Firm to Stop Clear-Cutting Redwoods

Pacific Lumber Co., which has been criticized for allegedly depleting California’s redwood forests for quick profits, announced Thursday that it voluntarily will end its most controversial practice, clear-cutting virgin redwoods.

The informal agreement, made public at the state Capitol in Sacramento, was swiftly denounced by critics, who said it is not legally binding and still allows the harvest of up to 70% of the towering, 1,000-year-old redwoods in currently unspoiled areas.

Critics also argue that the pledge does not cover clear-cutting of fir trees, the habitat for spotted owls, a species that environmentalists contend is in danger of extinction. Clear-cutting, a method that removes entire stands of mature trees, also is blamed for soil erosion that clogs streams and hampers the reproductive cycle of salmon and trout.

Some Progress Claimed

“We don’t pretend this solves all problems,” said Assemblyman Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto), who helped negotiate the agreement after lobbyists stymied his bill to limit clear-cutting. “But I have been trying to deal with the problem of clear-cutting virgin redwoods, of which we have so few, and this (promise) at least does that.”

Not so, argued critics like state Sen. Barry Keene (D-Benecia), who said the promise is merely “a cosmetic truce between a lumber company whose recent practices can only be described as rapacious, and an urban environmentalist (Sher) whose knowledge of silviculture is limited to Sierra Club bulletins.”

Under the agreement, Pacific Lumber, the largest private owner of virgin redwood timber in the world, most of it in Humbolt County, will stop clear-cutting virgin redwoods in favor of selective cutting. That is, instead of cutting down all of its virgin, or “old-growth” redwoods--those at least 200 years old--the company will cut only some of them. Company spokesman David W. Galitz estimated the harvest at between 50% and 70% of the trees.

Such plans still must be reviewed by the state, which has been reluctant to approve any Pacific Lumber plans since a Humboldt County Superior Court judge ruled last year that regulators had “rubber-stamped” environmentally unsound timber-harvest plans.

To take the decision whether to cut “out of the hands of professional foresters is not a good thing,” Galitz said, “but we think we’ve got to be sensitive to public opinion.”

Pacific Lumber has been criticized for doubling timber harvests after being bought by Houston financier Charles Hurwitz in 1986. Critics argue that Hurwitz is depleting the forests to pay off high-interest bonds used in the purchase.

Keene is preparing a bill to prevent such actions in the future.