Spring 1999 Wild Califonia
Another Victory for GILHAM BUTTE!
 |
Headwaters of Westland Creek,
Gilham Butte |
Recently, there has been tremendous progress in the 25-year effort by local residents to protect the 5,000-acre wildland on Gilham Butte, 25 miles northwest of Garberville. In December of 1998 EPIC and Friends of Gilham Butte won a lawsuit that reversed two clearcut logging plans on Gilham Butte. This month there has been significant progress by a coalition of community groups to obtain funding to purchase approximately 3000 acres of rare ancient fir and hardwood forests on Gilham Butte. The proposed acquisition would expand the existing 2550-acre Gilham Butte Late Seral Reserve managed by the Bureau of Land Management at the top of Gilham Butte ridge. The reserve is at the heart of an essential wildlife corridor between Humboldt Redwoods State Park and the coast where the King Range National Conservation Area and Sinkyone Wilderness State Park are adjacent to each other.
For more than 20 years, the Friends of Gilham Butte have fought to keep the forest wilderness of Gilham Butte pristine and whole. The ruling represents a victory both for the wildlife of Gilham Butte and for the community that has fought so hard to preserve this remarkable place.
CDF approved Timber Harvest Plan (THP) 1-96-536 in 1997, clearing the way for Eel River Sawmills to cut 122 acres of Douglas-fir forest on the Mattole River side of Gilham Butte. According to this plan, the proposed logging operation would discharge 115 cubic yards of sediment into the Mattole, a river already listed as "water quality impaired" by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Eel River Sawmills offered to repair a culvert four miles downstream in order to "mitigate" this sediment input and achieve "Zero Net Discharge," but the plan failed to account for the obvious impacts to those four miles of the Mattole River. The court found that CDF should not have approved the plan in the absence of this analysis.
On the Eel River side of Gilham Butte, THP 1-96-255 would have cut 144 acres of dense, mature Douglas-fir forest in the Salmon Creek headwaters. Although a CDF biologist found that the plan would significantly damage mature forest in the area, and made several specific recommendations for how the plan should be changed, officials higher in the agency approved the plan over his objections and without addressing his proposed alternatives. The court ruled that CDF should have denied the plan because it did not incorporate these feasible measures, which would have lessened the planÕs impact on the forest and its wildlife.
"The Department of Forestry clearly abused its discretion in authorizing these plans, and weÕre delighted that the court took notice," commented EPIC spokesperson Kevin Bundy. "CDF ignored the recommendations of its own biologist and failed to analyze critical environmental impacts of these plans, a practice that has become all too common in recent years. We hope this decision will make CDF officials think twice before ignoring the facts and the law in the future."
Gilham Butte remains an important refuge for creatures dependent on the increasingly rare ancient Douglas-fir and mixed hardwood forest that once dominated higher elevations throughout the North Coast.
Although the mountaintop is managed as an ecological reserve for the Northern spotted owl by the BLM, recent logging operations have threatened the integrity of the forest on all sides of the public ownership. The broad-based local effort to acquire and permanently preserve the remaining privately-owned ancient forest areas on Gilham Butte is safeguarding the biological corridor and the integrity of the area.
