Giant Trees Are Falling As Court Ponders Appeal

Scotia, Humboldt County - As old growth forest advocates await a Ninth Circuit Court decision, Pacific Lumber (PL) subsidiary Scotia Pacific (ScoPac) has brought their chain saws into an ancient grove of redwoods containing trees up to 15 feet in diameter and comprising the largest chunk of in-tact unprotected habitat for the federally listed Marbled Murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) in California.

The murrelet, is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and as endangered under the California ESA. Permission granted by US Fish and Wildlife Service for ScoPac to log this critical habitat flies in the face of a 2004 report commissioned by that same agency that stated that current logging practices in Northern California threaten the small seabird with an 80% probability of extinction in the next 55 years, and a 100% probability of extinction in the next 95 years. The murrelet population is suffering an annual 4-7% decline at present due to increased predation (which can be brought on by forest fragmentation) and loss of habitat. The 250-acre plan (1-05-097 HUM) named "Bonanza" by PL/ScoPac contains 192 contiguous acres of occupied nesting habitat.

In addition to the legal challenges filed by he Environmental Protection Information Center and the Western Environmental Law Center, Humboldt Forest Defense and Earth First activists have erected tree-sits in the branches of some of the massive trees, and have been showing up daily at the logging road gate outside Scotia, and also held a demonstration at PL offices in Scotia.

Those on site fear PL will log through the Thanksgiving holiday to extract as much of the old growth as quickly as possible, pointing to the fact that logging continued through the weekend. "We know PL cares more about reaping profits than whether their workers get to spend Thanksgiving with their families," said activist Karen Pickett. ."The want to get as much as they can before a change in ownership happens."

Maxxam's PL/ScoPac has their next interest payment on their massive debt coming up in January, facing bankruptcy reorganization if they default. They barely made the last payment at the 11th hour in July, but this is an impending bankruptcy by design, brought on by gross over-cutting of their forest base for nearly two decades, rather than a result of economic hard times related to the timber market.

"Virtually all the profits have gone to Houston (Maxxam headquarters) over the last 19 years", said Pickett. "This is Maxxam's CEO Charles Hurwitz's end game for Humboldt county"

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Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH)

2530 San Pablo Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94702
phone: 510 548 3113
email: bach@headwaterspreserve.org