Forest Fight Forever? : Ballot showdown can be avoided with artful compromise

In mid-October, Gov. Pete Wilson pocket-vetoed a bill designed to protect redwoods and prevent overkill in younger forests. By then, people with clipboards--the preferred weapons of activists waging ballot proposition battles--were already showing up at California shopping malls.

Next month, thousands of names that were scrawled on those boards will be submitted in asking for another forest-protection initiative on the California ballot. Presumably this will launch another brawl between environmentalists and lumber companies.

But this time the brawl will have something earlier campaigns lacked. Supporters of strict rules to govern logging will have a report issued by Wilson’s own forestry department on 7.1 million acres of privately owned timberland. It says the timber business was really the plunder business in parts of California for 20 years. The report finds that in Mendocino County, mature trees were felled more than twice as fast as young ones took their place. In the decade ending in 1985, the number of trees on private land declined by nearly half; at the present rate of logging, the number will have dropped by nearly two-thirds by 2015. Ancient forests were spread over 51,000 acres in 1984. They now take up only 5,000 acres.

Whether Wilson was told of any of this before the October veto is as much a mystery as the cause of the veto itself. The vetoed forest protection bill, by Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto), was one Wilson had publicly supported. It was amended to incorporate what its sponsors say was 80% of the last-minute changes he requested. It had the support of all but three of the state’s biggest logging firms.

Behind-the-scenes negotiations are moving ahead while both sides try to pick up the pieces. Environmentalists must submit voter signatures for a place on the June ballot a week from next Monday, a month before the Legislature returns to session. If a bid for ballot approval could be withdrawn, it might serve as a lever on both the governor and the Legislature to enact a new bill--and avoid one more expensive and unnecessary ballot fight over timber.