Logging and Landslides

Dec. 29, Humboldt County, California - It's flooding in Elk River. Roads are washed out after only 3.2 inches of rain. This morning, residents were stranded, unable to get to or from their homes. Meanwhile, Maxxam is gearing up to cut another 600 acres in those valleys, worsening conditions already brought about by fifteen years of liquidation logging.

In Southern California, rescue teams are still digging through the mud for victims of landslides triggered by rains following the massive arson fires of October 2003. CNN is airing animated reenactments of naked soil exposed to pelting rain, the ground swelling and giving way, creating mud and debris torrents that wipe out houses, RVs, and people. They do not question the causation: landslides are triggered by loss of trees.

200 people are either dead or missing in the Philippines from a flash flood and landslides last week caused by logging. It doesn’t matter if the logging is legal or illegal (in this case the blame is on illegal logging), rain hits bare ground just as hard either way. Steep slopes, that have been protected by thick layers of forest canopy for millions of years, only to be recently stripped of their trees, go washing downhill causing debris torrents and flooding from choked rivers. People, houses and entire neighborhoods and towns are washed away as floodwaters scour bleeding gashes in the earth. A dead mother hugging her two lifeless children were dug by hand out of the mud. Blame is unanimously put on logging.

When logging triggers landslides and flooding in the United States, it is written off as “an act of god” or is blamed on “Mother Nature.” When it happens overseas, the news media calls it “rape of the forest” and puts the blame where it belongs. Why the difference? Heaven forbid we criticize the war-like practices of timber corporations in the United States.

Given that even the most corporate of news outlets can see the relationship between clear-cuts and landslides, why must Humboldt County residents continue to endure the result of high-speed logging by an outside corporation?

Clearcutting the forest is legal in California, as it is in every other state in the US. It is also legal to cut thousand year-old trees, whose roots and canopy hold the forest floor in place. Despite the tremendously destructive logging practices that are allowed in what’s left of California’s ancient forests, Maxxam’s Pacific Lumber still can’t stay within the lines. And despite the incredible damage done by the Texas Corporation to both the ecological and economical base of Humboldt County, and the number of legal and scientific findings that have brandished their logging to be fraudulent, deceptive and damaging to water quality, the cutting continues.

Crews are brought in from outside the area, such as Columbia Helicopters from Oregon. Not only do they commit what they know to be permanent damage to this area, they aren’t even employing the local boys to do it.

Flooding in Freshwater and Elk River is annually getting worse. It is flooding higher and more frequently. The Coast Guard has had to rescue motorists on washed out roads, and families have been piggybacked from their drowning homes in the middle of the night. But the cutting will continue. And it will happen faster than in previous years due to the possibility of impending restrictions.

Legal or illegal, the end result is the same - an insatiable rate of logging leads to destroyed water quality, devastated streams and rivers, washed out roads, flooded houses, and a lot of injured (and sometimes dead) people.