Redwood Trees

A classic struggle is playing out here in the first capital of California, and it's anyone's guess who the victor will be: God or nature. On one side stands San Carlos Borromeo de Monterey, believed to be the oldest continuously functioning church in California, completed in 1794. On the other, a small stand of stately redwood trees, whose roots have made their way through the chapel's foundation and threaten its survival.

At a reception in the mountains above Santa Cruz, dozens of surfers of a certain age, balancing wine glasses and pizza slices, basked in their closeness to a little piece of their sport's history. The celebrants at the San Lorenzo Valley Historical Museum had known the basic story for a while: In 1885, three Hawaiian princes visiting Santa Cruz on a break from military school wowed the locals with, as a newspaper report put it, "interesting exhibitions of surf-board swimming as practiced in their native islands."

Don't call Oral Martin Whitlow Jr. a river pirate. He's no poacher either. This fourth-generation woodsman says he's in the redwood salvage business, when the opportunity presents itself. And he would be happily salvaging a giant redwood on this wintry day if park rangers didn't harbor the foolish notion that the towering trees in Humboldt Redwoods State Park belong to the state -- even after they topple into the swollen Eel River and begin to float away.

Four more tree sitters were arrested Tuesday, hours after climbers hired by Pacific Lumber Co. removed other activists from their perches more than 100 feet above the ground. A protester arrested Monday, who gave her name only as "Remedy," was identified by authorities Tuesday as Jeny Crad, 28, of Olympia, Wash. Pacific Lumber was focusing on removing 16 others named in a court order from majestic redwood trees in a grove near Eureka.

For years, a significant chunk of California's budget for forest restoration and protection has hinged on the logging of thousands of century-old redwoods in a state forest near the Mendocino coast. To the chagrin of environmentalists, the scenic 50,000-acre Jackson Demonstration State Forest has been a cash cow, with woods full of 80- to 120-year-old trees generating as much as $12 million annually.

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.

First things first, I figured. And so last month, on my first journey to California's redwood country, I steered my rental car toward the Avenue of the Giants. The trees got taller, the air cooler, the wind gentler. The trails were green and shady, with drivers, hikers and cyclists lingering at the roadside. "We're on 4,717 miles right now," said one of the cyclists, 19-year-old Mike Farina.

A dozen environmentalists demonstrated in front of a Santa Monica lumber store Thursday, waving signs and passing out fliers to protest the sale of old-growth redwood products. Members of Rainforest Action Network, an international environmental group, said Fisher Lumber sells wood from old-growth redwoods being harvested from Northern California's ancient redwood forests, including Headwaters Forest near Eureka. Erik Jorgensborg, president of Fisher Lumber Co.

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.