Volume 8, Number 1 The newsletter of Forests Forever Spring, 2004

New Framework weakens Sierra safeguards

Fresh start for oak woodlands protection bill

Dialing for Donors: phone canvass on the line...6

Sequoia Monument: Ripping up the Proclamation...7

Seth Zuckerman: Living write with nature ...8

Classic clearcut: Resource abuse then and now...2

Bush administration paves over roadless rule...3

Can we put back the forest once it’s gone?...4

Inside The Watershed

An important piece of legislationthat would protect the disappearingoaks of California has been rewritten,given a new bill number, and is nowmoving through the state Senate.

Senate Bill 1334 (formerly SB 711),introduced by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl(D-Santa Monica), would help protectCalifornia’s remaining oak woodlands.Kuehl’s bill would bring conversion ofoak woodlands under the provisions ofthe California Environmental Quality Act(CEQA), which requires environmentalanalysis before a project can go forward.

Oak woodlands cover about one-third of California, and are the forestecosystem that many residents considermost typical of the state. But oaks are van-

ishing at an average rate of 20,000 acres ayear. More than one million acres of the

state’s native oak wood-lands have been wiped outsince 1945.

“Conversion” to hous-ing developments and park-ing lots is not the only threatto oak woodlands. Grazingcattle browse and trampleseedlings, keeping oaksfrom propagating. Decadesof fire suppression haveallowed other tree species todisplace oaks. Sudden OakDeath Syndrome is killingoaks statewide at an alarm-

ing rate. “People have to know how important it

See “Oaks,” p. 12

The U.S. Forest Servicereleased its Sierra Nevada ForestPlan Amendment in January.

“As it has in so many otherareas of forest protectionrecently, the Bush administra-tion has put forward a revisionthat would decimate environ-mental protections for theSierra Nevada,” said MarkFletcher, president of the boardof Forests Forever. “The Frame-work affects more forestedacreage in the state than any

other federal plan or policy. “The timber companies that

enjoy federally subsidized log-ging privileges should be verypleased.”

The revisions to the Frame-work were originally scheduledto be released in October 2003.But when it became clear thatthe new Forest Service proposalswould triple the amount of log-ging and harm wildlife such asthe California spotted owl,Pacific fisher, willow flycatcher

and Yosemite toad, environmen-talists, forestry scientists (includ-ing Forest Service scientists), andconcerned citizens weighed in.

The volume of commentsthat ensued forced the agency topostpone release of the docu-ment. Officials had received atleast 55,000 comments againstthe revised Framework by thetime the public comment periodclosed on Sept. 12, 2003.

In spite of the outpouring ofcriticism, the final plan was not

much changed. “They’ve only made it

worse,” said Craig Thomas ofSierra Nevada Forest ProtectionCampaign.

The Forest Service paid anoutside public relations firm–OneWorld Communications ofSan Francisco– $90,000 to pres-ent the final plan in a PR cam-paign titled “Forests with aFuture.”

See “Framework,” p. 9

California loses 20,000 acres of oak woodlands a year.

The Watershed

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from the Executive Director

The trailer for the new movie Troyopens with a tight shot of an ancientGreek fighting ship, then slowly pullsback to reveal a vast armada bound forthe invasion of that city-state.

Part of the awe of this scene for someviewers may be the realization thatmuch of the forest of ancient Greece setsail with these ships, and that thedepleted landscape left behindwould never be quite the same.

The rise of Greece’s powercoincided with its access to ampleforest resources. In other ancientempires as well– Mesopotamia,Rome, Egypt– forest resourceswere not just a useful commodity,but actually determined the abilityof those civilizations to conquerterritory and control trade.

Wood was a truly strategicmaterial. It was used not only tobuild tough ships’ hulls and tallmasts for war and commerce, butalso to fashion chariots and spears andarrows, stockades and breastworks,assault towers, catapults and maybeeven Trojan horses.

Perhaps more important, wood (ascharcoal) was the fuel used most often tosmelt copper, silver, and iron and to firepottery and bricks.

Wood heated baths and buildings,cooked the meals, made up the loomsand furniture and roofs, the hand toolsand barrels and farm implements, andeven childrens’ toys. Every aspect ofsociety depended upon this light,strong, beautiful material that doubledas an energy source.

By 465 B.C. wood shortagesprompted Athens to institute passivesolar construction and to raid nearbycity-states, such as Amphipolis, for theirtimber. By 400 B.C. Athens was over-shadowed in the Mediterranean by forest-rich Macedonia.

City-states such as Troy, at themouth of the Scamander, became impor-

tant largely because of their vast storesof wood upriver. But as their water-sheds were stripped bare, silt washeddown into the harbors and necessitatedexpensive dredging operations and insome cases the settlements’ relocation.

Troy held a controlling view over itsnatural harbor on the day Achilles

landed. But today the site is located afull 1.5 miles farther inland due to allu-viation from the denuded watershed.

Silt plains often became marshes,breeding mosquitoes and typhus.Disease often delivered the final blow tonearby struggling urban centers.Deforestation also caused floods, mud-slides and cropland salinization, whichhelped doom great city-states.

When threatened by an overwhelm-ing Persian invasion force, the citizens ofAthens sought advice from the oracle atDelphi. Said the seer: “Though all elseshall be taken, Zeus the all-seeing grantsthat the wooden wall only shall not fail.”

It was Themistocles who convincedthe panicked populace that this “wall”must take the form of a fleet of warships,to be constructed from local wood. Sothe Athenians feinted, abandoning theircity temporarily to the invaders, thensurprised and crushed the Persian fleetat Salamis in 480 B.C.

A protective wall of wood may be,

even today, an apt metaphor for forestsand their dependent human societies. Inways both different from and similar tothe ancient world, the planet’s sole cur-rent superpower rose up with vastforests at its disposal. Now we threatento squander them, and in doing sodestroy environmental pillars of our civ-

ilization’s survival.Less important than in ancient

times as fuel and building material,forests now arguably provide evenmore precious resources– irreplace-able genetic diversity evolved overbillions of years, large-scale waterstorage and purification services,and the sequestration of atmos-pheric carbon.

