On August 4, 2000 I sent the following letter to Ken McLaughlin, who has been writing the articles on the Ramsey Gulch Tree-sit for the San José Mercury News. Ken was on vacation at the time, and has never gotten back to me on this. However, I feel that the points expressed below in a "point / counterpoint" format may help out anyone who is discussing the issues involved.
to Ken McLaughlin, the San Jose Mercury News:
Over the past few months, you have presented several stories regarding the tree-sit in Ramsey Gulch, relying heavily on skewed information provided by industry mouthpiece David Van Lennep. While I appreciate the fact that you have offered activists a limited opportunity to rebut these points, I feel that the truth is still in hiding. Like the forest itself, the full-grown version of the truth may not always spring up in time for today's edition.
Before I address these points one-by-one, an issue which has not come so far in the recent coverage is the ownership of the portion of Summit Road which the loggers are using. This was a gated, private road which Redwood Empire commandeered for its previous logging ecologically disastrous project. The ownership of this road has been in litigation for 5 years, and the court has yet to hand down a final decision. Redwood Empire owner Roger Burch falsely claimed the road was public and the CDF simply believed him.
Whatever the final outcome of this case, it's a typical example of the contentious way that the timber industry and the logger-hugging CDF routinely tread on the rights of neighboring landowners, doing whatever they need to get the trees out. More on this below.
The initial points below appeared in the Mercury News on 6/23/00 and 7/22/00. Industry propaganda appears in bold, followed by a more sensible analysis.
Any environmentalist who has ever worked with the Timber Harvest Plan (THP) process will undoubtedly agree that the word "mitigate" is the worst case of Orwellian doublespeak that the CDF has ever come up with. Most of the time it simply means that they simply rewrite the THP to make it look like any 'complaint' is the fault of the complainer. Or it may mean that they throw a few bales of hay on the hillside in an ineffectual attempt to deter erosion.
The CDF is infamous for its ineptitude at enforcing the terms of a THP. For example, witnesses report that trees in Ramsey Gulch have laid in the stream for over a month, when they are not supposed to be there longer than 24 hours.
For more details on why it is that the THP process is so horribly flawed, and the history of how it came to be that the THP is ineffective in providing any real environmental protections, I suggest you take a look at the Little Hoover Commission report entitled "THP's, a flawed process," which may be found at http://www.lhc.ca.gov/lhcdir/126rp.html
Although this report was written in 1994 (and is not perfect) the main points regarding the absence of environmental protection unfortunately are still true today. Furthermore, this report helps to illuminate the ways in which the contentious nature of disputes between timber industry and neighbors/environmentalists have been aggravated by system codified into state law.
Timber industry 'mitigations' are woefully inadequate, and Redwood Empire's have notoriously been among the worst.
Dr. Todd Dawson, formerly of Cornell U. and recently of Univ of Cal., has done some of the definitive work on fog drip in the redwoods, as reported on 24 Nov 99 in a NY Times article entitled "Clues to Redwoods' Mighty Growth Emerge in Fog."
Quoting the article:
In one foggy night, a single redwood can douse the ground beneath it with the equivalent of a drenching rainstorm and the drops off redwoods can provide as much as half the water coming into a forest over a year. In fact, Dr. Dawson concluded, the redwoods' ability to draw water from fog appears crucial in maintaining the wet climate that they and so many other species, some endangered, thrive in.
The article explains how Dr. Dawson used the study of isotopes to pinpoint the sources of water to the redwoods.
Just as a sanity check, anyone who lives underneath redwood trees (as I do) may easily observe that the humidity level under the trees is much greater than that of the sun-scorched earth left behind after a clearcut. (for example, the clearcut up China Grade) And if you've ever personally experienced such a fog event, as I have, you will have a tactile sense of how profound the impact can be.
The fact is that the profit-maximizing timber industry only uses helicopters when they have no alternative. It's usually because the slopes are too steep for any other means, as is obviously the case in Ramsey Gulch. So the truth is that helicopter logging allows "foresters" to take out trees in places they shouldn't even be touching.
It should be obvious that as the trees slide down the hillside, they create gashes that lead to erosion, silting of the streams, dying fish, &c. &c.
People often accept the idea that helicopters are environmentally friendly, when in fact it has not been conclusively established. There are many undocumented impacts which helicopters incur on the local animal and plant life, for example resulting from noise and wind. There is also the impact from the helicopter pad and fueling station.
Another point is that helicopter logging is dangerous. Witnesses of the Ramsey Gulch project have seen several cases of accidental droppings, in some cases of multiple logs accidentally dropped from a single load.
The technique of removing the smaller trees to improve the health of the forest is called thinning. By contrast, what Redwood Empire is doing is called harvesting. The difference is that in a harvest, it's the larger trees that are taken out for their board-foot value.
Harvesting has many negative effects on the ecosystem. For example, harvesting opens up the forest canopy, which increases fire hazards by promoting the growth of shrubs such as "scotch broom" (also called "french broom"), which grows prolifically in this region and is highly flammable. Neither does a harvest help the soil, nor the remaining habitat. It worsens erosion in most instances - especially on steep slopes. It dries out the soil and diminishes the mycorrhizal fungi that redwoods require for their roots to take in nutrients.
Also, there have been documented reports of old growth trees on the Ramsey Gulch property.