|
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 22, 2008
Contact:
Paul Hughes, executive director: (415) 974-4201; paul@forestsforever.org
Marc Lecard, communications manager: (415) 974-4202; marc@forestsforever.org
Timber
industry kills clearcutting-restriction bill
Advocates respond by calling for out-and-out ban
Clearcutting is making a mess of California’s forests. And
last week a bill that would have limited some of the worst excesses
of clearcutting was killed in the state Assembly.
Forests Forever and its allies are now calling on the state’s
highest elected officials to ban clearcutting outright.
Forest-protection advocates were incensed when on Apr. 17 Assembly
Bill 2926, a bill to limit clearcutting in California introduced
by Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View) was killed
in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee following a lobbying
blitz by Big Timber. The bill garnered four “aye” votes,
one short of the number needed for passage.
The measure would have restricted the maximum area of clearcuts
to 10 acres. This limit would have been consistent with rules governing
timberlands in the state’s coastal zone. The current maximum,
outside the coastal zone, is 40 acres.
“The timber companies knew that if this bill made it out of
committee, more attention would be paid to it by the media,”
said Forests Forever executive director Paul Hughes. “And
they knew that once the public sees pictures of devastating clearcuts–
and learns that this archaic practice is growing rapidly–
the resulting outrage would pose an unstoppable political force.”
In a clearcut, all of the vegetation in a timber harvest area is
cut down and removed, burned, or killed with powerful herbicides.
The bare soil, exposed to wind and rain, is torn up by heavy logging
equipment.
“The first response most people have when we show them how
damaging clearcuts are, is ‘I can’t believe we’re
still allowing that.” Hughes said. “I think people in
California are fed up with the destruction of our forests for short-term
profit.”
Forests Forever was the organizational sponsor of the measure, which
Hughes called the “opening salvo” in a longer battle.
California’s forests are being clearcut at an increasingly
rapid pace. Since 1990 nearly 687 square miles have been clearcut–
more than three and a half times the surface area of Lake Tahoe.
One company alone (Sierra Pacific Industries, based in Anderson)
has been authorized to clearcut more than 250,000 acres in the Sierra
Nevada in the past two decades.
Extremely destructive of the natural environment, clearcutting:
• Destroys wildlife habitat and corridors and endangers native
plants and animals;
• Increases soil erosion and sedimentation in rivers and streams,
thereby increasing the need for costly water treatment, diminishing
the capacity of the state’s water storage facilities and harming
fish populations;
• Boosts the risk of intense wildfires by converting cool,
moist forests into sun-baked slash piles and later to fire-prone
tree plantations;
• Degrades the state’s natural beauty, which in turn
affects tourism, recreation, retirement and property values; and
• Contributes to global warming by removing a major natural
storage reservoir (standing vegetation) for carbon dioxide, and
by disturbing forest soils, thus causing them to release CO2.
“Clearcutting has been going on for far too long in California,”
Hughes said. “Too much has been lost already. It’s time
to raise the stakes and call upon the state’s most powerful
elected officials to support a ban on clearcutting.
“Forests Forever is asking its supporters to contact Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, and Attorney General
Jerry Brown and tell them it’s past time we ended the barbarous
practice of clearcutting California’s forests.”
–
30 – |