Thanks to the generous support of the Klamath-Salmon Media Collaborative, a local media effort from Orleans, California, we now offer this brief but informative video about the campaign to protect Richardson Grove State Park. Please share the video far and wide, to build our movement to stop Caltrans from damaging this important gateway.

From everyone here at EPIC, thanks Stormy!

On August 17, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a landmark ruling in a case from Oregon titled NEDC v Brown. The Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC) is the environmental advocacy group staffed by law students at the Lewis and Clark Law School .

NEDC sued Brown, the Oregon Board of Forestry, and a handful of Oregon timber companies, among others, for their failure to obtain permits required under the federal Clean Water Act for discharges of a pollutant from a ‘point source;’ the key issue in the case is whether the culverts and ditches along the logging roads at issue are in fact ‘point sources’ under the law. In the Oregon case, the district court ruled they were not, and dismissed the case, agreeing with the timber companies, the Oregon officials, and the federal EPA.

However, in 2003, Judge Patel of the Northern District of California came to the opposite conclusion in a case that attorney Mike Lozeau argued with great skill on EPIC’s behalf against the Pacific Lumber Company.

Judge Patel concluded that stormwater runoff from logging roads that was collected in a system of ditches, culverts, and channels, and then discharged into protected water, was a point source discharge requiring an NPDES permit.

The Ninth Circuit court just agreed with J. Patel’s ruling in EPIC’s Bear Creek Point Source case that logging roads and ditches are in fact ‘point sources’ under the Clean Water Act, which means they must have permits under the NPDES permit system.

Our case died an untimely death due to PL’s bankruptcy; the Lewis & Clark law students’ group (NEDC) then brought a similar case in Oregon, which lost at the district court on the same issue. So now the 9^th district has finally ruled, and said yes, ditches and culverts are ‘point sources’ subject to NPDES regulation (which means they are not left for TMDLs to cover).

California State Parks has released this image of the area proposed to be removed from Tolowa Dunes State Park.

State Parks Director Ruth Coleman appears determined to downgrade protection for this ecologically unique and culturally sensitive area at the behest of a few waterfowl hunters.  Director Coleman has indicated that it is her intent to open ponds and sloughs in the northern section of the Park to waterfowl hunting before the end of 2010, and is pursuing their reclassification from “Park” to “State Recreation Area.” To send a letter opposing the reclassification, click here.

It seems unprecedented to rip out a piece of a Park that has already been designated. It will invite similar demands from small user groups for many units of California’s State Parks system.

The Lake Earl Wildlife Area, adjacent to Tolowa Dunes, already provides nearly 5000 acres for waterfowl hunting including marshes and sloughs along some 60 miles of shoreline.  In other words, ample and diverse hunting opportunities are already available next door and there is no need for additional hunting areas.  It isn’t fair either, because it upsets the balance intended by the legislature between the Wildlife Area and the State Park. The Park’s dune ponds and sloughs in fact provide the only refuge on this coast for birds during the hunting season.

The hunting area is proposed next to Yontocket where 450 men, women and children of the Tolowa tribe were slaughtered by militias in 1853, the second largest single massacre of native people in U.S. history. Hunting is proposed in Yontocket slough, where Tolowa tried to hide underwater and which “was just red with blood, with people floating around all over.” (Gould 1966b:33)  Most of the northern section of the Park, including the areas proposed for hunting, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 by the Tolowa people because of the many places of cultural, religious and ritual importance.  Some tribal members now view carrying or shooting guns in this area as an act of desecration.

The State Park was established not only for its cultural significance but also its ecological importance.  The Tolowa Coast is a hot spot of biodiversity deserving greatly increased protection — and not less. It provides refuge for 315 bird, 500 plant, 400 mushroom and fungi, 21 fish, and 50 land mammal species as well as many threatened and sensitive species, including the threatened Western snowy plover and Oregon Silverspot butterfly and endangered Tidewater goby.  It is a globally designated “Important Bird Area.”

Dune Ponds in TDSP, looking S. to Lake Earl, 2003

State Parks officials have said that this proposal poses no user conflicts and no environmental impacts. If you feel differently and would like to help, please write a short letter.  State your opposition to any reclassification or giveaway of Tolowa Dunes State Park for hunting, and describe how hunting will interfere with your enjoyment of this Park.  For example, hunting can scare people away from the dunes, displace birds and animals from their homes, conflict with bird and wildlife watching, disrupt peaceful enjoyment of nature, and show disrespect to the Tolowa and their ancestors.

