May 1st 1999

By Tom Marten
California Fly Fisher
May/June 1999

Is it a partnership designed to restore steelhead and salmon runs on the beleaguered Garcia River? Or is it a deal to give a timber company the right to earn millions logging North Coast forest?

The answers are: "yes" and "yes."

In a deal sure to have national implications, Trout Unlimited of California has entered into a partnership with a controversial, but progressive timber company to restore fish runs on the Garcia.

According to TU's Steve Trafton, his organization has raised $250,000 to work with the Mendocino Redwood Company to restore the watershed of the 34-mile-long river that has been damaged by years of poor logging practices. "We hope it will be a model for the rest of the country," said Trafton who helped negotiate the experimental plan with the headline-making timber company whose lands include watersheds on the Albion, Navarro, a fork of the Trinity and the Garcia rivers. "[Mendocino Redwood Company] is openly committed to making this experiment a thoughtful way to husband resources, while at the same time running a profitable business."

Mendocino Redwood made the headlines last May when the Louisiana-Pacific Corporation sold 325,000 acres of North Coast timberland to Simpson Investment Company and Sansome Partners, a San Francisco investment company, for $615 million. After the sale, the investors created the new company. Financial backers of the deal were the Fisher family, owners of the GAP clothing store chain. According to the company's web page, "the Fisher family of San Francisco is the primary investor in Sansome Partners, but it is not involved in the day-by-day management of Mendocino Redwood Company." Robert Fisher, son of GAP founder Don Fisher, serves on the board of directors of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Regardless, the Sierra Club was not happy with the company's goal of cutting 40 million board feet per year, as well as its use of clear cuts and herbicides on forested land. These practices prompted some of the club's activist to call for a boycott of GAP products.

Enter Mendocino Redwood's CEO, the 35-year-old Stanford MBA Sandy Dean, called by one North Coast environmental group "the fresh faced timber executive from the city."

Although unavailable for comment to California Fly Fisher, Dean told the Ecotrust Circuit Rider Dispatch newsletter, "I am not here to figure out how to squeeze cash out of the land. We're operating our lands with a low financial hurdle so we can invest back in the lands." That, according to Dean, includes investing $3 million to fix or relocate logging roads that are feeding sediments into a number of streams. Which is why TU came into the picture.

According to Trafton, the national conservation worked with a timber erosion control consultant to identify and prioritize sediment-reduction projects in the watershed of the South Fork of the Garcia. "We looked at the entire area, from the ridgeline to the stream," he said. "It was too expensive to fix it all, so we identified projects that would correct 73 percent of the sediment flows." According to Trafton, the road removal and stabilizing projects will cost $180,000. Trout Unlimited has raised funding from the California Department of Fish and Game and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. "The company is also putting up substantial funds, allowing access and making stream monitoring data available," he said.

Work on the projects will be guided by TU's consultants, but using the timber company's equipment.

Will the partnership prove successful in protecting fishery resources? Everyone hopes so.

"Call me hopelessly naïve," said Trafton. "But I hope this Garcia River project will serve as a model for other watersheds."

According to the company's remarkably candid Web site (http://www.mrc.com), similar restoration work is anticipated on the Navarro, Albion and Big rivers and many creeks, including one feeding the Trinity River.