Call To Action!

Call To Action! Logging in Nanning Creek Grove ...Bonanza For Whom?
December 31, 2005


Maxxam/Pacific Lumber (PL) has been moving forward with their plan to destroy the last remnants of the habitat of the threatened marbled murrelet in Northern California. It is not so much that they specifically have it out for the secretive and diminutive seabird, as it is the bird is in the way. But murrelets make their nests on the broad upper branches of old growth trees, which happen to be of high value in today's timber market. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) should protect species that are threatened with extinction due to habitat loss, as the murrelet is. However, ESA protections on PL land were eclipsed by a part of the 1999 Headwaters Deal called the Habitat Conservation Plan that gives PL a special permit to "take" (kill) murrelets and hundreds of acres of their old growth habitat.

Nanning Creek old growth marked for cutting.



PL began logging operations in a Timber Harvest Plan (THP) in Nanning Creek Grove on Nov.11 that contains the highest quality murrelet habitat left unprotected on PL land, long seen by scientists as a crucial habitat area for the bird. PL cynically named the plan "Bonanza", and it is no coincidence that it is one of Maxxam/PL's last shot at a sizable chunk of old growth before a possible bankruptcy reorganization forces a change in ownership of the timberlands.

THP # 1-05-097, at 249 acres, is in the Eel River and Nanning Creek watershed and contains habitat for other sensitive and threatened species, including the northern spotted owl. Nanning is a tributary of the Eel River, which is already listed as impaired by sediment/siltation under the Clean Water Act Section 303(d). The THP is adjacent to recently clearcut forest and would unquestionably do permanent damage to an area whose recovery is crucial to the Nanning Creek ecosystem as a whole. This is part of Hurwitz's "end game" for Pacific Lumber.
After approval by Calif. Dept of Forestry (CDF) in September, a legal challenge mounted by the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) and the Western Environmental Law Center (WELC) was dismissed, and EPIC and WELC appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court but relief from that court did not arrive.

Marbled Murrelet


The lawsuit claims the decision made by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to allow Pacific Lumber to log h undreds of acres of murrelet habitat was unjustified, given the alarming trend toward extinction of the murrelet on the north coast of California. Last year, in a common case of agency double-speak, the USFWS issued a Five Year Status Review that predicted the extirpation (localized extinction) of the marbled murrelet within 40-100 years, but in the more recent Biological Opinion (BiOp) issued in September, the agency found "No Jeopardy" for the murrelet which allowed operations in the Nanning Creek Plan. The agency is ostensibly responsible for monitoring impacts on wildlife and ensuring protection of federally listed species like the murrelet. USFWS's BiOp on THP 097 has been criticized for failing to use the "best available science" and failing to show that the murrelets could survive loss of this crucial habitat.

Forest activists have mobilized to stand witness at the logging plan gates numerous mornings at dawn, have occupied trees in the plan, and rallied at PL offices in the company town of Scotia. On November 28 two women locked themselves to a truck and gate on the access road, and four people were arrested.
Tree-sits remain high in the branches of the giant trees. For more info on the sits, and to view dramatic footage and photos, go to the site www.wesavetrees.org. More rallies and actions are planned in what is being called a "last stand for the last stands".

Call (707)825-6598 on the north coast or stay in contact with BACH here in the Bay Area at (510)548-3113, or
bach@headwaterspreserve.org.

The situation continues to unfold.


This article can be found online at www.headwaterspreserve.org/html/publications_article_53.html

PALCO venue

by Nathan Rushton, 4/20/2007

The federal judge presiding over Pacific Lumber Co. and its subsidiary companies’ bankruptcy in Texas ruled Friday that the proceeding won’t be moved to California.

Judge Richard Schmidt, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Corpus Christi Division, indicated in his decision that the numerous parties seeking the venue change didn’t present sufficient evidence to override PALCO’s choice of venue.

Several state agencies, the U.S. Trustee, the Official Creditor’s Committee, Humboldt County and the city of Rio Dell filed motions to the court asking Schmidt to transfer the case to the Northern District of California.

Attorneys for the various parties alleged that PALCO subsidiary Scotia Development, which they said was little more than a “phone booth” office few employees had ever visited, was formed in Corpus Christi in June 2006 as a ploy to create a venue in Texas and to keep the hearing out of California.