Yet from the deforestation ofthe Amazon basin to the Bushadministration’s aggressive effortsto gut U.S. environmental laws,forest destruction amidst a fast-growing human population surges

forward.Perhaps there’s a paradox: If Athens

had had to fashion its “wall of wood”from the sparse forests of modern-dayGreece, future generations might nothave benefited from her contributions toart, governance, philosophy and science.

At the same time, maybe launching athousand ships to reclaim Helen wasn’tsuch a good allocation of nationalresources, if things really happened asHomer said.

In any case we could do worse thanto look to the forests and times of Troyfor a lesson in whether we are doomedto repeat history– and this time withpossibly even longer-lasting conse-quences to humankind.

—Paul Hughes

“A protective ‘wall ofwood’ may be an aptmetaphor for forestsand their dependenthuman societies.”

Ancient resource, modern dilemma: Forests’ supporting role in all civilizations

Spring, 2004 The Watershed 3

Death of a Thousand CutsBush administration picks apart roadless rule forest by forest

Bush administration appointees arechipping away at the rules governing thenation’s last remaining tracts of roadlessand unprotected wilderness.

Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Reyhas said that the Roadless Area Conserva-

tion Rule will be rewritten to allow state gov-ernors to waive its provisions for federallands in their states.

Reyes said the revised rule would bepublished in the early months of 2004; as ofthis writing, however, it has not beenreleased. Environmental groups expect thechanges to be announced in spring 2004.

An unappealing administrationThe administration has failed to vigor-

ously defend the roadless rule in court,refusing to appeal adverse decisions.

To settle a lawsuit brought by the gover-nor of Alaska, the administration exemptedthe Tongass National Forest from the road-less rule on Dec. 23, 2003, opening 300,000acres of virgin forest to clearcutting and road-building. An exemption for ChugachNational Forest also is being considered.

Together the Tongass and Chugachforests contain one-fourth of all the roadlessacres in the United States.

This “sue and settle” tactic and otherattacks on the roadless rule are part of a larg-er administration assault on public forests.

The administration has proposed revi-sions to the National Forest ManagementAct, the National Environmental Policy Act,and other laws, which would help clear theway for logging and other extractive uses on

federal forests. Federal officials have usedcategorical exclusions to exempt loggingprojects from environmental review in thename of “hazardous fuels reduction” andrewritten rules that had protected wildlifeand assured public input to decision-making.

The Bush strategyapparently is to undo theroadless rule one forest ata time.

Popular ruleThe roadless rule was

written during the Clintonadministration and putinto place in January 2001.The rule was developedover three years in morethan 600 public meetingsand received 2.5 millionpublic comments, 95 per-cent of them supportive.

The roadless rule pro-tects the last third of ourundeveloped national for-

est land, areas not alreadydesignated as wilderness. By shielding 58.5million acres from roadbuilding, logging,mining, and ski resort development, the rulehelps preserve habitat for more than 1,500species of fish and wildlife, and protectswatersheds, helping to ensure our supply ofclean drinking water.

Most importantly, the roadless rulekeeps our last remnants of wild forest intactso future generationswill be able toenjoy them un-scarred by roadsand clearcuts.

There are4,416,000 roadlessacres in Cali-fornia’s nationalforests. If theroadless rule isweakened, thisvast acreage couldbe opened to log-ging, mining, andoil drilling.

A series ofprojects thatwould go intoroadless areasalready have beenproposed for

national forests in California, as if the pro-tections of the roadless rule did not exist.

Drilling on Los PadresThe Forest Service is studying 760,000

acres in Los Padres National Forest for pos-sible oil and gas drilling. The agency identi-fied 140,000 acres in the forest as potential“high-priority” drilling areas. Three-quar-ters of this area is currently roadless;Inventoried Roadless Areas are included inthe list of potential drilling sites, according toForest Service maps.

Los Padres lies on the central coast,stretching from Big Sur to western LosAngeles County. The forest is home tomany threatened and endangered species,most famously the California condor. Theareas being considered for drilling contain66 percent of the oak woodlands in the forest.

The California Wild Heritage Act (S.1555), a bill by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), would preserve 58,000 acres in LosPadres as wilderness.

Another bill would protect Los Padresfrom all forms of oil and gas development,including the exploratory drilling pro-posed by the Forest Service. Rep. LoisCapps’ (D-Santa Barbara) bill H.R. 3805,the Los Padres National Forest Conserva-tion Act, co-sponsored by Rep. Sam Farr(D-Santa Cruz), was introduced in the U.S.House of Representatives on Feb. 11, 2004.

Roadbuilding in the Tillamook Burn, Oregon, 1953

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More than 35 million new trees are plant-ed each year in California, according to

the California Licensed Foresters Asso-ciation. That equals seven trees planted forevery one harvested.

So why do environmentalists rallyagainst logging if cut trees can simply bereplaced?

John Isom of the Mattole RestorationCouncil said replanting figures such as theone used by the Foresters Association aremisleading, since many of those trees diebefore they become full-grown.

“They’re using the rhetoric of raw num-bers to overwhelm people and make themfeel like everything’s fine,” Isom said.

Re-creating forests is not as simple asplanting trees. There are many reasons whyreplanting trees cannot be regarded as apanacea for logging’s impacts.

Forests are complex systemsLogged areas, particularly clearcuts, can-

not be replanted without net loss to the for-est. This is because there are important eco-logical differences between a forest that hasgrown naturally over time and one that hasbeen heavily cut and replanted.

“The forest is really a very complex sys-tem for recycling nutrients,” said JohnBerger, an environmental science and policyconsultant based in Berkeley. “All the littlecreatures in the forest play a role in nutrientrecycling. If some of those components arelost (due to logging), then nutrients aren’trecycled properly.”

Replanting cutover areas also replacestrees of diverse ages with young trees thatare all the same age, Berger said.

Removing older trees destroys im-portant habitat for species such as thespotted owl, red tree vole and northernflying squirrel. In addition, Berger said,logging often removes snags– the stand-

ing dead trees that, like the older livetrees, provide crucial habitat for wildlife.

