Last month, EPIC’s Green Diamond Stop Clearcutting Campaign staff and volunteers flew over the timber giant’s patchwork ownership in Humboldt County. This truth-telling mission included video documentation by the Klamath-Salmon Media Collaborative shown here on EPIC’s new Youtube Channel.
From a bird’s eye view, the company’s reliance on clear cut logging and chemical herbicides across their ownership becomes crystal clear. A century of bad logging by Simpson Timber and their corporate partner Green Diamond Resource Company has left behind a barren patchwork of clearcuts across whole watersheds as is visible in the short film.
Of course many important forest groves still remain across Green Diamond’s 430,000 acres, that must be protected. The forests could regenerate for future generations if the company weened themselves from boom and bust logging habits and integrated sustained yields into their planning process. With rotations of around 45 years, how do they expect these sensitive forest ecosystems to recover from the blade?