May 1st 2000

Ted Williams
Fly Rod & Reel
May/June 2000

The coast redwood is the fastest growing, most easily renewed softwood in the United States. Cut it any time of year and three weeks later it will be sprouting from stumps and root crowns. It can be harvested on a sustained-yield basis with little damage to publicly owned forest resources such as salmon and steelhead. It doesn't have to be stripmined; in fact, if regeneration is a goal, large clearcuts should be avoided. Logs don't have to be transported on roads that are hacked into unstable slopes; in fact, if regeneration is a goal, haul roads should be well engineered. But for the average timber company CEO, who's in office for about five years, regeneration is basically irrelevant. He's not thinking about what happens half a century in the future when he and his stockholders are dead; he's thinking about dividends and quarterly performance. So soil sloughs into rivers, and salmonids flicker out.

Take northern California's Garcia River, once famous for enormous coho runs and giant chinooks (and still famous for wild steelhead, a resilient species that finds refuge in undefiled headwaters). Chinooks are main-stem spawners, and main stems degrade first. So now the Garcia chinooks are extinct. Cohos spawn in main stems, too, but also in low-gradient tributaries whose banks are easily roaded and whose channels have provided handy conduits for skidding logs. So now Garcia cohos are almost extinct.

But in free-flowing rivers blighted only by cut-out-and-get-out logging, healthy salmonid runs can be rebuilt from a few wild genes by controlling sediment, replacing hanging culverts with bridges and restoring large, woody debris. So in June 1998, as Mendocino Redwood Co. (MRC) was signing off on a deal to purchase the Garcia's watershed along with almost 235,000 acres of coastal California rainforest, Trout Unlimited's state policy coordinator Steve Trafton approached the company's CEO, Sandy Dean, with a proposal to do restoration work. Trafton told him how, on Lagunitas Creek near San Francisco, TU had rekindled the last spark of a coho population to a stable run of 500 wild spawners. Dean gave every appearance of being genuinely enthusiastic. He kicked in $150,000. About $90,000 more was provided by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, $200,000 by the California Dept. of Fish and Game, $25,000 by the Mendocino Resource Conservation District and $5,000 by TU.

Trout Unlimited hired professional stream restorer Craig Bell, who asked Dean if it would be OK to train MRC employees in the classroom and in the woods. Fine, said Dean; then he insisted that the company's independent contractors receive the same instruction. Because TU's resources were fully committed, MRC struck off on restoration of its own on the Albion and Navarro rivers, using TU's Garcia formula as a model. In its first year of existence MRC spent $3 million for fiscal 2000.

MRC gave TU unlimited access, handing over all maps, all road-maintenance data, all fish records, all temperature records, all sediment-assessment records. I asked Bell how that compared to the cooperation he'd received from the previous owner, Louisiana-Pacific, when he had worked on the Garcia and other streams. He said he had gotten no access to uplands, roads, data or documents, no encouragement, not even a kind word, just "a stern lecture at the gate to stay in the streams." Total cash commitment over 10 years amounted to about $200 for redwood seedlings to be planted by TU volunteers.

The motives of the investors who set up MRC--the Donald Fisher family of San Francisco--seem innocent enough. The Fishers run the 2,300 outlets of The Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy clothing stores. Gap division president Robert Fisher sits on the board of the tough, effective Natural Resources Defense Council. He and father, Donald, Gap's chairman and founder, have insisted on energy-efficient stores built with lumber purchased from the few timber companies certified as environmentally responsible by a demanding independent auditor called the Forest Stewardship Council. And Dean sounded sincere when he told me that he and the Fishers want to prove that it is possible--indeed, profitable--" to manage a large block of productive forestland utilizing high standards of environmental stewardship." If MRC could do that, he remarked, other companies might attempt this radical new strategy. Along with the good words there have been some good deeds. Dean has ended traditional clearcutting and embarked on progressive, earth-friendly silviculture practices.

