Panel Rejects Restrictions on Logging : Environment: The industry-dominated forestry board refuses a request to declare an emergency to limit the cutting of immature trees in the coastal north.

In a setback for the Wilson Administration, the state Board of Forestry refused Tuesday to declare an emergency and restrict the harvest of immature trees in coastal Northern California.

The board, an industry-dominated panel made up entirely of appointees of former Gov. George Deukmejian, concluded that the rapid harvest of redwoods and other trees in recent years does not threaten the long-term supply of timber in California.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, alarmed by an increasing number of industry proposals to log immature stands of trees, had asked the board to approve emergency regulations restricting the size of trees that loggers could cut down.

“The proposed rules did not receive much enthusiasm from the board,” said acting Chairman Woody Barnes after the panel voted 6 to 0 to reject the department’s proposal.

With the defeat of two rival timber initiatives on the ballot last year, the issue of overcutting has emerged as one of the major questions facing Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature.

The governor, who oversees the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has called for a policy of sustained yield, in which the timber harvest does not exceed the annual growth rate of the forests.

At the same time, a group of Northern California lawmakers has pledged to push through the Legislature a compromise plan drafted by environmentalists and one timber company that would place a variety of new restrictions on the logging industry.

Wilson, however, missed an opportunity to push the emergency regulations. Since January, the Board of Forestry has had three vacancies--including the post of chairman--and the governor has yet to fill any of the seats. Spokesmen for Wilson said he has been too preoccupied with the state’s budget deficit and drought to focus on the board appointments.

For years, the timber industry has been under pressure from environmentalists to halt logging of old-growth trees. More recently, industry critics have protested that loggers are taking trees that are less than 50 years old and have not yet reached their period of most rapid growth.

The emergency regulations proposed by the department would have affected about 1.4 million acres of immature forest--more than half of all the timberland on the North Coast, according to the department.

The rules to restrict logging were vigorously opposed by dozens of landowners and industry representatives who argued that the government has no right to tell them when they can harvest their trees.

“What business does the state have in dictating when a landowner should harvest his crop?” argued Jim Holmes, a forester with Simpson Lumber Co.

Gloria Barnwell, representing the Cattlemen’s Assn. of Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, told the board: “Environmental goals and principles are undefendable in the absence of private property rights.”

Environmentalists from the North Coast testified that logging companies have been harvesting trees at three times the rate of growth in some areas, a practice that they argued would lead to destruction of the forest resource and eventual economic problems in logging communities. In fact, many environmentalists argued that the department’s proposed emergency regulations would not go far enough to halt the overlogging.