Increased fire dangerThe timber industry and the U.S. Forest

Service often use the threat of fire to justifylogging. Whilethinning small-er trees andr e m o v i n gbrush does re-duce fire haz-ard, timbercompanies typ-ically cut largetrees, since thatis where theprofits lie. Butlogging theselarger trees and re-placing them withsmaller ones is partof the wildfireproblem, not itssolution, forestecologists say.

The shade pro-vided by older trees lowers forest tempera-ture and increases its humidity. Largedowned logs also provide windbreaks andoften store large amounts of water.Removing these older trees and downedlogs during logging makes the forest drier,windier and therefore more flammable.

The younger trees in a plantation canthemselves pose a fire hazard. While oldertrees tend to have thick bark and higherbranches, enabling them to survive manyfires, younger trees do not have these advan-tages. Stands or rows of densely packedyounger trees with overlapping, low-lyingbranches burn much hotter and quicker thanforests with a high number of older trees.

Timothy Ingalsbee of the Western FireEcology Center points to Oregon’s 1991Warner Creek Fire as an example of this.During that fire, 28 replanted areas burnedintensely, destroying all the young trees andalmost all of the nearby old-growth stands.

“Instead of reducing the intensity of thefire the clearcut-plantations whipped upextreme fire behavior that resulted in cata-strophic fire effects,” Ingalsbee wrote in“Plantations: Fire Bombs in the Forest” anarticle on the Western Fire Ecology Centerwebsite.

Logging reduces biodiversityFor years, particularly in the southeast-

ern United States, timber companies andthe Forest Service cut native trees andreplaced them with faster-growing non-native species such as loblolly pine. These

days the Forest Service and timber compa-nies say they work to ensure replantedtrees are native to the area.

“The seedlings we use are from seedsources that have been previously identi-fied,” said Forest Service Forester MontyMaldonado, adding that the seeds are care-fully labeled and tracked to ensure they suitthe area in which they are planted.

Rules for replantingReplanting on federal land is governed

by the National Forest Management Act of1976. Under this act the Forest Service mustreplant timberlands that have been clearcutor salvage-logged. A minimum number oftrees (roughly 300) per acre must surviveafter five years.

The State of California has its own mon-itoring methods to ensure the trees replantedon private timberlands survive. The state’sForest Practice Act contains guidelinesforesters must follow when replantinglogged sites. On most sites, 300 trees per acremust be growing after five years.

Private timber owners pay for replantingtheir own lands. On federal lands the ForestService allocates funds for replanting; moneyis also available from the Knutsen-Vandenberg Act of 1930, which allows the

A tree is not a forest:Can replanting trees restore complex forest ecosystems?

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Seedling nursery in Oregon

Recreating forests is not as simple as

planting trees.

agency to keep a portion of funds from tim-ber sales to use for replanting. (Ironically,these “K-V” funds act as an incentive fortimber sales, to bring replanting funds intothe agency budget.)

Private timber firms are subject to theregulations of whichever state they operatein. Frank Mendizabal, spokesman for theinternational timber firm Weyerhaeuser, said

his company has its own standards beyondwhat the states mandate. While many statesrequire trees to be replanted within three tofive years, Weyerhaeuser typically replantswithin one year, Mendizabal said. There aretwo reasons for this. One, the companywants to get the land back into production asquickly as possible. Second, the sooner treesare replanted after logging, the less brushcontrol is required.

Mendizabal said Weyerhaeuser hasdetailed guidelines for ensuring its seedlingssuit the logged area. The replanted treesmust be of a species native to the forest, hesaid, be suitable to the climate and soil, andcome from trees grown in the same 500-footelevation range. The seedlings, however,need not come from the forest in which theyare replanted.

Geneticist Larry Riggs said seedlingspecifications such as those the ForestService and Weyerhaeuser follow may notbe enough to ensure forest biodiversity.Studies in which Riggs participated, underthe California Gene Resources Program,concluded that tree seedlings varied signifi-cantly even on opposite slopes within thesame elevation range.

“In a natural forest you have diversi-ty at a whole range of scales,” Riggs said.Seedlings vary down to the level of“meters rather than kilometers,” he said.

Forest activists say the Forest Serviceand timber companies replant with eco-nomic gain in mind, not the complexecological needs of the forest.

“They’re converting diverse commu-nities of native forests complete with allkinds of forest species and simplifyingthose into tree farms or fiber farms,” saidJake Kreilick of the National ForestProtection Alliance.

Kreilick, who worked on ForestService tree-planting projects in Montana,saw firsthand the types of trees planted.

“They were tree types that werenative to the area but it still was simplify-ing the ecosystem,” Kreilick said.“Nowhere near the normal species compo-sition would have been represented bywhat we were planting.”

Not all seedlings surviveBesides altering the natural structure of

the forest, logging causes secondary damagethat can make survival difficult for replantedtrees. The effects of logging range fromunderstory plants crushed and uprootedduring operations to streams damaged bysediment from erosion caused by loggingroads and the removal of trees.

Mandizabal said Weyerhaeuser’sseedling survival rate is upwards of 90 per-

cent. Mendizabal said the company usesprecautions such as putting biodegradableprotective barriers around the seedlings toprotect them from deer and elk.

The Forest Service has a much lowersurvival rate for its replanting– about 50percent, says John Buckley of the CentralSierra Environmental Resource Center.This is due to the generally better-qualitytimberland in private hands, he said, andbecause the Forest Service uses much lessherbicide, sometimes none at all.

Maldonado of the Forest Service saidhis agency surveys seedlings at three andfive years after replanting to make sure therequired number of trees has grown back.The required number varies by location, hesaid. (The minimum federal requirement isusually 300 “points” per acre. A “point ”does not necessarily equal one tree; a treefour or more inches in diameter, for exam-ple, can count as three points.)

“The basic principle is to bring the siteback into production,” said Maldonado.

And that goal of timber production, says

Kreilick, is exactly the problem. “I look back at all the trees I planted and

I don’t feel that good about it. The purposewas just basically growing those trees sothey can get cut down again.”

