August 27th 2015
8/27/15 Frank Hartzell Mendocino Beacon Around 120 local residents packed the Caspar Community Center's meeting past full Tuesday night and everybody who spoke up was critical of Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC) and/or the process used by the Rainforest Alliance over the past 15 years to grant the timber company "green" certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). "I don't see a lot of support for what MRC is doing," said Bill Heil, longtime activist on local and national environmental issues. Stephen Grado, socioeconomic auditor for Rainforest Alliance, led the meeting for a three-person team spending the week looking at whether MRC will be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council again. The company was first certified in 2000 and has been recertified every year with a full inspection process every 5 years. John Andersen, director of forest policy for Mendocino/Humboldt Redwood Companies, gave a short speech at the start of the meeting. Andersen invited anyone in the audience to contact him to see the forest practices first hand. He said the company has been managed so that someone can put their finger on a map and say, "I want to go there." Andersen then left. Grado said the audit team normally asks representatives of the company being considered to leave the room so that discussion can be as frank as possible. Locals told Grado stories of cancer, miscarriage and a child being born with leukemia, which they attributed to the chemicals used in the forest. Grado explained that Rainforest Alliance applies the standards set by FSC. While he said audience input was important, Grado repeatedly said the framework restricted the Rainforest Alliance. "I know some stakeholders have issues that are very legitimate. But if they are not in the standards, there is nothing we can do," said Grado. Grado said the process did not allow them to tell the company what forest practices to use. He said Arsenal, the pesticide the audience was concerned about was currently on FSC's approved list. Locals hinted at of accused Grado of "green-washing". The auditor was unflappable and often frustrated the crowd by answering he didn't know something or providing scant details. "We cannot provide advice or consulting services, we can't tell them what to do we are not prescriptive... We are not here to make the company look good or look bad. We are here to get your input." Els Cooperrider compared what Grado said about restrictions of the process to certifying the ovens and ignoring the genocide. She told how Grado had come to her house five years ago and heard from the rural Turtle Creek (Comptche area) community and the problems created by pesticide use in "hack and squirt". "You rubber stamped MRC's policies." A favorite question that the audience asked was where Rainforest Alliance's funding comes from. "I don't know anything about the funding," Grado said when the question came from the audience at the start of the meeting. Susan Miller said the name Rainforest Alliance was chosen to confuse people with Rain Forest Action Network, a much better known environmental group. "This is a front for corporations to allow them to do what they are doing and liquidate the resources, as they have been liquidated for so long, they are a self-certifying organization... The $52 million (budget) comes from the corporations they are certifying." Stefan Bergmann, Rainforest Alliance's associate manager for the United States, said the organization is a 501 C3 non profit. He said one of the biggest sources of money was private donors, "like yourselves." "Or the Koch Brothers?" said someone in the audience. "No, no, not to my knowledge," said Bergmann. "We do have partners who are corporations, yes, but the corporations we work with are some of the most innovative around," said Bergmann. No names were mentioned. Someone demanded to know if they take money from the companies they certified. "We charge individual companies like (MRC)," said Bergmann. When Grado was again challenged later in the meeting he said he had never looked into the funders of the RFA. "You should for your own conscience. You are their mouthpiece," came from the audience. "I am not their mouthpiece, I don't work for them," replied Grado. The heckler persisted with questions about how the money behind the company might determine what went on.  "I'm not here to answer your questions. I'm here to get your input," said Grado. The standards include 10 principles, 56 criteria, and 192 indicators, all of which can be viewed at the website of the Forest Stewardship Council. Several audience members found materials in the standards that stated companies should be reducing pesticide use and finding alternatives and that public safety should be a prime directive in forest management. Locals have repeatedly emphasized over the years that RFA should be reducing pesticide use more if they are truly upholding the standards. Most of the controversy surrounding MRC focused on its use of pesticides, especially in hack and squirt. This refers to a timber management process where tan oak trees are killed and left standing. Firefighters say the dead trees create a fire hazard in the likely event of forest fires. Jenny Shattuck said 16 years ago she was awakened by four men doing night spraying to kill hardwoods. She was pregnant at the time. "Four months later my son was born with acute...leukemia and have to have an blood transplant. This awakened me to the forest practices around me." Shattuck said her son's lack of an immune system has been a struggle for all his 16 years. "I get frustrated when I see a commercial that says, "this is what a healthy forest looks like...This is why you need to buy MRC products." She said the tan oak forest sprayed and killed back then is currently a "dead zone," where the trees have not fallen and animals and birds don't go. The two dozen odd speakers who participated in the meeting were mostly neighbors of MRC' lands, volunteer firefighters and environmental and community activists. Two men from the Anderson Logging Company were on hand, but did not speak. Most of the controversy surrounding MRC focused on its use of pesticides, especially in "Hack and Squirt." This refers to a timber management process where tan oak trees are killed and left standing. Firefighters say the dead trees create a fire hazard in the likely event of forest fires. Others were concerned about the affects of Arsenal. Tan oaks are killed by being cut (hack) and having pesticides applies to the cut are of the tree (squirt). Removing tan oaks is part of MRC efforts to bring back productive redwood forests. Biologists generally agree that historic and some more recent logging practices turned the forest into a thicket of weeds and plants that love sun. Tan oaks have taken over in some areas. Pampas grass, for example, won't grow in a natural local forest, but composes a ferocious invasive species especially in formerly clearcut areas. Anna Marie Sternberg pointed out that the tan oaks have always been part of the forest and their acorns provided a key food for local Native Americans. Tan oak bark was a key export in the early days of Mendocino. Tan oaks provide shade that redwoods like in a transitional forest. She said MRC is trying to turn the forest into a monoculture tree farm plantation. "What is happening in our forests is not sustainable," said Laura Anderson from the Mendocino Environmental Center. "They say they are killing hardwoods. These pesticides don't stay into the hardwoods. They go  into the soil, they get into the bugs." Andrean Luna said the forest is in a "whole new ballgame" now with climate change, the drought, and the cumulative impacts of more than a century of logging on forests now being logged by MRC. Malcom MacDonald gave a history of logging in the area, putting MRC's ownership into perspective. He said MRC was also killing eucalyptus groves. He said in one place MRC workers had only partly killed the trees, leaving more of a mess than when they started. He said that kind of oversight reflected more poorly on the company than some of the criticisms from the crowd, which he said were off base on facts about MRC. When asked by this reported during the meeting how many audits he had done and if RFA ever said "no" to certification, Grado, proved again hard to pin down. He replied this was his 88th audit. Apparently, decertification is very rare but the process makes clients better. "I have been involved with some companies where we have dinged them where they have temporarily lost their certification. The main thing is we have seen companies operating on a shoe string and we have seen major improvement from them," Grado said.