Click here to send a message requesting the protection of Tolowa Dunes State Park

Comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report/ Environmental Assessment are due on Monday August 23, 2010.  All comments should be emailed to kimberley_hayler@dot.ca.gov.

Click here to take an action to stop this unnecessary project!

While there are a total of three active Green Diamond clearcut plans within Jacoby Creek watershed, two (1-08-145 and 1-08 153) have had “start-ups” filed with the California Department of Forestry and Fire (CalFire) in the last several weeks. Green Diamond has prepared to clearcut in very young stands in this area, underscoring the problems of short rotation, clearcut based logging operations. Aside from the almost exclusive use of clearcutting, the units to be cut are surrounded by areas plagued by years of clearcut logging. As is required under the California Environmental Quality Act, the list of historic plans within the planning documents has been included, and is daunting. (See graphic below)

It may be a bit difficult to understand how much logging has occurred in this region until you examine the attached maps showing a century of clearcut logging and roadbuilding that has increased the slope instability and damaged the watershed. What’s unique about these logging plans is that they are in such close proximity to residents along Jacoby Creek, including a certified organic farm.

To find out more about these plans or other private industrial logging operations, contact Calfire in Fortuna at (707) 725-4413 or visit the Forest Practice section of their website.  Click here to see what local redwood forest defence activists are doing to save this place.

Eye on Green Diamond: Jacoby Creek Operations

by Rob DiPerna

Green Diamond is currently operating on two adjacent Timber Harvest Plans (THPs) in the its Jacoby Creek ownership.  THP 1-08-145 and THP 1-08-153 are both located along the property line with units adjacent to residences.

The stands in these plans average a paltry 50 years old.  The tree size in these stands averages less than two feet in diameter.  These largely young, homogenous stands have already been the subject of several overlapping logging entries in the last 10-12 years.  Both plans were subject to selection and commercial thinning operations under four overlapping THPs.

These THPs contain Steep Streamside Slopes as defined in Green Diamond’s Aquatic Conservation Plan (AHCP) on Class I (fish-bearing) and Class II (non-fish-bearing but support amphibians) watercourses. Green Diamond will conduct selection-logging operations within the outer zone of these steep streamside slopes. Selection logging is also proposed in the Riparian Management Zones as defined in the AHCP, with the exception of Units C and D of THP 1-08-153.  These RMZs do not contain enough overstory canopy for Green Diamond to conduct further operations, likely as a result of the previous, overlapping harvest entries.

These two plans combine for 72 acres of clearcut logging of these young, heavily impacted and homogeneous stands.  This is a ‘clear-cut’= example of multiple entries, quick rotations, and intensive even-aged forest management. According to the THPs, the last commercial thinning entry into these units was under a THP filed as recently as 2001 (1-01-346). Now, less than ten years later, Green Diamond is back again, this time to completely liquidate as much of these young stands as the Forest Practice Rules and the AHCP will allow.

Jacoby Creek watershed in the vicinity of these THPs is home to resident Cutthroat trout, and represents potentially suitable habitat for listed species such as Coho salmon.  In addition, these areas are littered with historic Osprey nesting sites.  While the area does not contain Northern Spotted Owls, this species is known to occur in the biological assessment area.  In Addition, both these THPs represent habitat for the Pacific Fisher.

Green Diamond’s future projections for logging on its Jacoby Creek ownership demonstrate that nearly 500 acres more logging is likely in the next ten years, with nearly 400 acres of this slated for clearcutting.  Green Diamond’s frequent and intensive logging entries into these young stands represent a significant threat to trout and salmon species within Jacoby Creek.  Furthermore, the proposed logging operations on Steep Streamside Slopes runs the substantial risk of creating landslides or other mass wasting events.

Green Diamond’s intensive even-aged management in Jacoby Creek reflects the company-wide preference for liquidation forestry wherever the Forest

Practice Rules and the AHCP allow.  The Forest Practice Rules require “Maximum Sustained Production of High Quality Timber Products.” It is difficult to ascertain how Green Diamond can achieve maximum production of high-quality products when its intensive management strategy necessitates fast “rotation” i.e. logging and replanting, which results in the creation of young, homogenous stands that do not have time to develop into a high= quality product.