Heavy use of herbicidesThe Forest Service monitors the replanted

areas to make sure other species don’t out-compete the seedlings for moisture and nutri-

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Fifteen-year-old loblolly pine plantation

See “A tree is not a forest,” p. 10

Replanting trees, losing the forest

Five reasons why replantingtrees after logging may notbe enough:

• Oversimplified ecosystems.Replanting individualtrees does not reproducethe interactions of differ-ent species that make upthe forest ecosystem.

• Habitat Loss. Even-agedplantations lack the agemix that provides diversehabitats for many ani-mals. Even-aged standsare also more fire- and disease-prone.

• Herbicide Use. Applied toreduce competition from“undesirable” trees, thesepoisons kill non-targetspecies and may pollutewatersheds.

• Damaged soil. Soil com-paction by loggingequipment leads to erosion, polluting water-sheds. May also hinderregrowth.

• Timber production over sustainability. Plantationsare managed mainly fortimber harvest, not tocreate a living forest.

At 6 p.m. most of the phones in theForests Forever canvass room– a big

open space subdivided by cubicle walls–are still in their cradles, waiting for thecallers to begin their nightly telephonemarathon, calling people to tell them aboutthe dangers to California’s forests, and toask for their help.

Soon the phone canvassers begin toshow up. The callers now have to preparethemselves mentally for work. Every nightincludes a fair share of people who asktough questions, who are fighting theirown personal battles, financial and other-wise, and people who simply don’t want tointerrupt what they’re doing to learn abouta new threat to the planet and be asked towrite a letter or make a donation.

“I recently spoke to one lady who hadlimited funds, but was very involved in thecall,” recalls Moira Worland, a trainingassistant at Forests Forever. “She wasgasping and exclaiming throughout thecall at the short-sightedness of the Board ofForestry and the developers. I thanked her

at the end of the call and she said, ‘No,thank you so much for the work you aredoing.’ It made my night!”

Moira came to Forests Forever in July of1999 when she was 16 and just starting col-lege. She knew very little about politics orecology, but was looking for a part-time jobin something more meaningful than retailwork. Now 21, she has remained with thephone canvass all the way through a two-

year degree and plans to continue to workat Forests Forever as she attends UCBerkeley for her bachelor’s degree.

As a training assistant, Moirateaches new callers the ropes: howto stay informed on the issues,how to handle tough questions,and how to sound confident with-out being pushy. Most of the peo-ple who come to the ForestsForever phone canvass have neverworked in a “phone room” before.

The Forests Forever phone can-vass started in 1993, four years afteran anti-clearcutting ballot proposal,the “Forests Forever Initiative”(Prop. 130) gave birth to the organ-ization. There are usually around25 canvassers working the phoneseach evening; in a typical yearthey contact about 80,000 people.

The “PCV” was formed to provide one-on-one contact with tens of thousands ofCalifornians and inform them about thepressing forestry issues of the day. Phone

canvassers have had acombined total of overone million contactswith Forests Foreversupporters, resulting inhundreds of thousandsof letters, calls, faxes,emails, and personallobbying visits to Cali-fornia representatives.

Surveys have shownthat individually writ-ten letters– the form ofcitizen expression thatthe PCV most empha-sizes– are the most effec-tive way of influencingpublic officials. The per-sonal voter contacts thatForests Forever helpsbring about are a crucial

element in the fight for legislative change. The phone canvass is also a vital

fundraising tool for the organization,which relies almost entirely on the supportof individual donors.

“Most people are excited about the let-ter-writing,” Moira laughs. “The moneycan make them a bit more tense, so I makesure to emphasize that we only want themto donate what they are comfortable with.”

On this night Erich, one of the canvass’s

newest callers, gets a relatively detailedquestion about the oaks campaign. (Saving

California’s oak woodlands by passingSenate Bill 1334 is a high priority at ForestsForever; see story on page 1.) He asks themember to wait while a manager comes overto field the question.

“Our supporters tend to be veryinformed,” says Worland. “Sometimes theyknow a good deal more about the issuethan a caller on his or her first few days.”

A couple of seats away, Sophia is com-plaining: too many answering machines,too many people running out the door.

“Most of our supporters don’t mind beingcalled very much,” says Moira. “With thefolks that do, those with small children, forexample, I set up a time that works for them.”

Many contacts can be pleasantly surpris-ing. Supporter will come in and speak to thePCV about a political or social issue of theirown. And some callers have wound up vol-unteering for members’ causes.

“I recently spoke to a woman about ouroaks campaign,” recalls Moira. “She wasfighting to save a very old oak in her owntown. The conversation reminded me thateven though it is a hard fight, none of usare alone in our love for the environment.”

The phone room is busy now. Manycallers are talking at once, all of themattempting to convince people to give theirtime or money or both to saving forests andwildlife– the sort of one-on-one contactwith the citizens of California that helpskeep our woodlands intact so they can beenjoyed by future generations.

—Jon Dakin

Forests Forever’s canvassers have something they want to tell you

They Call by Night

Moira Worland, training assistant.

Forests Forever callers at work.

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Logging planned for Sequoia Monument

The U.S. Forest Service recentlyannounced plans for extensive logging inGiant Sequoia National Monument in thesouthern Sierra Nevada.

The Forest Service management planfor the monument would log 4,050 acres ayear for ten years, taking out 7.5 millionboard feet of timber annually.

This may come as a surprise to thosewho thought that establishment of theGiant Sequoia National Monument put anend to logging there.

The monument includes some of thelargest trees on Earth, as well as “speciesof special concern” such as the Pacific fish-er and California spotted owl. More than200 endemic plant species are foundthere– that is, species found nowhere else.

Forests Forever worked from 1998 to2000 to preserve the sequoias, generating21,473 letters and commitments to write,call, fax or email.

Then-president Bill Clinton created the328,000-acre monument by presidentialproclamation in 2000. The proclamationlimited logging and grazing on the monu-ment to contracts awarded as of Jan. 1,2000, and these were to end within threeyears. New timber sales were forbidden.

