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October 24, 2002
Press Release
For Immediate Release
Campaign:
Vince Taylor (707) 937-3001
Forests Forever: Paul Hughes (415) 974-36-36
Legal:
Paul Carroll (650) 322-5652
October 24, 2002, Ukiah. Citizen groups today challenged a key
environmental document prepared by the California Department of Forestry
(CDF) for Jackson State Forest. Until halted by a lawsuit last year,
large-scale timber operations in Jackson State Forest had been generating
$15 million of revenue for state forestry programs. In a March court
settlement with the Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest, CDF
agreed not to resume logging in Jackson State Forest until a new management
plan and Environmental Impact Report (EIR) were approved. The previous
management plan was prepared and approved in 1983.
The new lawsuit, filed in Mendocino Superior Court by the Campaign to
Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest and Forests Forever Foundation, is the
latest blow to CDF’s efforts to continue its profitable but increasingly
controversial management of Jackson State Forest.
Vince Taylor, spokesperson for the Campaign, said, "We regret the
necessity for this suit, but CDF left us no choice. Jackson State is owned
by the people of California, who have overwhelming told CDF they want their
50,000-acre redwood forest restored to old growth as sanctuary for
threatened species. Experts filed 1000 pages detailing glaring deficiencies
in the EIR and management plan. CDF ignored the public and experts. It
adopted a management plan that would essentially clearcut half the forest
and approved an EIR that is legally defective. Sadly, the public now has to
go court to force CDF, our supposed public servant, to obey the law."
Paul Carroll, lawyer for the citizen groups, said, "The EIR for Jackson
State fails to meet well-defined legal standards laid out by the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and related court decisions. The absence
of a comprehensive analysis of cumulative effects, a fundamental
requirement of CEQA, is a fatal defect. The requirements of CEQA are not
mere legalities, but reflect expert scientific knowledge. Without the
information required by CEQA, there is no way for the public or
decisionmakers to know the environmental consequences of the proposed
management activities."
Paul Hughes, Executive Director of Forests Forever Foundation, explained
the involvement of his San Francisco based organization in the lawsuit,
"The 50,000 acres of Jackson Forest constitute an island of public land in
the midst of a half-million acres of industrially owned, devastated redwood
timberland. Jackson State Forest is the only possible large sanctuary
between San Francisco and Humboldt County for salmon and other endangered
redwood-related species. It could also be a recreation haven for the
millions of people who live in the Bay Area and Central Valley. The state
ought to be restoring this publicly owned treasure for its precious
ecological and recreational values, not logging it like another big
industrial company."
CDF has been working for over a year to develop and gain approval for a
new management plan. In April 2001, it issued a draft management plan that
called for continued large-scale commercial timber production in Jackson
State. The draft plan was widely criticized for its heavy use of "even-age
management" (commonly known as clearcutting), minimal protection for salmon
streams, and planned cutting of the oldest second-growth stands in
Mendocino County. In response to the criticism, CDF requested informal
public comment, which many took to be a sign that CDF was planning to
revise its plan to incorporate public concerns.
An approved EIR is necessary under the California Environmental Quality
Act (CEQA) before a management plan can be approved. In May 2002, CDF
released a new draft management plan and a draft EIR. The new draft plan
was essentially identical to the heavily criticized plan of 2001. The new
plan and EIR drew an immediate and overwhelmingly critical flood of public
comment. Of the 4,000 public comments, less than 50 supported the proposed
CDF plan. The remainder strongly opposed CDF’s large-scale logging plans
and most called for restoration of the publicly owned forest to old growth
for recreation, habitat, education and research.
CDF also received a thousand pages of detailed expert comments on the
EIR. The expert comments detailed numerous deficiencies, including lack of
any meaningful cumulative impacts analysis, lack of comprehensive botanical
surveys, inadequate protection of endangered species, inadequate
presentation of data on timber, and errors in estimates of timber
inventory, growth and allowable harvest levels.
CDF published its response to comments and certified its final EIR on
September 26. A few days later, it issued its final management plan and
took it to the Board of Forestry for approval. Few substantive changes were
made between the drafts and final versions of either the EIR or management
plan. The Board of Forestry is expected to approve the management plan at
its November 5-6 meeting. |