In 1999, PL/Maxxam sold several thousand acres of old growth redwood to the government. This “Headwaters deal” was publicized to the public by the Clinton administration and others as an unqualified environmental success. In fact, the deal gave the company almost half a billion dollars plus the latitude to log heavily on it’s other holdings under a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP). These HCP’s have come to be the preferred tool for abetting resource extraction that “endangered species considerations” might have otherwise prevented. Residents in the Mattole and in other watersheds in the area began to think of their valleys as “Orphans of Headwaters” since their old growth and associated endangered species seemed to have been thrown up for grabs. When PL began to submit a series of eight timber harvest plans for Rainbow Ridge over the past two years, all calling for clear-cutting in old growth, people in the Mattole began to fight back. How they have fought is a combination of legal challenges, public relations campaigns and, when all other means to stop the logging failed, direct action in the woods and at the gates.