A different breed of protester; Opposition to clear-cutting of timber grows among Humboldt County residents

Copyright 2001 San Francisco Chronicle
June 18, 2001
Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer

Mattole Valley, Humboldt County -- Rancher Michael Evenson loves the Mattole River; he just wishes it wouldn't have swallowed several acres of his pasture during the flood of 1997, transforming a lush grassland into a cobbled barrens.

But Evenson doesn't blame the river. The culprit, he feels, is Pacific Lumber, the North Coast timber company that is logging old-growth Douglas firs in the Mattole's upper stretches.

"Their clear-cutting has caused massive landslides, and that has filled up the river with silt and gravel," said Evenson.

The slides have cloaked the river's lower stretches in a thick layer of muck and rock, Evenson said, encouraging bankside erosion during winter floods.

"By the so-called exercise of their property rights, they're violating my property rights," he said.

An increasing number of Mattole Valley residents are agreeing with Evenson, contending that Pacific Lumber is both endangering their livelihoods and despoiling a way of life.

And state agencies, they say, are colluding with the company, allowing violations of logging restrictions.

The residents' stance marks a change in the ranks of combatants on the environmental side, with local landowners supplanting - or at least, augmenting - legions of long-haired protesters.

Evenson is also convinced the logging is destroying the river's last runs of anadromous fish.

Coho and chinook salmon and steelhead trout inhabit the Mattole. The fish once teemed in the river's riffles and pools by the thousands, but their numbers have been depleted in the past several years.

Last year, only 356 spawning salmon and steelhead were counted on the river.

"What's even worse is that the downward migration of smolts (young fish) has become a holocaust," said Evenson. "Salmon and steelhead are cold water fish, but the deep pools are all filled in, so the water has warmed significantly. Huge summertime kills of smolts are the norm now."

Pacific Lumber executives express exasperation at Evenson's accusations, contending that their cutting is having little or no effect on the river's health or on the integrity of adjacent property.

They say the company is adhering to stringent logging guidelines hammered out three years ago in an agreement with state and federal officials; protesters, they maintain, have neither the legal nor moral right to interfere with their timber harvests.

Evenson has filed two unsuccessful lawsuits against Pacific Lumber in a bid to stop the logging, and Mattole Valley residents have participated in a number of protests against the firm.

In one sense, the resistance of Mattole residents is just the latest battle in the war that has been waged against Pacific Lumber for a decade.

Ever since the company was acquired in 1986 in a hostile takeover by Maxxam Inc., a Houston-based conglomerate owned by financier Charles Hurwitz, environmentalists have fiercely resisted logging on the firm's 200,020 acres.

Their primary complaint: Under Hurwitz, Pacific Lumber greatly accelerated the harvest rate on its lands, singling out in particular its last ancient stands of redwoods.

The conflict raged for years, characterized by vehement demonstrations mostly attended by counterculture youth. The dispute was also marked by direct actions such as tree sits, confrontations with loggers at clear-cut sites and the blockading of logging roads.

An uneasy detente was reached in 1999 when the company and the state and federal governments signed an agreement preserving the 3,000-acre Headwaters Forest, along with several smaller redwood groves.

The company also signed a "habitat conservation plan" for the remainder of its land. The agreement included logging restrictions to preserve endangered species such as spotted owls, marbled murrelets, fishers and coho salmon.


Things quieted down for a time after that. But as Pacific Lumber began logging in earnest in the late '90s on the Mattole, acrimony again flared.

But this time, there was a significant difference: Transient young longhairs weren't the only ones protesting.
True, there have been about 50 arrests, mostly of younger people who fit antiestablishment stereotypes of dress and hair styles. But mainstream locals - ranchers, fishermen, artisans, retirees - also began showing up at the barricades.

"I grew up on the Mattole, so this is a big issue for me," said Sierra Simpson, whose father, David Simpson, a rancher, is one of the leaders in a local fish restoration project.

Simpson and her mother, Jane Lapiner, discussed the Mattole situation recently while visiting David Simpson as he lay in a Eureka hospital recovering from injuries suffered in a horseback riding accident.

"A lot of the local people got turned off to the outside kids coming in for the (Headwaters) protests because they dress and look different," said Simpson.

"When my father moved here years ago, the generation above him taught him all about this country. He's so knowledgeable about this watershed - that's what's missing in the younger kids."

Lapiner said, "We don't want to denigrate the kids - they've been very brave and committed. But one thing most of us who live here share is a tremendous awareness of the river and the watershed."

Pacific Lumber owns about 18,000 acres in the Mattole watershed and has received approval from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention for six timber harvest plans totaling 294 acres. State approval for two other harvest plans, totaling 93 acres, is pending.

The rekindled protests have upset Pacific Lumber executives, who say they have accommodated opponents as much as possible.

"We thought we could get back to a normal way of life after Headwaters," said Mary Bullwinkel, a spokeswoman for Pacific Lumber. "We had hoped the illegal activity on our lands would go away. We didn't think it would come to this."

Evenson and others have accused Pacific Lumber of violating the terms of the habitat conservation plan, and contend that state natural resource agencies such as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Department of Fish and Game are doing nothing about it.

But Bullwinkel says the company is "absolutely" adhering to the plan. Logging, she says, must be allowed to proceed in a timely fashion.

Bullwinkel also challenged contentions that timber harvesting has devastated the Mattole's fisheries.

"It isn't accurate to point to one cause (for the salmon and steelhead decline), " Bullwinkel said. "Homes, roads, drought, ocean conditions - you can't just pin it on one thing."

Louis Blumberg, a deputy director for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said the state is holding Pacific Lumber to the letter of the habitat conservation plan.

"The timber harvest plans for the Mattole were subjected to full interagency review, and we've amended them following concerns expressed by the departments and the public," Blumberg said. "Whether (the habitat conservation plan) is sufficient to protect the Mattole's fisheries is another issue and one the protesters aren't really addressing. But the logging operations themselves do not violate the law."

In conjunction with two logging contractors and two ranchers, Pacific Lumber has filed a lawsuit against Mattole protesters.

"We can't continue to sustain (the economic losses) associated with these illegal activities," said Bullwinkel.

Along with "the kids" involved in direct action, some Mattole residents have been named in the suit - including Lapiner and Ellen Taylor, Evenson's wife.

The locals have been included in the suit for providing aid to the direct action demonstrators, said Bullwinkel.

"Most of (the parties named in the suit) are outsiders, but it is true that some property owners have been joining hands with them," said Bullwinkel. "It is very frustrating for us."

Taylor said the suit has had a sobering effect on Mattole landowners, although their determination to stop the clear-cutting remains strong.


"People have to think of their livelihoods and the costs involved with legal action," said Taylor. "There's no doubt the suit has been intimidating. People are much more leery about getting arrested. But we can't pretend this isn't happening - we have to do what we can." Error: Unable to read footer file.