0001

01 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

02 U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE

04 PUBLIC HEARING

05 regarding

06 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT/ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

06 REPORT FOR THE HEADWATERS FOREST ACQUISITION AND

07 PACIFIC LUMBER COMPANY HABITAT CONSERVATION

07 PLAN AND SUSTAINED YIELD PLAN

09 RADISSON HOTEL, LOS ANGELES WEST, PACIFICA BALLROOM,

10 6161 WEST CENTINELA AVE., CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA

11 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1998

12 1:00 P.M. AND 6:00 P.M.

14 PRESIDING: LOTARIO ORTEGA, Retired Solicitor

14 Department of the Interior

15 Albuquerque, New Mexico

16 APPEARING: BRUCE HALSTEAD, Field Supervisor

16 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

17 Coastal California Fish and

17 Wildlife Office

18 1125 16th Street, Room 209

18 Arcata, California 95521-5582

19 JERRY AHLSTROM, Chief of Forest

20 Practice

20 California Department of Forestry

21 Sacramento, California

22 JAMES LECKY

22 National Marine Fisheries Service

23 (Session 2 only)

25 Reported by:

25 Amy R. Kuramoto, CSR No. 10157 File No. 1027802

0002

01 I N D E X

02 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1998

04 SESSION PAGE

05 Session 1 3

06 Session 2 114

0003

01 SESSION 1

02 1:05 P.M.

03 * * * * *

05 MR. ORTEGA: Good afternoon, ladies and

06 gentlemen. Welcome to this public hearing.

07 The United States Fish and Wildlife

08 Service and National Marine Fisheries Service and

09 California Department of Forestry and Fire

10 Protection and the California Department of Fish and

11 Game are conducting a joint process for the taking

12 of comments on an Environmental Impact Statement and

13 Environmental Impact Report for the Headwaters

14 Forest Acquisition and the Pacific Lumber Company

15 Habitat Conservation Plan and Sustained Yield Plan.

16 My name is Lotario D. Ortega. I am an

17 attorney, retired from the United States Department

18 of the Interior, Office of the Solicitor. I will be

19 serving as the presiding official for this hearing.

20 Here with me at the head table are the

21 following agency representatives: at the far end is

22 Mr. Bruce Halstead, of the United States Fish and

23 Wildlife Service; and his office is in Arcata,

24 California. He works out of the Portland region.

25 Right next to me to my right is

0004

01 Jerry Ahlstrom, who is with the California

02 Department of Forestry. His office is in

03 Sacramento.

04 You will find an information table in

05 the lobby or in the room outside this room with

06 written materials about the proposed action and the

07 documents that are involved in this process.

08 At this point, I would like to

09 introduce Bruce Halstead, of the U.S. Fish and

10 Wildlife Service, who will give you a brief overview

11 of the proposals.

12 MR. HALSTEAD: Thank you, Terry.

13 Can you hear me okay?

14 Good afternoon. My name is Bruce

15 Halstead, and I'm with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife

16 Service in Arcata, California.

17 The federal Endangered Species Act has

18 established protections for species listed as

19 threatened and endangered and provides for

20 authorization of certain impacts or such impacts

21 complied with criteria established by the Act.

22 The most fundamental protection

23 provided by the Act is the prohibition against take

24 of listed species. "Take" is defined as to harass,

25 harm, pursue, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or

0005

01 collect, or to attempt to engage in any such

02 conduct.

03 "Incidental take" is defined as take

04 that is incidental to and not for the purpose of the

05 carrying out of an otherwise unlawful activity.

06 When an incidental take may result from the actions

07 of state or local governments, corporations, or

08 private individuals, Section 10 of the Endangered

09 Species Act directs the Secretaries of the

10 Department of the Interior and the Department of

11 Commerce to issue permits for incidental take when

12 certain conditions are met by the applicant. Those

13 conditions are described in detail in the Act.

14 In order to provide more time for your

15 comments, I will only summarize the conditions

16 briefly. Most importantly, the applicant must

17 submit a conservation plan which has become known as

18 the Habitat Conservation Plan, or HCP. Among other

19 things, the conservation plan must describe the

20 impact of the taking and the steps the applicant

21 will take to minimize and mitigate such impacts.

22 The standards for the agencies'

23 evaluation of the HCP are also described in the Act.

24 Most importantly, the agencies must find that the

25 taking will not appreciably reduce the likelihood of

0006

01 survival and recovery of the species in the wild.

02 If the statutory conditions are met, the Incidental

03 Take Permit will be issued by the U.S. Fish and

04 Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries

05 Service.

06 The Pacific Lumber Company has prepared

07 an HCP and submitted an application for an

08 Incidental Take Permit for several species. Also,

09 the United States Congress and the California

10 legislature have approved appropriations for

11 acquisition of portions of Pacific Lumber Company's

12 property if the HCP is approved.

13 Because the issuance of an Incidental

14 Take Permit is a federal action, the process is

15 subject to review under the National Environmental

16 Policy Act, or NEPA. The State of California is

17 also undertaking an environmental review under the

18 California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA;

19 therefore, the state and federal agencies have

20 entered into an agreement to prepare a single

21 environmental documental called a joint EIR/EIS.

22 Impacts considered under NEPA and CEQA

23 are not limited to the impacts on listed species,

24 but include all impacts of the action affecting the

25 human environment. In addition to evaluation of the

0007

01 effects of the implementation of the Habitat

02 Conservation Plan, the joint EIR/EIS will cover the

03 impacts of the proposed acquisition.

04 This public meeting is conducted as

05 part of the public comment period on the EIR/EIS.

06 The public comment period will close on

07 November 16th, 1998. Because the congressional

08 appropriation includes a deadline of March 1st,

09 1999, for completion of the entire process, the

10 public comment period will not be extended beyond

11 November 16th.

12 On behalf of the Fish and Wildlife

13 Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, who

14 couldn't make it here for this meeting. They'll be

15 here this evening for the evening session, I thank

16 you for the effort you have made to attend this

17 meeting and also thank you in advance for your

18 comments.

19 Now, we will hear some introductory

20 words from the representative of the State of

21 California.

22 Jerry?

23 MR. AHLSTROM: Good afternoon. My name is

24 Jerry Ahlstrom. I'm with the California Department

25 of Forestry and Fire Protection in Sacramento, and

0008

01 I'm a Staff Chief of the Forest Practices Program.

02 The California Department of Forestry

03 and Fire Protection is the state lead agency under

04 the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA,

05 for this project. The department will use the

06 Environmental Impact Report, or EIR, to evaluate

07 environmental impacts of the Sustained Yield Plan

08 submitted by Pacific Lumber Company.

09 The department will use the EIR to

10 identify potentially significant adverse impacts and

11 to determine whether the Sustained Yield Plan needs

12 to be modified with alternatives or feasible

13 mitigation measures to avoid or mitigate those

14 impacts. This EIR is a joint document with the

15 federal Environmental Impact Statement.

16 Sustained Yield Plans, or SYPs, are one

17 of the mechanisms that timberland owners can use to

18 meet the State's requirement for maintaining maximum

19 sustained production of high-quality timber products

20 while giving consideration to the values relating

21 to, among other things, watersheds, fisheries, and

22 the wildlife.

23 SYPs must include projections of timber

24 growth and harvesting over at least a hundred-year

25 planning horizon, a fish and wildlife assessment,

0009

01 and a watershed assessment. Subsequent, timber

02 harvest plans may rely on the approved SYP to the

03 extent that the issues are addressed in that SYP.

04 Following approval, the SYP is enforced for a period

05 of no more than ten years.

06 The department does not normally

07 prepare an EIR for Sustained Yield Plans and usually

08 uses its CEQA functional equivalency process under

09 the Forest Practices Act; however, in this case, it

10 was judged to be more efficient to prepare an EIR as

11 a joint document with the federal EIS.

12 On behalf of the department, I welcome

13 everybody this afternoon and look forward to your

14 comments.

15 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, gentlemen.

16 Public comments on the documents that

17 are involved, the EIS and the EIR and the Sustained

18 Yield Plan, will be accepted until November 16th,

19 1998.

20 After review and consideration of your

21 comments and all the other information gathered

22 during the comment period, the agencies will prepare

23 a final Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental

24 Impact Report.

25 The purpose of this hearing is to

0010

01 receive your oral comments on the proposals.

02 Information you offer on all aspects of these

03 proposals is very important and will be carefully

04 considered.

05 Now, because of the importance of your

06 comments, it is necessary that we follow certain

07 procedures here this afternoon. If you want to

08 present comments at this hearing, we ask that you

09 please register at the table outside this room in

10 the foyer. When you register, please indicate any

11 organization that you represent.

12 When you are called to present your

13 comments, please come forward to one of the two

14 microphones here at the front. Begin your

15 presentation by stating your full name, and please

16 spell it for accuracy on the record and then

17 indicate what organization, if any, you represent.

18 I will call at the time that I call for

19 public statements two names, the name of the person

20 who will be speaking next and then the one to follow

21 so you can be prepared to come up immediately after

22 the first speaker has finished.

23 We prefer not to limit the time for

24 presentations when we have a number that can be

25 accommodated with any time frame that we have

0011

01 allotted; however, I would ask and urge each of you

02 to keep your comments down to a reasonable amount of

03 time. Take into account, please, that others who

04 will follow you should not be shorted of their time

05 because of your presentation.

06 Now, this is an informal hearing, so

07 you will not be questioned or cross-examined in

08 connection with your comments. Also, it is not

09 possible during the time that we have available here

10 to answer your questions. Official responses to

11 issues that are raised during the comment period

12 will be covered in the final Environmental Impact

13 Statement/Environmental Impact Report.

14 Your statements are being recorded by a

15 Certified Court Reporter to accurately preserve them

16 for the record. Now, please keep in mind, however,

17 that the reporter will not record any statements

18 from the audience or which are made to the audience.

19 Comments must be made into the microphones and

20 addressed to the table here in front.

21 In order to allow as many people as

22 possible to speak, it is important also that

23 everyone maintain an atmosphere of courtesy and

24 respect for each and every speaker; therefore, I ask

25 you to refrain from applause, to discourage

0012

01 argument, cheering, or anything else that would

02 disrupt the audience. We will maintain a fair and

03 neutral atmosphere in order to properly record all

04 comments into the record.

05 Now, instead of presenting oral

06 comments this afternoon or in addition to any oral

07 comments that you may have, you may also submit

08 comments in writing. Written comments may be

09 submitted today to the staff at the registration

10 table, or you may mail them to Mr. Bruce Halstead,

11 at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. His address is

12 1125 16th Street, Room 209, Arcata, California. The

13 address is available at the registration and

14 information tables in the lobby. Written comments

15 will be accepted only until November 16, 1998.

16 Please also remember written comments will be given

17 the same consideration as any oral comments

18 presented here today.

19 At this point, let us proceed with the

20 oral comments. First, Teri Cohan Link.

21 MS. COHAN LINK: Good afternoon, gentlemen.

22 My name is Teri Cohan Link, T-e-r-i, C-o-h-a-n,

23 L-i-n-k. I'm representing the Coalition on the

24 Environment and Jewish Life.

25 I'm going to be reading from excerpts

0013

01 from a statement on protecting the ecological

02 integrity of the Headwaters Forest.

03 The American people have a solemn,

04 moral, and religious obligation to safeguard the

05 ecological integrity of the Headwaters Forest

06 complex, which contains the last remaining

07 unprotected virgin redwood groves in North America.

08 This ecosystem is of vital importance

09 to the protection and recovery of endangered and

10 threatened creatures and its significance as a work

11 of the creator.

12 Protecting the Headwaters Forest would

13 assist in the preservation of the marbled murrelet,

14 spotted owl, and coho salmon.

15 The Coalition on the Environment and

16 Jewish Life, CEJL, has called upon Pacific Lumber

17 Company and the U.S. Government to protect the

18 ecological integrity of the Headwaters Forest

19 complex by developing a conservation plan that would

20 conform to the principles adopted by the Jewish

21 Council for Public Affairs for strengthening of

22 habitat protections.

23 Such a plan should prohibit harvesting

24 of any kind in areas designated as critical habitat,

25 for endangered species, including all remaining

0014

01 old-growth redwood groves, and require that the plan

02 be reevaluated if scientific investigation reveals

03 new information about the habitat.

04 CEJL again urges Pacific Lumber Company

05 to continue a full moratorium on all salvage logging

06 operations in ancient redwood groves until the final

07 resolution of Pacific Lumber's Habitat Conservation

08 Plan.

09 The Jewish tradition calls upon us to

10 serve as guardians of God's creation. The

11 preservation of species is a Jewish imperative. As

12 Nocmanades (phonetic) wrote, Scripture does not

13 permit the destruction of a species. It's

14 Deuteronomy 22:6.

15 The Psalms teaches us that forests are

16 to serve as homes for God's animals. The trees of

17 the eternal have their fill, the Cedars of Lebanon

18 which God has planted where the birds make their

19 nests. As for the stork, the cyprus trees are their

20 house. That's Psalm 104:16 through 17.

21 Protecting the ecological integrity of

22 the Headwaters Forest would prevent any possible

23 violation of Balltash'heet (phonetic), do not

24 destroy. Based on the prohibition in Deuteronomy

25 against cutting down fruit trees in a time of war,

0015

01 the rabbis developed the principle of Balltash'heet

02 which prohibits needless wasteful destruction.

03 Destruction of some of the few remaining ancient

04 redwood forests, unless necessary for some

05 lifesaving cost, may well be a violation of

06 Balltash'heet.

07 The ten-year struggle to protect the

08 Headwaters Forest exemplifies both the strengths and

09 limitations of our nation's laws regarding the

10 protection of endangered species and habitats.

11 The federal Endangered Species Act

12 encodes into law a moral principle shared by Jewish

13 tradition and the vast majority of Americans alike.

14 It is wrong for human beings to knowingly cause the

15 extinction of a unique form of life. The Act sets a

16 mandate for the federal government to take actions

17 necessary to prevent extinction, including the

18 protection of habitat that is critical to the

19 survival and recovery of an endangered species. It

20 has done much good rescuing much species from the

21 brink of extinction.

22 CEJL and the JCPA strongly support the

23 re-authorization of the Endangered Species Act. At

24 the same time, in the case of the Headwaters Forest

25 and many other ecosystems around the nation, the

0016

01 limitations of the Act have impeded its stated

02 goals. The Endangered Species Act has enabled

03 conservation advocates to successfully challenge the

04 logging practices of Pacific Lumber Company in order

05 to protect the remaining old-growth groves held by

06 Pacific Lumber.

07 Since being taken over by MAXXAM,

08 Pacific Lumber Company has failed to uphold the

09 spirit of the Act, but rather has sought to maximize

10 its profit through maximum logging. The limitation

11 of the Endangered Species Act has enabled Pacific

12 Lumber to take actions which have degraded habitat

13 critical to the recovery of the marbled murrelet,

14 spotted owl, and coho salmon.

15 In July 1997, the Jewish Council for

16 Public Affairs and the Coalition on the Environment

17 and Jewish Life endorsed the Endangered Species

18 Recovery Act, introduced by representative

19 George Miller, of California, as an effective remedy

20 to the shortcomings of the current Endangered

21 Species Act, which serves as this nation's most

22 effective ark for the protection of endangered

23 creatures.

24 Moved by both the deep concern of

25 thousands of citizens about the protection of the

0017

01 Headwaters Forest and our own longstanding

02 convictions and policies, CEJL and JCPA call upon

03 the federal and state governments to develop a

04 process whereby citizens of the region can actively

05 participate in conservation plans for Pacific Lumber

06 lands, including on-site monitoring of lumber

07 operations.

