(Provided courtesy of the Trees Foundation)
What is Headwaters Forest?
The Headwaters Forest, 60,000 acres of redwood and Douglas-fir, forest is located approximately 15 miles southeast of Eureka, California. This land plus an additional 140,000 acres belongs to the Pacific Lumber Company, which was bought out in 1985 by Houston-based Maxxam Corporation. Six ancient redwood groves, totalling 4,500 acres, lie within Headwaters Forest. They are: Headwaters Grove (2,754); Elk Head Springs Grove (291 acres); All Species Grove (434 acres); Shaw Creek Grove (317 acres); Owl Creek Grove (387 acres); and Allen Creek Grove (360 acres). These are the most significant remaining uprotected stands of ancient redwoods in the world.
Why not protect just the pristine groves?
Headwaters Forest is an ecosystem made up of various forest, plant, and animal communities. Although the virgin groves are the most critical areas in terms of protecting species dependent on old-growth forest habitat, the species that inhabit these forest "islands" may not be able to survive if their habitat stands alone, surrounded by clear cuts. The land connecting the pristine groves supports a patchwork of "residual" old-growth redwood (forest stands that were partially logged by Pacific Lumber before the Maxxam takeover), second-growth redwood of various ages, and vast areas of clearcuts. Taken together, these lands comprise a series of recovering plant and animal communities that cannot stand alone, but must instead be managed as a single unit for forest biodiversity.
Would protecting Headwaters mean ending all logging?
No. The Humboldt County-based Trees Foundation, with help from the Institute for Sustainable Forestry has designed an "alternative" restoration forestry plan for the previously logged areas of Headwaters Forest. The plan's goal is to goal is to speed the recovery of old-growth forest characteristics while protecting soils, water quality, and habitat. The plan also addresses the need for sustainable timber employment and for a healthy forest. The pristine groves would be permanently preserved.
Don't timber companies replant the areas they cut?
Yes...BUT replanting trees does not make a forest. The impacts of clearcutting on forest biodiversity far exceed what replanting seedling trees can repair. One of the most signifcant, and often overlooked, impacts of industrial clearcutting is the irreparable damage done to the soil. Healthy soil is integral to rebuilding healthy, productive, biodiverse forests. Clearcutting takes more than trees from a forest; it destroys the habitat upon which countless creatures depend. That habitat represents a complex web of life that cannot be replaced by simply replanting trees. Furthermore, trees managed under short rotations (areas repeatedly clearcut, replanted, and clearcut again) cannot support that intricate web of life. Studies in Redwood Parks have found it takes 1 million seedling to get one ancient tree.
Isn't there enough redwood protected in state and federal parks?
No. Although parks contain nearly 250,000 acres of redwood land in California, only 76,000 acres is unentered old-growth redwood. This is less than 4 percent of the original two-million-acre coast redwood ecosystem. In addition, most of the "protected" redwood groves are better called "tree museums," as they are heavily impacted by roads, millions of tourists and fragmentation. For example, the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt County contains hundreds of acres of old-growth trees, but has been so impacted by the tourist industry that it contains no ancient forest habitat. Headwaters Forest lies between Redwood National Park to the north and Humboldt Redwoods State Park to the south, a distance of 50 miles. It is the only ancient redwood habitat remaining within the Humboldt Bay ecosystem. Destroying the ancient redwood groves of Headwaters Forest would eliminate the critical habitat connectivity they provide between the two parks for the survival of many species.
What sort of species are found in Headwaters Forest?
Headwaters Forest is home to many rare plant and animal species. The most famous of these is the spotted owl, long an icon of ancient forest preservation efforts throughout the West. Headwaters also provides habitat for the marbled murrelet, a small, elusive seabird that only nests in the canopy of large old-growth trees. Currently the marbled murrelet is listed under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) as "threatened" and under the state ESA as "endangered." The California Department of Fish and Game estimated that Headwaters Forest represents one of the state's three most important habitat areas for the marbled murrelet. The groves of Headwaters Forest also protect water quality essential for survival of the coho salmon, listed as "threatened" under the federal ESA. Peter Moyle, a fisheries biologist at the University of California-Davis, testified to Congress in 1994 that up to 10 percent of California's remaining population of wild coho salmon may use the streams of Headwaters Forest to spawn.
How can Maxxam continue to log these ancient groves if they are protected by state and federal laws?
On paper, they can't. Over the past 10 years, the Garberville-based Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) has won numerous lawsuits against Pacific Lumber and Maxxam, slowing, but not stopping, the destruction of ancient redwood forest illegally approved by the California Department of Forestry (CDF). Long an ally of Big Timber, CDF has approved old-growth redwood logging plans even after losing lawsuits over similar plans. Had CDF officials properly enforced state and federal laws, Headwaters Forest would today contain thousands of additional acres of old-growth redwood forest. After losing round after round of litigation, Pacific Lumber recently changed tactics and began submitting "salvage" logging proposals to CDF under a major loophole in the California Forest Practices Act. These plans, requiring no public involvement, agency review or monitoring, have allowed Pacific Lumber to remove downed old-growth trees trees the ancient redwood groves, causing irreparable damage to these otherwise pristine forests.
Isn't the government planning to buy Headwaters Forest?
The Clinton Administration is negotiating with Maxxam in an apparent attempt to purchase a small part of Headwaters Forest. Maxxam CEO Charles Hurwitz has insisted that only Headwater Grove, Elk Head Springs and a small buffer of cutover land are up for sale, leaving the four other ancient groves open to logging. A Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), a loophole in the Endangered Species Act that allows killing of endangered species and destruction of crucial habitat, could give Maxxam permission to liquidate all or part of the remaining ancient forest. The only way to "save Headwaters Forest" is to permanently preserve all six ancient groves and restore the devastated watersheds between them. Anything less would represent a cosmetic political fix rather than a long-term solution based on sound biology.
The Trees Foundation
POB 2202, Redway, CA 95560
707/923-4377 * FAX: 923-4427
info@treesfoundation.org
