Logging an Illegal Harvest : Environment: An emergency ban has not stopped the cutting of large, old trees for firewood, a county consultant insists. Authorities say the law is hard to enforce.

Century-old oak trees are being cut down for firewood in the upper Ojai Valley in defiance of an emergency ordinance to protect the area’s oldest trees, the county’s arborist says.

Rural landowners continue their illegal harvest of firewood, despite a countywide ban on taking oaks, sycamores and any other large trees with historic significance, said George Moore, a Ventura arborist who serves as consultant to the county.

Yet county authorities say it is difficult to enforce the emergency law unless loggers are caught in the act. Moore said he cannot identify the ranches where trees are being removed, and firewood salesmen say their wood was cut before the emergency ban took effect in April.

“But I have seen some of the wood and I know it has been newly cut,” Moore said. “There is a great deal of cutting now to avoid the effects of the permanent ordinance.”

Ventura County supervisors are scheduled to act next month on a permanent ordinance to replace the emergency ban adopted last April. Both ordinances outlaw the logging of any trees larger than 30 inches in diameter. Oaks and sycamores, which are native to the county, are protected once they have grown larger than three inches in diameter.

“We’ve got to protect the small trees or we won’t have any future,” Moore said.

The proposed permanent ordinance would require woodcutters to apply for county permits and submit reforestation plans before private property could be logged, county officials say.

Moore said the stately old oaks and sycamores are not only part of the county’s cultural heritage--some are 500 years old--but they also support a range of wildlife as well.

“You’ve got birds and hawks and coyotes and any number of species of wild animals that depend on these trees,” he said. “You can’t separate wildlife from their environment and say that rabbits don’t need trees because they don’t live in them.”

The county so far has issued only one permit to cut oak trees under the emergency ordinance. That permit, held by George Gamboa, allows him to cut dead, fallen trees on the Sloan Ranch in Santa Paula.

But Gamboa said he knows of others who continue to cut live trees in the Ojai area and sell the firewood.

“There is no way those guys are selling wood that was cut a year ago,” he said. “Any wood man can tell you the wood we’re seeing wasn’t cut last year.”

To date, county officials have issued only one citation under the emergency ordinance. Authorities caught several men in the act of removing cut wood from 60 to 90 trees taken from the Moorpark area. The case, which is being handled by the county counsel’s office, is still pending.

“They need to set a trap for these people,” Gamboa said.

Under the emergency measure, violators can be fined up to $1,000 per tree and spend up to six months in jail. In addition, violators could be required to replace any tree cut down, or pay the county’s cost to do so. The proposed permanent ordinance carries the same penalties.

Oak firewood sellers, who advertised in a local newspaper, maintained that their wood had been cut more than eight months ago, before the emergency ordinance was enacted. County officials said they have not verified whether the wood was being sold legally.

County supervisors adopted the emergency ban last spring when county planners were working on the permanent logging ordinance. At the time, county officials were receiving phone calls reporting that the Newhall Land & Farming Co. was cutting down hundreds of oaks in the county’s northeast end, said Marsha Campiglio, a county planner.

That practice was stopped with the emergency ordinance, she said. The emergency ban is far more restrictive than the proposed permanent ordinance. It is also more sympathetic to the needs of ranchers than a similar ordinance proposed--and defeated--a decade ago.

“The agriculture community defeated a tree-protection ordinance then,” Campiglio said. “This time we were directed to work with the agriculture community.”

Although firewood is not a crop listed on the county’s annual agricultural report, it is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in the county, said Earl McPhail, county agricultural commissioner.

McPhail said the permanent ordinance has been relaxed to allow cutting large eucalyptus trees planted for wind protection for crops in the early part of the century.

“They’re not native trees anyway,” McPhail said. “But oak trees are a different story.”

Once enacted, the permanent ordinance will allow the cutting of eucalyptus or other trees planted as windbreaks, and the pruning of oaks and other trees to maintain ranch roads.

McPhail said he supports the ordinance to save the county’s oaks and other large trees as long as it does not impede farming or ranching operations.

Robert Pinkerton, who runs one of the county’s largest cattle operations, said the local Cattlemen’s Assn. is satisfied that the ordinance will protect trees without hurting ranchers.

“In no way do we want to cut down oak trees,” he said. “They provide shade for cattle during the heat of the day where they can relax and chew their cuds.”

Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said the ordinance is “part of a very definite and troublesome trend” of government interference.

“It’s a property-rights issue,” he said. “The county is again telling people what you can and can’t do with your property.”

Todd Collart, who heads the county Planning Department’s enforcement section, said the county ordinance also exempts other public agencies, including the state Department of Transportation and the county’s incorporated city areas.

“But at least this sends a clear signal that we do respect these trees and think you should as well,” he said. “It tells them that if you take trees out, we would expect you to do it under environmental review.”