The consequence of this intensive even-aged management strategy is to sterilize the forest and significantly retard any attempts at biological recovery as a results of such frequent entries. Green Diamond’s 45-50 year rotation policy all but prevents the forest from developing the necessary characteristics of older more mature forests that would support a wider array of threatened species.

Clearly Jacoby Creek is but one example of Green Diamond’s intensive management which necessitates frequent entries, and ultimately results in clearcutting, burning, and the use of potentially dangerous herbicides. In a watershed such as Jacoby Creek where threatened trout and salmon are struggling to survive, Green Diamond’s intensive even-aged management practices will only serve to remove overstory canopy from critical streamsides, and clearcut the hills above.  In such an environment, it is difficult to see how the creek, or the species that depend on it can adequately recover from such frequent, and intensive even-aged management entries.

A little background

Under the terms of the antiquated 1872 mining law, Wabuska Mining LLC has proposed to develop the High Bar Placer Mine in the McNeal watershed near the Salmon River in Trinity County. An Environmental Assessment has been prepared to analyze the project known as High Mar Mine Phase 2, which includes the following activities:

• Removal of approximately 1.75 acres of surface vegetation (and piling for later burning by Forest Service personnel) in preparation for excavation and milling operations,

• Excavation and stockpiling of approximately 19,000 cubic yards of topsoil and overburden soil,

• Excavation of approximately 24,500 cubic yards of ore material for on-site milling,

• Ore milling at the High Bar Placer Mine, including housing of mill personnel,

• Development of a water line for milling purposes from McNeal Creek,

• Continued use and maintenance of the existing non-system access road,

• Reclamation of the mined sites, with a Reclamation Bond to be paid to the Forest Service by the claimant/operator should claimant/operator fail to reclaim the site.

It is interesting to note that in a recent Best Management Practices Water Quality Monitoring Report, the Klamath National Forest assessed the High Bar Mine and access road and determined that the development that has occurred at this location up until this point did not include adequate measures, as layed out in the permit process, to reduce environmental impacts. Clearly outlined “erosion control measures had not been implemented, and removed vegetation had not been properly treated…”

Recently, I drove home to Ferndale from Sonoma County. Since the last time I made this 101 drive, someone had stretched a banner between two redwood trees at the southern entrance to Richardson Grove. Just before plunging into the dark woods, the words “Save Richardson Grove” flashed by. I paid close attention to what I was seeing, thanks to that sign.

Some time ago, I attended Caltrans’ elaborate presentation which was held at River Lodge in Fortuna. The layout of designs and options displayed at that meeting came to mind as I slowed down and made my way through the forest. I could visualize exactly what Caltrans is “offering” to us, and I did not like what I could imagine.

The entire journey from south entrance to north entrance through the grove is not long. What Caltrans proposes will rip the heart out of this park — a park which (as we all know) belongs to the citizens of the state of California.

Richardson Grove does not belong to Caltrans, nor to the trucking industry, nor to the various chambers of commerce in Humboldt County.

Will it be possible to stop this project in a traditional and systematic way? Will public commentaries have been persuasive? Or will it be necessary for several thousands of people to stand in silence next to the silent trees who are unable to defend themselves?

We had a Redwood Summer years ago. Another one could be arranged to save Richardson Grove, if required.

Jere Bob Bowden

A bird's eye view of the Maple Creek watershed.

Green Diamond Resource Company (GDR) has been intensively working to churn out dozen of new logging plans for 2010.  Thus far in 2010, GDR has filed 37 THPs covering thousands of acres.  Nearly all of these plans call for a vast majority of logging operations to be conducted by clearcut.

Most of these proposed new logging plans are concentrated in a few, heavily impacted watersheds.  For example, six of these new THPs are slated to conduct clearcut logging in Little River, four of which are proposed in the Headwaters region, a watershed area that has been heavily impacted by past and current clearcutting. Little River Still provides habitat for salmon and steelhead populations.

In addition, GDR is proposing 12 new clearcutting THPs within the Maple Creek watershed. Maple Creek is a refugia for salmon and steelhead, which drains to Big Lagoon.  Many of the newly proposed logging operations in Maple Creek are in the lower part of the watershed where the potential to impact salmonids and the lagoon is highest.