But a large element of the environmental community remains unimpressed. For instance, the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance, which represents 13 watershed associations in Mendocino County, is leading a national assault on MRC in court, in the press and on the Internet. According to president Mary Pjerrou, all the forest's owners past and present and all regulatory personnel past and present are liars: "The lies of the California Department of Forestry, the lies of foresters in timber harvest plans, the lies of Louisiana-Pacific and the Board of Forestry and Terry Gorton, are why the redwood forests are in their present condition." And what about MRC and the Fishers? "Might even be considered worse." Pjerrou disses Donald Fisher as an "aging monarch" and a "contributor to rightwing causes." She'd heard about TU's work on the Garcia but didn't know anything about the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation--which has proved itself to be the most effective force for aquatic and terrestrial habitat restoration in North American [see "Venture Capitalists in Conservation," Jan./Feb. 1993]. "I looked at their brochure on grants," she said, "and I had the impression that it was industry-funded. A few alarm bells went off."

Pjerrou also serves as a general coordinator of Gap Picket, and her group is part of a national effort by environmentalists called Save the Redwoods/Boycott The Gap Campaign. On November 27, 1998 environmentalist staged a bagpipe-and-drum march down San Francisco's Powell St. to The Gap's flagship store. "We made the front page of The San Francisco Examiner," crows Boycott The Gap, "with a wonderful color photo of the parade, including the Art and Revolution giant Fisher puppet wearing the sign 'Fishers: G-reed A-nd P-rofit,' giant redwoods on stilts, marbled murrelets on 15-foot bamboo poles, and more!"

That day there were similar protests at Gap stores in 40 US cities. On March 6, 1999 18 of 300 protesters, again demonstrating at The Gap's flagship store in San Francisco, were cited by police for disorderly conduct. On June 14 "Redwood Mary" of Mendocino led a protest at the 6th Ave. Gap store in New York City, in which she and others held the doors shut. On December 10, 1997 (before MRC even existed) Julia Hill, an Arkansas woman who calls herself "Butterfly," climbed into a tree house in a redwood that she named "Luna" near Stafford, California, and lived there until Dec. 18, 1999, eating only fruits and vegetables supplied by fellow activist who stuffed them into the bag she lowered on a string. From her tree house Butterfly granted interviews by cell phone, composed poems on recycled paper, and protested all sorts of alleged outrages, including the alleged rapaciousness of the Fishers.

Environmentalists demonstrated at MRC logging operations, too. Beginning in April 1999, they held rallies at the scene of a planned selection cut in the Albion River watershed, playing a song entitled "Chocolate Albion," ensconcing themselves Julia-Butterfly-style in redwoods for almost two months, throwing a cargo net over five trees (four of which weren't marked for harvest), and getting cited for disorderly conduct. These kinds of timber-harvest plans get approved, explains Save the Redwoods/Boycott The Gap Campaign, because of "our corrupt and useless regulatory agencies, the California Department of Forestry and the US Fish and Wildlife Service."

"There are many other reasons people don't like Donald Fisher," reveals Mary Bull, national coordinator of Boycott The Gap and a pooh-bah of Guardians of Elk Creek Old Growth, the group that spawned it. "He's very big in the World Trade Organization; he's privatizing public schools; he's engaged in sweetheart deals with the City of San Francisco. The list goes on."

Speaking more softly is Linda Perkins, president of the Albion River Watershed Protection Association. "MRC's practices in and by themselves might not be considered too horrible," she avers. "But the point is the lands are blasted, so anything you do is bad. Sandy Dean wants to cut 40 million board feet a year, and that's too high. Everyone has said the maximum should be 20 million."

Maybe Perkins has it right, yet when you get down to haggling between 40 million and 20 million board feet a year from 235,000 acres you're basically in the same camp. Forty million board feet a year in two percent of MRC's standing inventory, 30 percent less than the long-term harvest planned by Louisiana- Pacific, and 66 percent of current annual growth. Not only is it sustainable, it is a prescription for forest revitalization.

