Coalition Seeks a Peaceful End to Forest Fray : Nature: Protection of privately held lands is at stake. Seeking a common ground for environmentalists and timber interests proves to be a tall order.

It is pitting environmentalist against environmentalist, logging company against logging company and a Republican governor against Republican legislators.

California is in the midst of a timber war.

Like many other wars, it began with a common goal--the passage of a legislative package that would provide longstanding protection for forests that are privately owned. The question of just how much protection, however, quickly became a complex political issue that threatens to tear apart long-held alliances, destroy political careers and force environmentalists to try another forest protection initiative.

“Neighbor is split against neighbor. Fear has become the motivating force in a conflict that’s nearly broken out in civil war. There is no peace in timber country,” lamented an embattled Sen. Barry Keene (D-Benicia) after a week of legislative wrangling over logging measures.

But in the final days of a hectic legislative session, a small coalition that includes Keene, Gov. Pete Wilson, other legislative leaders, some environmentalists and one big logging company is still hopeful of compromise. Coalition members are doggedly trying to push through the forest protection package in the hope that it will forestall another timber initiative battle.

The measures ban clear-cutting in ancient forests, limit the practice in other timberlands, require large landowners to have an approved long-term timber management plan, restrict timber harvesting in watersheds and attempt to put controls on logging that will prevent timber interests from cutting more trees than they grow.

Because it seeks a middle ground, the compromise pleases few of the combatants. Some environmentalists outside the coalition argue that the measures do not go far enough and are full of loopholes that would allow timber interests to continue their forest-clearing practices.

Loggers and timber companies view the measures as extreme and more evidence that environmentalists and preservationists have the state’s political leaders on the run.

On the north coast, where logging is part of the economic lifeblood, the outcome of the battle could have an effect on jobs and the financial health of large corporations and small landowners.

By last week, the package had barely survived bruising attacks in the Senate and Assembly Natural Resources committees and was headed for the fiscal committees in both houses, where opposition was expected to be even stronger.

While both resources committees had bowed to pressure from the timber industry and adopted weakening amendments, the coalition maintained that the most important provisions had been preserved. Even in their altered form, they insisted their measures would go a long way to provide significant new protections for the state’s privately held ancient forests, streams, watersheds, wildlife and woodlands.

“I don’t think anyone can honestly answer that this is not a very substantial improvement,” said Douglas Wheeler, Wilson’s resources secretary.

Forestry experts estimate that roughly 7.1 million acres of productive timberland is privately owned in California--mostly in the north coast--and would be affected by the legislation. Another 9.4 million acres of productive forest acreage held by the state and national governments would not. Neither figure includes the 2 million acres in national and state parks and wilderness areas that are protected from harvesting.

All the issues surrounding timber practices were brought to the forefront earlier this year when environmental groups and timber companies decided that the time was right to negotiate a resolution to timber controversies that had been festering for decades.

The two sides had just spent more than $17 million in an attempt to pass two timber initiatives: Proposition 130, sponsored by environmentalists, and Proposition 138, offered as the industry alternative. A confused electorate rejected both--the industry measure by a wide margin, the environmental proposal by a narrow one.

Each side reasoned that the other was ill-prepared to embark on another ballot fight and would be amenable to compromise. The compromise that ensued was presented in March as the Sierra Accord, a detailed agreement on proposed legislation endorsed by the Sierra Club, the Planning & Conservation League, the National Audubon Society, California Trout, and Sierra Pacific Industries, the state’s largest holder of private timberlands.

Notably absent from the agreement, however, were the state’s other timber companies and the grass-roots environmental organizations, based primarily in Mendocino and Humboldt counties, that had waged major court battles to control logging on lands inhabited by endangered wildlife.

Even so, four legislators--Keene, Sen. Dan McCorquodale (D-San Jose), Assemblyman Dan Hauser (D-Arcata) and Assemblyman Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto)--agreed to sponsor the proposal in four separate bills.

