U.S. Makes ‘Final’ Offer to Purchase Headwaters

The federal government has made its final offer to Pacific Lumber Co. for the purchase and preservation of Northern California’s Headwaters Forest, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said Thursday.

Pacific Lumber has accepted the offer “in principle” but has refused to sign a final deal, he said.

“We did not reach full agreement on every issue being discussed, but we agreed in principle to get the process moving to a final, written form when we can then determine if it is acceptable,” said company spokeswoman Mary Bullwinkle.

A final Headwaters deal must be formally approved by the company, the Clinton administration and the state of California by March 1 in order to obtain $250 million from the federal government to help purchase portions of the forest.

Despite Pacific Lumber’s refusal to sign off on the deal, both Babbitt and Douglas Wheeler, California’s outgoing secretary of resources, were upbeat in their assessment of where things stand.

“This is a tremendous holiday gift in the making for California and the nation,” Babbitt said. He said protection of Headwaters, which contains the largest array of giant redwood trees still in private ownership, “ranks up there with the establishment of Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Redwood national parks.”

Wheeler described the agreement in principle as “an important milestone in the long path to get an agreement on Headwaters,” adding, “I am more optimistic than I was yesterday, but not as optimistic as I would like to be at this point.”

The tortuous two-year negotiations are aimed at transferring about 10,000 acres of giant redwoods and other trees into public ownership while establishing logging restrictions for the rest of the forest--about 200,000 acres--to protect salmon streams and trees that endangered birds need for their nests.

Especially troublesome to Pacific Lumber are government proposals to curb logging along the banks of small, seasonal streams where there are no fish.

Federal experts contend that those streams transport logging debris into larger waterways where salmon spawning areas are vulnerable.

The outcome may now depend on the position taken by the incoming Gray Davis administration on whether to approve about 40 Headwaters logging plans that would allow Pacific Lumber to cut timber on parts of its land.

Wheeler’s successor, Mary Nichols, said Thursday she had no intention of “fast tracking any timber harvest plans that should not be approved at all.”