08 The biological inheritance of our

09 nation belongs to all of us and to future

10 generations. Conservation planning and monitoring

11 should therefore include broad citizen

12 participation. CEJL and JCPA urge Pacific Lumber

13 Company and all parties concerned about protection

14 of the Headwaters Forest ecosystem to work to

15 achieve a solution that both protects the forest

16 ecosystem and provides for the workers and families

17 dependent upon Pacific Lumber for their livelihood.

18 I'd like to read a few brief excerpts

19 from the Headwaters Sanctuary Project. These are

20 their talking points.

21 This Habitat Conservation Plan deals a

22 lethal blow to California's devastated fisheries.

23 The coho salmon, once abundant in California's

24 rivers and streams will likely go extinct if the

25 aquatic provisions of the HCP are not strengthened.

0018

01 The interim no-cut buffer zones around

02 fish-bearing streams have been arbitrarily set at

03 100 feet. This prescription was arrived upon by

04 purely political means when legislators split the

05 difference between the scientific bottom line of

06 170 feet and the company's proposed 30-foot buffers.

07 The result is inadequate and far from the scientific

08 consensus on necessary protection levels for these

09 imperiled fish, which falls between 170 feet and

10 600 feet.

11 The watershed assessment process is

12 precluded by the HCP from developing no-cut buffers

13 that are adequate to protect coho salmon by capping

14 the no-cut buffers at 170 feet. The purpose of

15 conducting a watershed assessment is to allow

16 biologists to look at the unique conditions of each

17 watershed and to determine the needs of the species

18 on a site-specific basis. Forcing biologists to go

19 into a watershed assessment with predetermined

20 buffer zones negates the purposes of the process.

21 This HCP will cause landslides by

22 allowing clear-cutting on steep slopes and in

23 sensitive areas such as Bear River and North Fork

24 Mattole River. Sediment from these weakened slopes

25 will course through streams for decades, further

0019

01 destroying critical habitat for coho salmon, Mattole

02 chinook, and many other species.

03 Thank you.

04 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, Ms. Link.

05 Jerry Rubin will be followed by

06 Saran Kirschbaum.

07 MR. RUBIN: Good afternoon. My name is Jerry

08 Rubin, J-e-r-r-y, R-u-b-i-n. I'm director of the

09 Los Angeles Alliance for Survival. We have

10 6,000 members in Southern California, our grass

11 roots in environmental organization.

12 I thank you for your diligence in being

13 here today. It was an honor to meet you all

14 personally a few moments ago.

15 I know for a fact there's many, many

16 people working on election campaigns now and

17 volunteering, supporting environmental candidates,

18 so don't let the turnout be an indicator of the

19 crucial import of this issue and how people really

20 feel about it in Southern California and throughout

21 the entire state.

22 I'm not a scientist, and I'm not an

23 attorney. You'll be hearing many, many speaking

24 points dealing with the scientific aspects of this

25 plan.

0020

01 Basically, my understanding is the plan

02 is very deficient. My understanding is that Pacific

03 Lumber has a very bad criminal record and is showing

04 strong corporate irresponsibility.

05 This plan has an incomplete watershed

06 assessment. The Sustainable Yield Plan is not

07 sustainable. Mitigation for endangered species is

08 inadequate. Protection for coastal streams and

09 salmon is also inadequate. The only viable option

10 is a conservation-based plan.

11 I want to take one moment to comment on

12 something that I think is very, very important, and

13 I know it doesn't relate directly to the plan, but I

14 came here today to also speak from my heart. I'm

15 going to an environmental forum tonight. I couldn't

16 make it tonight, and I missed a dentist appointment

17 to be here today. That's how important this is.

18 I spoke on the telephone last week with

19 a young woman that has been sitting in a tree

20 200 feet in the air since December 10th, and I'm

21 sure you all know of her. I'm sure millions more

22 people know about her because of the article. It

23 was on the front page of the Los Angeles Times a few

24 days ago.

25 She's not a scientist either. She's

0021

01 not a lawyer. After some tragedies in her life

02 where she lost some motor skills, she lost some of

03 her short-term memory, she went searching for some

04 spiritual communion with our planet, and she

05 happened to wander up to the Headwaters Forest.

06 As you know already, after sitting in a

07 tree a few days with other people, on December 10th

08 last year, she decided to go up there and stay there

09 until, I guess, we do the right thing; and that's

10 what I'm appealing to you diligent people. I know

11 the good work that you do in your department. I

12 know the commitment that you have to the

13 environment; but what I'm appealing to you today is

14 to go even deeper in your heart to think about what

15 we can do to save the environment. We know business

16 is important. We know that already, but let's go

17 the extra mile to protect the endangered species and

18 protect this precious, precious planet.

19 As Chief Seattle once said, "The earth

20 does not belong to us. We belong to the earth."

21 Thank you very, very much for your time

22 and your diligence.

23 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, Mr. Rubin.

24 Saran Kirschbaum will be followed by

25 Parker Butterfield.

0022

01 MS. KIRSCHBAUM: By the way, Saran is

02 S-a-r-a-n, K-i-r-s-c-h-b-a-u-m, and "Kirschbaum"

03 means cherry tree.

04 Teri Cohan Link and I are members of

05 the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.

06 That includes over 26 major Jewish organizations

07 throughout the United States. The Jewish Council

08 for Public Affairs, which is JCPA, is also involved

09 and I have left literature out there with all this

10 stuff.

11 Reverend Peter Morkoklis (phonetic),

12 who is the Director of the Environmental Ministries

13 and member of the eco-justice working group of the

14 National Churches on Christ, has asked that his name

15 and organizations go on record with the above groups

16 in support of preserving Headwaters and all its

17 diverse flora and fauna, as well as protecting all

18 the old-growth forest, its inhabitants, many of

19 which are endangered now and for the future. You

20 might say that this is an interfaith get-together.

21 In the Talmud, which is the collection

22 of Jewish law and traditions dating back over

23 1600 years ago, there is a very famous story. It's

24 about two men fighting over a piece of land, and

25 they took all of their papers, and yet they couldn't

0023

01 decide on who owned the land. They both had equal

02 rights. So they went to the rabbi. They said,

03 "Rabbi, you have to make the decision."

04 And the rabbi looked at the papers, and

05 the papers were all in order, and he didn't know

06 what to do; so he went out and he said, "What I'm

07 going to do is ask the land."

08 So he went out and put his ear to the

09 ground, and he got up and he said, "Gentlemen, the

10 land says it belongs to neither of you. You belong

11 to it." And that's over 1600 years ago.

12 Only 4 percent of the old growth

13 remains, much of it in Headwaters. The Sustained

14 Yield Plan from Pacific Lumber proposes to harvest

15 more forest than it will ever grow back in the

16 ten years. In the first four years, 25 percent or

17 54,382 acres will be logged, and over 35,000 of

18 these will be clear-cut with over 2500 acres of

19 uncut old growth included.

20 Under the proposed HCP, Pacific Lumber

21 can have an Incidental Take Permit allowing them

22 50 years to endanger species and destroy habitat.

23 It takes only a moment to destroy something that has

24 taken millions of years to evolve. This is from a

25 company which just a few days ago was issued its

0024

01 fourth criminal citation stemming from violating

02 California forestry laws. These violations and the

03 previous ones, of which there are many, hopefully

04 will be enough to suspend Pacific Lumber's license.

05 I don't know what the standards are about giving

06 licenses and ERAs and all that -- not ERAs, but you

07 know what I'm talking about -- all that stuff to

08 somebody who has had all of these citations given to

09 them.

10 The present plan will give permission

11 to Pacific Lumber to liquidate the habitat of the

12 marbled murrelet, disrupt the habitat of the spotted

13 owl, and allow for inadequate buffer zones to

14 prevent stream disruption, the signing of the

15 distinction for the coho and chinook and others; in

16 other words, there are no adequate protections that

17 we've been able to find for the complex habitat

18 needs of the flora and fauna which live in

19 Headwaters.

20 What is needed for Headwaters to

21 survive and recover from past assaults is a plan

22 which will provide immediate protection and a chance

23 for restoration in the next 50 to 100 years. It

24 must be based on the best possible scientific

25 knowledge available and flexible enough to change as

0025

01 additional scientific knowledge comes in. We are

02 learning new things every day, and your best

03 scientists will tell you that they still don't know

04 hardly anything at all about anything. We're just

05 beginning to understand.

06 The actions that your group takes will

07 have profound consequences in the years to come.

08 Long after you and I are only memories, your

09 decisions will be charting the course for whether

10 the ecological integrity of Headwaters is preserved

11 or not and whether our children's children will

12 thank us for saving Headwaters, this remnant of

13 ancient forest and all the life therein.

14 Thank you very much.

15 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, Ms. Kirschbaum.

16 Parker Butterfield will be followed by

17 Betty Connolly.

18 MR. BUTTERFIELD: My name is Parker

19 Butterfield. That is P-a-r-k-e-r,

20 B-u-t-t-e-r-f-i-e-l-d. I'm vice president of

21 International Forest Products. It was founded by my

22 father back in 1971. I'm also a third generation of

23 the lumber industry. We have two locations in

24 California, one in Fresno and one in Chino.

25 My grandfather owned and operated a

0026

01 sawmill in Piercy, California, and still owns timber

02 in Humboldt County, which my uncle oversees; and he

03 also has a tree farm there in which he grows

04 samplings.

05 When I was in my early teens, my father

06 would bring me to Northern California to help and to

07 learn of the importance of replanting trees on our

08 property in the areas that have previously been

09 logged. He would tell me to do this to ensure a

10 healthy productive forest for all generations to

11 come. You see, it is my hope to pass this on to my

12 son and to my daughter so they could have the

13 assurance of a healthy forest that they can enjoy

14 also.

15 My father and grandfather also stressed

16 the importance of protecting the habitat in the

17 forest. I remember them saying every tree that is

18 harvested, we need to plant at least five and hope

19 for an 80-percent survival rate so the next

20 generation can also enjoy their beauty. The lumber

21 industry understands why we need and have a

22 Sustainable Yield Program, so this is not a new

23 concept.

24 Through my years in dealing with PALCO,

25 they have been the front-runner in protecting their

0027

01 private property and its surrounding habitat. It is

02 my understanding that PALCO has already set aside

03 thousands of acres of old-growth redwood. To me,

04 this shows that they are dedicated to the

05 preservation of both habitat and redwood forest.

06 They also have a program that is

07 sponsored by the North American Wholesale Lumber

08 Association, which I'm a part of, that sponsors

09 elementary school teachers to go to Scotia, to go

10 through their lumber mill, to go through their fish

11 hatcheries, to go through the forest in which they

12 have set aside; and they educate the teachers on the

13 importance of sustained yield and the importance of

14 protecting the habitat so they in return can go back

15 and teach their students. And I find this very

16 admirable that they spend their own time and money

17 to institute this organization.

18 Both my customers and my business

19 depend on a quality product that PALCO manufactures.

20 In my industry, when you mention the name PALCO, my

21 customers are assured they are receiving a

22 dependable product that they in return sell to the

23 public.

24 The Headwaters agreement is indeed

25 historical. It does ensure the protection of

0028

01 ancient forest and its habitat, and it also provides

02 jobs for the men and women who live in the

03 surrounding areas and for those to use PALCO as a

04 source of lumber supply. In all areas of our

05 industrial world, we as consumers use wood products,

06 and it is important to manage those resources in a

07 productive way.

08 I see this agreement to be beneficial

09 for all sides involved. Pacific Lumber Company's

10 HCP plan will protect not only ancient forest, but

11 all wildlife and other plant life that exists in

12 this area. It also promotes a partnership with

13 private landowners and government agencies.

14 I also am not a scientist. I am a

15 businessman, and I am convinced through the

16 extensive research through scientists that this plan

17 is sound and it will protect the conservationists

18 and the habitat in the Headwaters Forest. It will

19 be a tragedy to miss this opportunity; therefore, I

20 ask that this plan be finalized, the one that is set

21 before you.

22 I appreciate your time. Thank you.

23 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, Mr. Butterfield.

24 Betty Connolly will be followed by

25 Todd Shuman.

0029

01 MS. CONNOLLY: Okay. My name is

02 Betty Connolly, B-e-t-t-y, C-o-n-n-o-l-l-y, and I

03 belong to Earth First.

04 I have been in the Headwaters Forest.

05 I have been arrested there. I have seen the

06 conditions of the streams, which are terrible. I

07 have seen the condition of clear-cut, which is

08 awful. There's nothing more damaging to the soul

09 than to go to Northern California and see vast miles

10 of acreage clear-cut, see bleeding stumps of trees,

11 some of which were here 2,000 years ago and are no

12 longer here with us. Tree farms do not replace

13 old-growth forest. Wildlife does not live in tree

14 farms.

15 As Mr. Hurwitz, himself, said, he who

16 owns Pacific Lumber Company, which he got through

17 corporate raiding and junk bonds through Michael

18 Milken -- he, himself, said of the Headwaters,

19 "Sure, it's beautiful, but I believe in the Golden

20 Rule, and he who has the gold rules and I have the

21 gold."

22 Now, this is his attitude. He lives in

23 Houston. He's not even a Californian, and he is

24 destroying the north coast, and he's destroying an

25 integral part of California which we should all love

0030

01 and venerate forever; and anybody who lives in this

02 state who really cares about it --

03 And my family on one side goes back to

04 the 1840s, so we care about it, care about it a

05 great deal.

06 -- should care about what Mr. Hurwitz

07 is doing to the land in Northern California. He let

08 an S&L fail in Houston. He borrowed $1.6 billion

09 through junk bonds supposedly to bail out the S&L,

10 and he turned right around and he made a hostile

11 takeover of Pacific Lumber Company, which had been

12 in a Northern California family for four generations

13 and had all of this lumber responsibly. He took it

14 over and immediately started the clear-cut process.

15 It's ugly. It's demeaning to the State

16 of California. If anybody who lives here truly

17 loves this state, they will put a stop to this.

18 Perhaps we should change the term from "incidental

19 take" to "incidental murder," and then we'll fully

20 understand what Mr. Hurwitz is doing in Northern

21 California.

22 Thank you.

23 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

24 Todd Shuman will be followed by

25 Karen Besser.

0031

01 MR. SHUMAN: Greetings. My name is

02 Todd Shuman, T-o-d-d, S-h-u-m-a-n. I live in

03 Glendale, California. I work as a teacher. I'm a

04 Sierra Club member, but I'm basically representing

05 myself as a citizen activist now.

06 I work on other issues concerning fish

07 on our public lands and other lands around. I have

08 some experience from when I lived up in Santa Cruz

09 with timber harvest in redwood forests, and some of

10 that pertains to this Habitat Conservation Plan, and

11 I'll go into that a little bit.

12 Basically, I have a whole bunch of

13 problems with this Habitat Conservation Plan.

14 There's almost so many that it's hard to know where

15 to start.

16 We can start with the Sustained Yield

17 Plan. We have a Sustained Yield Plan that proposes

18 to harvest 32 percent more of the forest than will

19 grow back over the first decade. We have a variety

20 of other problems.

21 My greatest concern has to do with two

22 particular issues. I work on fish issues, so I'm

23 very concerned about what's going to happen to the

24 fish habitat in this area. I've also worked on

25 marbled murrelet issues, so I'm very concerned about

0032

01 that.

02 My first and probably most important

03 concern about this Habitat Conservation Plan is that

04 it's going to allow very extensive logging in

05 riparian zones. In some of those zones, there's

06 virtually going to be no management at all. Even

07 though there are some standards for dealing with

08 first-class fish-bearing perennial streams, there

09 are virtually no standards for regulating logging on

10 Class III ephemeral drainages, which is where much

11 of the sediment in these very steep, fragile-soil

12 areas results from.

