Citizens File Suit to Stop Illegal Clearcutting in Northern California

Timber giant Sierra Pacific Industries may at last be held accountable for its reign of terror in the region of Battle Creek in Northern California, if citizens are successful in a lawsuit filed on January 14, 2008. The latest lawsuit in a round of challenges to CalFire, the state agency that approves timber harvest plans, the Lookout Timber Harvest Plan (THP) includes 809 acres of clearcuts located on Digger Creek, along the border of Shasta and Tehama Counties . Digger Creek flows west from springs on the west side of Lassen National Forest (Heart Lake Potential Wilderness Area) and Lassen Volcanic National Park into Battle Creek .

Downstream, Battle Creek is one of the largest tributaries to the Sacramento River and home to federally listed threatened Central Valley steelhead and Chinook salmon. In 2006, restoration plans were finalized for the Battle Creek Restoration Project, a multi-agency plan whose projected cost is approximately 101.5 million dollars. Battle Creek was chosen by a consensus of fisheries experts as the premier stream capable of recovering the imperiled fish, because of its cold, spring fed water, and the deep canyons and shaded pools that exemplify the watershed. Digger Creek is one of its main tributaries, located right in the middle of the watershed—its heart.  

Digger Creek—located in between these two ecologically significant areas, and in the middle of the migration corridor for the state’s largest migratory deer herd--is the center of the most intensive clearcutting in the entire Sierra Nevada . It is here that Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) is busy implementing its forest liquidation plan that includes clearcutting 70% of its entire ownership of nearly 1.5 million acres of California forest lands. SPI’s clearcutting, or “evenaged management” as they prefer to call it, includes dense replanting after clearcutting, with mostly single species commercial pine, followed by heavy applications of toxic chemical herbicides to kill all the natural regrowth of native plants that occurs after clearcutting. Clearcutting continues to take place throughout Northern California with the full compliance of CalFire (formerly “CDF”), the agency charged with approval of the plans, and the California Department of Fish and Game, charged with regulating and protecting the state’s trust resources, the water and the wildlife.

For months, local citizens in the area tried to get information from CalFire regarding the full extent of timber harvesting and conversion of native forest which had already taken place in the area. The state’s Forest Practice Rules, lauded by the industry as the most restrictive in the country, explicitly require the plan submitter to disclose the extent of other timber harvest activities in the vicinity of the plan, in order to evaluate the potentially significant cumulative impacts of the action.

Yet, the Lookout THP fails to disclose these numbers.

Ironically, SPI and CDF claim that clearcutting produces early successional forest habitat which is beneficial to species like deer, but fail to disclose that these potential benefits are never realized, due to the use of herbicides used by the company in heavy amounts after clearcutting. The chemicals target the exact species needed by deer and other wildlife for survival. Vast quantities of toxic chemical herbicides are applied to the forests of the state each year. In Shasta County in 2006, nearly 80,000 pounds of herbicides were applied to the forests in the area by timber companies—accounting for 22% of  the total pesticide use by all agriculture and commercial users in the county. The sole purpose of herbicide use is to eliminate the competing non-commercial vegetation—in other words, the early successional forest habitat. This vegetation component of natural forests is comprised by shrubs and hardwoods such as oak and deer brush that provide food for deer and other wildlife species.

Oaks are of particular concern in California ’s forests for the survival of deer. Up to 70% of the diet of the Eastern Tehama migratory deer herd deer in November and December consists of acorns, necessary for the animals to put on fat to carry them through the winter. And in spite of the efforts of the California Oak Foundation and other environmental groups to force the California Board of Forestry to address this issue, mandatory retention requirements for hardwoods have never been adopted. In any case, CalFire routinely grants waivers or “in lieu of” practices that side step the Forest Practice Rules.  

SPI’s proposed Lookout THP will once again maximize the use of clearcutting as a timber harvest method, followed by dense planting and herbicide spraying to reduce the re-growth of native species. Together, the cumulative impacts may not be sustainable for wildlife that are dependent upon the forest for food, shelter, and nesting habitat. Intensive single species planting coupled with  herbicide management of the non-commercial native re-growth after clearcutting results in significant loss of suitable habitat for both early-successional and late series forest dependent species.

The impacts to water quality and the potential for herbicide run-off into the creeks and groundwater are also given short shrift by the company and the state.

You can help us to draw the line in Ishi Country by sending contributions for the legal defense to:

Re: Lookout THP Legal Defense Fund

Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation

P.O. Box 603

Georgetown , CA 95634