The court conducted a hearing on the venue issues in early March, in which senior PALCO officials provided testimony and argued that the company was formed to investigate the real estate market in south Texas.

“While many of the parties allege that venue is improper, the unrefuted facts presented at the hearing demonstrate that venue is proper in the Southern District of Texas,” Schmidt stated in his 29-page ruling.

Because Scotia Development was formed more than 180 days preceding the bankruptcy filing, Schmidt ruled the law was in PALCO’s favor and its choice of filing in Texas was proper.

Friday’s ruling follows another favorable ruling by Schmidt April 6 that determined PALCO subsidiary Scotia Pacific Co. is not a single asset real estate debtor, which precludes the holders of the bulk of the company’s approximately $700 million debt from foreclosing and taking control of SCOPAC’s more than 200,000 acres of property.

Andrea Arnot, PALCO director of communications, said Friday that company officials are pleased with the court’s decision.

“Our goal is to get our reorganization plan filed as soon as possible,” Arnot said.

A hearing is scheduled for May 10 in the Texas court to address that plan.






Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved.

Pacific Plunder

Pacific Lumber should do right by employees
by Carolyn Campbell, Fortuna, 3/28/2007

Imagine that you have worked for a company for 34 years. You have rarely missed a day of work and you have always come into work on time. You have been what most employers would call a model employee.

Then one day, due to no fault of your own, you are told that this is your last day. The date is Dec. 1, 2006. Do not return to work on Dec. 4, 2006. You will be given two months’ pay and medical benefits until the end of January 2007 and a severance package based on the number of years that you have worked for the company.

On Dec. 4, you wake up in the morning feeling lost. What do you do now? You are 59 years old and you have a bad back from an injury that you sustained while working for this company. It feels funny not to be getting ready for work because, after all, you have had the same routine for 34 years.

You comfort yourself with the knowledge that with the severance package, you can pay off your bills and maybe find a job. You hope that someone will hire you at age 59 and with the knowledge that you have a bad back.

Then you read in the newspaper that your severance package is “on hold.” Your employer doesn’t even send you a letter telling you that your severance package is in jeopardy. You have to read it in the news.

The news article quotes Pacific Lumber Co. spokesperson Andrea Arnot as saying, “We take our employees very, very seriously and we tried to do the right thing.” Then she goes on to explain that the former employees were “no longer critical to the day-to-day running of the business.”

In other words, the employees were no longer needed, like a broken piece of equipment, so you just toss it out with as little thought.

Does this sound like a company that takes its employees seriously as stated in the above quote by Ms. Arnot?

My husband received two months’ pay and medical benefits and unemployment, but no notice of his termination, and no notice of a hold on his severance pay in exchange for 34 years of employment with the company. We aren’t even sure he will get the severance package.

Please, administrators at Pacific Lumber, don’t try to pretend you have the employees’ best interest in mind. This employee and his wife are no longer fooled. We learned the hard way.

Save the Oaks!

Save the Oaks!
Berkeley Treesitters Inspire the Imaginations of Bay Area Residents
By Karen Pickett


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It was just after 6 a.m. and still dark when the call came.

“They’re raiding the grove! The cops are here with a front-end loader, and they’re taking people’s stuff! Call the media, and get here as soon as you can!”

The call came from a grove of trees where six treesitters have taken up residence. Ground support was getting a pre-dawn visit from authorities. Was this deep in the forest in an old-growth grove? Not exactly…. These treesitters look out over the teeming Berkeley-Oakland-San Francisco urban area, the Golden Gate bridge in their view. But many of the issues and sound bites we feed the media are the same as for those treesits in the moss-draped branches of an old-growth forest. We are always dealing with last remnants, biologically. This case is no exception.

This grove isn’t habitat for any large predators except Homo sapiens anymore, but the oak woodland ecosystem has become increasingly rare, since most are in areas ripe for the same galloping development that has taken over California’s canyons and valleys. Any grove like this one, with trees up to 200 years old, also becomes an important genetic resource, as Sudden Oak Death Syndrome ravages many oak woodland areas not already cut down for urban sprawl. Oak woodlands have become rare enough that Berkeley protects it under its Coast Live Oak Moratorium, making it illegal to cut a mature oak tree measuring more than six inches in diameter. But this oak grove is on University of California-Berkeley (UCB) land. Because UCB operates essentially as a country within a city, it gets away with refusing to comply with city law.