13 I know that because, in my past

14 experience working up in Santa Cruz, we documented

15 and had hydrologists out there documenting the kind

16 of sediment that would flow from road-crossing areas

17 and areas where trees have been filled in ephemeral

18 third-class and fourth-class drainages. These are

19 areas that the California Department of Forestry has

20 systematically ignored.

21 CDF has focused on mass wasting

22 processes primarily and perennial fish-bearing

23 streams; but they've ignored the sediment inputs

24 that come from high up in the drainages where

25 there's maybe only water flow four or five days a

0033

01 year.

02 But when you have disruption in those

03 areas, which you will have extensively in this, you

04 can have massive inputs of sediment that can just

05 blow out streams below. If you don't incorporate

06 that into your models, you're not protecting the

07 habitat, and that habitat is going to disappear.

08 In this plan, there's basically no

09 logging restrictions along all the steep seasonal

10 Class III streams that contribute this kind of

11 sediment. That's a real problem with this plan, and

12 I seriously urge you to go back and look at the

13 literature, talk to some hydrologists -- Bob Curie

14 would be one who's up in the Monterey area -- to

15 focus on what is the kind of sediment, probable

16 sediment, inputs you're going to have from logging

17 in these areas. Right now you're assuming there's

18 not going to be any sediment coming from those

19 areas, so that's a very serious problem.

20 We also have a problem with the process

21 for the way in which logging is going to be

22 regulated in hillside areas away from the stream

23 corridors. You can have all sorts of overland flow

24 that will carry sediment into the streams, and right

25 now the HCP doesn't really have a rigorous and

0034

01 vigorous process in there for ensuring that --

02 basically, it leaves a lot of the control for -- a

03 lot of the authority for controlling erosion from

04 overland flow sources with the company itself, which

05 is not a very good process. So we need much more

06 rigorous processes.

07 Some of this will be submitted. I'm

08 not going to go into a lot of the details of this.

09 My last concern has to do with the

10 marbled murrelet, and I'm very concerned about this

11 deal because even though Pacific Lumber is setting

12 aside a number of areas to protect the habitat, it's

13 receiving permits to log over 9,000 acres of ancient

14 and residual redwood old forest, including 501 acres

15 of uncut old-growth redwood forest.

16 Almost all of this land qualifies as

17 the kind of habitat in which marbled murrelets might

18 nest, and the birds are in fact known to occupy

19 several of the areas slated for the chopping block.

20 If the Grizzly Creek/Owl Creek options

21 in the areas are executed as per the draft HCP,

22 additional ancient forest would be lost, another

23 117 acres of old growth and 530 acres of residual

24 growth in Grizzly Creek.

25 Moreover, what's kind of been

0035

01 completely ignored in this process, since we focused

02 so much on the redwoods, is the fact that over

03 8,000 acres of old-growth Douglas-fir is also going

04 to be eliminated by this whole process. Marbled

05 murrelets and spotted owls use the Douglas-fir just

06 as much as any other forest, and that's basically

07 being eliminated.

08 One thing before I leave is this. I

09 want to talk about how Pacific Lumber has done its

10 marbled murrelet surveys and the inadequacy of that.

11 I'm quoting from an analysis that Environmental

12 Protected Information Center has provided, but it's

13 something that you need to hear and think about,

14 because this is a creature that's on the edge.

15 Pacific Lumber has surveyed for marbled

16 murrelets every summer since 1992; however, the

17 Habitat Conservation Plan itself admits that the

18 surveys were, quote, conducted primarily for the

19 purpose of determining whether a specific stand of

20 old growth could be cleared for harvest. It wasn't

21 conducted uniformly and with a design intended to

22 determine the distribution or density of murrelets

23 on the entire property. As a result, much of the

24 potential murrelet habitat on the property has never

25 been adequately surveyed.

0036

01 Based on a completely unproven and

02 rather arbitrary assumption that murrelets occupy

03 unsurveyed residual old-growth redwood at a rate

04 much lower than that documented in old-growth

05 stands, the HCP estimates a take of between 251 and

06 340 of the slightly less than 1500 birds that are

07 assumed to nest on Pacific Lumber lands.

08 However, the HCP clearly proposes to

09 harvest more than 53 percent of the available

10 habitat. Most of it remains as unsurveyed residual

11 old-growth redwood. If occupancy rates are in fact

12 higher than those estimates by Pacific Lumber, the

13 rate of take could be much higher; and as many as

14 700 murrelets, potentially half of the local

15 population, could be eliminated and die because of

16 this plan.

17 What's most stunning about this HCP is

18 that Pacific Lumber proposes to sacrifice all of

19 this habitat without doing a single additional

20 survey to determine whether there's murrelet nests

21 in these areas and how many of the birds will be

22 killed or displaced by this destruction.

23 So this plan, as it sits right now,

24 given the protocols that the company plans to

25 follow, is going to be a blatant and violent

0037

01 violation of the Endangered Species Act; so you're

02 basically setting yourself up for a major lawsuit by

03 letting this thing go through. So you really need

04 to go back to the blocks on this and look at some of

05 these areas, especially the logging and the

06 inadequate provisions on steep and unstable soils

07 and the amount of liquidation of murrelet habitat

08 that's going to be taking place without any kinds of

09 protocols assuring that there's no murrelets there.

10 So that will be it for now, but thank

11 you.

12 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

13 Karen Besser will be followed by

14 Nancy Voien.

15 MS. BESSER: Hi. I'm Karen Besser, K-a-r-e-n,

16 B-e-s-s-e-r. I'm just representing myself, and I

17 thank you for holding these public hearings.

18 I know you have a tough job trying to

19 accommodate the needs of private industry and trying

20 to save the environment as well; however, when

21 making your decisions, I think you should keep in

22 mind the fact that Pacific Lumber has already been

23 convicted of numerous criminal violations of the

24 forestry laws, so it doesn't seem that generosity

25 towards them is warranted.

0038

01 And I'm also concerned because of the

02 "no surprises" clause that is part of the HCP, and

03 so it's extremely important that you really consider

04 all of these issues carefully now. Because of this

05 "no surprises" clause, in the future, changes can't

06 be made if it's discovered later on that there are

07 problems and the environment is being damaged.

08 A previous speaker, Mr. Butterfield --

09 he's the vice president of the lumber company -- was

10 speaking about the importance of replanting and that

11 he's proud that the forestry industry does that, and

12 that is important; but that doesn't replace the

13 old-growth forest, and that's where the endangered

14 species are, and that is what is so important to

15 protect, unless we're willing to wait another

16 thousand years. That won't help the animals and the

17 endangered species that rely on the old-growth

18 forest.

19 Because there are so many issues, I'm

20 speaking on the coho salmon, and that's all.

21 I lived in Alaska for a few years, and

22 the salmon up there are so abundant; and in addition

23 to just being an incredible animal, it's a thriving

24 industry up there. Many jobs. And I know jobs are

25 an important issue in this battle.

0039

01 Historically, Northern California and

02 Southern California had a coho population that

03 ranged from 125,000 to 400,000. Today there's only

04 about 10,000 left; and consequently, the fishing

05 industry has also been decimated.

06 So I'm grateful that there are buffer

07 zones that have been provided for the Class I and

08 Class II streams, and particularly, the Class I

09 streams that have the fish in them; but I don't

10 think -- it doesn't -- I believe it's 170 feet for

11 the Class I streams. And as far as I can tell, it

12 sounds that science seems to be saying that it

13 should be approximately 300 feet.

14 In addition, I'm a little bit -- I have

15 questions regarding your riparian management zone,

16 which is where you divide this 170 feet into three

17 different bans; and it appears that even in the

18 Class I restricted harvest ban, which is zero to

19 30 feet, some logging could be allowed in certain

20 circumstances. So that concerns me. Then, also,

21 beyond that, 30 to 100 feet, even more circumstances

22 allow for logging.

23 So I think you need to delve into those

24 issues more closely and be sure this time that

25 that's going to be good enough to save these salmon

0040

01 streams because, as the gentleman before me already

02 spoke about, they're easily clogged by the logging.

03 Once the trees are logged there, the streams become

04 clogged with sediment, and they lose their shade,

05 and there are no longer cool streams that support

06 salmon.

07 I'm also concerned because there are no

08 buffer zones for the Class III streams; and even

09 though these don't have fish in them, these are the

10 steep seasonal streams that are further up. And

11 logging will be allowed on those; but it also

12 appears that, you know, those still contribute huge

13 amounts of sediment to the streams below, to the

14 larger streams below, the fish-bearing streams.

15 Especially with logging, it will greatly increase.

16 So I hope that you reconsider putting some buffer

17 zones for the Class III streams.

18 Finally, in addition to around the

19 streams, any of the steep slopes and unstable areas

20 should also have logging restrictions because they,

21 too, greatly increase the chances of landslides

22 which flow down and clog the salmon streams.

23 Thank you.

24 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

25 Nancy Voien, to be followed by

0041

01 David Prather.

02 MS. VOIEN: Nancy Voien is spelled N-a-n-c-y,

03 V-o-i-e-n.

04 I'm employed in the home-building

05 industry; and as a member of the development

06 community, I'm interested in the overall economic

07 impact of the plan as well as the impact to my

08 industry and the home buyers we serve.

09 Pacific Lumber is the largest private

10 employer in Humboldt County. The company directly

11 and indirectly provides thousands of high-quality

12 jobs throughout California. Pacific Lumber provides

13 a resource which is both renewable and vital to the

14 success of the building of homes.

15 The Pacific Lumber Habitat Conservation

16 Plan breaks the logjam between the environmental and

17 economic interests and provides a solution which

18 benefits everybody, even if it pleases nobody.

19 The Pacific Lumber HCP accomplishes two

20 key goals: first, it gives the company the economic

21 use of its land; second, it provides a level of

22 protection to fish and bird species which is

23 unmatched by any other HCP, including stream bank

24 protections which no other timber company in

25 California lives by.

0042

01 The Pacific Lumber HCP should not be

02 allowed to fail. The cost to the species, the

03 company, and the taxpayers will be too high. If

04 this plan is not approved, Pacific Lumber and the

05 agencies will begin negotiating mitigation to

06 occupied habitat on a case-by-case basis. Because

07 the Endangered Species Act protects only occupied

08 habitat, no protection will be given to the

09 unoccupied habitat that would have been covered by

10 the currently proposed global plan.

11 The company will be overburdened by the

12 continual negotiation process and the continual risk

13 of lawsuits from environmental concerns. The

14 taxpayers will be put at risk of paying huge sums of

15 money if Pacific Lumber prevails in a takings

16 lawsuit. Finally, the people of the state of

17 California may lose their last opportunity to

18 protect the Headwaters Forest.

19 For the future of all Californians, I

20 would urge you to approve the Pacific Lumber HCP as

21 written.

22 Thank you.

23 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

24 David Prather, to be followed by

25 Rick Anfinson.

0043

01 MR. PRATHER: My name is David Prather,

02 P-r-a-t-h-e-r. I'm the director of Soma Christian

03 Training Center in Orange County, California.

04 First of all, I would like to say that

05 I spent this morning planting a number of tree

06 species, a few thousand of them; and I planted more

07 than one species.

08 Many years ago, I had the opportunity

09 to work for a major re-foresting company working

10 near Pendleton, Oregon -- between Pendleton, Oregon,

11 and Walla Walla, Washington. We had many, many

12 hundreds of thousands of dollar contracts. I was

13 merely an employee.

14 When the inspectors came, it was very

15 hot, dry weather, a beautiful forest beside us full

16 of bio-diversity. We were mono-cropping. We

17 weren't doing what I was doing this morning, even

18 though I planted four different species this

19 morning.

20 When lumber companies plant -- like in

21 this case, it was Douglas-fir -- they only planted

22 one kind of crop. They removed a myriad of species,

23 many of which have benefits medicinally that are

24 only now beginning to be understood.

25 When we planted these trees, I asked

0044

01 the inspector, "How many of these seedlings will

02 make it?"

03 And their response was: "Do you really

04 want to know?"

05 And I said, "Of course, I want to

06 know."

07 There was a huge crew of people, and

08 this was going down in the books as an area that was

09 being replanted with a renewable forest.

10 Remember, they took many species and

11 many habitats from many animals -- butterflies,

12 birds, mammals -- giant hollow trees, which are the

13 main homes for many, many, many of our breeding

14 species.

15 And their response was: "None of these

16 seedlings will make it." Between, in this case, the

17 elk, the ground squirrels, and gophers and the

18 temperatures, none of them would make it.

19 So, first of all, I can tell you you

20 can fly over Washington and Oregon and many places

21 and see areas that on the books have been replanted,

22 but they're not natural forests. They are no more a

23 real forest than a mannequin is a real person. They

24 don't do justice to the ecosystem that the creation

25 does, the way that God established it.

0045

01 First of all, I would like to point out

02 that because we are a Christian training center, we

03 are also very much involved in the interfaith

04 community. Saint Augustine said the whole duty of

05 man is to glorify God, but what does that mean?

06 Well, one of the aspects of that --

07 And I'm certainly not telling anyone

08 here, and you'll miss the point, I guess, of all of

09 the Holy Scriptures if you assume this is the only

10 point. But one of the points of glorifying God

11 which we find in Genesis 2:15 says that mankind was

12 created in the Hebrew to abad and shamar the

13 creation, and "abad" means to nurture the

14 bio-diversity. And "shamar" means to guard and

15 protect the earth. So one of the ways that we

16 glorify God --

17 And I feel humbled and I feel

18 privileged to be here with this collection of people

19 save those who are here today to defend a criminal

20 act. Primarily, I refer to the representatives of

21 Pacific Lumber that are here today. I am honored to

22 be amongst those of you who are here -- one of our

23 comrades even fell recently, as some of you know --

24 are here to guard and protect the earth.

25 King David is perhaps the second or

0046

01 third best well-known person in the Bible.

02 King David said, "I will not give sleep to my eyes

03 or slumber unto my eyelids until I find a habitation

04 for the Almighty Creator," and he said, "We sought

05 for it and we found it." And if you translate the

06 Hebrew Scriptures, he said, "We found it in the

07 spread-out wilderness of the old-growth canopy."

08 That's where he found a habitation for God.

09 This is something that in the past --

10 just like before Martin Luther came along, salvation

11 by grace rather than works. We call that the Dark

12 Ages. We're still coming out of that darkness, and

13 today Christians are discovering, Jews are

14 discovering, Islamic people are discovering that the

15 Scriptures teach that it's our responsibility to cry

16 out, to protect and defend the bio-diversity on this

17 planet and the spread-out wilderness.

18 In fact, the Bible says, "Woe unto

19 those who join house to house and lay field to field

20 until there's no place that may be placed alone in

21 the midst of the earth."

22 The Book of Revelation goes so far as

23 to say --

24 And I'm speaking to those people that

25 are specifically here, and this is not a threat from

0047

01 me. This is not a threat from me. I do not

02 threaten anyone. But one day you're going to be

03 looking in the eyes of your creator, and he says in

04 Revelation 11:18 that he will ruin all those who

05 ruined the earth.

06 Right now the seeds that you're sowing

07 today is what you're going to harvest tomorrow, and

08 I ask you to start planting into bio-diversity and

09 not like Mr. Hurwitz who made that little mistake,

10 which the Bible says, "The love of money is the

11 source of all evil."