The wording of the proclamation isunambiguous:

"No portion of the monument shall be consid-ered to be suited for timber production, and nopart of the monument shall be used in a calcu-lation or provision of a sustained yield of tim-ber from the Sequoia National Forest."

The logging recently proposed by theForest Service goes beyond the timber salesgrandparented in by Clinton’s proclamation.It would be done under the guise of“mechanical thinning” for “catastrophicwildfire prevention.” The agency’s planwould cut trees up to 30 inches in diameter(as it would in the rewritten Sierra NevadaFramework; see article on page 1), purport-edly to reduce fire risk.

The Forest Service claims its plan is inthe interest of public safety and ecologicalrestoration. Forest activists are not con-vinced by the agency’s rationale.

“They want to log,” says AraMarderosian of Sequoia Forestkeeper.“Their purpose is to log.”

The giant sequoias themselves are notmuch sought after for timber. But loggingthe valuable fir and pine in sequoia grovesleaves the big trees open to the wind. The

newly exposed soil is subject to erosion andis ripped apart by heavy logging equip-ment, which also breaks up the giants’shallow root systems. All this makes thesequoias more vulnerable to blowdown.

The Forest Service’s plan would alsocreate “gaps” in the forest of up to two acreswhere the trees have been clearcut. Theagency claims these gaps provide space forsequoia seedlings to take root. In certainunspecified conditions the gaps could belarger than two acres.

But according to Marderosian, in an

alert issued by his group, “such gaps . . . arepartly responsible for the catastrophic fireconditions the agency says it is now tryingto counter with this management plan.Experience has shown that the predomi-nant vegetation that returns after a clear-cut is highly flammable brush.”

“We asked them not to cut these gapsbut the Forest Service didn’t listen,” saidMarderosian. “They said it wasn’t ‘eco-nomic’ [not to cut the gaps], that it wouldnot create jobs. They wanted to do it realfast, where Nature takes centuries.”

“You have to wonder how the sequoias

got along all those centuries without theForest Service,” said Martin Litton, a lifelongsequoia advocate who is working with sev-eral groups to end logging on the monu-ment. (Litton sits on Forests Forever’s advi-sory council.)

As a barrier against wildfires the agencyis proposing one-and-a-half-mile-wide“defense and threat zones” around commu-nities, where “fuels reduction” would takeplace. Forest Service scientists and otherforestry experts previously had recommend-ed a treatment zone between 150 and 200yards wide. Forest activists see the widerzone as merely another excuse for logging.

Marderosian accuses the ForestService of ignoring its own scientists.

“Scientist Jack Cohen (with the USDAFire Science Laboratory in Missoula,Mont.) said his science showed that 200-foot-wide treatment for fuel reduction isadequate and would protect structures.”

Logging also would be permitted inPacific fisher habitat under the new plan.The fisher is sensitive to disturbances inits habitat. Marderosian fears that the raremammal will flee in the face of loggingand brush-clearing projects, making itmore vulnerable to predators.

Finally, the Forest Service plans to con-struct more roads within the monument,where there are already more than 900miles of roads. But the agency already hasa $14-billion road maintenance backlog inthe national forests. And with its budgetrecently cut by $7.5 million, obtainingfunding for additional road maintenancewould be difficult if not impossible.

The Forest Service does not deny theeffects its management plan will have onwildlife habitat, watersheds, and forest

composition. The agency maintains, how-ever, that “catastrophic wildfires” wouldcause more damage than logging.

“The Forest Service report violates theproclamation,” says Litton. “The manage-ment plan also contradicts what George H.W. Bush said about the sequoias: ‘Weshould treat them as a great cathedral.’”

How should the monument be man-aged, then? Said Litton: “No logging, It’sthat simple.”

On Mar. 1, 2004, Sequoia Forestkeeper,joined by three other groups and two indi-viduals, filed an appeal of the Forest Servicemanagement plan for the monument.

—M.L.

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Giant sequoia surrounded by felled trees.

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The Forest Service saws its way through the “Great Cathedral”

Seth Zuckerman is a writer on ecology,energy, forestry and ecosystem restorationissues. His informative, thoughtful pieces haveappeared in magazines, online and print, and inseveral books. Some of his publications are list-ed at the end of this article.

When The Watershed spoke withZuckerman by phone recently, we askedhim first to describe for our readers whatexactly he does for a living.

Seth Zuckerman: I write about envi-ronmental issues. A lot of what Iwrite is influenced by my relationshipwith the Mattole Valley, which hasbeen my home since 1988. TheMattole Valley is mostly in HumboldtCounty, with a little bit in MendocinoCounty. It has a watershed of about300 square miles and a population ofbetween 2,000 and 2,500 people.

It’s pretty isolated: It takes morethan an hour to get to a town, eitherGarberville or Eureka. But of coursethose of us who live there consider it tobe the center of the known universe. Ithas a couple of restaurants and bars, apost office, and an elementary school.It’s rural, in a good way.

It’s a community that has been apioneer in salmon and forestry issues.In 1988 the Mattole Restoration Council,our local watershed group, mapped currentold-growth forest and compared it withmaps of old-growth forest from 1947.

We saw that there had been a dramaticdecline: Nine percent of old growth was left!More recently, we got curious about thegrassland, about the fact that brush andyoung trees were encroaching onto theprairie. First we consulted old soil and veg-etation maps to see what the area had lookedlike 50 years prior. Then we used satelliteimagery to determine what the grasslandlooked like at that point. We found that in 50years we had lost one-third of our grassland!

When I left college I originally wrotemostly about energy issues. In 1987, I wrotea story for the magazine in the San FranciscoSunday newspaper about forest fires, andinterviewed people in the Sierra Nevada andthe Klamath mountains. I was fascinatedwith the question of how forest managementwas contributing to forest fires.

At that point I realized that I hadn’tlearned much about the role of livingthings in environmental issues.

This realization inspired me to go back toschool at the University of California,Berkeley and get a master’s degree. My

department was the Energy and ResourcesGroup and I was able to put together aninterdisciplinary area of concentration. I tooka lot of forestry classes. I also took hydrolo-gy, population biology, and economics.

