Trial Begins on Logging of Redwoods in Headwaters

Adversaries in the seemingly endless battle over the North Coast’s redwood forests crowded into a small courtroom Wednesday for a pivotal hearing on a lawsuit seeking to prevent logging in the last unprotected area within the Headwaters Forest Reserve.

Ponytailed Earth First! members, state forestry lawyers, timber executives and residents who live below hills slated for logging joined the standing-room-only audience.

Presiding was Judge Quentin Kopp, the maverick former state senator from San Francisco, who agreed to come to Humboldt County Superior Court after every local judge recused himself or was rejected.

Lawyers for both sides asked for a quick resolution, but Kopp said he wouldn’t rule until after Monday, a deadline he set for more arguments from Pacific Lumber Co. and two environmental groups that sued.

Pacific Lumber wants to harvest 595 acres it bought in a little-noticed part of last year’s landmark Headwaters agreement, which transferred a huge chunk of old-growth forest to public hands.

State and federal taxpayers spent $480 million on the nation’s newest wilderness sanctuary. But there’s a hole in the Headwaters--a plot that Pacific Lumber wants to begin harvesting immediately.

Environmentalists sued in March, saying “the public and the environment will be irreparably harmed” by the logging company’s plan to use helicopters to remove downed trees from the area.

The Sierra Club and the Environmental Protection Information Center accused Gov. Gray Davis’ administration of rubber-stamping its approval of the helicopter plan, rather than giving the public a chance to comment.

But Pacific Lumber says its plan is a big improvement on Elk River Timber Co.’s original logging plan, which was approved in 1996, before the much bigger Pacific Lumber Co. took ownership.

Pacific Lumber reduced the area to be logged--second-growth timber along and below a ridge along the northern edge of the park--from 705 acres to 595 acres, increasing buffer zones around streams to protect several protected salmon species. The company also had biologists conduct spotted owl surveys to ensure that logging would not encroach on owl habitat.