Wilson at first was lukewarm to the accord even though he had made a campaign promise to tackle the timber problem. Sidetracked by the budget and other matters, he waited until August to propose 98 amendments designed primarily to attract more industry support. Despite his delays, a majority of the amendments were adopted by the two resources committees.

But the amendments did little to soften the opposition of either the grass-roots environmentalists or the timber interests.

“Kill the damn thing and start over,” Helen Libeu, an environmentalist from Mendocino County and owner of 1,000 acres of timberland, finally advised the Assembly committee.

A day later, Tom Herman of the California Licensed Foresters told the Senate committee that the measures were nothing more than “weird science that’s being advocated by doomsday preservationists.” He predicted that if enacted into law, they would force many landowners out of business and require logging companies to curtail their activities so severely that hundreds of jobs would be lost.

Libeu’s anger typified the reaction of the grass-roots environmentalists, who opposed the measures as strongly as the timber interests, but for opposite reasons.

The grass-roots groups, which had stood solidly with national environmental organizations in promoting Proposition 130, accused the Sierra Club, the Planning & Conservation League and others supporting the accord of selling out to the industry.

“When you read between the lines, it’s a timber industry bill that’s being carried by the Sierra Club,” Stephanie Tebbutt, a spokeswoman for the Mendocino County-based Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance, said in an interview. “This is the kind of bill that the industry could never have gotten on its own.”

As an example, she said the measures provided for a 10-year transition period that allowed some of the restrictions on logging to be phased-in gradually. Calling that provision a “loophole,” she said it was written in such a way that it left room for “a large corporation to remove essentially all of their merchantable trees in 3.5 years and walk away.”

Cecelia Lanman, director of Forests Forever, the group that sponsored Proposition 130, said the legislation should have required at least a temporary moratorium on logging in ancient forests, but instead made provisions for some harvesting.

Defending the measures, Jennifer Jennings, who helped negotiate the agreement for the Planning & Conservation League, said the grass-roots groups were ignoring political realities. She said the national organizations would also have preferred a moratorium and the elimination of the transition period, but in order to get some industry support they had to make compromises.

“They’re (the grass-roots organizations) looking at the ideal and seeing how this package measures up to their ideal,” she said. “They refuse to look at existing law and see how this improves what we already had.”

She said the negotiators were only willing to compromise so far and had already put the sponsors of the legislation on notice that they would drop their support if one of the Wilson amendments remained. The original legislation had mandated that only 15% of a watershed be subject to clear-cutting. The amendment allowed that threshold to be exceeded under certain circumstances.

On the industry side, Maureen Frisch, who represented Simpson Paper Co. and other coastal lumber businesses, said not only would the Wilson amendments have to remain, but others would need to be added before the timber corporations could support the proposals.

She said the coastal companies had split with Sierra Pacific over the legislation because it failed to account for differences in growth rates and soil conditions in various parts of the state. The bills would require her coastal-based companies, she said, to adhere to standards that were more suitable for slow-growing trees such as those that populate the forests owned by Sierra Pacific.

The opposition from the industry and the grass-roots environmentalists hold political risks for Keene and Hauser, whose districts encompass the areas that would be most severely affected by the legislation, and for Wilson, who so far has not been able to attract much Republican support for the measures. Persuaded by the industry arguments, Republicans in both committees have been highly critical of the measures.

With the industries and the grass-roots environmental groups based primarily in their districts, Keene and Hauser have faced opposition from both sides. On Friday, Keene took the unusual step of issuing a statement to explain his position.

He said he had sponsored the legislation in an attempt to find a middle ground on the timber issue that would draw enough support from industry groups and environmentalists to bring about some sort of truce in the timber wars.

“For the four of us legislators who are engaged in this effort . . . this is a no-win struggle politically,” he acknowledged. “The divisions we confront are so profound, our constituents will be dissatisfied no matter what we do.”