12 I want to talk about the marbled

13 murrelet just for a second. I had the privilege of

14 observing that bird in flight, and I can tell you

15 that there are creatures in nature which make good

16 pets. There are creatures in nature like the

17 opossum, sometimes the coyote, which seem to thrive,

18 even the white-tailed deer, with mankind. They like

19 to be in close human contact. And white-tailed deer

20 like slashed areas to eat the brush. Right in

21 Costa Mesa, where I live, we have opossums that come

22 and get in the garbage cans and raccoons.

23 But the marbled murrelet, like many

24 other species, is a wild thing. It's a bird, but

25 like the spirit of man needs to spend time in the

0048

01 wildness and in the silence.

02 Joel Goldsmith, who wrote a book and is

03 a great spiritual leader amongst a number of people,

04 called -- his teaching is called "The Infinite Way."

05 You have people like Oprah Winfrey and many other

06 people here in our area -- if I mention their names,

07 you would instantly know them -- who follow his

08 teachings. He wrote a book called "The Thunder of

09 Silence."

10 The Bible says that God speaks in our

11 inner being with a still small voice.

12 There's one thing -- and I deplore the

13 destruction of salmon habitat and the destruction of

14 trees that took thousands of years to grow when our

15 children won't know what a miracle looked like if

16 those trees are cut.

17 But the one thing that I really speak

18 out against and no one can mitigate for is something

19 that's becoming so rare, and we certainly shouldn't

20 let somebody from Texas come into California and

21 destroy what is a wilderness area, a wilderness area

22 where we can go out and experience quietness and

23 solitude and tranquility and the presence of the

24 Almighty. You cannot mitigate for that, sir. You

25 cannot go to Nebraska or Iowa or San Diego and

0049

01 recreate the Headwaters Forest.

02 So I want to conclude by saying,

03 Mr. Hurwitz, you share the same Scriptures that I

04 do, and I call you to repentance, to change, to turn

05 around, and to look; and even if you have to live in

06 a little cottage and declare bankruptcy for the rest

07 of your life, and if you gentlemen up there would

08 have to live in poverty the rest of your life and

09 know that one day the Almighty God is going to look

10 at you and say, "You preserved this sanctuary for

11 future generations," your smile will last forever.

12 Thank you very much.

13 MR. ORTEGA: Rick Anfinson, who will be

14 followed by Bill Buchner.

15 MR. ANFINSON: Rick Anfinson, R-i-c-k,

16 A-n-f-i-n-s-o-n, and I'm with Anfinson Lumber Sales.

17 I started in the lumber business

18 35 years ago shoveling sawdust for my dad. I am now

19 the owner of Anfinson Lumber Sales. Having been in

20 this industry full time for over 29 years, I have

21 seen it go through a lot of changes, not all of them

22 good.

23 I believe that the Headwaters Forest

24 agreement is good for the land, the people, and the

25 lumber industry. I've always said that those of us

0050

01 making a living in the remanufacturing of lumber

02 have to be the biggest environmentalists there are.

03 If we chop down a tree today, we'll be out of work

04 tomorrow.

05 The Headwaters agreement has a

06 provision insisting on a Sustained Yield Harvest

07 Plan. That means there will be redwood trees there

08 for generations to come; and with the Sustained

09 Yield Plan is a Habitat Conservation Plan designed

10 to ensure the health of all species that depend on

11 the forest for their livelihood, as we do. This

12 agreement includes provisions for 12,000 acres of

13 forest to be sold undervalued to the government and

14 set aside with no logging for a nature preserve.

15 As a business owner, I have had my

16 share of dealing with different government agencies.

17 I can't tell you how frustrating it can be to have

18 someone else tell you how you can and cannot run

19 your business. I applaud PALCO and all the redwood

20 producers for their patience and for their efforts

21 to save this resource for the generations to follow.

22 The Headwaters Forest acquisition plan

23 will accomplish just that. Remember, all the wealth

24 in the world comes from only three sources: you

25 mine it. You grow it. You harvest it. Nothing

0051

01 else happens if these three don't. This is where it

02 all starts. Nowhere else. It's a shame, for the

03 most part, people do not realize this fact.

04 As an example, take a look at your car.

05 The entire thing came out of the ground. The next

06 time you eat something, think if the farmer didn't

07 plant anything. Or the next time you write on a

08 piece of paper, think about the loggers.

09 The point is that everything in the

10 world comes from these functions, although, for the

11 most part, they are viewed at the wrong end of the

12 scale of importance. It seems that most people do

13 not realize that without these steps, the rest of us

14 would have nothing.

15 Thank you for your time.

16 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

17 Bill Buchner, who will be followed by

18 Teresa Thompson.

19 MR. BUCHNER: Hello. My name is Bill Buchner,

20 B-i-l-l, B-u-c-h-n-e-r.

21 I'm interested in the Headwaters

22 agreement for two main reasons. I believe as a

23 people, we are stewards of this planet and we have

24 the responsibility to manage it well. I've been

25 employed in the lumber industry for 15 years and

0052

01 hope to preserve redwood timber as a resource for

02 generations to come.

03 I worked my way up through the ranks in

04 a sawmill in Sonoma County, California. I've seen

05 log prices double in my short career. I've seen

06 numerous mills close displacing probably thousands

07 of workers.

08 I am now employed by a redwood

09 re-manufacture plant in Southern California. A

10 large amount of our stock comes from Pacific Lumber,

11 from PALCO, and they hold a large enough share of

12 the redwood market that what affects PALCO affects

13 the redwood industry as a whole.

14 In my opinion, Pacific Lumber has been

15 more than reasonable in accommodating the wishes of

16 the environmentally conscious contingent. This plan

17 sets aside 12,000 acres of timberland, one-third of

18 which is old growth, and the rest as a buffer to

19 ensure the old growth remains pristine. This is

20 land we can go out on, a wilderness area we can go

21 out on and sit and be still and quiet. Right now we

22 can't. It's illegal. It's trespassing.

23 On the remaining timberland, a

24 Sustained Yield Plan is in place to guarantee that

25 timber is harvested no faster than it grows. This

0053

01 means there will always be trees. This is my hope

02 and the hope of everyone I know in the lumber

03 industry. We want job security and a sustainable,

04 predictable supply of timber, is the only way that

05 will happen.

06 While this timber is being harvested, a

07 Habitat Conservation Plan is in place to ensure the

08 continued health of all affected species. This plan

09 not only spells out exactly what PALCO will do to

10 protect the habitat provided on their own land, it

11 also has a provision that forces PALCO to prove it

12 works. If fish and wildlife are not being

13 protected, if habitat conditions are not improving,

14 PALCO must meet with state and federal officials to

15 find out what else they need to do.

16 Look at the other large industries in

17 this country: farming, mining, fishing, you name

18 it. Are any of them asked to perform the way PALCO

19 has?

20 This agreement is good for the

21 Headwaters Forest, is good for the lumber industry,

22 and is good for the people.

23 Thank you for your time.

24 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

25 Teresa Thompson will be followed by

0054

01 Valerie Sklarevsky.

02 MS. THOMPSON: T-e-r-e-s-a, T-h-o-m-p-s-o-n.

03 I'm here to speak for the environment,

04 for the trees and animals which have no voice of

05 their own.

06 I'm concerned that the Sustained Yield

07 Plan should really be sustainable. It seems to me

08 that the best scientific information has not been

09 used in the development of this plan.

10 I'm concerned about the incidental

11 taking provision of the Habitat Conservation Plan

12 which will allow Pacific Lumber to kill endangered

13 species and wreck their habitat with impunity for

14 50 years. I'm concerned that the Habitat

15 Conservation Plan does not predict endangered coho

16 salmon.

17 There should be larger no-logging

18 buffer zones. There should be logging restrictions

19 applied to steep slopes to prevent erosion and mud

20 slides, and there should be logging buffers

21 established for seasonal streams.

22 Pacific Lumber cannot be trusted.

23 They've done widespread clear-cutting. They've cut

24 through winter months on steep slopes giving the

25 ground and silted streams no respite. They've

0055

01 repeatedly violated court orders, federal

02 environmental rules, and state forestry regulations.

03 Thank you.

04 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

05 MS. SKLAREVSKY: Hello. My name is Valerie

06 Sklarevsky, V-a-l-e-r-i-e, S-k-l-a-r-e-v-s-k-y.

07 I'm a member of Earth Trust Foundation,

08 and I work as a gardener and a chef, and I did take

09 the day off from work today, as I'm sure many, many

10 others were not able to do.

11 I'd like to take this opportunity to

12 thank -- well, to speak to the U.S. Fish and

13 Wildlife Service, and I hope you are truly serving

14 the fish and the wildlife, including the endangered

15 species.

16 I feel sometimes betrayed by our

17 government agencies that are supposed to protect the

18 environment, including the agency the California

19 Department of Forestry. All of these agencies are

20 supposed to be monitoring Pacific Lumber.

21 Meanwhile, Pacific Lumber is getting away with

22 murder.

23 I have visited Julia Butterfly Hill

24 high up a very steep, very steep hike; and she's up

25 a very tall redwood. This was right above a slide

0056

01 that destroyed seven homes above Stafford.

02 I visited the Grizzly Creek area where

03 David "Gypsy" Chain was murdered, killed by a

04 redwood fallen by a Pacific Lumber employee after

05 threatening all morning to do so. There were other

06 activists out at Grizzly Creek trying to preserve

07 the murder scene, or Pacific Lumber is calling it an

08 accident. And the Humboldt County Sheriffs came and

09 used pepper spray on -- I would say they were young

10 kids in their twenties that were blockading the road

11 up to the site where he was killed.

12 Also, legal observers, who were there

13 watching the action to see what happened, to be

14 protection for some of these nonviolent protesters,

15 were arrested themselves, taken to the jail, and not

16 released until they had $5,000 cash. This is three

17 of my friends, two of them women who hiked up to see

18 Julia Butterfly Hill. To me, the Humboldt County

19 Sheriffs and Pacific Lumber are behaving with

20 institutionalized violence.

21 95 percent of our ancient redwoods are

22 gone. To me, the virgin old growth is sacred. It's

23 a sacred part of creation. It is the legacy of this

24 whole country and possibly even the world.

25 I heard a lot of quotes from the Bible

0057

01 today, but one of the commandments is "Thou shalt

02 not kill," and I believe that means all of creation.

03 It is the sacred endangered species. There is so

04 little left. With 95 percent gone, please, I beg of

05 you, let us find another way that we can sustain

06 life now and into the future generations.

07 The Pacific Lumber Habitat Conservation

08 Plan is a license to kill, and I'm saying this has

09 got to end and we have got to find a way. The trees

10 are the lungs of creation. Cancer is rampant. We

11 have got to protect all of life and see the

12 connection.

13 Thank you very much.

14 MR. ORTEGA: Ladies and gentlemen, we're

15 making very good progress, but we're going to take

16 about a ten-minute break right now. We'll reconvene

17 in about ten minutes. This will allow everyone to

18 stretch a little.

19 We're off the record for the moment.

20 (A brief recess was taken.)

21 MR. ORTEGA: We are back on the record.

22 We will reconvene this public hearing.

23 The next speaker will be Nancy

24 Lawrence, who will be followed by Kent Stromsmoe.

25 MS. LAWRENCE: My name is Nancy Lawrence,

0058

01 N-a-n-c-y, and Lawrence is L-a-w-r-e-n-c-e. I'm a

02 candidate for the 42nd District on the Peace and

03 Freedom party ticket, state assembly; and I want to

04 talk about two issues here that are related.

05 The first one is, we need a plan that

06 sustains life. The plan that I see on the books,

07 the plans I hear about do not sustain life. As some

08 of the speakers were talking about before, the

09 replanted trees are not growing. You can't have a

10 natural biological system when you plant one species

11 of trees. Fertility of the soil and the runoff of

12 the soil is very damaging, as some people who live

13 below in homes know about.

14 Also, we have to think about planning.

15 Like the indigenous peoples whose lands were taken

16 from them and destroyed, we have to think about when

17 we make plans, we have to plan like seven years in

18 the future. They have a tradition where they always

19 look seven years in the future to see how this

20 impacts on nature around them. Because if nature is

21 not protected, then it impacts their life and it

22 impacts not only their lives, but all their living

23 creatures. So we need a plan that is obviously --

24 that will sustain us.

25 Also, Earth First and also the

0059

01 Wobblies, who are organizing in the Headwaters area,

02 also had a plan for the workers, the loggers,

03 because they're going to lose their jobs when the

04 trees are done. Pacific Lumber does not give a damn

05 about the loggers, the people who actually live and

06 work there and try to support their families.

07 So we need a plan that maybe would be

08 something like workers collectives that could

09 recycle wood products or perhaps grow organic

10 gardens, or we can legalize hemp and grow some hemp

11 there because you could use it for medicine and

12 clothing and other things. So there are all sorts

13 of possibilities that could sustain a living wage

14 and life there and feed people and housing and that

15 children can grow up seeing deer running through the

16 forest, through natural forests.

17 Also, number two is the issue of what I

18 will call creeping fascism or perhaps a creeping

19 police state.

20 I was last Thursday marching against

21 police brutality downtown. It's also taking place

22 in the Headwaters Forest. We have a brutal

23 capitalistic system in this country that is not

24 afraid now. They're becoming more bold. Here it

25 was on TV that activists up in Northern California

0060

01 had their eyes -- you know -- pepper spray put in

02 their eyes, and it was on TV; and then the jury --

03 first, it was a hung jury; and then, apparently, the

04 second time, they dismissed the case. And the

05 second time, some group of activists who were

06 chained to a tree also had pepper put in their eyes,

07 and they just don't care. So it's becoming like a

08 Roman circus. People go watch this stuff on TV, and

09 the people are being desensitized toward human life

10 and all other living beings. When you have this

11 happen, it's like a Roman circus. So what are we

12 coming to?

13 I was talking to my brother on the

14 phone. He says it's not creeping fascism, it's

15 galloping fascism. So we have to stop this because

16 it's all interrelated. We need our human rights,

17 and we need also rights for other creatures who

18 cannot speak for themselves.

19 So I beg you to put a new plan where

20 everybody will truly win and not the corporations.

21 Thank you.

22 MR. ORTEGA: Kent Stromsmoe, to be followed by

23 Loriel Golden.

24 MR. STROMSMOE: My name is Kent Stromsmoe,

25 K-e-n-t, S-t-r-o-m-s-m-o-e. I'm a licensed general

0061

01 contractor in the State of California.

02 My livelihood was long dependent upon

03 the ready availability of building materials,

04 including timber. But for those materials to be

05 available, the source has to be sustainable. And

06 while we talked about timber as America's renewable

07 resource, that's only if we do indeed renew it.

08 There are some forms of timber -- not

09 timber -- standing trees that cannot be renewed.

10 You cannot renew old-growth redwood forests that

11 have life cycles that range from 600 to 2,000 years

12 and may require generations of that in order to

13 renew that environment if the other conditions

14 around it still even exist to help create that

15 environment; and there is very little of that left.

16 And that is an environment that sustains and

17 supports a variety of other species.

18 The focus on the PALCO HCP is really on

19 the three listed species. There's a considerable

20 number of other species that are potentially

21 impacted that have not had the million dollars in

22 its back pocket and a constituency to push for

23 listing, and there's often a strategy not to list

24 species which are de facto endangered simply because

25 that limits the kinds of flexibility that may be

0062

01 necessary in order to recover them.

02 I'd like to talk, really, to three

03 areas of the PALCO HCP. First, about roads. We

04 heard earlier a comparison about the kinds of

05 constraints that are being put upon PALCO versus

06 other industries. Those roads are pumping sediment

07 at a huge rate into the streams. It's a

08 considerable part of the problems that we have

09 there; yet the HCP calls for the reconditioning of

10 those roads and bringing those roads up to standards

11 over a period of decades.