This large-scale intensive logging strategy will impact critical habitat for imperiled species such as salmon, steelhead, Northern Spotted Owl, Pacific Fisher as well as various amphibians.  For example, a review of these newly proposed THPs indicates that Northern Spotted Owls are present either in or adjacent to a THP in 27 of the 37 cases.  Furthermore, 15 of these newly proposed THPs indicate that Pacific Fisher are present either in or adjacent to the plans.

While GDR proposes some no-harvest within some riparian management zones and habitat retention areas, the vast majority of the logging to be carried out under these plans is clearcutting.  Some of this clearcutting is proposed in and around wet areas, areas of disturbed ground, and potentially unstable areas.  Ground based selection logging is proposed within riparian management zones in many cases.

The 2010 GDR THPs also reveal a few other trends.  For example, 21 of the 37 new plans contain clearcut units that are constrained by lack of completion and stocking in adjacent THP clearcut units.  This means that trees in adjacent units are neither old enough nor tall enough to meet Forest Practice Rules tree stocking constraints required prior to clearcutting adjacent to regenerating units.

Furthermore, 23 of the 37 newly proposed THPs contain what is considered “oversized” clearcutting units.  This means that units contain greater than 20 acres of ground based clearcutting or greater than 30 acres of cable based clearcutting.  These extra large clearcut units are constrained by the Forest Practice Rules in order to protect natural resources such as soil, water, forest health, and wildlife.  Event though Cal Fire routinely approves the execution of these oversized clearcuts, the intent of the rules is to constrain the size and scope of clearcut logging to protect critical natural resources.

On June 30, the California Transportation Commission (CTC) approved a resolution to provide “approval for consideration for funding” of the the recommendation that the project be funded. It is interesting to note that nowhere in the resoultion language did the words “park” or Richardson Grove” or “Old Growth redwoods” appear. Perhaps this is the reason that with so many people paying close attention to procedures related to the project, no one caught that the item appeared on the CTC’s agenda. According to the Memorandum that laid out the resolution, the “total estimated project cost is $10,053,000 for capital and support.” This is approximately one third more expensive than earlier estimates.

In related news, CalTrans has proposed another project like the one through Richardson Grove, that would allow STAA access on Highway 199 and 197. This project damage  old growth redwoods in Del Norte County and would occur in nine locations along the Wild and Scenic Smith River. Public comments on the project will be accepted by District 1 Caltrans until August 23. To read the project Environmental Impact Report, click here.

EPIC volunteers have put together activist packets that we intend on distributing to motivated individuals to spread the word and gain support to save Richardson Grove. Packets include brochures, stickers, post cards, petitions, T-Shirts and other Richardson Grove paraphernalia. Please call or email the EPIC office if you have the time and energy to reach out to your family, friends and neighbors about the campaign to save Richardson Grove.

We’d love to raise the visibility of the pending devastation of our environment and way of life to those outside our immediate area. We have had a couple of articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle. We’d like to see more letters to the editor and op-eds written to the Chronicle and other newspapers such as the San Jose Mercury News, the Santa Rose Press Democrat, the the Marin
Independent, as well as environmentally and progressively oriented magazines and campus newspapers.

Naturally, donations for the cost of the lawsuit are badly needed. Please donate what you can.

Sally Bell Grove soon after two clearcuts were completed on either side of the grove.

We should, here in 2010, take notice, reflect, and refresh at a wellspring of inspiration on occasion of the 25th anniversary of the landmark, precedent-setting EPIC v. Johnson appeal court decision in 1985. From a statewide, and even national perspective, EPIC v. Johnson marked a significant milestone in environmental protection, much of which was initiated by environmental laws passed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In California this included the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the Forest Practices Act (FPA), and California Endangered Species Act (CESA). There were federal legislative counterparts with some direct cross-over, notably the California Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act (1969) affecting the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972.

During the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, the turmoil of politics and natural resources was intense in the Redwood Region of California (and lingers today), especially from Santa Cruz to the Oregon border. Damage from the huge floods in 1955 and 1964 were greatly increased from the horrific impacts of the post WWII logging boom (which was basically unconstrained & pushed by the ad valorem tax on standing timber). The old “Forest Practice Act” was thrown out for being unconstitutional (no rules unless the large landowners agreed). A number of counties struggled to have their own rules. The effort to protect an adequate National Redwood Park was a huge local, regional, and national issue. The general move to constrain unbridled ‘boom & bust’ resource economies to respond to environmental considerations like conservation for the future with protection for wildlife, remnant old-growth forests, and the beneficial uses of water — set the stage for dramatic, stressful, and from time to time, violent manifestations of significant social and cultural change. I don’t have the time and space to detail all the important legal cases, other events, and situations leading up to the July 25th, 1985 EPIC v. Johnson decision, or the cases, events, and situations in the last 25 years — but I will try and give a coherent summary of the decision and related matters from a local “Mateel” perspective, and through the experience of a participant, from time to time, in various activist and watershed restoration efforts.

