SCOTIA, CALIF. — Beneath the gnarled green-needled boughs of the North Coast redwoods, a remarkable encounter one recent day shook the roots of the forest's fiercest struggle.
A top timber company executive hiked into the woods with a message for the latest generation of tree sitters perched on platforms high in the massive limbs of the ancient trees they've campaigned to protect.
Come down out of the sky, he told them. The war is over.
With that, a cautious transformation has begun: For the first time in the memory of even the grayest of locals, the vast lands of Humboldt County's most storied timber firm could soon be devoid of protest.
Ever since Texas millionaire Charles Hurwitz and his Maxxam Inc. used junk bonds to finance the hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber Co. in 1986, the logging concern has been the focus of a stubborn series of demonstrations -- from the "Redwood Summer" civil-disobedience arrests in 1990 and Julia "Butterfly" Hill's celebrated two-year tree-sit in Luna to the latest encampments aloft in the Nanning Creek and Fern Gully groves.
Now a bankruptcy and new ownership group have uprooted the status quo. A timber firm owned largely by the Fisher family, of Gap stores fame, acquired Pacific Lumber through bankruptcy court, renamed it Humboldt Redwood Co. and set upon a new path away from the more aggressive logging practices of the Hurwitz days.
Mike Jani, Humboldt Redwood president and chief forester, vowed to the tree sitters during his recent meetings beneath the conifers to hew hard to the tenets of sustainable logging: essentially cutting no more wood per year than the forest can grow. Jani told them he would spare the oldest of the old-growth redwoods, the world's tallest living organisms.
In the days since Jani's unheralded Aug. 12 walk into the woods, word has spread among the activists behind the redwood curtain of the North Coast.
"This is excellent news, to say the least," said Jeanette Jungers, who has fought to spare these forests for more than a quarter-century. "We've gone from being characterized as environmental terrorists to being embraced. This is like falling down a rabbit hole. I feel like Alice in Wonderland."
More than just deliver news, Jani offered a humane embrace. He applauded the activists' perseverance and dedication to a worthy cause. He voiced heartfelt assurances. In one case, he talked a balky sitter out of a tree and then offered a hug.
