ARNOLD, Calif. — The nearby sawmill has long since been demolished and you can dine on tofu with peanut sauce and a glass of Calaveras County red wine at a popular local restaurant.
But logging trucks still rumble down winding California 4. And it's hard to find anybody in this mountain community--which caters to retirees, second-home owners and tourists--who thinks cutting down trees is a sin.
"This," noted county Supervisor Merita Callaway, "is not a Sierra Club kind of town."
So it's with some surprise that little Arnold finds itself in a fight with the biggest private timberland owner in the state, Sierra Pacific Industries. The giant lumber company has begun logging a patchwork of about 50 clear-cut parcels above a local reservoir, and the town's 4,000 year-round residents are in an uproar.
Arnold's reaction is evidence of growing concern over Sierra Pacific's plans to eventually clear-cut the majority of its timber holdings, which have swelled in the last decade to 1.5 million acres in California, or about 1% of the entire state.
As a logging technique, clear-cutting has long been a hot-button issue, attracting defenders and passionate detractors. Public opposition and subsequent policy changes have greatly reduced the practice--in which virtually every tree on a piece of property is chopped down--in federal forests. But Sierra Pacific is escalating clear-cutting on its lands, most of which lie in the Sierra Nevada.
In Nevada County and Calaveras County, environmental activists are responding with protests, blocking company trucks and locking themselves to logging equipment.
Less predictably, much of Arnold--where tourism and the quality of life are increasingly important--is also fuming. Meetings about the local cuts have drawn hundreds of distraught residents. Three members of the local quilting group have even sewn a clear-cut wall hanging to rally opposition.
The Calaveras County Board of Supervisors last month fired off a letter asking the governor to reexamine earlier state approval of the Arnold cuts. The county water district is worried that logging runoff will flow into the reservoir, White Pines Lake.
"No one likes the idea. Everyone is in shock it's approved," said Bob Chok, a bed-and-breakfast owner sipping an afternoon drink in the Lube Room Saloon, a cavernous, wood-beamed bar in which hangs everything from a traffic light to a mounted deer head.
A Forest Buying Binge