I was curious about how foresters thinkabout forests, how engineers think aboutwater, and how economists think about nat-ural resources. These ways of thinkinghave a tremendous effect on how Nature istreated. It’s useful to understand the think-ing in order to combat it.

Can you tell us more about just what an envi-ronmental writer does?

SZ: To start out in this line of work youhave to eat a lot of beans and rice! Besidesthat, it’s about finding things out and pass-ing on what I learn. I try to put thingstogether that, at first, might not seem to gotogether. There’s so much that we can

learn from the natural world!Nature is a rich vein of metaphor for

what goes on in human society. For exam-ple, I’ve got a small orchard in HumboldtCounty of about 100 trees. For a few years Ileft the horizontal branches when I pruned.

But this, I found out, was unsustainable! Ileft those branches in order to get morefruit. But once the branches were ladenwith fruit, they broke.

So what I learned was that I couldn’tafford to be too greedy. Once I identifiedmy mistake I just ‘fessed up and dealtwith it. I resolved to do better the nexttime. The natural world gives you lotsof feedback!

What environmental issue is closest to you?

SZ: I’m curious about how we ashumans in the modern world can still seeourselves as part of the wild. If we seeourselves as part of the natural world,not separate from it, then it becomes thatmuch harder to damage it: We see it asessential to ourselves. We humans needto reintegrate ourselves into the way weperceive the natural world.

The industrial economy fails tohonor that truth. The natural world,according to that way of thinking, isthere for humans to exploit. And even

some environmental thinkers make thatmistake. Wild nature, they believe, issomething out there that needs to be pro-tected from humans. I believe that theissue is, How can we humans change sothat we’re safe for Nature to encounter?

How do you personally live an ecological life?

SZ: I have to say that living an ecological lifeisn’t a binary choice, something that youeither do or don’t do. The challenge that con-fronts my friends and me is, What aspects ofour lives can we make more ecological?

Because my wife is in graduate school,I’ve been living in a city, Seattle, for the pastsix months. This is the first time in 15 yearsthat I’ve lived in a city. It’s so different!

When I live in the Mattole Valley I canconnect with the cycles of life on a localbasis, through my firewood, throughknowing where the water comes from, andthrough knowing where my waste goes. I

See “Zuckerman,” p. 10

Spring, 20048 The Watershed

Making humans safe for Nature:A Watershed interview with Seth Zuckerman

Seth Zuckerman

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Critics accused the agency of using thePR firm to spin its revision of the Frameworkas fire prevention and to downplay thetripling of commercial timber harvest andthe weakening of protections for threatenedand endangered species.

“The Forest Servicemaintains it needed thisexpensive PR firm to‘explain a complicatedissue to the public,’”Fletcher said. “But that’swhat agency staff arefor. In reality the ForestService bought this slickPR campaign to sell therevised Framework, notto explain it.”

On Apr. 2, two U.S.congressmen demand-ed an investigationinto the Forest Service’suse of the PR firm.

The Sierra NevadaFramework covers 11.5million acres of nationalforest in the Sierra. Put inplace at the end of theClinton presidency, theFramework protected old-growth forestand laid the groundwork for watershedand wildlife habitat restoration.

The plan was the result of 10 years ofscientific analysis and received more than47,000 public comments and peer reviewsby independent scientists.

The Bush administration initially sup-ported the plan, but the tim-ber industry attacked it,prompting the Forest Serviceto take another look. In a let-ter dated Dec. 31, 2002,Regional Forester JackBlackwell announced that theagency would rewrite theFramework. The agency pre-sented its draft revision to thepublic on June 5, 2003.

The revised plan called for almost threetimes more logging to take place than theoriginal Framework. It also increased thesize of trees that could be logged to as largeas 30 inches in diameter. (Previously themaximum diameter was 12 or 20 inches,depending on whether the area being cutwas an old-forest area.)

This expansion of logging was cast bythe Forest Service as fuels reduction to helpforestall wildfires. The larger timber would

help pay for brush removal, it was claimed.Environmentalists, however, say that

the new plan is more likely to promotewildfires than prevent them. The largertrees attractive to commercial harvesters

are also more resistant to fire, so removingthem does little to slow down wildfires.

The slash– limbs and wood fragments–left behind by loggers increases fire danger.And the canopy removal that would beallowed by the revised Framework– up to60 percent in certain vaguely defined cir-cumstances– would cause windier, drier

forest floor conditions and brush growth.This would make wildfire more likely.

Studies have identified logging– andespecially the cutting of larger trees– asincreasing the risk of forest fires. TheSierra Nevada Ecosystem Project Report(1996), for example, says, “Timber harvest,through its effects on forest structure, localmicroclimate, and fuel accumulation, hasincreased fire severity more than any otherrecent human activity.”

The revision also allows “small reduc-

tions” in spotted owl habitat, and provides“discretion” in managing grazing allot-ments that could endanger the Yosemitetoad and the willow flycatcher.

The new plan allows full implementa-tion of theHerger/FeinsteinQuincy LibraryGroup pilot plan,with its extensive“experimental”clearcuts, charac-terized as fire-breaks. The origi-nal Frameworkwould have miti-gated many of theQuincy Libraryplan’s worst fea-tures.

Many scien-tists and federalagencies had con-cluded that imple-mentation of theQuincy Libraryplan would threat-en the spotted owl,Pacific fisher, and

pine marten, since it would increase loggingin the old-growth habitat these creaturesrequire.

While the original Framework wasbased on 10 years of scientific studies, therevised plan cites no new science to justify itschanges.

“The Forest Service and its timber-com-pany backers knew thatCongress would neverswallow such a sweep-ing set of revisions thatdefies the science,”Fletcher said. “That’swhy they are using thestealth maneuver of put-ting through big changesin the form of regulatory

revisions rather than statutory ones. It’s anall-too-familiar pattern in the administra-tion’s anti-environmental strategy.”