12 Other industries -- if you ran a

13 service station that had a leaking gas tank, you

14 would have to replace it and repair it immediately;

15 and yet this continuing damage is going to persist

16 and be allowed for the next 30 years under the PALCO

17 HCP.

18 The second has to do with the marbled

19 murrelet and mamu (phonetic) habitat, and for that

20 matter, also coho. When you have species that are

21 in decline and very strongly amongst the reasons

22 that they're in decline is loss of habitat and lack

23 of habitat, further removal of habitat does not

24 unrest the decline of that species, much less you

25 can get into the realms of recovery. The PALCO HCP

0063

01 definitely creates decline of habitat for both.

02 The actions of the company outside of

03 the HCP, as we have historically seen recently, also

04 tend to minimize the amount of habitat that is

05 available. If we're going to stop the decline of

06 mamu, we not only have to stop removing any habitat,

07 we're going to have to recruit habitat.

08 Mamu require large-diameter mossy

09 branches to balance their eggs on because they do

10 not create nests. The only source of large-diameter

11 mossy branches is very old trees; and by "very old,"

12 I'm not talking about 60 years or 80 years or even

13 120-year cycles. Those trees, in some number, exist

14 on PALCO lands. They are the old-growth

15 Douglas-fir. They are the old-growth redwood. This

16 plan allows the destruction of those trees.

17 The second element that the mamu seem

18 to need in their nesting is cover for those nest

19 sites, but the cover for those nest sites does not

20 require the large-diameter branches. So where we

21 have residual old growth, that is the only

22 reasonable habitat that we could ever recruit for

23 mamu in the next century or two; and by retaining

24 that old growth and allowing the second growth to

25 grow up high enough to provide cover, we then have

0064

01 created a recruitment habitat for mamu. If we cut

02 the old growth, there is no potential for creating a

03 recruitment habitat for mamu; and this plan cuts

04 lots of old growth, lots of residual.

05 The coho, as well as the conditions for

06 downstream properties, are again dependent upon

07 conditions on this land that we are not sure whether

08 or not the prescriptions called for in the HCP are

09 going to be adequate.

10 Other industries have performance

11 standards as well as prescriptions. Go out to a

12 refinery, and they may be required to have scrubbers

13 on their smokestacks, but they're still in desperate

14 trouble if their emissions, if their particulates,

15 exceed certain levels.

16 This Habitat Conservation Plan does not

17 adequately cause for penalties to the company for a

18 violation of the terms of the HCP or the terms of

19 its timber harvest plans. The agencies do not seem

20 to have the will to pull their license when that is

21 what is called for, which causes us concern, that

22 the minimal provision in the HCP will ever be

23 properly and reasonably enforced.

24 As a minimum, we need some sort of

25 performance standard, much like the standard that

0065

01 that smokestack can't emit too much particulates.

02 To go along with the minimum prescriptions that

03 PALCO insists are adequate, let them put their

04 operations and their money where their mouth is. If

05 they are adequate, then let's have limitations on

06 the Incidental Take Permits that react to any

07 failures in those prescriptions or failures on the

08 part of the company to follow those prescriptions.

09 An example would be if what we're

10 trying to do here is stop the decline in the

11 population of marbled murrelet, then allow an

12 Incidental Take Permit that only allows a taking of

13 a percentage of the demonstrable gains in mamu

14 population caused by the mitigations and set a size

15 that Pacific Lumber is proposing to make.

16 And the same goes for every other

17 species covered, that any take of any species on the

18 property should only be a percentage of the

19 additional individuals in those species that are

20 allowed to live on those properties and as a result

21 of the mitigations.

22 Thank you.

23 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

24 Loriel Golden, to be followed by

25 Aaron Hall.

0066

01 MS. GOLDEN: Hello. Thank you very much for

02 being here. My name is Loriel Golden. That's

03 L-o-r-i-e-l, G-o-l-d-e-n.

04 Trees are the lungs of the planet.

05 That means they actually create oxygen for all

06 living beings. Although I do volunteer work with

07 groups who lead children and their parents on nature

08 walks and I supervise children planting trees in

09 their elementary schools with another group, I am

10 here to represent all the living beings of the

11 future who may have a chance to enjoy this beautiful

12 earth if we act now to save one of the last small

13 parcels of virgin redwoods known as Headwaters

14 Forest, which is 60,000 acres, not 12,000, not 7500.

15 As the gentleman before me spoke, he

16 said the marbled murrelets and probably other birds

17 need old, old trees. They're part of a design that

18 was made before you and I were born, a design that

19 was designed to last as long as this earth lasts.

20 This planet can last as long as the sun is burning.

21 That's at least 80 billion more years if this

22 civilization, you and I, decide that all of life is

23 sacred. If we decide to honor all the people and

24 other living creatures from the past who have

25 provided for us to be here right now, then we can

0067

01 have the great honor of allowing all the beings of

02 the future to survive.

03 And that's exactly what I would say to

04 Charles Hurwitz. I would say, "You have the chance

05 to go down in history for providing the way for all

06 of us to breathe." Not just the marbled murrelets,

07 not just the coho salmon, but all living beings on

08 this planet, which are connected to the air that is

09 produced, the oxygen that is produced, by all trees.

10 We do not need to cut 2,000-year-old

11 redwoods to build another redwood deck. We can cut

12 other trees that are now being grown on farms.

13 There's Douglas-fir farms, many kinds of tree farms.

14 We do not need to cut 2,000-year-old trees to build

15 another half-a-million or million-dollar home when

16 other materials can be used.

17 We certainly don't need to cut another

18 single tree ever for paper. There are forest

19 species I know right off the bat that we can produce

20 paper from. Hemp, among its 19 uses, is one. The

21 Constitution was printed on hemp. Our U.S.

22 Constitution, a template for all life forms, at

23 least in the northern hemisphere that we call the

24 United States of America, to live in the pursuit of

25 happiness and not at the expense of other happiness,

0068

01 with religious freedom, was printed on hemp; and our

02 original American flag was made on hemp material.

03 There are medicinal uses for this

04 plant, among many other uses. There is the keynoff

05 (phonetic) plant. Coffee paper I now see at

06 Kinko's. They're selling coffee paper, paper made

07 from banana fiber. We never need to cut trees for

08 paper; and to say that we need -- to even think of

09 saying that we must cut into this last wild area for

10 our own personal purposes of just this generation is

11 totally irresponsible. Anyone who is a parent who

12 is not working to protect all of life on earth,

13 starting in our own home, in our own state, in our

14 own city, is not a responsible parent.

15 We need to reserve and preserve this

16 forest in its entirety. It's an ecosystem, and

17 these are not just natural resources. It's not the

18 environment out there. We have our own roots as

19 human beings on the earth that we stand on, on the

20 ground and the soil that we stand on. We need to

21 look into the way everything fits into a circle.

22 The way the lowly worm digs his holes

23 in the soil actually provides -- the feces from the

24 worms provide the fertilizer for plants to grow. We

25 may think it's just a worm or just a fly. When

0069

01 flies die, they provide fertilizer. When I die, I'm

02 going to be able to provide life for this planet

03 with my own body, to give back, to make it

04 worthwhile for all the plants, animals, fish, and

05 oxygen molecules who have given their lives to me.

06 So I'm asking you to do it for your own

07 children, to not even consider supporting a group

08 that supports murder. Definitely, you can see five

09 or ten protesters. You can see people standing

10 there. It wasn't an accident to cut down a tree and

11 kill a protester. It's not an accident to take

12 pepper spray and stick Q-tips in it and then stick

13 it into the eyes of other human beings. These are

14 not accidents. Please do not turn your back on all

15 of us, on yourselves, on your own children.

16 I once again want to thank you for

17 being here and may we all fly like eagles.

18 MR. ORTEGA: Aaron Hall, to be followed by

19 Susan Stephenson.

20 MR. HALL: Hello. My name is Aaron Hall.

21 It's spelled A-a-r-o-n, H-a-l-l.

22 I'm here today to voice my opinion

23 about this proposed plan by this corporation.

24 It seems to me that it's really

25 lowering the standards and presets of the Endangered

0070

01 Species Act, and it creates an agenda that I think

02 really is going to hurt a lot of generations to

03 come.

04 I'm a descendant from the salician

05 cuney (phonetic) peoples in Montana, and I've always

06 been told that the earth is not ours to own, and it

07 seems odd to me that we're even having a debate

08 about this. We've already had -- there's lots of

09 scientific reports and stuff that are on books and

10 papers about the negative aspects of lumbering and

11 clear-cutting and stuff. It's not necessary.

12 There's many alternatives.

13 I don't have much to say, but I think

14 that in you guys' heart, you know that it's not the

15 best plan and it really should be taken down and

16 there should be a radical alternative to it. It

17 needs to be improved.

18 I'm really for saving the Headwaters

19 Forest and the animals, our brothers and sisters

20 there.

21 Thank you very much.

22 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

23 We keep getting people registered out

24 there. When we started the speakers, I indicated

25 that we probably would not put a time limit on

0071

01 anyone; but I ask you, because we keep getting

02 people coming in, to hold your presentations to not

03 more than five minutes.

04 Thank you.

05 Susan Stephenson will be followed by

06 Stewart Mintzer.

07 MS. STEPHENSON: Thank you.

08 I'm Susan Stephenson, and that's

09 spelled S-u-s-a-n, S-t-e-p-h-e-n-s-o-n.

10 I'd like to thank the agencies for

11 providing this opportunity for public input into the

12 Headwaters Forest HCP, and I hope the final document

13 really will reflect all of the recommendations that

14 I'm hearing here today, a lot of the ones.

15 I think you're probably going to hear a

16 lot of criticism of the plan today and throughout

17 this process because the plan was created in a

18 situation that was really a political process rather

19 than a scientific process. Now the agencies have

20 the chance to bring science and sound biology back

21 into the plan. I'd urge to do that.

22 The goal of this process should be to

23 protect habitat for endangered species. Please use

24 your own recommendations -- that is, the federal

25 government's own science -- for species protection,

0072

01 particularly the coho salmon. There are studies and

02 standards that the government has used to protect

03 coho salmon habitat, specifically the FEMAT

04 standards and the Mantech Report that I would urge

05 you to use in creating the salmon protections in

06 this plan. If you have these studies, we need to

07 use them.

08 Coho salmon, obviously, is really in

09 dire straits. We're down to 2 percent of the

10 original numbers of native runs of coho salmon, and

11 that's according to the National Marine Fisheries

12 Service. There's no excuse not to take every

13 necessary step to protect the last remaining runs of

14 coho salmon; and there's no excuse, with a half a

15 billion dollars, for Pacific Lumber not to be able

16 to do that.

17 Once again, please use your own science

18 and use your own scientific standards to protect the

19 coho salmon and other endangered species in the

20 final plan.

21 Thanks a lot.

22 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

23 Stewart Mintzer, to be followed by

24 Ned Boyer.

25 MR. MINTZER: Hi. My name is Stewart Mintzer,

0073

01 S-t-e-w-a-r-t, M-i-n-t-z-e-r.

02 I just happened on this event. I was

03 riding to the beach to see it for a friend back in

04 the Midwest and went into a store and saw some

05 article that there was going to be this meeting

06 here, so I showed up today with no intention to

07 speak; and I was sitting in the back and thought of

08 this idea that perhaps everything might be perfectly

09 balanced. I don't stand up in public and speak,

10 that my next sound or intention may make a

11 difference and tip things.

12 So I just came up here to say that I

13 want to speak for the trees. I want to speak for

14 what I think is important and sacred space. I want

15 to speak for species in decline, which I feel like

16 in this environment here in this room is almost like

17 being a species in decline, surrounded by somewhat

18 synthetic trees.

19 I ask you to consider when you do make

20 your choice, if it's at all possible, to go sit in

21 the forest and listen and to pay attention to what

22 has heart and meaning. I think there are great

23 teachers there.

24 Thank you.

25 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

0074

01 Ned Boyer, to be followed by Jennifer

02 Scott-Lifland.

03 MR. BOYER: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Again,

04 thanks for having us here. My name is Ned Boyer,

05 N-e-d, B-o-y-e-r.

06 I'm also, like many of the previous

07 speakers, very concerned with the inadequacies of

08 this plan, and I especially would like to say that

09 the enforcement is quite inadequate. In many cases

10 in the plan, the lead agency, the California

11 Department of Forestry, is only asked to consult the

12 federal agencies who are charged with looking after

13 the welfare of the public good in the form of fish

14 and wildlife.

15 I would like to say that when -- I'm

16 sorry. I'm a little nervous -- that when there is a

17 need for marbled murrelet surveys, as others have

18 mentioned, I think that there ought to be a panel of

19 experts who go out to do the surveying for that.

20 Getting a surveyor who is hired solely by Pacific

21 Lumber is totally inadequate. You need an

22 independent scientist to be there as well as

23 government scientists. As others have said, I also

24 believe that the areas that have not been surveyed

25 for marbled murrelets must be surveyed for marbled

0075

01 murrelets.

02 I also wanted to reiterate a point that

03 I heard earlier, which I thought was very well

04 taken, and that is that we need to recruit new

05 old-growth habitat. The old-growth redwood forest

06 ecosystem is horribly depressed. As people have

07 quoted before, the species that have either complete

08 dependence on it or some measure of dependence on it

09 are also very, very low. We can't hope to recover

10 their numbers to really viable populations if we

11 don't recruit new habitat, and that simply has to

12 happen.

13 I would also urge you to look at what

14 are in economic terms called the "extranalities."

15 You are charged in this plan with looking at the

16 effects on human population, the effects of timber

17 harvesting on downstream communities, whether debris

18 torrents take out homes in Stafford or make the

19 drinking water in Elk River undrinkable. I think

20 those are essential things for these agencies to

21 consider as part of their plan.

22 If the harbor in Arcata needs

23 additional dredging, that's the responsibility of

24 the upstream landowners, like Pacific Lumber. It's

25 also the responsibility of the government agencies

0076

01 who go ahead and sign off on these plans.

02 Potentially, government agencies, as well as the

03 individual landowner, like Pacific Lumber, ought to

04 be legally liable for damages and ought to pay

05 reparations to the people in Stafford, along with

06 Pacific Lumber.

07 And whatever percentage of the silt

08 that's delivered to the bay by Arcata, Pacific

09 Lumber, as well as the government agencies that sign

10 off on Pacific Lumber's plan, ought to be

11 responsible for reimbursing Humboldt County and the

12 City of Arcata in those instances.

13 Gosh, I'm sorry. I'll probably just

14 get the rest of this in to my comments in writing, I

15 guess.

16 I guess I also wanted to say that there

17 needs to be some kind of veto power that the federal

18 agencies can have over the California Department of

19 Forestry. The California Department of Forestry

20 ought not to be the only one with the power to deny

21 a timber harvest plan. If the National Marine

22 Fisheries Service or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife

23 Service can show that coho or cutthroat trout or

24 steelhead trout are going to be impacted by a given

25 plan, they ought to be given the power to deny a

0077

01 timber harvest plan and not merely to be advisors to

02 the California Department of Forestry.

03 I'll reserve the rest of my comments

04 for written.

05 Thank you.

06 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

07 Jennifer Scott-Lifland, to be followed

08 by Rex Frankel.

09 MS. SCOTT-LIFLAND: Good afternoon. My name

10 is Jennifer Scott-Lifland, J-e-n-n-i-f-e-r,

11 S-c-o-t-t, hyphen, L-i-f-l-a-n-d. Thank you for

12 being here to listen to our concerns this afternoon.

