Logging of Redwoods Held Off as Talks Continue

An agreement to postpone logging of old-growth redwoods in the Headwaters Forest of Northern California for two weeks was reached Friday, on the eve of weekend demonstrations against logging of the giant trees.

A statement issued in Washington said Pacific Lumber Co. will continue to negotiate the transfer of a key area of the forest into public hands. The firm had the right to resume logging after Sunday, the conclusion of the nesting season for the threatened marbled murrelet.

The ongoing talks to acquire 4,000 to 6,000 acres of virgin redwoods are “promising,” according to statements from the U.S. Interior Department and Pacific Lumber.

Intensive negotiations involving the Clinton administration and Pacific Lumber have continued for several weeks without much reported progress. Gov. Pete Wilson publicly entered the fray this week, offering to help resolve the efforts to preserve the state’s last enclave of unprotected ancient redwoods.

With Friday’s agreement, officials hope to avoid a confrontation in Humboldt County between loggers and demonstrators intent on preventing disturbance of the Headwaters Forest. However, Pacific Lumber officials did not rule out logging in the forest outside old-growth stands, said a spokeswoman for the Interior Department.

The talks, involving the White House Office of Environmental Quality, Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi and Wilson’s office, are focused on acquiring the ancient core of the Headwaters as part of an asset swap that could involve giving Pacific Lumber other forest lands as well as commercial and industrial properties in California and elsewhere.

Such an exchange would assure the preservation of at least part of the last privately owned vestige of an expanse of giant redwoods that once extended from the Oregon border to Big Sur. California’s coastal redwoods, the tallest trees in the world, are found on only 4% of their original range.

Logging of the Headwaters is prohibited during the nesting season of the marbled murrelet, a federally protected seabird that nests in ancient redwood forests.

At one point Friday, officials announced that an “agreement in principle” to acquire the Headwaters Forest had been reached. But a few minutes later, that statement was retracted without explanation and negotiations resumed.

Douglas P. Wheeler, California’s secretary of resources, who was part of the negotiating sessions this week, expressed confidence that a deal would eventually be reached.

He said that although the details of the swap had not been worked out, “we are within the range of an acceptable agreement on numbers.”

Pacific Lumber is a formerly family-run timber company that was purchased in the 1980s by Maxxam Inc., headed by Texas real estate investor Charles Hurwitz.