REDWOOD NEEDLES
REDWOOD NEEDLES
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Blue Lake residents are greatly exercised over a proposal to experiment for 90 days with burning tires to generate electricity in a local facility designed to be fueled by wood. Having lived with wood ash residues spewing far and wide resulting from 37 shutdowns in 1995 alone, community members have little faith in UltrapowerÕs ability to operate without causing serious damage to themselves and the environment for miles around. If the Blue Lake Planning Commission fails to nix Ultrapower's proposal soon (and in mid-March truckloads of tires seen entering the facility), the issue promises to blaze away for the foreseeable future. For information, call 668-1902 or 668-4221.
With the theme, "Restore the California Dream for Our Families and Our Future," the Sierra Club, along with a broad coalition of local and national environmental groups, is sponsoring a community walk and distribution of door hangers in Eureka on Saturday, April 13. In an event that will be repeated in communities nationwide, we shall rally together at 9 am in Eureka (at a location not yet pinned down at this writing) for instructions and refreshments, then fan out in the community with packets of environmental information in door hangers. For additional information and to sign up to participate in the event, call 441-9833. You may also call 825-8428 to volunteer and to ask questions.
Pacific Lumber Company's Timber Harvest Plan (THP) to cut eight acres out of the heart of the 3000-acre Headwaters grove was denied by the California Department of Forestry in December 1995. PL then appealed the decision to the Board of Forestry, which heard testimony on March 5. The denial was based on the fact that Headwaters is one of very few nesting sites in northern California of the endangered marbled murrelet. The THP would cause "significant long-term damage" to the marbled murrelet, which nests only in old growth. The THP also made explicit what lay ahead for Headwaters, that this was the first step in an overall plan to cut down the entire grove within 35 years. (In a tense and less than jovial day, Pacific Lumber President John Campbell's statement that "An actively managed forest is always more healthy than one that is not managed" provoked a widespread spasm of hilarity.) Dan Hamburg spoke at the rally outside the building at noon, relating that, after the success of the Headwaters Act in the House, Pacific Lumber did all they could privately to trash the corresponding act in the Senate, all the while taking a stance publicly favoring it. Statements from the public, overwhelmingly for denial of the THP, took up the afternoon. Finally, the Board of Forestry deliberated and denied Pacific Lumber's appeal.
The North Group Annual Dinner - always a festive affair - is set
for Saturday evening, April 20, and will take place this year at
Celebration Hall in Arcata. Savory Thyme Food will provide the
repast. The guest speaker will be the distinguished writer and
imaginative naturalist David Rains Wallace, whose book, The
Klamath Knot: Explorations of Myth and Evolution, was described
by George Schaller as "one of the finest nature essays I have read,
beautifully written, full of stimulating ideas and insights." Mr.
Wallace, who presently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, will
read from his works, which include both fiction and non-fiction.
Invitations will be mailed to members around the first of April. "The
powerful resonance of wilderness in my own mind - never having seen a
wilderness or really understood what one was until I was in my
twenties - leads me to suspect there is some kind of genetic circuit
that lights up when a suburban animal is set down before a virgin
forest." (From The Klamath Knot, p. 9.)
--Diane Beck, North Group Conservation Co-Chair
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