In 2003 Forests Forever contacted 4,012people who agreed to write letters toRegional Forester Blackwell, telling him thatthey opposed any changes to the SierraNevada Framework. California senatorsBarbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein alsoreceived a total of 4,237 letters from ForestsForever supporters opposed to theFramework revisions. —M.L.

“Framework”continued from p. 1

Spring, 2004 The Watershed 9

The new plan triples logging, reducescommunity protection, and endangers

wildlife habitat.

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participate in the cycles of life. It’s muchdifferent in the city. On the other hand, Iuse my car a whole lot less!

But wherever I live, the common denom-inator is awareness. It starts with the com-mitment to perceive and to think about howwhat we do affects the world beyond us. It’sjust simple consideration: It’s what your par-ents taught you when you were a kid.

How can we develop broad grassroots educationabout forests and organize people to save them?

SZ: The first thing that comes to mind iswhat farmers have done for organic farm-ing: They’ve put a face on the farmer. Somany more people nowadays know whoraises their food because of farmers markets.It would be significant for people from thecity to know who raised their two-by-fours.

There are many misconceptions onboth sides. There’s a lot of derision direct-

ed at environmentalists by people fromrural areas who don’t feel heard or under-stood. An increasing amount of the forestis owned by non-industrial private forest-land owners. They face pressures that citypeople fail to appreciate. Many of them areland rich and cash poor. They have issuesrelated to estate tax. They face the difficultfact that the price for the commodity thatthey sell is low, and yet the prices for thefinished products are high. There’s an oldsaying: The farmer buys retail, sells whole-sale, and pays the freight both ways.

The protection of old-growth forests ishugely important. At the same time weneed to consider the other 90-odd percentof the landscape. All of that land has eco-logical value and much of it supports acommunity of local people who haveimportant knowledge about the landscapeand how to take care of it.

—Interview by Kathy Kaiser

“Zuckerman”continued from p. 8

ents. In some cases, Maldonado said, theother vegetation must be killed off. And thatleads to another one of replanting’s draw-backs: the use of herbicides.

Chris Colson, Forestry Associate withCalifornians for Alternatives to Toxics(CAT), said that even though the ForestService does use herbicides, the timberindustry is a much bigger user.

“They’re carpeting entire clearcuts withthe stuff,” he said.

Glyphosate is the mostcommonly used herbicidein California forests.Different formulations areknown under brand namesRoundUp, Rodeo, andAccord. Other herbicidesin use are hexazinone, tri-clopyr, and clopyralid.

The Forest Service nowuses mostly RoundUp.Private companies, accord-ing to Buckley, use all of theabove, and more problem-atic herbicides such asatrazine as well.

In Humboldt Countyalone between 1999 and 2000,timber companies sprayed20,463 acres with forestry herbicides, accord-ing to the California Native Plant Society(CNPS). The timber industry claims that her-

bicides can be used without causing signifi-cant harm to the forest.

“The ideal herbicide can be used to elim-inate specific undesirable plants while caus-ing little or no damage to valuable crops,”says the National Council for Air and StreamImprovement, an industry group.

But the CNPS says that herbicides usedin logging do harm native plants such astanoak and manzanita, which stabilize andreplenish disturbed and depleted soils. Nopermit is needed to use many of these herbi-

cides, the CNPS says, and while buffer zonesare required to protect native plants during

logging, they are not required during herbi-cide applications.

Colson said herbicides are used beforelogging to kill back plants and allow for eas-ier harvesting. After the cut, they are usedto kill off competing vegetation to allowreplanted seedlings to grow back.

“A lot of the treatments we see will killanything, including rare plants,” Colsonsaid. “They’re designed not to kill the treesbut to kill everything else.”

One of the dangers of herbicide use iscontamination of streams and rivers.Herbicide manufacturers claim theirproducts do not pollute waterwaysbecause they stick to the soil. ButColson pointed out that the soil itselfoften makes its way into the waterdue to erosion, and can carry thechemicals with it.

Herbicides have health impactsfor both humans and wildlife. Thesesubstances have been shown to beendocrine disruptors in amphibians,Colson said. (Endocrine disruptorsare chemicals that can imitate hor-mones and are suspected of causing arange of health effects, from cancer toreproductive abnormalities.)

Perhaps as troubling as herbicides’known side effects are their unknownones. Vivian Parker, a biologist who

has worked with various nonprofit and gov-ernment agencies throughout the Sierra, said

“A tree is not a forest,” continued from p. 5

Spring, 200410 The Watershed

Native plants in this clearcut have been killed by herbicides.

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See “A tree is not a forest,” p. 12

A selected Seth Zuckerman bibliography:

BooksSalmon Nation: People, Fish & Our

Common Home. Elizabeth Woody,Edward C. Wolf, Seth Zuckerman. Ecotrust, September 2003.

Saving Our Ancient Forests. Independent Publishing Group, April 1991.

Magazine articles“Nice Boulders, but Where’s the Fish?”

Whole Earth, March 22, 2001.“How green is my forest?” Sierra, July

1998.

Online“What the Future Holds,” excerpted

from “Encouraging Communities to Think like Watersheds: Practices on the Mattole River of California.” In Aurora: www.mtnvisions.com

A publication of Forests Forever, Inc.and the Forest Forever Foundation

50 First St., Suite 401

San Francisco, CA 94105

phone (415) 974-3636

fax (415) 974-3664

mail@forestsforever.org

www.forestsforever.org

The Watershed© 2004

Forests Forever, Inc.Forests Forever Foundation, Inc.

All rights reserved

Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper

The Watershed

FORESTS FOREVER

Board of Directors:

Mark A. Fletcher, Ph.D.President

Ken SmithSecretary

James NewmanTreasurer

Kent Stromsmoe

Advisory Council:

Richard Gienger

Betsy Herbert

Martin Litton

Jeanne Newman

Jill Ratner

“Restore,Reinhabit,

Re-enchant”

Paul HughesExecutive Editor

Marc LecardEditor

Gary Bentrup Flag Artwork

“Roadless”continued from p. 3

FORESTS FOREVER FOUNDATION

Board of Directors:

Paul HughesExecutive Director

Mark A. Fletcher, Ph.D.President

Ken SmithSecretary

James NewmanTreasurer

Spring, 2004 The Watershed 11

Senators Boxer and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have offered a parallel bill in the Senate.