The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) was founded in 1976 or 1977, depending on the person you talk to. It formally was accepted as a 501(3)(c) several years later. It’s formation was catalyzed by the region’s opposition to the aerial spraying of phenoxy herbicides (2,4,5T & 2,4D: components of the ‘Agent Orange’ defoliant used in Vietnam) on forestlands surrounding or adjacent to human communities. The specific instigating situation for Northern Mendocino and Southern Humboldt Counties was the attempt by the Barnum Timber Company (BTC) to aerially spray its timberland, mainly in the Sprowel Creek Watershed west of the town of Garberville. Due to vocal and written opposition encouraged by EPIC, and spontaneous direct action by various individuals, such as removal of truck keys from the truck hauling an herbicide application helicopter through Garberville, and contamination of barrels of herbicide near an herbicide application site — BTC was prompted to cancel its proposed aerial application of herbicides.

Subsequent to that EPIC continued to regularly meet — an amalgamation of local concerned activists — supporting each others’ voluntary efforts and involvement on a wide range of issues: Gilham Butte, the King Range/Lost Coast, Red Mountain, National Forest lands, private and State forest practices, water quality, toxins, and many others. In late summer and early fall of 1977, concerns coalesced over changing poor forest practices that had continued, and protecting the last old growth forest remnants and the area that became know as the Sinkyone Wilderness Coast. In September 1977 Georgia-Pacific Corporation (G-P) filed a Timber Harvest Plan (THP) to use the “Overstory Removal” silviculture method [sic], quite prevalent at the time, to liquidate all the Old Growth and merchantable forest in Little Jackass (or Little Wolf) Creek — in the same month that the California Parks and Recreation Commission was meeting in Fort Bragg to combine and classify the Usal and Bear Harbor projects.

The spectacular forested coastal canyon they wanted to cut is about midway between Bear Harbor and Usal, and remarkably, had somehow retained about 300 acres of Old Growth — despite numerous rounds of logging in the surrounding areas starting in the latter part of the 19th century. Aerial photos from the early 1960s showed almost the entire watershed covered by Old Growth. The canyon that later became renowned as the Sally Bell Grove watershed has a beautiful cove at its base where the creek enters the Pacific, along with a prominent rocky outcropping, aptly named Mistake Point. In the 1970s and 80s, it was common to have to share the beach with many hundreds of sea lions.

In the early 1970s, when William Penn Mott was Resources Secretary, California showed great interest in protecting the rugged and wilderness character of the coast, particularly from Usal north to Chemise Mountain. The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) King Range coastal land, including a significant proportion of the western Mattole Valley, from Chemise Mountain (just south of Shelter Cove) to the mouth of the Mattole River became the first National Conservation Area in 1970 — after widespread local and regional support, and leadership from Congressman Clem Miller.

In Fort Bragg in September 1977, the Parks & Recreation Commission heard both concise and impassioned testimony from the public supporting wilderness designation for the combined area of the Usal & Bear Harbor projects. The Bear Harbor Ranch had been purchased by Parks and Rec. in 1975. Testimony was topped off by William Penn Mott himself, who perhaps most strongly and lucidly spoke for wilderness protection. Parks & Rec. Director Cahill was vehement for classification as a park, and the Commission did vote for classification as park, but with the provisions that large areas would be designated as wilderness. The naming was put off until October at Asilomar, when the Commission named the new unit Sinkyone Wilderness State Park.

During that early Fall, the California Department of Forestry backed Georgia-Pacific down into a two or three phase cutting plan for the Sally Bell Grove watershed. The 1977 THP was approved, however, for 40 and 80 acre clearcuts on either side of what became the Sally Bell Grove, which still stands providing a predominately Old-Growth Redwood forest background behind the cove and beach. The Grove and some other areas were left for subsequent THPs. It was heartbreaking when those clearcuts were done in 1978.