13 The Habitat Conservation Plan presently

14 being discussed is based solely on Pacific Lumber's,

15 quote, science. Pacific Lumber has violated the

16 California Forest Practices Act almost 300 separate

17 times in the last three years. This is outrageous.

18 Pacific Lumber is not a trustworthy corporation.

19 They're the only major California logging

20 corporation ever to be placed on probation. Now is

21 the time for wildlife agencies to take a stand to

22 insist that the best available science be used to

23 create an adequate HCP.

24 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife agency and

25 National Marine Fisheries Service have conducted

0078

01 studies and made recommendations regarding buffer

02 zones in fish-bearing streams, in areas like the

03 Pacific Northwest. These studies were paid for by

04 our tax dollars. These studies are scientifically

05 sound, and the findings must be implemented to truly

06 conserve and save the habitat of Headwaters.

07 Anything less is un-American.

08 The specific issues I would like to see

09 addressed are wider buffer zones, reduced, quote,

10 take of endangered species, cessation of herbicide

11 use, adequately addressing the enormous potential

12 for mass wasting in areas such as the Stafford

13 Torrent of 1997, and cessation of clear-cutting and

14 logging on steep hillsides.

15 Thank you for your time.

16 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

17 Next, Rex Frankel, to be followed by

18 Ralph Cole.

19 MR. FRANKEL: I'm lucky I arrived just in

20 time.

21 I'm Rex Frankel. The spelling is

22 R-e-x, F-r-a-n-k-e-l.

23 Let's see. I live just down the block

24 here. I represent an organization called Save All

25 of Ballona. We've been fighting to save the little

0079

01 open-space preserve just down the block from us

02 about a quarter mile. It's the last major open

03 space in the city of Los Angeles, just like the

04 Headwaters Forest basically is the last major

05 old-growth forest we've got in Northern California.

06 I believe that we should be saving --

07 The entire Pacific Lumber property

08 should be acquired one way or the other through

09 eminent domain. I don't believe Pacific Lumber's

10 property rights should supersede the right of the

11 public to protect its last remaining open spaces.

12 I'm not terribly concerned with Charles

13 Hurwitz's property rights. I think that society has

14 greater degree of property rights, the right for

15 clean air, the right for endangered species and

16 bio-diversity. Compared to what we spent on a

17 B1 Bomber or just an average boondock along Central

18 America or in Bosnia or wherever else, this last

19 forest we've got left to acquire would be a bargain.

20 There are a few things, some things --

21 we've destroyed 99 percent of them, like our

22 wetlands, urban open space, our old-growth forests.

23 I don't believe we should compromise any of those

24 things that we have left.

25 Anyways, other than that, I have

0080

01 technical comments. I have a few just major points.

02 I think that basically, in general, we

03 should be encouraging an industry to recycle wood.

04 I happen to work as a plumber in rehabilitating

05 affordable housing; and I've discovered that, yes,

06 society and technology have come up with ways of

07 recycling wood so that the lumber industry does not

08 have to suffer and so that we don't have to cut down

09 our old-growth timber. Even the developer down the

10 block is tearing down old buildings right now,

11 recycling all the wood. I don't happen to like the

12 developer because he wants to pave over natural

13 lands, but the fact is that it's easy to do.

14 Then again, you could be recycling cars

15 and converting -- making steel buildings instead of

16 putting all the wood into buildings. There may be a

17 way you can take all this plastic and Styrofoam and

18 all kinds of other junk, but building materials do

19 not have to come from old-growth forests.

20 Even Pacific Lumber has tree farms

21 which they could be sustainably managing instead of

22 managing man managing their old-growth forests.

23 Old-growth forests, I think God put them here to be

24 left alone. He didn't put them here to be just

25 destroyed.

0081

01 Let me see. A couple things I noticed

02 in the description of the Environmental Impact

03 Statement here: There are technical questions that

04 I would --

05 Basically, it looks like this room

06 here. I was saying the extreme side management

07 zones where you're preserving 30 to 170 feet of

08 no-cutting zones or relatively little zones; and

09 this room -- and I'm just saying like per acre,

10 you're saving -- I think it says -- what is it? --

11 300 square feet of conifer-basil area. Since I've

12 only read this, I don't understand all of what this

13 means; but this room is probably about an acre or a

14 little bit less.

15 300 square feet of conifer-basil area,

16 what that comes out to is, if you have an old-growth

17 tree that's 10 feet in diameter, you're talking

18 about three or four old-growth trees in a room this

19 size, and that doesn't sound like much of a habitat

20 that you're preserving, you know, if it's all

21 clear-cut except for four trees, you know; and if

22 you're coming down to one-foot diameter trees, well,

23 sure, you're going to have a few more trees.

24 But, I mean, again, what Pacific Lumber

25 is doing is that they're getting rid of all the old

0082

01 growth. We're saving, what, 5 percent of the old

02 growth on 5 percent of their land and giving them

03 nearly $400 million of taxpayer dollars, especially

04 which is ugly when you're dealing with a guy like

05 Hurwitz, who is currently being sued in all kinds of

06 legal proceedings with the government for, I think,

07 a billion and a half dollars that he fleeced from

08 the taxpayers already. It seems tragic that we're

09 giving him additional money to get him to agree to

10 stop basically breaking the law and destroying our

11 natural heritage.

12 Let me see if I see anything else

13 interesting.

14 Again, I don't understand it.

15 Other than that, I think it should all

16 be acquired. I think that all old growth should be

17 bought one way or another. If Hurwitz sues us --

18 well, we're suing him. It's a good deal to save it

19 any way that we can, because it's all we've got

20 left.

21 There was one thing. I remember a song

22 by Darryl Churney (phonetic), who has been involved

23 in the forest preservation movement for years; and

24 it definitely applies. It was a song called

25 "Hurwitz, MAXXAM is on the Horizon," and let me just

0083

01 say the one line. "He turns the forests into

02 deserts and the deserts into towns."

03 And Los Angeles is covered by pavement

04 a hundred miles in all directions. Our forests are

05 being encroached upon in all directions just as our

06 farmland is being encroached in all directions.

07 Once these things are gone --

08 There's another wise guy that I read,

09 strangely enough, in a very conservative

10 pro-development publication called "Fortune"

11 magazine, and I just thought it was ironic. What he

12 said was: "When all the forests are clear-cut and

13 all the farmland polluted, what will man do? Will

14 he eat his money?"

15 Think.

16 Thank you.

17 MR. ORTEGA: Ralph Cole, to be followed by

18 Leeona Klippstein.

19 MR. COLE: I'm very new to this issue.

20 On the 4th of this month, I videotaped

21 an event in Berkeley called "The Next Fight to Save

22 Headwaters Forest, Politics Versus Science"; and it

23 had David Brower, George Miller, Doug Throng,

24 Pat Higgins, Frasier Schilling, Terrum Miller, and

25 Kevin Bundy (phonetic).

0084

01 Under the hope that some of the things

02 that were said there that may bypass this panel and,

03 otherwise, might have the opportunity to become part

04 of the process, I'm going to offer each one of you

05 one of these tapes under the hope that somewhere

06 along the line, you'll at least tune in to the

07 presentations by Pat Higgins and Doug Throng.

08 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

09 MR. COLE: Again, I'm only two weeks into

10 familiarity with this issue, and I do this because I

11 tape all sorts of justice events; but some of the

12 striking points that were made at the conference --

13 and I didn't take notes because -- and I haven't

14 read about it further, so I only get it in passing

15 while I'm preoccupied with the videotaping -- is

16 that this -- and some of the things come from my

17 observations of processes and ten years of graduate

18 work in economics that I have.

19 But the last speaker mentioned the

20 litigation against this company. The patterns of

21 cutting that Doug Throng's photographs show where

22 you can see an aerial cutting, they're not just

23 picking one small area, but you see huge tracks; and

24 from the sky, you can see seven huge tracks.

25 Essentially, 75, 80 percent of the trees are gone.

0085

01 It's just bare forest.

02 As an economist, there was a famous

03 problem, a tree-cutting problem. Several of the

04 courses, in particular, a couple of them, where --

05 the optimal time to cut a tree has to do with the

06 interest rate and it has to do with the growth of

07 the tree. When they match, that's the time you cut

08 the tree; but clear-cut, they're not all at that

09 time. They're not at the optimal time to cut.

10 They're obviously wasting a lot by not paying

11 attention to the biological best time to be cutting.

12 There's a lot of anti-market sentiment, but I think

13 that many of these problems are because the market

14 is failing.

15 And when you have a company that is --

16 what is it? -- 400 million? A billion? A billion

17 and a half? -- has this debt and they're not paying

18 on the debt, they're paying the interest only, you

19 have to look at what they're doing. Are they

20 profit-maximizing? Don't they have stockholders,

21 and if so, aren't these stockholders going to be

22 better off if they get dividends as quickly as

23 possible and then fold up their tent and go home

24 when their debt equals their net worth?

25 If I was the government or the people,

0086

01 I would sell my commonwealth, which, of course, this

02 was, to -- on the basis of assuming the

03 responsibility that we expect from the corporation;

04 therefore, if all of a sudden they're 380 or a

05 billion dollars in debt, where's that money going to

06 come from? It's got to come out of irresponsible

07 going-out-of-business practices. And that's what's

08 been going by this term. Now, if enforceability is

09 cost-less and easy, fine; then it doesn't matter how

10 irresponsible they intend to be.

11 But I question the ability to stay upon

12 this organization that has a record of cutting

13 regardless, clear-cutting, not making beds for the

14 trees to fall, so high waste -- you know. How many

15 redwoods out of ten do they actually harvest? If

16 they're not doing it efficiently, they may get five,

17 they may get three; but if they're not making beds

18 for them -- this is one of the things I learned last

19 week -- that they're destroying these redwoods that

20 they shatter. It's like an elephant falling down.

21 It crushes itself. These redwoods are doing it

22 because they're not falling on a level surface.

23 They're all broken up and they're unusable and

24 they're wasted for us and for them.

25 The stream temperature changes -- a

0087

01 Pat Higgins event talked a lot and it gave graphical

02 indications of how the trends in the streams on

03 Pacific Lumber's lands have been trending upwards,

04 and they show also the narrow band or the band

05 within which the indigenous species are capable of

06 living, and these bands are separating.

07 The experience and the temperatures of

08 the streams where they've been cutting are drifting

09 away from the indigenous, making it more available

10 for other species, a non-indigenous species, but

11 even these. Non-indigenous species put more

12 pressure upon the indigenous populations. This is a

13 problem too.

14 The temperatures, of course, are

15 affected by the neighboring areas outside of the

16 buffer zone. So you have a buffer zone. The

17 temperature is going to be affected and also the

18 wind conditions and other things like that. I'm not

19 an expert. In two weeks -- I had my first course on

20 this.

21 Another concern of mine is the example,

22 you know, that the Amazon rain forest for years is

23 what I had heard about is in jeopardy.

24 I saw you look at your watch. I'll try

25 to get done here.

0088

01 But if we're down to 5 percent now, how

02 can we have any moral leadership in the world when

03 we're quibbling over whether we can keep five or

04 three or what? You know, what percent of the Amazon

05 rain forest do you expect that they'll want to keep

06 if we're down further than we are now?

07 And I don't understand the nuances of

08 the HCP and all this. I haven't read it, but I just

09 don't see how we can be discussing this if we're

10 already 5 percent guilty of --

11 And the sustainability, is this a joke?

12 You know, sustainability and old growth, we're

13 nowhere near to getting back to sustainability. We

14 couldn't be.

15 And if these people are ever going to

16 pay off their billion-dollar debt, they've got to do

17 the policies that they've been doing, that they've

18 demonstrated in the past; and I don't see any way we

19 can allow a company that is this highly leveraged to

20 violate their -- what we've given them and entrusted

21 them with. I don't see how we can ever feel like we

22 can turn our backs on this company, and you have to.

23 They're there. We're not.

24 I guess I said a little of all I wanted

25 to say.

0089

01 Thanks.

02 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

03 Leeona Klippstein, to be followed by

04 Andrew Leavenworth.

05 MS. KLIPPSTEIN: Good afternoon.

06 I missed the introductions and the

07 warning. Could you please tell me who I'm speaking

08 with or speaking to on the panel?

09 I know you have your name up. I don't

10 see the names of the other gentlemen and which

11 agencies they're from.

12 MR. ORTEGA: All right. The gentlemen are

13 with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and

14 the California Department of Forestry.

15 Go ahead, please.

16 MS. KLIPPSTEIN: Do you have names?

17 MR. AHLSTROM: Yes. I'm Jerry Ahlstrom, with

18 the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in

19 Sacramento.

20 MR. HALSTEAD: I'm Bruce Halstead, with the

21 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Arcata,

22 California.

23 MS. KLIPPSTEIN: Okay. Thank you.

24 I'm Leeona Klippstein, the Conservation

25 Director of Spirit of the Sage Council. We're a

0090

01 nonprofit Native American conservation group here in

02 Southern California, but we have become very focused

03 on the issue of Habitat Conservation Plans,

04 Incidental Take Permits, and the NCCP program since

05 1991; and since that time, we've reviewed HCPs and

06 ITPs not only in California, but throughout the

07 United States. I've personally reviewed and

08 commented on probably 20 now within 13 states, so I

09 feel that I'm quite qualified to comment.

10 Unfortunately, we haven't really had

11 time to go through the EIR and EIS with a fine-tooth

12 comb. We only received the documents on the 22nd.

13 We tried to access the information on the Internet;

14 but, apparently, last week the pages were down for

15 both the service and California Fish and Game. So

16 we're doing our best at making these comments, and

17 we may be going over the five minutes; but I'd ask

18 that you go ahead and let us since we're speaking on

19 behalf of an organization.

20 The first thing that I'd like to say

21 about the PALCO plan is that it doesn't meet the

22 issuance criteria for permits to take peonies

23 species pursuant to 50 CFR, Parts 13 and 17,

24 primarily because PALCO has previously been found in

25 violation of the Endangered Species Act and may not

0091

01 apply for Section 10 ITPs.

02 Also, PALCO -- from looking in the

03 documents, I don't see it, and perhaps you'll add it

04 to the appendices in the future for the final

05 EIR/EIS; but I don't see that PALCO has submitted an

06 official application form, Form 3-200, from the Fish

07 and Wildlife Service. We again refer you to 50 CFR

08 Section 17.63.

09 Regarding economic hardship permits, we

10 did not find anything in any of the documents

11 referring to this or any proof that PALCO is

12 suffering any economic hardship by having to protect

13 endangered species.

14 As you know, the goal and intent of the

15 federal Endangered Species Act is to, quote, halt

16 and reverse the trend towards species extinction,

17 whatever the cost, end quote. I'll repeat again:

18 "whatever the cost." The Supreme Court has found

19 this in both the cases of "TVA versus Hill" and

20 "Babbitt versus Sweet Home Chapter." The Sage

21 Council has found that the proposed Headwaters HCP

22 and ITPs and the associated documents and agreements

23 fail to meet these goals.

24 In addition, it appears that the

25 government agencies and our government

0092

01 representatives acted against we, the people, and

02 other public trust responsibilities when entering

03 into agreements and contracts and passing

04 legislation that would approve the destruction of

05 our natural resources within the Headwaters planning

06 area without public comment. This has been

07 pre-decisional. Agreements have been signed

08 pre-decisional, before the hearings, and in

09 violation of the Administrative Procedures Act and

10 our civil rights. I believe that these hearings are

11 only to help us build an administrative record to go

12 forward in litigating this plan in the future.

