Forests Forever Press Release
For
Immediate Release:
Friday, April 25, 2003
Contacts:
Paul Hughes, Andria Strickley 415/ 974-3636
Forest advocacy group denounces
$4.7 million sale of publicly owned redwoods
WILLITS, CA -- Forests Forever Foundation, a nonprofit California forest
education group, today expressed dismay over the California Department
of Forestry’s (CDF) $4.7 million sale of ecologically valuable mature
redwood trees.
The 366-acre "Camp 3" timber harvest is planned for Jackson
Demonstration State Forest, California’s largest state-owned forest,
located in Mendocino County. The awarding of the contract for the harvest
comes just two weeks after Forests Forever and other forest advocates
held a demonstration to protest the 540-acre Brandon Gulch timber sale
in the same vicinity in Jackson. Together, the two harvests would produce
almost 20 million board feet of timber, removing trees between 80 and
110 years old from the heart of the forest’s recreation area.
"Together these two cuts represent the best of what’s left
at Jackson Forest," said Paul Hughes, Forests Forever Foundation
executive director. "Our state government agency entrusted with safeguarding
our forest resources is liquidating some of the last unprotected century-old
redwoods in Mendocino County. Why? To pad the agency’s budget."
In a related development, the company that won the contract for the Brandon
Gulch harvest April 8 has pulled out of the deal. A spokesperson for Schmidbauer
Lumber Co. of Eureka cited a calculation error in the company’s
bid as the reason for backing out of the contract. CDF consequently offered
the contract to the company that was the second-highest bidder on April
8, Mendocino Forest Products of Fort Bragg.
"It certainly doesn’t look good when the bid winner suddenly
bails out and effectively drops the price of the sale by 23 percent [from
$456 to $350 per thousand board feet]," Hughes said. "For CDF’s
part they just lost $800,000 in a fell swoop. It raises the question we’ve
asked, which is, Is logging an ecologically valuable area to generate
agency revenue a smart move when the price of timber is at a low? Is this
a wise use of the taxpayers’ assets?"
Forests Forever Foundation is working to educate the public on the importance
of ending large-scale commercial logging in Jackson. If restored, the
50,000-acre forest could return to old-growth-like conditions, providing
a significant source of habitat for threatened species dependent on fast-disappearing
older redwoods. Instead, CDF in recent years has logged the forest using
outdated methods such as clear-cutting– producing about $15 million
annually to augment its budget.
Forests Forever Foundation and fellow advocacy group the Campaign to Restore
Jackson State Redwood Forest sued CDF last October, asserting that the
management plan for Jackson fails to comply with the California Environmental
Quality Act. The suit is to go to court July 7.
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