans under "Option C" rules, which do not require a "Sustained Yield" Plan. Both companies continue to log with no approved "Sustained Yield" Plan - despite the promises made to this County by the California Board of Forestry in 1994. We now know that the Mendocino Redwood Company is abandoning the "Sustained Yield" Plan process, and will be filing logging plans under another set of rules - called "Option A" -rules that have no requirement for restoring the productivity of the redwood forest. Not that the other "Options" have worked...
The "Option C" rules are how L-P accomplished cutting themselves out of business. "Option B" rules are the late, lamented "Sustained Yield" Plans. "Option A" is what you do after "Options B and C" have failed to produce sustainable logging.
The collateral damage from this destruction of the timber base has been severe, and is on-going: including the rivers of mud we see out in the ocean after every winter storm, from every river and stream along the coast; the imminent loss of the coho salmon; the potential loss of the steelhead. The loss of these resources is illegal. We have laws that were supposed to prevent such losses. Government has failed to enforce them - and Big Timber has put up a relentless fight against all efforts to conserve soil, water, fish, wildlife and forest integrity.
The title for our presentation today is "Watershed Protection: Myth and Reality." The "myth" is that we have watershed protection. The "reality," of course is that we do not. To know this, you only have to go down to the Albion River and talk to the people who are right now sitting in trees - and have been for several weeks - trying to stop the Mendocino Redwood Company from logging in an area with active slides that are pouring sediment into the Albion River. Linda Perkins, of The Albion River Watershed Protection Association, tried for a year to get somebody, in some agency, to do something about this. The answer we get, these days, from the state in charge of protecting our watershed resources, is, "We don't have time for Mendocino County." From our federal agencies, what we hear is: "We don't do THPs," and - sorry - but there is nothing we can do about the faulty Spotted Owl surveys in your county, the lack of Marbled Murrelet, and your local Coho salmon fishery.
Time and again we hear this - from Regional Water Quality, from State Fish and Game, from the National Marine Fisheries Service, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. We are the forgotten County. Our government has written Mendocino County off - as to the protection of natural resources, and this natural resource-based economy. If it takes tree sitters to stop the logging in a slide area - something is critically wrong in our state agencies - agencies that should be here, shutting this logging operation down, now.
To address the question of watershed restoration - whether it be fish habitat or water quality - we have first to address this other matter: that our major timber corporations are cutting themselves out of business - under the current Forest Practice Rules - and with that, are continuing to inflict serious, if not fatal, harm on our watersheds
In one watershed - Elk Creek, on the south Mendocino coast, where there was once an abundant Coho salmon fishery - the Louisiana Pacific fish surveys found only "10 or fewer" coho salmon in the entire creek system. These were also the only Coho salmon found in a region of approximately 150 square miles. Elk Creek is one of only 8 watersheds where any coho at all were found. Right now, the California Department of Forestry is in the process of approving over a thousand acres of logging - half of it clearcutting - and more than 10 miles of road construction, all around the one place they found any coho.
Local people care about this - people like the 14 and 16 year old kids who found the fish in Elk Creek - when the California Department of Forestry, the California Department of Fish and Game, and Mendocino Redwood Company foresters couldn't find any fish there. People all over the country care, and care deeply - about the redwood forest and its wildlife and fish. People who have been protesting at the Gap store on 5th Avenue in New York City. People like Mary Bull who is leading the Save the Redwoods/Boycott the Gap campaign in San Francisco. People in Australia, people in India - people all over the world who have signed our Petition.
Yet our government agencies do worse than nothing. The National Marine Fisheries Service wrote off a thousand acres of logging around the only documented Coho salmon in the region - without even requiring a fish survey.
It doesn't bother CDF, of course. They just flip the page, when it comes to the cumulative effects portion of the THP. No amount of logging is too much logging for CDF - no matter the cost to other resources - which, in this case, is very grave, indeed.
We - those of us who live in these coastal watersheds - may be the last people on earth who have the privilege of seeing Coho salmon in these rivers and streams. Extinction is the most profound impact possible. It comes at the end of many accumulated impacts that have been systematically ignored. The Coho salmon's land-based habitat is the one controllable element of the Coho's life cycle. Any further harm to this habitat must be stopped right now - including the frenzied and unsustainable logging that we see you, in government, approving every day.