These actions in the Fall of 1977 precipitated an amazing and often bitter struggle to achieve a protected Sinkyone Wilderness Coast, as well as end logging abuses, recover fisheries resources, and gain protection for Native American cultural heritage. Local and regional groups and individuals became mobilized and activated over these issues. EPIC and the “Sinkyone Council” (which was a local non-Indian, but living on the land group of what some called ‘back-to-the-landers’, and others called ‘hippies’ & worse.), joined by the Sierra Club were the initial main organizations committed to those issues along that coast.

Usal Creek 1980.

The roller coaster emotional, political, communicational, and physical engagement was, it seemed, at times unbearable. People that had never before, nor since, traveled and spoke out at public meetings and hearings did so during those years. The Board of Forestry, the Coastal Commission, the Parks and Recreation Commission, the Department of Fish and Game (DF&G), the Department of Forestry (CDF) and other entities were repeatedly approached with relevant information that applied to their legal responsibilities to protect this area and correct damaging and illegally implemented resource exploitation. Legislation was sought and passed enabling negotiations to get underway between the state and G-P, and to establish wilderness principles for the area (carried by Senator Barry Keene). It should be pointed out that wilderness designation, in part, was significantly supported, in the context of classifications available through Parks & Rec. protection, because traditional hunting and fishing could only be allowed to continue under that designation. Another major factor, of course, was the exclusion of motorized vehicles which continued to degrade the land — whether it was ‘yahoos’ attacking steep coastal meadows, or caterpillars scaring the hills, deranging the drainage and watercourse equilibriums established through millennia, and causing immense amounts of sediment to clog the streams that were the spawning and rearing areas for salmon, steelhead and other species.

G-P had first logged on the Sinkyone Wilderness Coast in 1975, having purchased the old Union Lumber Company holdings from Boise-Cascade. Their first THP was basically for the entire Hotel Gulch watershed on the north side of Usal Creek between the Usal Road and the ridges with cliff faces toward the Pacific Ocean. CDF allowed them to use “overstory removal” in the entire watershed, and the Coastal Commission which had jurisdiction over logging in the Coastal Zone at the time, allowed the cutting to go forward in exchange for the promise of an easement granted for a coastal trail across G-P’s holdings on the coast. This promise of an easement got ‘lost between the cracks’ until EPIC’s Robert “Man-who-walks-in-the-Woods” Sutherland (or “Woods”) pointed out that promise. This was after more than a year was wasted in legislative and administrative efforts to establish a trail with G-P ingenuously/corruptly insisted that it had to be a leased trail.

THP after THP submitted by G-P was analyzed and opposed by the public. Each THP and each legislative & administrative move (e.g.: getting resolutions passed to force field tours etc.) took an immense effort in donated time, money, and resources. We were schooling ourselves, schooling the bureaucrats, schooling the public, and schooling the media. We were ‘trying to get a handle on’ turning around the resource extraction culture to actually evaluate and respond to essential values, rather then merely “giving consideration to the public’s need for watershed protection, fisheries and wildlife, and recreational opportunities”, while primarily encouraging “prudent and responsible forest resource management calculated to serve the public’s need for timber and other forest products” (parts of the Z’Berg-Nejedly Forest Practice Act (FPA) in Section 4512(c)). The “prudent and responsible resource management” part was a big problem. It was quite a struggle to even finally come up with a professional licensing program for foresters in 1973. One has to understand that up until the 1973 FPA there really was no ‘harvest plan’ — no mapping requirements about actual operations, no procedure to ensure stream and watercourse protections, no procedure for cultural protection, no procedure to ensure slope stability, prevent bad roads — and no procedure to evaluate and respond to the ‘big picture’ and long-term forest and timberland sustainability. Although an idealistic forester might see that mandate ‘between the lines’ in the 1973 FPA, it wasn’t until the courts clearly spelled out that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) applied to forest practices — that some headway was arduously gained in making obvious and legally mandated considerations and responses become manifest.

While EPIC and the public gained experience in the realities of logging, applying environmental law, and in spreading that knowledge in ever widening circles — the tightly entwined CDF/Industry culture gripped the basic philosophy that immediate economic gain trumps and trivializes all other concerns. CDF & industry had (and really still has) a hard time seriously responding to the multi-agency review that the FPA, to a small extent, and CEQA, to a large extent, required. It wasn’t uncommon for sister agencies like Fish & Game, Geology, and Water Quality to be bullied, impugned, & ignored. A mild mannered Fish and Game biologist was threatened with being shot for taking streambed samples in a coastal stream in or near the area of a G-P proposed THP south of Bear Harbor.