Cleveland be dammedOn Southern California’s Cleveland

National Forest, a local transportation com-mission is studying proposals to widen thehighway that runs through the forest betweena roadlessarea and theSan MateoWilderness.The ForestService alsohas beenasked for apermit tobuild a line ofelectric trans-mission tow-ers throughthe forest.

Last butnot least,Nevada Hydroand the Elsinore Valley Municipal WaterDistrict want to build a large reservoir inMorrell Canyon, located on the national forestin a roadless area on the edge of the SanMateo Wilderness.

“The canyon would be sealed off by twodams to make a reservoir,” says Sierra Clubactivist Paul Carlton. “Two pipelines willpump water up from Lake Elsinore into thereservoir at night when the electric rates arecheaper. By day, when the rates are higher,the water would be pumped downhill todrive a hydroelectric generator.”

Local environmentalists hope to seeMorrell Canyon designated a wilderness area.

Salvage logging in SequoiaThe Forest Service is planning to log the

Rincon Roadless Area in Sequoia NationalForest. The Rincon covers 41,000 acres and hasnever been logged.

The agency maintains that the burnedtrees from the McNally wildfire of 2002 are afire hazard, and propose logging by helicopter.

“If they do want to restore the forest andreduce the chance of a reburn,” says JoeFontaine of the Sierra Club, “they could cutthe small wood and brush, stack ‘em and burn

‘em. Thatw o u l dreduce thechance of ar e b u r nmore thantaking outall the bigtrees.”

Boxer’sCaliforniaW i l dH e r i t a g eAct wouldadd theR i n c o nR o a d l e s s

Area to the Golden Trout Wilderness. The roadless rule has helped to protect

federal lands from heedless development andexploitation. The Bush administration seemsdetermined to find ways around, over orunder the rule to increase logging, drilling,and driving on our national forests.

—M.L.

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TAKE ACTION:Write to Undersecretary of AgricultureMark Rey and tell him not to destroy theRoadless Area Conservation Rule:

Mark ReyU.S. Department of AgricultureRoom 217-E, Jamie L. Whitten Bldg.1400 Independence Avenue, SWWashington, D.C. 20250(202) 720-7173

FORESTS FOREVER50 First St. #401 San Francisco, CA 94105

Address Service Requested

If you do not wish toreceive The Watershedsend this along with themailing panel at right to:

Forests Forever50 First St. #401San Francisco, CA 94105

Thank you.

Please remove me from the news- letter mailing list.

NONPROFIT ORG.

U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDSan Francisco, CAPermit No.3573

is, after the cumulative impacts of urbansprawl and losses from disease, that weprotect the living, healthy oaks,” said JanetCobb of the California Oak Foundation.

There are no effective laws or regulationsin place that protect California’s oaks out-side of parks and preserves. SB 1334 wouldrequire the state Board of Forestry to estab-lish such regulations.

The bill also would require developersto offset the loss of any oaks they clear.Several possible mitigation measures arelisted: replanting five oak trees for everyone destroyed, purchasing conservationeasements on oak woodlands, or contribut-ing to the Oak Woodlands ConservationFund.

Replanting would involve not merelyplanting individual trees, but also establish-ing biologically functional oak woodlands.

SB 1334 has been rewritten slightly fromlast year’s SB 711 but offers the same strong

protections. It was passed out of the SenateEnvironmental Quality Committee on Apr.19 on a vote of 5 to 1. Forests Forever pushedespecially hard to enlist the “aye” vote ofSen. Bruce McPherson (R-Santa Cruz). Thebill now goes to the Senate AppropriationsCommittee.

Supporters are optimistic about SB1334’s chances in the Senate but less san-guine about the Assembly. Developmentinterests are fighting hard to defeat the bill.

“Ranchers and the timber industry aregunning for it,” said Cobb.

Forests Forever has campaigned on theOak Woodlands Protection bill sinceNovember 2003, generating 2,950 commit-ments to contact legislators in support of it.

We also have been pushing the stateBoard of Forestry to designate oaks as acommercial species. This would provideoaks with the same protections affordedconifers. Without commercial species sta-tus oaks can be treated as weeds and erad-icated without much recourse. We have

generated 2,742 letters and faxes to theboard in support of our position. —M.L.

“Oaks”continued from p. 1

TAKE ACTION:Please urge your state senator andassemblymember to support SB 1334.To find contact information for your legislators, visit

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

Send a copy of your letter to:

Gov. Arnold SchwarzeneggerState Capitol BuildingSacramento, CA 95814

Assemblyman Fabian Nunez,Speaker of the Assembly

Assemblywoman Hannah-BethJackson, chair of the AssemblyNatural Resources Committee

no one knows what forest herbicides’ trueimpacts are.

“In fact, most laboratory studies havefocused only on the lethal effects from inges-tion. They seldom have looked at the moresubtle effects of these products on eggs andsperm, developing embryos or on juvenileorganisms,” Parker wrote in an article onthe Pesticide Action Network website.

Replanting can have benefitsWhile replanting as practiced by most

timber companies clearly has its problems,when done right it can help revitalize dam-aged forests. The Mattole RestorationCouncil has been replanting cutover landsince the mid 1980s in Humboldt County’sMattole River Watershed. Isom, the coun-cil’s reforestation program coordinator, saidthe organization takes pains to replant inthe most ecologically sound way possible.

“For us, the mandate of improving thequality of the watershed we call home isparamount,” he said.

Isom said the organization recentlyreceived funding to undertake a largeassessment of the sites replanted in the1980s. The council will be looking at howmany of the trees survived and their cur-rent state of health. It is that kind of moni-toring that makes for a responsiblelandowner, Isom said.

“Stewardship connotes active tending,”he said. “It’s time-consuming, but it makesfor better long-term viability of the forest.”

—Andria Strickley

“A tree is not a forest”continued from p. 10