A new kind of logging company has arrived on the Mendocino County scene, promising to help bring back goliath trees and king salmon, eventually providing jobs, food, good quality lumber and help with global warming.
Three huge tracts of timber have sold in the past three years to two logging entities that sound like environmental groups, including the Redwood Forest Foundation, which came to Fort Bragg Saturday to ask for local input for its restoration of the 50,635-acre Usal Redwood Forest.
The property was purchased on June, 13, 2007 from Hawthorne Timber Company by Usal Redwood Forest LLC of Portland, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gualala-based Redwood Forest Foundation.
The foundation paid a $610,909 transfer tax to Mendocino County, indicating a purchase price of about $60 million, county records show. Bank of America financed the purchase.
The purpose of Saturday”s meeting was to discuss acquisition of as much as $35 million in state funds to help with the effort. The Redwood Forest Foundation is currently seeking to sell conservation easements, which would be purchased by the Wildlife Conservation Board, or marked up by a land trust, then sold to the state WCB.
Another Mendocino Coast effort was The Conservation Fund”s 2006 purchases of 12,000 acres along Big River and 4,000 acres along Salmon Creek.
The Conservation Fund”s first such effort, the purchase of 24,000 acres in the Garcia River watershed in 2005, made national headlines.
These efforts don”t provide much public access or park like preservation, but rather what proponents are calling sustainable, community forestry.
All three sustainable, community forest projects combine ecology with logging, improving the economic and environmental values of ruined forests, not incidentally allowing logging jobs to someday return to the Mendocino Coast, in the visions of proponents.
“Having these [three] major efforts toward sustainable working forests is a huge improvement from the days, just a decade ago, of having our local forests almost totally dominated by out-of-the-area, cut-and-run logging corporations, which left us with over-cut forests, devastated fisheries, closed mills, and lots of unemployed fishers, loggers and mill workers,” said Tom Wodetzki of Albion.
“It”s so great that lots of the news on the forest front these days is good and contains major success stories, especially after 25 years mostly of defeats and devastation,” Wodetzki said.
Lumberman Art Harwood has been the driving force behind the Redwood Forest Foundation, or RFFI, for the past 11 years. For most of that time, RFFI looked on lustfully as Georgia Pacific and Louisiana Pacific sold the two biggest tracts of land in county history, Harwood told the crowd of about 40 people at Town Hall.
The foundation gained money and financing ideas over the years. A big break in finding funding came when a Bank of America employee, Candy Skarlatos of Elk, joined RFFI.
Currently, RFFI is part of a consortium of such groups that plan to bid on the lands of bankrupt Pacific Lumber Company in Humboldt County, a project much larger in scale even than the 50,000-acre Usal Redwood Forest.
Harwood relayed how the idea of community-based forestry had actually emerged from the bitter timber wars.
Loggers stopped blaming environmentalists for the destruction of the economic values of the redwood forests. Lumber companies had in fact caused their own demise by cutting with thoughts of corporate quarterly profits, not long term economics. Environmentalists, for their part, learned that protecting forests from all logging wasn”t always best.
Environmentalists relented on preserving forests that included miles of overgrown brush patches, riddled with erosion and non-productive invasives. Instead, loggers and environmentalists agreed that managed cutting, favoring older trees, could restore both economic and ecological quality.
Managed by something other than market forces, all agreed redwood forests could provide long-term economic prosperity to generations with quality wood, natural splendor and help with global warming. If the giant redwoods had not been removed so quickly, with no real strategy for replacement, they would have been removing millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Bigger, older trees take much more greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere than stands of competing young trees.
In fact, the Usal Redwood Forest is actually a hopeful name. The crowd heard that thanks to past market-based logging, 40 percent of the 50,000 acres is now hardwoods, mostly tanoak. Tanoak makes great firewood and wood chips, but the sprawling hardwood lacks the quality lumber or biomass of firs and redwoods. The conifers that are on the property are mostly young, with low economic value.
Wilderness Unlimited, an exclusive and expensive hunting club that offers members opportunities to hunt throughout much of Northern California, is controlling access to the property through an annual lease with RFFI. There are no current plans to offer public access beyond tours, but that idea is evolving.