13 The Headwaters agreement, as I said,

14 was signed and entered into on September 28, 1996.

15 At that time, the public had no way of commenting on

16 it. We are assuming that since it is an appendices

17 in these documents that this is the time now that we

18 can comment; however, what's the point when

19 Director Spear (phonetic) and others in the

20 administration both at the state and federal levels

21 have already signed these contracts? There's

22 nothing in the law that allows them to do that.

23 There's no sections that we've read that said that

24 they can enter into these pre-decisional contracts.

25 For anybody who's interested, again,

0093

01 these documents occur in the appendices, Sections A

02 through C.

03 Also, Incidental Take Permits,

04 agreements, pre-issuance of permits, were also

05 signed by Mike Spear and others in violation of our

06 rights. In doing so, we also feel that the state

07 and federal agencies are in violation of 18 U.S.C.

08 Section 1001 for political scheming and fraudulence

09 against the People of the United States.

10 The Sage Council's position is that the

11 entire 2,111-acre Headwaters planning area, as

12 referenced in the Headwaters agreement, be acquired

13 and conserved in perpetuity for we, the people, of

14 the California Republic in the United States of

15 America.

16 All public trust lands and natural

17 resources that are currently privately held by PALCO

18 that are of ecological and cultural significance

19 must be acquired through condemnation or other means

20 that will ensure the public trust is upheld by our

21 state and federal public trust agencies. The public

22 trust bestowed upon our government by we, the

23 people, must supersede the whims and desires of a

24 corporation hell-bent on private profit through the

25 pillaging of America's natural heritage.

0094

01 I'd like to expand upon that statement.

02 Many people refer to, and having commented on many

03 HCPs and plans here in Southern California too, that

04 we have to or the agencies have to deal with private

05 property rights. I'd like to clarify that these

06 lands that are within the jurisdiction of the state

07 or the United States are held by we, the people.

08 They are public trust lands and public trust

09 resources.

10 However, individuals or corporations

11 may acquire entitlements to use that land, and in

12 that way, they are privately held; but they're not

13 owned; otherwise, we would not have these hearings.

14 We would not have a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

15 We would not have a California Department of Fish

16 and Game. You are public trust agencies, and these

17 public trust resources are regulated, and it is your

18 responsibility to enforce the regulations.

19 This supersedes everything that Charles

20 Hurwitz or any other private landholder may think

21 that they have; otherwise, they wouldn't have to go

22 through these permitting processes. So I just want

23 to clarify that because it really annoys me that

24 we've come to a point that people talk of this as if

25 it's a private property. These trees are not

0095

01 privately held. These are public trust resources:

02 our fish, our plants, and our wildlife. And the

03 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must uphold the

04 public trust as an agency to conserve them.

05 The draft EIR and EIS for the

06 Headwaters HCP does not provide an adequate range of

07 alternatives that would include an environmentally

08 superior alternative, which we believe would be the

09 acquisition of the entire 2,111 acres of habitats

10 within the planning area and no take of sensitive,

11 rare, and endangered species. We request that this

12 alternative be included in the final EIR/EIS.

13 The alternative that you currently have

14 in there for "no project" is full of assumptions and

15 fallacies and is misleading to the public. The

16 areas where you talk about roads, that if we went

17 ahead and we adopted the "no project" alternative

18 that there would be a problem with roads and

19 sedimentation and this and that, that happens

20 anyhow. The agencies are supposed to regulate that

21 anyhow. Why try to confuse the public by saying

22 that the "no project" alternative would only cause

23 further environmental damage? That's a fallacy. It

24 should be completely removed. It's very misleading.

25 It should be removed from all the documents.

0096

01 As you may know, and at least the Fish

02 and Wildlife Service may be aware, the Sage Council

03 legally challenged the "no surprises" policy, and

04 this policy has been adopted already previously in

05 the agreements pre-decisional in the Headwaters HCP.

06 We won that challenge to open it up to public

07 comment.

08 And again, we've entered into another

09 legal challenge that's currently in the courts

10 against Secretary Babbitt and the Interior and the

11 Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine

12 Fisheries, basically the federal government; and we

13 believe that we will also win this challenge because

14 we have science on our side.

15 Somebody here earlier said that this

16 has been a political decision-making process. I've

17 also said that when these pre-decisional contracts

18 and agreements were signed. The use of "no

19 surprises" was also pre-decisional and without the

20 ability for the public to comment on the use of it.

21 Over 400 conservation groups across the country and

22 over 300 prominent scientists are opposed to the "no

23 surprises" -- the use of "no surprises." That's

24 already been established within. Fish and Wildlife

25 Service has that on record; but we've also --

0097

01 I'll add into the record that out in

02 the bin outside is a copy of our report to Congress

03 entitled "No Surprises, the Policy of Extinction," a

04 white paper report entitled "Science Missing the No

05 Surprises Policy," including associated letters.

06 That was endorsed by 175 scientists and

07 environmental professionals. So we are requesting

08 that the "no surprises" policy and rule be rescinded

09 and removed from all of the Headwaters documents,

10 including the pre-decisional contracts and

11 agreements.

12 Because the Sage Council only received

13 the documents on October 22nd and it's our

14 understanding in speaking with other organizations

15 that they haven't had the full amount of time to

16 review the documents, we're requesting that you

17 extend the commenting period for at least another

18 30 days.

19 In reviewing this past week, well,

20 since the 22nd, the documents, they are very, very

21 difficult to read; and again, this is saying from

22 somebody who has read 20 of these plans. The way --

23 it's very fragmented in regards to the different

24 alternatives. I think that each alternative should

25 be laid out in full and not split between the

0098

01 subjects -- I don't know if I need to clarify that

02 any further with you. Perhaps I do -- in that when

03 you look at, for instance, "Aesthetic Impacts" or

04 "Visual Impacts," it's separated with each

05 alternative. I would prefer and the Sage Council

06 would prefer that when you highlight, say, "Water

07 Resources," that all of the alternatives come under

08 that heading rather than fragmented. It's very,

09 very difficult to read.

10 All of the references to the page

11 numbers, which documents to go to, was very

12 confusing. The maps are so small, really, and I

13 know that's a difficulty in just trying to put

14 something out like that; but we still question even

15 the methods of GIS that were used and how the public

16 may even have the ability to go about identifying

17 whether the GIS was adequately done, whether there's

18 been any type of --

19 I'd like to know what the percentage

20 actually is of accuracy and whether there were field

21 studies and surveys done, to make a comparative

22 study of the boundaries that are identified in the

23 GIS maps. I don't know if that has been done.

24 There was nothing in the documents that I could see.

25 MR. ORTEGA: Ms. Klippstein, can I ask you to

0099

01 conclude, please?

02 MS. KLIPPSTEIN: Sure.

03 There was a recent case that I want to

04 refer to also. In regards to the Alabama Beach HCP,

05 "Sierra Club versus Bruce Babbitt," I believe that

06 this case is very timely, of October 1998, and the

07 court decision on it in regards to the Headwaters

08 HCP and ITP and any others that the agencies have

09 out there regarding the use of best data and whether

10 the state of that's being used by PALCO is outdated.

11 What the gaps are in the information,

12 people have mentioned here that are more familiar

13 with the plan or the planning area, that there's

14 been areas that have not been surveyed; so to

15 include those areas where we don't know what the

16 impacts are, we would ask that you do that and that

17 there would be hearings on the Incidental Take

18 Permits. It appears that there's only hearings on

19 the EIR/EIS for the HCP. We know that we have to

20 wait to see the biological opinion on the ITPs; but,

21 again, it's very difficult if you don't know how

22 many species there are out there and how many that

23 they'll actually be killing.

24 Thank you.

25 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

0100

01 Andrew Leavenworth, to be followed by

02 Coby Siegenthaler.

03 MR. LEAVENWORTH: My name is Andrew

04 Leavenworth, A-n-d-r-e-w, L-e-a-v-e-n-w-o-r-t-h.

05 Gentlemen, I want to thank you for

06 being here and being willing to listen to those of

07 us who are part of this family, this country's

08 family, that has to look out for each other.

09 What I see here for myself is that this

10 is a problem of addiction. Addiction usually is

11 connected to something drug related, but the drug

12 here seems to be greed -- greed and profit.

13 When we have a family member who's

14 addicted and out of control, we try to make some

15 kind of intervention for them. This HCP should be

16 that intervention; and yet it does not seem to be

17 adequate.

18 This is a corporation that's out of

19 control, violation after violation, run by a

20 gentleman who has a history of greed addiction. You

21 have a golden opportunity to help this member of our

22 family get back to a state of health.

23 There are laws on the books for drug

24 offenders and three strikes and you're out, and yet

25 what kind of three strikes is happening for this

0101

01 corporation? What is built into this HCP

02 intervention to make sure that this corporation does

03 not go out of control?

04 It seems to me and my own suggestion

05 would be that there be something built into this

06 plan that can actually revoke the corporate charter.

07 If a corporation is out of control, if their greed

08 addiction has overcome them and begins to destroy

09 the habitat, then they must be helped; and one way

10 to help them is to eliminate the charter that gives

11 them the power to do this.

12 Thank you.

13 MR. ORTEGA: Coby Siegenthaler, who will be

14 followed by Robert Brower.

15 MS. SIEGENTHALER: S-i-e-g-e-n-t-h-a-l-e-r.

16 Why don't we look for alternative

17 limber made from plastic refuse and steel instead of

18 cutting and clear-cutting mountain slopes after

19 mountain slopes.

20 If you go on a trip to Alaska, you will

21 see what I mean. There are no trees left. I can

22 only show where once there were white marsh orchids,

23 the place only, because it's gone. My daughter

24 doesn't know where this was, where we saw these

25 beautiful marsh orchids in the forests. The

0102

01 hillsides were full of flowers and color. It is

02 dust now. After the clear-cutting, the cows came

03 in. They ruined the rest.

04 The human species doesn't need anything

05 from animals or gorgeous trees. We can reschool

06 people working in the tree/forest industry. The

07 forest that was planted 30 years ago is still only

08 man height, in the high Sierras, that is. Grow fast

09 and grow good in other areas, but leave our old

10 forests. We need every species alive there.

11 Please.

12 Thank you.

13 MR. ORTEGA: Robert Brower, who will be

14 followed by Bruce Campbell.

15 MR. BROWER: Gentlemen, good afternoon. My

16 name is Robert Brower, B-r-o-w-e-r, and I live in

17 Irvine, California.

18 By way of introduction, my background

19 is in economics and investment management.

20 Currently, I provide strategic business consulting

21 to various clients. I'm here today to offer some

22 testimony in support of the Headwaters agreement.

23 My comments come from a business perspective.

24 Without business activity, we would not

25 have our jobs, our homes, the clothes we wear, the

0103

01 food we eat, and various other products and services

02 which we enjoy. In business, as in life, we are

03 continually making decisions about what we do, and

04 the theme of my comments today is one of balance and

05 compromise.

06 I realize that this hearing is being

07 held to receive comments on the draft EIS/EIR for

08 the Headwaters acquisition and the respective

09 Habitat Conservation and Sustained Yield Plans, but

10 what I see here is a model case of conflict between

11 a business and a property owner who wants to make

12 productive use of his resources and the desires of

13 those who want to preserve and protect those

14 sensitive resources for generations to come. Both

15 the motives are noble and desirable; but how do we

16 decide?

17 Classic economics teaches us that

18 there's a choice between guns and butter. If we

19 have all guns, there are no productive resources

20 left to create butter and vice versa; therefore, as

21 we make these economic decisions, we must arrive at

22 a balance.

23 I think the same analogy is applicable

24 in this case as you consider the Headwaters EIS and

25 EIR. You are being asked to consider a historic

0104

01 agreement that combines the acquisition of ancient

02 redwood forests, the protection of sensitive

03 wildlife and fish species, with a preservation of

04 jobs which go to the very heart of the economic

05 vitality of Humboldt County.

06 You're being asked to decide if these

07 agreements which have been reached through lengthy

08 negotiations between experts representing the

09 various interests, both pro and con, have reached an

10 acceptable balance and conclusion to a controversy

11 that has lasted some 12 years.

12 One of the consequences you have to

13 weigh: on the one hand, you have the federal and

14 state regulations to protect endangered species.

15 Alternatively, you have the business activity of

16 timber harvesting which generates $50 million in

17 annual payroll benefits to some 1500 residents of

18 Humboldt County and an indirect economic benefit to

19 the region of approximately $170 million.

20 This agreement preserves 75 acres of

21 virgin old-growth redwood forest as a permanent

22 habitat for environmentally sensitive species. It

23 will be implemented through some $380 million of

24 joint federal and state funding from your taxpayer

25 dollars. Yours and mine. It calls for a

0105

01 preparation of a long-range Sustained Yield Plan and

02 a multi-species habitat HCP based on the best

03 available science and current law.

04 The SYP is a comprehensive planning

05 document that will provide for timber harvesting

06 while protecting the sensitive ecosystem over the

07 next 120 years. The HCP will protect designated

08 species while allowing timber harvesting operations

09 to take place.

10 This agreement carries the support of

11 the Departments of the Interior and Fish and

12 Wildlife, National Marine Fisheries Service, the

13 California Resources Agency, U.S. Senator Diane

14 Feinstein, California Governor Pete Wilson, and the

15 landowner, Pacific Lumber Company.

16 I believe that federal legislators

17 recognize that there are inherent conflicts between

18 listed species protection and economic development

19 activities. That recognition is the underlying

20 motivation for legislation permitting the creation

21 of these long-term HCPs which allow incidental takes

22 of listed species.

23 From a business and investment

24 perspective, this agreement provides certainty.

25 Each day thousands of business decisions are made

0106

01 weighing one choice against another, assessing risk

02 associated with that choice. With this

03 unprecedented agreement, we get a better

04 understanding of the risks associated with the

05 conflicting alternatives and add certainty to the

06 process.

07 We have traded back and forth and

08 reached some compromises. We know that more than

09 7500 acres of sensitive habitat will be permanently

10 protected. We know that Pacific Lumber Company will

11 be able to continue its activities and provide for

12 the livelihood of its employees and the economic

13 stability of Humboldt County. Both sides have won

14 some points and lost others through compromise.

15 What is compromise? It is a settlement

16 of differences by consent reached by mutual

17 concessions.

18 I view the Headwaters agreement as a

19 good solution to an issue that continually puts

20 those who favor economic development against those

21 who favor the preservation of valuable resources,

22 and I agree with both.

23 To quote from the British statesman,

24 Edmund Burke, all government, indeed every human

25 benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every

0107

01 prudent act is founded on compromise and barter.

02 It is my hope that you will see the

03 balance and compromises in this issue before you and

04 support the Headwaters agreement.

05 Thank you.

06 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

07 Our final speaker for this session is

08 going to be Bruce Campbell.

09 MR. CAMPBELL: Good day, gentlemen. My name

10 is Bruce Campbell. I'm from Los Angeles.

11 Before I get into some gripes about

12 some process situations, I want to respond to the

13 last speaker a little bit.

14 This Habitat Conservation Plan and SYP,

15 they're not based on the best available science.

16 They don't abide by current law, which is why they

17 need the huge HCP loophole in the law in otherwise a

18 reasonably good Endangered Species Act, in order to

19 not protect designated species, but to get a license

20 to kill 36 List A species, including some designated

21 ones under the ESA and then possibly amend later on

22 to be able to kill more species legally for 50 years

23 on 211,799 acres, possibly adding more.

24 On to process, first of all, as far as

25 timing of the comments, this cover sheet from the

0108

01 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signed by Cynthia U.

