Pacific Lumber Company (PL) owns over 211,000 acres of Northern California land zoned for commercial timber production. Company headquarters are in Scotia, California, and other sawmills are located in Fortuna and Carlotta; its 1,300 employees make PL the largest private employer in Humboldt County. In 1986 PL was the victim of a hostile takeover by Maxxam, Inc., a Houston, Texas holding company also engaged in aluminum production, real estate development, and horse racing. Since the takeover, Maxxam has attempted to quickly recoup its investment by overharvesting Palco's redwood and douglas fir holdings. Clearcuts have impacted the water quality of streams and rivers, dramatically increased the loss of topsoil, and depleted such species as the northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet, bald eagle, peregrine falcon, western snowy plover, bank swallow, chinook salmon, coho salmon, coastal cutthroat trout, steelhead trout, California red tree vole, Pacific fisher, California black bear, northwestern pond turtle, southern torrent salamander, red-legged frog, tailed frog, and foothill yellow-legged frog. Now that Maxxam has locked out union steelworkers at the Maxxam/Kaiser Steel Mills and raided Maxxam/PL pension funds, becoming "one of the most worker unfriendly companies in the world" (according to the Timber Workers Industrial Union), a new alliance of environmentalists, labor unions, and concerned local residents has taken action.