Separating the Forest From the Trees : A good, if not perfect, timber protection bill is far better than none at all

Reports that even some lumber industry officials worry that their companies are overcutting California forests seemed to promise easy going for a forest protection bill this year.

But a new debate over whether the bill is tough enough to save old forests and to force sensible timber practices elsewhere may revive the rough sledding that all forestry bills have faced in recent years.

In any face-off between a better bill and a best bill, we will take better. The alternative may well be nothing at all.

Environmental activists who want reforms in state controls over logging have maintained for years that trees were being cut faster than new ones could take their place.

The state Department of Forestry recently acknowledged that overcutting has been going on for years without interference from the department under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Then two memorandums turned up--one written by a top executive of Louisiana-Pacific Corp., a logging firm, and another by a consultant to the logging firm--that blister top management for sometimes cutting trees even before they were fully grown.

Common sense seemed to say the memos should persuade legislators of any persuasion that forests need protection and need it now. But some senators and assemblymen want to raise the stakes. That is hard to understand in light of the two memos.

The first came from the desk of Robert E. Morris, manager of the company’s western resources division. He said the company was failing to “understand and apply basic business principles,” among other things, by over-harvesting. He was fired a week after the memo was written, although the company declined to say why. The second was written by Jerry Partain, a consultant to the company who had served as director of the California Department of Forestry under then-Gov. George Deukmejian. He warned that at the rate the company was cutting trees, it would slash a hole in its forests that could not be filled for decades.

The new bill, which has bipartisan sponsorship and a promise from Gov. Pete Wilson not to veto forest protection again, would forbid clear-cutting in old redwood forests and would put more environmentalists on the Board of Forestry. But perhaps the most important section would require owners of forests to file long-term management plans under which trees would not be cut faster than new growth could take their place.

The bill not only should pass but be locked into law by Wilson as a desperately needed step toward intelligent management of one of California’s most precious resources.