UCB wants to level the grove for an expanded sports training facility and more parking. Since UCB went public with its plan, it has been opposed by students, the neighborhood association above the stadium, the California Oak Foundation, the California Native Plant Society, most residents of Berkeley and Bay Area environmentalists.

Three lawsuits were filed shortly after UCB went public with its decision. A fourth lawsuit was recently filed by a group calling itself Save Tightwad Hill!, on behalf of the hundreds of people who watch football games for free from a vantage point above the stadium proposed for expansion. The other three lawsuits, however, have a solid environmental foundation, including the fact that the stadium and the grove sit next to the major and active Hayward earthquake fault. The judge granted those lawsuits a preliminary injunction on January 29, barring UCB from taking action that would change the physical environment of the project site until the lawsuits are heard in court. This means that UCB cannot cut down the trees. Whether it can make other changes that would keep protesters off the site and whether it will appeal the injunction will become known soon. But in any event, it is a huge victory, and there is no doubt our momentum, visibility and public support were garnered by those arboreal crusties.

The treesit was spearheaded in December by Zachary Running Wolf (a Native American man who ran for mayor in the last election), a UCB student, an urban ecologist and a couple of veterans of northern California’s timber wars who provided invaluable ’round-the-clock ground support. Three people took ropes, platforms and rain gear up the trees at about 3 a.m. on December 2, hours before about 72,000 people would stream by the grove and into the stadium for UCB’s “big game” with Stanford University.

The inevitable raid came in the pre-dawn hours of January 12, more than a month into the treesit action. People converged in response to a call for an emergency rally at the grove. When the cops didn’t immediately come back with machinery to extract the treesitters, we marched onto the UCB campus from the grove, taking the street en route to the chancellor’s office. Police barricaded its doors from the raucous crowd, which included a contingent of UCB students demanding to see their chancellor. The raid and subsequent rally only strengthened and enlarged the coalition challenging UCB’s plans to level the grove. The treesitters who climbed the trees on December 2, brought a new dimension to the ongoing campaign to spare the oaks from UCB’s axe.

Since the treesits went up, the grove has been the site of concerts featuring musician Country Joe McDonald and ’60s icon Wavy Gravy, as well as a spiral dance, which brought out the pagan community. A treesit was orchestrated by a 71-year-old former mayor and UCB alumna, an 86-year-old Berkeley city councilwoman and 90-year-old legendary conservationist Sylvia McLaughlin. The women charmingly announced that they were bringing nearly 250 years of experience to the plywood platform. As the cameras rolled, the venerable ladies climbed a ladder into an oak and held a press conference, bullhorn in hand.

Though bordered by a busy street and the UCB stadium, the grove of about 50 trees has become a mini-basecamp and direct action site. The treesits have grown to six platforms, complete with traverse lines and a tarped area for support people, who maintain a constant presence. The grove has also been a magnet for curious visitors, including international tourists, classes of middle school kids, people with babies in strollers, dogwalkers and other passers-by. Most of these people have never seen a treesit up close. In fact, this iconic action may do more to familiarize people with the phenomenon of treesitting than famous actions by people like Julia Butterfly Hill (who has stopped by to strategize with people and offer support). Accessibility is everything here.

Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) is a beleaguered species, but oak woodlands like this one provide essential habitat that can support a whole network of other plants and animals. As with coral reefs or wetlands, the level to which these woodlands are intact and functional is everything. Just as saltgrass reeds do not constitute wetlands, the individual oaks scattered around do not an oak woodland make. This ecosystem has particular value in the Berkeley lowlands, where it has all but disappeared.

