Groups strike deal to preserve redwood forest
Copyright 2001
San Jose Mercury News
June 28, 2001
By Paul Rogers
SAN JOSE, Calif. _ State officials, a timber company and a Bay Area open space group have pieced together a historic deal to preserve a huge expanse of redwood forest containing some of the state's top salmon streams.
And, perhaps most surprising, the deal has come together without controversy, protests or even much public attention.
Under the plan, Stimson Lumber Co., based in Portland, would sell nearly 25,000 acres of redwood lands along the rugged Del Norte County coast to the Save the Redwoods League, a non-profit land trust based in San Francisco, for $60 million. The area is three times the size of the famous Headwaters Forest, preserved in a 1998 deal.
The league would then sell the lands to California's state parks department.
The transfer would represent the largest acquisition by state parks since 1981, when the state acquired the 25,000-acre Gill-Mustang Ranch to expand Henry Coe State Park, east of San Jose.
The lands, known as the Mill Creek Property, are equal in size to the city of San Francisco. Home to 23 endangered species, including chinook, chum and coho salmon, as well as steelhead and cutthroat trout, the property contains stands of second and third-growth redwood and Douglas fir with views of the Pacific Ocean, three miles south of Crescent City. It also contains roughly 125 acres of old growth redwood.
"This has been a priority for Save the Redwoods League since the 1930s," said Kate Anderton, the league's executive director.
"California's natural history legacy is in its salmon and in its redwoods," she said. "The property connects two of the richest stands of old growth redwoods in the world. But its overwhelming values are rooted in the healthy populations of wild salmon in its creeks."
If purchased, the lands would connect more than 400,000 acres of North Coast forest. Linked would be Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, along with sections of Redwood National Park and the Smith River National Recreation Area.
Last month, the state Wildlife Conservation Board committed $15 million to the purchase. The project would be the largest, by acreage, in the board's 53-year history.
Save-the-Redwoods League also has committed $15 million in private funding.
And last Friday at midnight, the budget conference committee of the state legislature approved a 2002 budget that includes $22.5 million, mostly in bond funds from Proposition 12 and Proposition 13, parks and water bonds approved by voters last year.
With state lawmakers still wrangling over the final budget, however, the deal could be in some jeopardy.
Gov. Gray Davis could cut funding out in horse-trading with legislators to approve other projects.
"Mill Creek represents a fabulous opportunity, but we also have needs in the urban areas," said State Parks Director Rusty Areias. "There's a lot of competing priorities."
Davis has spent the bulk of the parks bond money so far in Los Angeles and other heavily populated areas of Southern California that are underserved by parks.
State Sen. Byron Sher, D-Stanford, said he supports the deal because "there has to be a balance" between urban and rural parks spending.
Sher, chairman of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, said that because the land has been logged intermittently since the 1920s, it represents a bargain.
"Instead of buying this when somebody is threatening to log it or subdivide it when its price is highest, this is a great chance," Sher said.
Last month, the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors endorsed the project on the condition that public access is guaranteed, and that the county be repaid for lost timber and property taxes, roughly $350,000 last year.
Meanwhile, the state's leading fishing groups are lining up to support the project. If salmon, which are endangered statewide, can be expanded in the property's streams, they will swim into the Smith River, the state's largest undammed river, expanding salmon populations across Northern California, they contend.
"For fisheries, there's more bang for the buck on this project than on the Headwaters forest deal, hands down," said Tom Weseloh, north coast manager for California Trout, a non-profit advocacy group.
It's cheaper to save the fish now than to recover them from near-extinction, he said.
"I am so sick and tired of restoring totally trashed habitat to get a couple more fish," he said. "But this is a huge opportunity to protect a wide area. It's the old ounce of prevention, pound of cure."
Andrew Miller, president of Stimson Lumber, said his company, which owns 400,000 acres, wants to sell the property and use the money to buy more timberland in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
"The trend going forward in California for resource businesses is only getting more challenging and negative," he said. "It's a never-ending onslaught. Oregon and Washington have less bureaucracy and fewer costly citizen lawsuits."
The lands were logged heaviest in the 1970s and 1980s, he said, and now have had more than 20 years or more years to recover.
"Our foresters have taken a long-term view," Miller said. "We tell them you have to go home at night and be comfortable with the work you do. I think this property is a real gem."