Lumber Industry Northern California

In a decision hailed as a landmark by environmental groups, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the government must consider the impact a logging project will have on a "biological corridor" protecting plant and animal life. Lawyers for opponents of a proposed timber salvage and harvest plan in Northern California said the ruling was the first in the nation to overturn a project because of the potential effects on the biological diversity of an area.

Small bands of protesters fanned out across timber country Monday, blocking loggers' gates and wailing in front of the headquarters of a company that plans to begin salvage logging in an ancient redwood grove. The demonstrators included people who were among the 900 environmentalists--including singers Bonnie Raitt and Don Henley--who were arrested Sunday at Pacific Lumber Co.'s Carlotta mill.

An 11th-hour compromise to save the Headwaters Forest preserves the ancient heart of America's last unprotected expanse of virgin redwoods but leaves the great majority of the fog-shrouded primeval forest open to logging as early as this week. The decade-long struggle to protect the forest--which led to an agreement announced Saturday in Washington--ends the imminent threat of logging in a 7,500-acre island of trees along the Northern California coast just south of Eureka.

A state appeals court Tuesday ordered Pacific Lumber Co. to temporarily stop logging in a North Coast old-growth redwood forest believed to be a habitat of the marbled murrelet, a small sea bird on California's endangered species list. Pacific Lumber, which began logging in the Owl Creek area of Humboldt County on Friday, said it stopped cutting after the stay was issued. But the company denied the birds were being harmed and said it would seek to dissolve the order.

State forestry officials seeking compromise unanimously approved six-month rules Wednesday to limit tree cutting near Northern California's rivers and streams. The State Board of Forestry's action drew mixed reviews from loggers and a quick hit from environmentalists.

A week of Earth First! protests began with the arrest of six activists who tried to halt timber-cutting on land bordering old-growth forests in Humboldt County. The six, who had chained themselves to logging equipment, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing near the Headwaters Forest, according to witnesses and sheriff's deputies. Earth First! said that Pacific Lumber Co. had renewed cutting second-growth timber on land along the Headwaters Forest.

A U.S. Forest Service report to be released today endorses a logging increase across more than 2 million acres of national forest in Northern California. The document, a draft environmental impact statement, deals with a congressionally approved logging blueprint, known as the Quincy plan, hammered out several years ago by a coalition of small-town citizens seeking a resolution to the bitter ongoing fights over tree-cutting in the Sierra Nevada.

Federal and state officials said Friday that they have reached agreement with a major corporate landowner on a plan that will allow logging in a nearly 200,000-acre swath of Northern California while preserving some of the most environmentally sensitive acres in the Headwaters Forest.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will proceed with a scaled-back plan to clear oak trees in the Carpenter Canyon area. A panel of local officials toured an eight-acre "test site" Wednesday, where oaks had been marked for pruning or removal under PG&E transmission lines. The work was ordered because of fire concerns. On May 12, about 75 demonstrators gathered at a neighboring farm to protest the planned tree and brush clearing. PG&E agreed not to cut any of the oaks until experts studied the area.

About 600 anti-logging demonstrators marched peacefully Monday in Fortuna to a lumber mill for the last planned protest of Redwood Summer. The "Redwoodstock" marchers were met by 100 counter-demonstrators. Authorities said there were no arrests and no violence as the environmentalists made their way to the Pacific Lumber Co. mill in this town on California's northern coast.