The issues are myriad; seismic safety, urban density and aesthetics. But the biological issues, while not paramount in the court challenges, are the ones that resonate universally. Those who visit the grove are enraptured by the treesitters’ stories of the nocturnal trotting of a fox they have come to know. A UCB professor who spoke at a press conference this week waxed poetic about something not immediately apparent in this small grove—the cameo ecosystem the trees hold together forms a linchpin corridor connecting wildscapes that start in the hills above UCB’s land to the remarkable park system of the East Bay and the open space watershed lands. There are mountain lion sightings in these wildlands, and this humble grove is a connecting puzzle piece. It has helped many urbanites realize the importance of these oases; it’s like turning over a rock in your driveway and finding little squirmies and tunnels in the soil. Oh yeah, others live here.

The repercussions of this campaign go beyond the grove, especially reaching those stepping through the door to direct action strategies and individual action. We are not so much honing the skills of climbers who will go on to other forest campaigns as bringing people to a tactic not previously in their sphere, creating community among an interesting and diverse coalition of people, and rekindling activism on the college campus.

For more information, contact Save the Oaks, infosaveoaks.com; www.saveoaks.com.

Karen Pickett is a longtime Earth First!er whose goal in life is to keep as many trees as possible vertical.

United We Treesit

United We Treesit
The Humboldt Forest Defense Update
By Humboldt Forest Defense

As developers and logging companies push farther and farther into the wilderness, leaving a wake of destruction in their path, it is comforting to know that there are still a few places that have been left untouched. Fern Gully is one of these places, where life still flourishes for trees and plants, forest creatures and fairies.

The Fern Gully treesit village in Humboldt County is one of the longest-running forest actions in Northern California. Defenders protect a glorious grove of ancient redwood, Sitka spruce and Douglas fir trees with their hearts, minds, spirits and bodies.

Fern Gully, with towering trees including Libertal, Sundance, Patience and Watsi, has been a hotspot in recent years for forest defense actions. Maxxam/Pacific Lumber (PL) plans to log directly above Freshwater Creek, across from an elementary school. Each immense and magnificent tree in the gully stands on a steep, fern-covered slope. Destroying this awe-inspiring area would not only devastate precious habitat, it would also increase silt erosion into the already heavily sediment-impaired creek.

Fern Gully is walking distance from US Highway 101, near a residential area. It is unique for an uncut forest to survive so close to development, especially with ancient trees vanishing at an alarming rate.

Fern Gully is in immediate danger. Months ago, when forest defenders thought the gully was in the clear due to the long-awaited expiration of PL’s logging plan, PL got the California Department of Forestry to extend the plan for at least another year. After defending Fern Gully for more than three years, we will continue to guard the sacred area. Please help us save one of the last groves of ancient forest. In just a few work hours, this centuries-old ecosystem could vanish.

Meanwhile, logging has recommenced in the Nanning Creek area of the Eel River watershed, only a few miles east of PL headquarters in the soon-to-be-sold-off company town of Scotia, California. Logging in Nanning, which began 10 days before marbled murrelet nesting season ended in September, threatens to wipe out one of the last commercially owned ancient redwood stands. Forest defenders remain determined to do all they can to protect the Timber Harvest Plan, aka Timber Holocaust Plan.

The forest that remains after last year’s logging in Nanning is home to endangered species, including the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet. Early morning gate blockades (often including children), rallies, lockdowns and enduring treesits make up the short her/history to protect some of the oldest beings on Earth.

Nestled in Nanning Creek, two massive trees—dubbed Spooner and Grandma—enchant their protectors with resident flying squirrels, neighborly salamanders, and treetop fern and mushroom gardens. Spooner—more than 42 feet around and 290 feet tall—and Grandma—attached to her Siamese twin, Grandpa—rest on the edge of a cliff directly above the Nanning Creek watershed and are likely the largest trees ever defended by sitters here. With the help of traverses, treesitters are protecting the trees that hold together the steep hillsides.

After a storm in December, 10 trees near the Spooner treesit village fell to the forest floor. Due to recent logging, an area that has sustained itself for millennia is now vulnerable to one night of storms.

Please support the Earth through persistent action and participation.

For more information or to donate time, energy or resources, contact Humboldt Forest Defense, POB 28, Arcata, CA 95518; (707) 825-6598 (NCEF! hotline); (707) 845-9046 (direct line to ground support); (707) 618-9047 (Fern Gully pager); (707) 618-9181 (Nanning Creek pager); www.spoonerdirect.org.