“[Are] we are going to open the gate and let the public come and go as they want? Probably not, the reason is, the next time you are at Usal Beach, you will see the reason, unfortunately it is that 1 percent that takes advantage of free public access that spoils it for the rest,” said board member Greg Giusti. Talks are under way with mountain bikers about non-motorized cycle trails.
Although the property is all in Mendocino County, the eventual economic benefit would go mostly to the Highway 101 corridor, primarily in Humboldt County. Board members said the milling would likely be done in Humboldt County, with some possible for Branscomb.
The Usal Redwood Forest property is located north of Highway 1 and Highway 101 from the coast to Leggett. Purchased from Hawthorne Timber Company last May using all private money, it is the third largest tract of land in Mendocino County, board members told a Fort Bragg audience of about 40 people. No more than 2.9 percent of the total timber can be logged in a given year, under terms of the purchase.
Audience members wrote questions down, which board members of the foundation, including Kathy Moxon, Pete Mattson and Steve Smith, collected and put up on a bulletin board, then took turns answering. The board hopes to hire an executive director by summer.
“That was a good event RFFI produced Saturday. They spent at least half the time getting info from we, the people, and appeared very sincere in wanting and valuing such public input,” Wodetzki said.
Board members admitted they didn”t have many answers and many ideas are still evolving.
Bernie Macdonald and Skip Wollenberg pressed the board for more detailed answers about the extent of erosion caused by logging roads.
The logging practices of the past created erosion that fouled major tributaries of the Eel River, such as Hollow Tree Creek and Stanley Creek. All of the rivers and streams have been so muddied and warmed by logging and development that none supports a viable salmon population.
Macdonald, who is involved with the efforts under way in Albion, said having more detailed information on roads would add credibility to the Usal efforts to sell conservation easements.
Up until now, RFFI has been funded entirely by private moneys. High land prices in Northern California have been the bane of anyone who wants to do any logging, explained board member Don Kemp, a retired banker. He said even the commercial logger must pay more than they can make from the land. The market forces thus kill the economic future of property as timber, especially with prices of the past 10 years.
The problem is much worse where logging is restricted to help restore the property, Kemp said. He said Bank of America had given the foundation the best possible deal, interest rates 3 percent below the market rate of 9.5 percent for bare land. There is also no fixed repayment schedule.
“These are the best terms possible. But they do want their money back,” Kemp said.
To that end, the $30 million in conservation easements are being sought from Proposition 84 funds. Chris Kelly and the Conservation Fund will likely be acting as facilitators (something like real estate agents complete with commission) for getting the government funding.
Conservation easements became popular in the Reagan Administration, allowing the government to mitigate the costs of preservation on private landowners. At first conservation easements removed all development and industrial rights from a property. They have evolved to include protecting uses like agriculture and logging from residential and commercial development. The easements sought by RFFI would allow limited logging, road building and rock extraction for use on the property, as well as energy production for use on the property.
There are five 10-acre areas where development would be allowed, such as barracks for loggers or interpretative nature centers.
The easement documents are public by law, as is the timber harvest plan, which board members said will be a crucial document for public participation.
Criticisms of conservation easements are aimed at how they are appraised and the promise they make for preservation “in perpetuity” (forever). This may be beyond the ability of the county recorder”s office to deliver.
Giusti put the restoration of a redwood forest into time perspective by comparing the millenniums that redwoods thrive with the puny lifespan of humans.
“If I am lucky, I will see the results of my work in 30 years. My job is to put this on track so somebody else can carry it forward in the future,” Giusti said.
As to questions about the easements, he told the crowd, “They will last as long as our system of government. I don”t know about what they will mean in 200 years, but for the time being it is the best tool we have to lock in some assurances,” Giusti said.
The historic home of the Sinkyone/Wailaki Indians includes parts of the Usal Redwood Forest, according to published accounts. The area continues to be used for tribal hunting, gathering and ceremonial purposes.
Harwood said the board wants to get input from interested members of the Mendocino Coast community through committees being formed that will report to the board. More information is available on the Website, www.RFFI.org.