These new-fangled environmental laws and rules enraged many in the dominant timber industry — many had the “hell with this sissy bull___” attitude — and this attitude, along with its variety of milder and subtler versions, had to be coped with at almost every level. The modification of this attitude was, at root, a heavy needed cultural change that continues today. A lot of times there was no real conscious collusion between the industry and the regulators, but a shared unspoken instinctual understanding of a common perspective on the accepted, even perceived as essential, treatment/mistreatment of forests through generations and millennia.

The public persevered. Even the calloused perspectives of loggers were often softened by the amazing existence of any remnant old-growth — and by the spectacular and wild coastal landscape. There are many personal stories that will probably never be known, and some that are, that epitomize positive resolutions of inner conflict in the many human perspectives.

One of these perspectives came up immediately along the Sinkyone Wilderness Coast. This was the perspective of the ancestors, descendants, and cultural heritage of the Indian People. The idealist ‘back-to-the-landers’ of the 1960s and 70s consciously were looking for models of how to ‘get-in-tune’ with ‘place’. The model all around them of a skid trail every ‘stone’s throw’ didn’t seem to be the right one. The Briceland Book Store had a short UC Berkeley anthropological tome from the 1920s or 30s, called “Sinkyone Notes” by Gladys Ayer Nomland. It was widely acquired and read. Among other things, it described the year-to-year, season-to-season, movement from coast to inland and back. It described the incredible rich range of resources from acorns to salmon to elk and much more. It also described some of the horrific impacts of the euphemistically labeled “contact” era. One of these was the story of Sally Bell and her brother surviving the killing of the rest of her family “by bad men” near Needle Rock along the Sinkyone Wilderness Coast. We’re not talking ancient history. She and her Coast Yuki husband, Tom Bell, lived at Four Corners (several miles north of Needle Rock) almost into the 1940s. All of this made a great impression on many persons and affected the whole way that the protection of the coast was approached.

Right away, as G-P THPs were examined, analyzed, and ground-truthed, the existence of, and past and potential future adverse impacts to, Native American heritage and cultural resources were evident. To protect these values and resources was, and continues to be, very difficult in complex ways. Initially, it seemed sort of straight-forward: “There are sites, including many that are damaged, that need to be protected.” But then it became evident that there was no adequate will and process to ensure that real and respectful protection could be achieved. Operations went ahead and adversely impacted sites, when assurances had been made that adequate archaeological protections would be in place prior to those operations. Consultation with Native Americans and California Indians was not happening. The public fought for protections in one large and significant area, only to have only four small areas designated for protection, and then have one of those bulldozed for a layout pad for the felling of an old-growth Redwood. When the Park and Rec. archaeologist involved in setting protections discovered the destruction, and was accordingly angered and dismayed, he was admonished by a G-P forester and told he could never come on their land again.

There is too much information to convey about those years from 1977 to 1985 in this summary paper. But, as regards the incident just described above: It led to a conviction for site destruction by G-P, with a requirement that they do an archaeological study/inventory for their entire 50,000 acre “Usal Unit”. It was requested of the court to include mandatory consultation with California Indians as part of this requirement, but the court failed to do so. Walt Lara Sr. and Milton Marks of the Northwest Indian Cemetery Association, a precursor of the California Native American Heritage Commission, were present during the proceedings.

So, by late summer 1983, progress had been made for the protection of the Sinkyone Wilderness Coast on some levels: There was 3.2 million dollars set aside for acquisition of the G-P lands (initiative taken by Assemblyman Doug Bosco). The public had been made aware of the importance of protection of that coast and the heavy damage from the past and present. The Native American and California Indian relationship was being more publicly realized. Just about everything that could be done to administratively affect the way CDF was approving THPs had been done. Legislation carried by Assemblyman Dan Hauser to facilitate protection of the Sinkyone Wilderness Coast passed, but failed to protect the critical areas and remnant old-growth. And then it happened: G-P filed the THP to cut the Sally Bell Grove. And that was EPIC’s, the International Indian Treaty Council’s, and the public’s last straw.