Yet, with no data, groups like the Mendocino Watersheds Alliance, Greenwood Watershed Association, Guardians of Elk Creek Old Growth and Save the Redwoods/Boycott The Gap chant the mantra that MRC's planned cut is nonsustainable. "Last summer," declares Mary Bull,"MRC was denied certification by the Forest Stewardship Council." In this Bull speaks the truth.

But what interests me more that MRC's failure to win certification on its first try is the fact that it wanted it. Other timber companies don't. MRC is the largest forestland owner in the nation that has made a run at certification and, west of the Cascades, the only large industrial landowner to do so. Green certification by an independent, nonprofit third party is an idea that originated in Europe, where consumers worry about how their wood is procured. It has been an enormous success there. In Sweden, for instance, 60 percent of the industrial land base is certified. But in the US, where less than one percent is certified, companies resist. Their trade group--the American Forest and Paper Association, which seeks the lowest common denominator in order to keep the bottom feeders in the fold--sees genuine certification as a threat. So, as a counter measure, it has devised the "Sustainable Forestry Initiative," a make-believe certification process with no possibility of public review and based entirely on vague promises. More than 99 percent of AF&PA's members--owning 80 percent of the nation's industrial land base--were quickly certified under this handy arrangement.

MRC wanted the real thing, and it flunked. Robert Hrubes, of the Oakland based Natural Resource Association and co-leader of the auditing team contracted by the Forest Stewardship Council, reports that MRC is clearly moving in a new and better direction and that he was "impressed" by the effort. Real certification has to be "transparent," he explained, but only after the fact. That is, when the company begins trading on its green certification, consumers need to be able to see that the process isn't an AF&PA-style fake. If the council's contractors went around airing dirty laundry before certification, they wouldn't have many customers. That's why Hrubes declined to tell me about the problems he found.

But MRC's chief forester, Mike Jani didn't hesitate. "We need to put together a management plan for the 235,000 acres that not only deals with sustainability of the timber but also the issues of wildlife, fisheries and biological components. We know our forest is going to get better. But we don't know where, over the next 50 years, we're going to go to do our harvesting. The other issue was that our interim policy about old growth [no cutting of trees over 48 inches in diameter] needed an element to assess biological value."

Maybe he was lying. Maybe Dean and the Fishers were lying, Maybe MRC was a wolf in granny drag. I needed a third-party observer more talkative than Hrubes, so I contacted Greg Giusti, Extension Service forest advisor for the Univ. of California. I asked him to compare the forest practices of Louisiana Pacific with MRC's and please to be blunt. "OK," he said. "L-P didn't give a shit about the land; they wanted their quarterly dividends. They hired fisheries and wildlife biologists, but it was window dressing. Those guys told me that it was a fight to get every possible inch of protection for the stream corridors. I had a lot of respect for them because I knew what they were up against-- real hard core timber-beast mentality."

MRC hasn't made Giusti a believer yet. But he calls it a "breath of fresh air," explaining that virtually all the other big industrial tracts are managed by absentee owners headquartered in other states. "Because MRC is based in San Francisco the owners have the ability to jump in a car and go see their property. There is much more open and honest dialogue now between the landowner and the public." His theory is that Dean-a brilliant, 35-year-old graduate of Stanford Business School-hadn't fully understood what certification involved and perhaps had sought it too early. But Giusti says this: "MRC has established certification as a goal. Are they there yet? No. Can they get there? Well, they've got the guy who can get them there. His name is Mike Jani. He walks the walk; he is the best of the best." Other independent forest professionals agree. They say that, as chief forester for Big Creek Lumber in Santa Cruz, Jani established the company as one of the most exemplary forest managers anywhere and won certification from the Forest Stewardship Council.

What dark motive could MRC have had in hiring someone like that? I couldn't think of one. But Mary Bull explained that Jani is a charlatan--"not green in the least"--and Mary Pjerrou proclaimed that he "is fooling himself." Jani told me he thought he was making progress with both women. But when I asked Pjerrou if MRC was possibly doing a little better with Jani running its forest she gave me an emphatic "no." When I asked Bull the same question I got another emphatic "no." But then, almost in the same breath, she intoned: "We just got some concessions on a plan on Greenwood Creek that we made a huge brouhaha over; in the last week they've caved in and are retaining all the old growth." Jani says he's going to keep up a dialogue with any environmental group that behaves in a civil manner.