What we want from our government is the following:
1. We want you to tell the truth. We don't want any more logging plans that say there will be no cumulative effects from a 1,000 acres of logging in a creek where only "10 or fewer" coho salmon were found. We don't want to ever again hear the words "sustainable logging." Let's put those untruthful words behind us. If you believe that the cost of sustaining this resource-based economy for another year or two is the loss of the coho salmon species, and other forest values, then we have a right to know that's what you are thinking.
We have a right to participate in these decisions. We elect you. We pay your salaries. We pay for your presence here today. If we wanted lies, we would have chosen another form of government. Bottom line, no. 1: We want you to tell the truth.
2. We want you to face the existing situation, square on - and start showing some leadership and courage.
3: We need a new way of thinking about these matters. Instead of thinking that corporations have rights and no responsibilities, we need to reverse that order, and make sure that corporations take responsibility for what they do, or else they get no rights.
The redwood ecosystem is a single, very complex, very delicately balanced organism. We cannot allow continuing damage to one part of it, and expect to be able to fix another part. We must stop the deforestation of Mendocino County - before we can restore anything. What's needed is a fundamental change in the way logging is regulated, wherein the resources that all people depend upon come first, and logging comes second.
The fish, the wildlife, the water, the soil, the trees and other forest components - the things that make up a forest - the things we all need - must come first. These important resources have been disregarded and severely damaged. The Forest Practice Act needs to be re-written to state that the health of the forest - and the good of most people - must take precedence over the profits of a few. The forest is a necessity of life to all of us. We need it to live. Other people, on the other side of the planet, need it to live. Forests create the biosphere of the planet, and the very air we breathe. To sacrifice our forests for a few people to make money is not right, and must be stopped.
4. Watershed restoration money must be tied to increased regulation and enforcement, and to a commitment from the landowner to stop harming the watershed. I am personally involved in a fish habitat restoration project in Greenwood Creek. Just as we began the restoration work part of the project, L-P sold out - still with no approved Sustained Yield Plan, yet they had started to implement their unapproved Sustained Yield Plan which called for clearcutting a third of their forest ownership over a ten year period. At that moment, the new company came in - Mendocino Redwood, with its intimate money connections to the Gap clothing stores - and they started doing the same thing! Ten years of clearcutting, with no approval by anybody - except for the tacit approval given by the California Department of Forestry as they rubber stamp logging plan after logging plan. How can we restore a watershed that is being systematically unraveled, and converted into a tree farm?
Using taxpayers' money to pay for fish habitat restoration - while the entire redwood ecosystem is under such continual stress, and is being removed before our very eyes - is not a viable solution. It's as if a doctor tried to fix a broken leg, with the patient meanwhile bleeding to death from an open chest wound.
It's time for us to recognize the truth of this situation - and it's time to do something about it, before it is too late. When you head out of here - and get back on the road - and pass by that illusion of a forest on Highway 128 (those big tall trees that line the road and stop at the river's edge, about 50 feet in) - and if find yourself behind a log truck, count the trees. In the old days here, you would see one log per truck - one great, magnificent redwood tree per logging truck. Even fifteen years ago, you might see two or three big trees per truck. What do you see today?
Mendocino County's bio-diversity is going down that road, in that log truck filled with 20 pecker poles - to a mill that got rid of its old growth saw some time ago. The myth is that we can keep that truck going forever - carrying 20 pecker poles, then 30 pecker poles, then...what? L-P's Harry Merlo said he was "logging to infinity." He meant what he said.
The reality is that our watersheds have no protection. The birds that need those trees, the water that those trees filter to the ground, the fish that need their shade, and the people who need these qualities in the environment, are being severely harmed by this liquidation.
The myth is that it all grows back. The reality is that the wood that is being sold now is not good wood. It's weak; it's disease-prone. Builders won't use it. It's called "yellow redwood" - because it's growing up in a depleted, damaged watershed.
Tell the truth. Be courageous. Lead the way in straightening out natural resource priorities. Put people first. Put the forest first. Put the earth first.
Thank you
