Logging Permits Hurriedly OKd on Eve of New Limits, Group Charges : Timber: Activists ask court to order state Resources Agency to apply a strict interpretation of forestry regulations.

A North Coast environmental group charged Wednesday that state regulators have continued to approve logging on thousands of acres of timberland despite findings that over-cutting has severely depleted California’s private forests.

The Redwood Coast Watershed Alliance asked a San Francisco Superior Court to order state regulators to consider these findings, made by state officials, when reviewing requests for logging permits and to apply a strict interpretation of forestry regulations.

Officials in the state Resources Agency declined to respond to the accusations, saying that it was generally their policy to refrain from comment on matters pending before the courts. The court is expected to rule today on the request for a temporary restraining order.

In a petition to the court, attorney Sharon Duggan said timber companies hurriedly submitted plans for logging more than 50,000 acres in a 40-day period just before new emergency regulations restricting harvesting on private timberlands went into effect. On the North Coast alone, she said, there were requests to harvest 16,000 acres, including thousands of acres of old-growth forests.

“Industry wasted no time in taking advantage of the 40-day window of opportunity to beat the new rules,” the alliance complained in a news release.

The petition said the department responded by granting approval to log 4,374 acres in the North Coast, including 736 acres of old-growth forest in the redwoods region. It said logging on another 344 acres of old growth has been recommended for approval on Friday, and additional approvals are expected to be granted in the coming months.

The approvals come at a time, the alliance said, when state Forestry Board findings have determined that as little as 10,000 acres of scattered old growth remain on private lands, and of that, only 5,000 acres are in “pristine ancient forest condition.”

Although the requests to approve the harvest plans were filed before new emergency logging regulations went into effect Nov. 25, the alliance argued that findings to justify the regulations had been issued well before then.

In the findings, the department declared that a statewide emergency existed in the forests because inadequate state regulation had permitted over-cutting in sensitive watersheds and depletion of saw-timber. Because of the over-cutting, it said, the last remnants of ancient forests on private lands “were being rapidly liquidated” and the state was facing a severe shortage of mature trees.

In light of the findings, the alliance said the department could have used authority granted by the 1973 Forest Practices Act to delay or deny approval of harvest plans.

But instead, it said the department “approved scores of timber harvest plans for thousands of acres in complete defiance of the evidence” in its own findings.