His definition of "civil" is, well, generous. For example, you log on to Save the Redwoods/Boycott The Gap's Web site (created by Mary Bull's Guardians of Elk Creek Old Growth and shared with the Greenwood Watershed Association) by punching in "Gapsucks.org." After that you don't expect --or get--much text that is civil or even interesting, and you read nothing about the genuine reforms MRC has implemented. Still, that's not to say that in its first year and a half of business MRC hasn't made mistakes. For one thing, the company went forward with some controversial L-P timber-harvest plans. Looking to display its inventory to prospective land buyers, L-P had applied for a large number of plans before it put its forest on the auction block. Some were too controversial even for L-P, a fact that Dean and the Fishers may not have known. When MRC began implementing some of the L-P plans it got eaten alive by the enviros. Maybe it should have moved slower.

On the other hand, there weren't lots of choices. MRC inherited about nine months worth of state-approved plans. Basically, it had two options: shut down its mills and lay off its workers or proceed with logging. It chose the latter. Since then it has moved ahead with superb plans of its own and has substantially amended L-P's. But don't expect to read about that by connecting to the Internet and typing in "Gapsucks.org."

What you can read about on the Save the Redwoods/Boycott The Gap's Web site and in the rambling harangues issuing from the Mendocino Watersheds Alliance and its members is the fact that MRC, like L-P, uses herbicides. The Fishers, Mary Pjerrou informed The San Francisco Bay Guardian, "are going to gas us and take our trees. They are going to poison our children and send the coho salmon to extinction." Actually, MRC uses a relatively benign herbicide (Garlon), delivering it entirely by hand on the ground and protecting fish-bearing streams with 100-foot buffers. When you clearcut old growth, as did L-P and previous owners, brushy species like tanoak take over. "To be profitable they've got to turn those lands back to conifers," says the Extension Service's Giusti. "Over time, I would hope that their silvicultural practices would be such that chemical treatments would cease. Maintain enough canopy and these weedy species will be held in check. Right now they're doing a lot of cleanup."

As The Santa Rosa Press Democrat editorialized back on November 20, 1998, "One would have expected North Coast activists to welcome the Fisher family of San FranciscoŠAnd the Fishers arrived with a demonstrated record of environmental commitment. Here was a family that gave millions of dollars to environmental causesŠSurely, people committed to environmental protection would give the new company, Mendocino Redwoods, time to prove its stewardship. Six months later, activists are mounting attacks on the Fishers' business holdingsŠ.This is the dogma: Don't bother us with the complexities of timber economics. Don't permit a fair hearing or adequate time to demonstrate commitment. All timber companies are bad. If the Fisher family takes this kind of public pounding, the next prospective investor will ask, what are the chances that I will get a fair shake?"

I asked Mary Bull and Mary Pjerrou what they thought the Fishers should do with their redwoods, virtually all of which are second growth. The answer was: cut none of them-i.e., let them become old growth. In Pjerrou's words: "I think they should set them all aside and invest money in restoration work, particularly to employ out-of-work fishermen and timber workers. I don't think they should cut anymore. We're talking about people who have an eleven-billion-dollar fortune. They're in the Rockefeller class. They could do this."

Indeed they could. But that's not how the real world works, and that's not how businesses work. Moreover, they wouldn't be accomplishing much for fish and wildlife. When you take an industrial forest out of production, you put that much more pressure on other industrial forests. And there aren't enough rich philanthropists to buy up and protect significant chunks of commercial forestland. Sandy Dean and the Fishers can do far more for trout, salmon and other forest resources by setting an example for the world.

Meanwhile, environmental groups in California and elsewhere should remember that it's OK to train your people to be watchdogs and even attack dogs. Once trained, it's OK for them to watch everyone. But it's not OK for them to attack everyone. What makes an effective environmentalist is what makes an effective forester--selectivity.