REDWOOD NEEDLES
REDWOOD NEEDLESPresented by the Sierra Club Redwood Chapter Newsletter, The REDWOOD NEEDLES
Return to Article Menu
By Diane Beck, North Group
A public meeting on "Public Trust, Science, and Forestry: An Exploration of Alternatives" was held at the Eureka Inn on November 10. It was sponsored by several environmental groups, including the Redwood Chapter and the North Group, who share a keen desire to stop the abuses of industrial forestry. A common theme expressed during the all-day event was the clear appreciation of and desire for good science, and more of it, especially for issues regarding clean water and the cumulative impacts of forestry. Others were the need slow down the overall rate of harvest and to give certain watersheds a rest, particularly those impaired by recent debris flows and slides and demonstrate greatly increased rates of flooding, sedimentation, and turbidity.
Sierra Club staffers Carl Zichella and Warren Alford drove up from Sacramento to speak of politics and how to get your message across, and of coalition building. Warren is from Arnold in Calaveras County, which has been experiencing first hand the kind of rapacious forestry that Sierra Pacific Industries has in mind for its vast timberlands in the Sierra Nevada.
It was a very long and spirited day with many speakers, which left those remaining at the endgame too exhausted to do justice to the strategizing and organizing session that was scheduled. A follow-up meeting is in the works.
The California Department of Transportation held a "Ceremonial Ribbon Cutting" in October, which Lucille Vinyard reports is a righteous "win-win" for both highway users and the environment. The Cushing Creek Project on Highway 101 in Del Norte Redwood State Park south of Crescent City used to be a tricky two-mile stretch of road that an excessive number of drivers failed to treat with the respect it was due. Caltrans's Preferred Alternative to fixing the hazard would have cost $32 million, involved road cuts and fills of +/- 150 feet, and resulted in the removal of over 200 old-growth redwoods within the park. Environmental groups and State Parks took exception to such plans. We like to think that the North Group's Susie Van Kirk's excellent 20-page critique of Caltrans's plans played a role the final project, in which but two old-growth trees were lost. (By the way, Lucille is reporting from a hospital bed, having just undergone surgery for a hip replacement. (A terrific lady, Lucille Vinyard.)
Big Bar Fire "Recovery" Plan Update
Last summer, the Sierra Club and six other environmental groups brought suit and received a temporary restraining order to stop the salvage logging of 21 million board feet of timber on Six Rivers National Forest, in an inventoried roadless area adjacent to the southwestern border of the Trinity Alps Wilderness. The Forest Service thereafter dropped the "emergency determination" under which it had attempted to log without a full consideration of several citizens' appeals. The environmental groups then dropped their suit, hoping that the Regional Forester would overturn the decision to log the timber sale.
On October 4, the Deputy Regional Forester denied the appeals, and the environmental groups again filed suit. Sierra Club National Board member Rene Voss puts it nicely: "Despite clear violations of the law, the Forest Service refuses to address the issues we have raised. This lack of accountability by the agency forces citizen groups to go to the courts to uphold the law."
Facing the threat of another injunction by a Federal District Court in San Francisco, Six Rivers National Forest agreed in late October to postpone all activities associated with the timber sale until at least March 15, 2002, the date our attorney Marc Fink (of the Western Environmental Law Center) has requested for a hearing.
Return to Article Menu