First the quiz. Examine the photographs below and determine on which logging operation you think that a lawsuit was sought by a group of forestry activists.
Photo A. Gualala Redwoods Inc. clearcuts, bordering the Gualala River (not seen, but immediately below the cut on the left):
Photo B (below) Before and after photographs of a Barn Gulch timber harvest (indicated within yellow lines) executed by Mendocino Redwood Company in 1999. Top: before harvesting. Below: after harvesting. View: looking east from Morrison Ranch, approximately 1/3 of a mile away, Oct. 1999:
Answer to the quiz: B, the Barn Gulch plan.
I have seen the completed Barn Gulch THP with powerful field glasses, from about the same vantage point as the picture, but standing in front of those little conifers. I checked the location against the topo map. This is a timber harvest plan that some forestry activists sued on, and lost. I believe this illustrates the problems some activist lawsuits produce.
This area before harvesting was primarily a fine youngish EVEN-aged stand (all same aged trees). The MRC chief forester thought that they should gradually convert it to an UNeven-aged stand -- which is what forestry activists typically prefer. So he changed from a thinning method -- which would perpetuate the EVEN-aged mode -- and placed cable corridors (cabling is used to haul the cut trees) where they coincided with the heavier tanoak occurrence. Cabling is gentler on a forest than using tractors. These tanoaks were removed, so that conifers can now regenerate there, and some conifers, but as you see from the pictures, those corridors remained so fully timbered that you can hardly see where they are with binoculars -- which means they also were narrow. Conversion to UNeven-aged mode, by repeating this operation over decades, will take a long time and during that time the trees will gain in age and size.
Such suits on good THPs are sometimes filed out of ignorance, or on the basis of vendettas against certain owners, or oral assertions by other activists, activists who have not even seen the land in question. With such cases, the litigators:
A. Make themselves look ridiculous, and waste time and energy and money in the process;
B. Increase the perception that forestry activists are a bunch of.....you supply the terms of annoyance and even contempt;
C. Tie up the court system needlessly, and expensively to the taxpayer;
D. Eventually build up annoyance WITHIN the court system for such activities, which then may make it harder for those with suits sound both legally and on the ground, to make the grade in court;
E. Make it harder to convince timber owners, the state regulators and occasional loggers who are disturbed about the liquidation of the forests, that our positions are reasonable, and that they can work with us.
Helen Libeu
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