02 Barry (phonetic) for Michael Speer, dated

03 October 1st, says, "All comments must be received or

04 postmarked by November 16, 1998."

05 However, every other -- the federal

06 register notice and other listings and notices seem

07 to say received by that date; but seeing that this

08 came with the DEIR/EIS, I'm abiding by this one,

09 anyway, even though I'll try to get it in by the

10 16th.

11 Now, we've seen Mr. Halstead's name a

12 lot, where to send comments regarding the federal

13 aspect of this; however, the State seems to not want

14 to receive comments. Even though they'll take them

15 up here, I saw nothing in the -- first of all, I saw

16 nothing in the HCP/SYP or summary about where to

17 send comments. I saw no cover sheet for any

18 document about where to send comments to the State,

19 and then the first volume of the DEIS/EIR, you have

20 to turn on the 70th page with printing on it, and

21 finally, you see not one, but two places to send

22 comments to the State, Page 1-20. Anyway, these

23 documents are huge, as those who have plodded

24 through them or parts of them know, and one can

25 easily totally miss that there's a State commenting

0109

01 process, and I think that was the plan.

02 In my scoping comments, I had some

03 process gripes. The only one I'll mention here is

04 that the scoping process was before the draft HCP

05 came out. I also had some -- so I talked with the

06 Fish and Wildlife Service the week the federal

07 register notice came out. They said the next Monday

08 they'll send out the paper summaries and the CD-ROMs

09 or something. So instead of being sent out on

10 July 20th that I was told that week, mine arrived in

11 mid-August. This happened to work in to Pacific

12 Lumber's favor so that state legislators, unless

13 they browsed a web site, whether it was up there or

14 not, basically couldn't see what they were voting

15 on.

16 Then the delay in sending out the

17 summary was theoretically due to waiting for the

18 errata sheet which wasn't sent with the summary.

19 And the cost of the paper HCP/SYP was prohibitive to

20 many interested citizens. Assuming that citizens

21 can afford computer systems, well, has elitist

22 arrogance written here. Requests by offices of

23 state legislators for a paper copy of the HCP/SYP

24 were denied.

25 Then I got this large sheet of paper

0110

01 and was writing down the different acreages, talking

02 about -- anyway, there's so many different acreage

03 figures in both the HCP/SYP and DEIS/EIR that --

04 And then, also, when citizens are

05 trying to influence legislators whether to give

06 money to Hurwitz and things and then if you're sort

07 of confused as to acreage, well, the agencies and

08 the companies confused as to acreage are trying to

09 make the public confused. Anyway, basically,

10 they're trying to hold back information so that

11 citizens could be really clear on it and contact

12 their legislators and things. Anyway, I'll get off

13 process now.

14 Basically, the essence of what we're

15 talking about here is the Endangered Species Act

16 requires that an applicant for an Incidental Take

17 Permit, quote, minimize and avoid take to the

18 maximum extent practicable.

19 Basically, Hurwitz is using threats of

20 salvage logging in the main Headwaters stand to

21 bully the federal and state government to buy two or

22 maybe four ancient stands for top dollar as if they

23 could legally log it, which they can't under the

24 ESA, and then get his plan approved for his whole

25 holdings to log the hell out of it and spray the

0111

01 hell out of it for 50 years as far as the federal

02 side and 120 years on the state side.

03 And the mitigations for the wildlife

04 species are a joke; but, of course -- anyway, the

05 fix is in on this document. The lawyers conclude

06 something, and then they get this inadequate biology

07 or junk science, and then they try to -- then, of

08 course, their conclusion is that there's no

09 significant impact on species, and thus the proposed

10 action should go forward, the proposed action which

11 involves the most logging and probably the most

12 herbicide spraying.

13 MR. ORTEGA: Mr. Campbell, could I ask you,

14 please, to summarize your point?

15 MR. CAMPBELL: I'll summarize in regards to

16 scoping comments.

17 Now, it's my understanding that scoping

18 comments are supposed to be dealt with in the

19 DEIS/EIR; however, I wrote 14 pages of scoping

20 comments, and a number of points weren't mentioned

21 in the draft, including looking into what is in

22 specific herbicides and herbicide formulations,

23 including inert ingredients, and the effect of all

24 that on various species, including 11 specific key

25 wildlife areas or corridors in a few counties up on

0112

01 the north coast and how Pacific Lumber's land

02 relates to habitat connectivity and wildlife

03 movement in dispersal.

04 And they vaguely mentioned sort of

05 corridors between the Humboldt Bay watershed and the

06 Eel, and from east of the Eel to west of the Eel

07 into Humboldt Redwood State Park; but then a bit

08 later, it says that the proposed action would result

09 in basically short-term destruction of these

10 wildlife corridors. Anyway, that's just a taste of

11 what --

12 And in conclusion, I submitted -- I

13 don't have the Xerox copy today, but I got some

14 return registered cards I got at the post office

15 when I sent this report called "Toxic Water, a

16 Report on the Adverse Effects of Pesticides on

17 Pacific Coho Salmon and the Prevalence of Pesticides

18 in Coho Habitat," by three women with the Northwest

19 Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides in Eugene,

20 Oregon.

21 I sent this to NMFS in Long Beach, and

22 they signed for it back in July, and I sent it to

23 U.S. Fish and Wildlife in Arcata in September, and

24 it seems like NMFS should have gotten it to Arcata,

25 and then I got it a little late to Arcata; but it

0113

01 seems like NMFS should have brought it up there, but

02 it obviously wasn't included in the DEIS/EIR.

03 And you'll be hearing from me again.

04 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

05 Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to

06 adjourn at this time and go off the record. We will

07 be back in session this evening as scheduled,

08 6:00 P.M.

09 Thank you all very much.

10 (Whereupon, the first session

11 of the proceedings were concluded at

12 3:55 P.M.)

0114

01 SESSION 2

02 6:00 P.M.

03 * * * * *

05 MR. ORTEGA: We are on the record now. We've

06 reconvened the second session of the public hearing.

07 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,

08 or I should say good evening. Welcome to this

09 public hearing.

10 The United States Fish and Wildlife

11 Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the

12 California Department of Forestry and Fire

13 Protection, and the California Department of Fish

14 and Game are conducting a joint process for the

15 taking of comments on an Environmental Impact

16 Statement and Environmental Impact Report for the

17 Headwaters Forest Acquisition and the Pacific Lumber

18 Company's Habitat Conservation Plan and Sustained

19 Yield Plan.

20 My name is Lotario D. Ortega. I am an

21 attorney, retired from the United States Department

22 of the Interior, Office of the Solicitor. I will be

23 serving as the presiding official for this hearing.

24 Let me introduce to you the people that

25 are representing the agencies involved at the head

0115

01 table here with me. Let me begin. At the far right

02 is Mr. Bruce Halstead, of the United States Fish and

03 Wildlife Service. He is stationed in Arcata,

04 California.

05 Next to him and immediately to my right

06 is Jerry Ahlstrom, of the State of California.

07 On my left here is Jim Lecky, of the

08 National Marine Fisheries Service.

09 You will find an information table in

10 the lobby as you entered this room with written

11 materials about the proposed action and the

12 documents that will be referred to in this hearing.

13 At this point, let me introduce

14 Mr. Bruce Halstead, and then he will be followed by

15 Mr. Ahlstrom, who will make brief statements

16 regarding the documents that we're going to be

17 discussing here this evening.

18 MR. HALSTEAD: Thank you, Terry.

19 Good evening. My name is Bruce

20 Halstead, and I'm with the Fish and Wildlife Service

21 in Arcata, California, and I'll read a few

22 statements here to put this thing into context.

23 The federal Endangered Species Act has

24 established protection for species listed as

25 threatened and endangered and provides for

0116

01 authorization of certain impacts or such impacts

02 complied with criteria established by the Act.

03 The most fundamental protection

04 provided by the Act is the prohibition against take

05 of listed species. "Take" is defined as to harass,

06 harm, pursue, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or

07 collect, or to attempt to engage in any such

08 conduct.

09 "Incidental take" is defined as take

10 that is incidental to and not for the purpose of the

11 carrying out of an otherwise unlawful activity.

12 When an incidental take may result from the actions

13 of state or local governments, corporations, or

14 private individuals, Section 10 of the Endangered

15 Species Act directs the Secretaries of the

16 Department of the Interior and the Department of

17 Commerce to issue permits for incidental take when

18 certain conditions are met by the applicant. Those

19 conditions are described in detail in the Act.

20 To provide more time for your comments,

21 I will only summarize the conditions briefly. Most

22 importantly, the applicant must submit a

23 conservation plan which has become known as the

24 Habitat Conservation Plan, or HCP. Among other

25 things, the conservation plan must describe the

0117

01 impact of the taking and the steps the applicant

02 will take to minimize and mitigate such impacts.

03 The standards for the agencies'

04 evaluation of the HCP are also described in the Act.

05 Most importantly, the agencies must find that the

06 taking will not appreciably reduce the likelihood of

07 survival and recovery of the species in the wild.

08 If the statutory conditions are met, the Incidental

09 Take Permit will be issued by the U.S. Fish and

10 Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries

11 Service.

12 The Pacific Lumber Company has prepared

13 an HCP and submitted an application for an

14 Incidental Take Permit for several species. Also,

15 the United States Congress and the California

16 legislature have approved appropriations for

17 acquisition of portions of Pacific Lumber Company's

18 property if the HCP is approved.

19 Because the issuance of an Incidental

20 Take Permit is a federal action, the process is

21 subject to review under the National Environmental

22 Policy Act, or NEPA. The State of California is

23 also undertaking an environmental review under the

24 California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA;

25 therefore, the state and federal agencies have

0118

01 entered into an agreement to prepare a single

02 environmental documental called a joint EIR/EIS.

03 Impacts considered under NEPA and CEQA

04 are not limited to the impacts on listed species,

05 but include all impacts of the action affecting the

06 human environment. In addition to evaluation of the

07 effects of the implementation of the Habitat

08 Conservation Plan, the joint EIR/EIS will cover the

09 impacts of the proposed acquisition.

10 This public meeting is conducted as

11 part of the public comment period on the EIR/EIS.

12 The public comment period will close on

13 November 16th, 1998. Because the congressional

14 appropriation includes a deadline of March 1st,

15 1999, for completion of the entire process, the

16 public comment period will not be extended beyond

17 November 16th.

18 On behalf of the Fish and Wildlife

19 Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, I

20 thank you for the effort you have made to attend

21 this meeting and also thank you in advance for your

22 comments.

23 Now, we will hear some introductory

24 words from the representative of the State of

25 California.

0119

01 Jerry?

02 MR. AHLSTROM: Good evening. My name is Jerry

03 Ahlstrom. I'm with the California Department of

04 Forestry and Fire Protection in Sacramento. I'm the

05 Chief of the Forest Practices Program.

06 The California Department of Forestry

07 and Fire Protection is the state lead agency under

08 the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA,

09 for this project. The department will use the

10 Environmental Impact Report, or EIR, to evaluate

11 environmental impacts of the Sustained Yield Plan

12 submitted by Pacific Lumber Company.

13 The department will use the EIR to

14 identify potentially significant adverse impacts and

15 to determine whether the Sustained Yield Plan needs

16 to be modified with alternatives or feasible

17 mitigation measures to avoid or mitigate those

18 impacts. This EIR is a joint document with the

19 federal Environmental Impact Statement.

20 Sustained Yield Plans, or SYPs, are one

21 of the mechanisms that timberland owners can use to

22 meet the State's requirement for maintaining maximum

23 sustained production of high-quality timber products

24 while giving consideration to the values relating

25 to, among other things, watersheds, fisheries, and

0120

01 the wildlife.

02 SYPs must include projections of timber

03 growth and harvesting over at least a hundred-year

04 planning horizon, a fish and wildlife assessment,

05 and a watershed assessment. Subsequent, timber

06 harvest plans may rely on the approved SYP to the

07 extent that the issues are addressed in that SYP.

08 Following approval, the SYP is enforced for a period

09 of no more than ten years.

10 The department does not normally

11 prepare an EIR for Sustained Yield Plans and usually

12 uses its CEQA functional equivalency under the

13 Forest Practices Act; however, in this case, it was

14 judged to be more efficient to prepare an EIR as a

15 joint document with the federal EIS.

16 On behalf of the department, I welcome

17 you to this hearing, and we look forward to your

18 comments.

19 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, gentlemen.

20 Public comments on these documents will

21 be accepted until November 16th, 1998.

22 After review and consideration of your

23 comments and all the other information gathered

24 during the comment period, the agencies will prepare

25 a final Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental

0121

01 Impact Report.

02 The purpose of this hearing is to

03 receive your oral comments on the proposals.

04 Information you offer on all aspects of these

05 proposals is very important and will be carefully

06 considered.

07 Because of the importance of your

08 comments, it is necessary that we follow certain

09 procedures here this evening. If you want to

10 present comments at this hearing, you must register

11 at the table outside in the foyer. When you

12 register, please indicate any organization that you

13 represent.

14 When you are called to present your

15 comments, please come forward to a microphone. You

16 will find one on each side in the front of the

17 hearing here. Please begin your presentation by

18 stating your full name, and please, for accuracy of

19 the record, spell your name, and then, if

20 applicable, indicate what organization you

21 represent.

22 It appears that we will not have to

23 impose a strict time limitation on speakers because

24 we don't appear to have that many in number to

25 require such a measure. We prefer not to limit

0122

01 anybody in the amount of time to a strict timetable,

02 but we would leave it with you. Please bear in mind

03 that there will be people following you who will

04 also want to be heard, so we would ask that you

05 limit your comments to an appropriate period to

06 allow for the other people to have ample opportunity

07 to explain their proposal or their comments.

08 Your statements are being recorded by a

09 Certified Court Reporter to accurately preserve them

10 for the record. Please keep in mind, however, that

11 the reporter will not record any statements from the

12 audience or to the audience. Comments have to be

13 made into the two microphones that are placed for

14 your convenience.

15 This is an informal hearing. You will

16 not be questioned or cross-examined in connection

17 with your comments; but on the other hand, it is

18 also not possible to answer your questions here.

19 Official responses to any issues raised during the

20 comment period will be stated in the final

21 Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact

22 Report.

23 Instead of presenting oral comments

24 here or in addition to any oral comments you make,

25 you may submit comments in writing. Written

0123

01 comments may be submitted today to the staff at the

02 registration table, or they may be mailed to

03 Mr. Bruce Halstead, and I'll give you his address

04 right now: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,

05 1125 16th Street, Room 209, Arcata, California. The

06 address is also available at the registration and

07 information tables outside.

08 Written comments will be accepted until

09 November 16th, 1998, and please bear in mind that

10 written comments will be given the same

11 consideration as oral comments presented here.

12 At this point, we're ready for our

13 first speaker. I will call two names so that the

14 person speaking will be followed by the one that I

15 call second so that that person can be prepared to

16 come forward. The first speaker will be Kirk James

17 Murphy, to be followed by Peter J. Bralver.

18 DR. MURPHY: Counselor Ortega, Mr. Halstead,

19 Mr. Ahlstrom, Mr. Lecky, my name is Kirk James

20 Murphy. I'm a medical doctor and Chair of the

21 Environmental Committee of L.A. Physicians for

22 Social Responsibility. LAPSR appreciates the chance

23 to give its input into the proposed plan for the

24 taking of resources on the Pacific Lumber

25 properties.

0124

01 I'm sorry. I was asked to spell my

02 name. First name, K-i-r-k, like the old Star Trek

03 captain; middle name, James, J-a-m-e-s; last name,

04 Murphy, M-u-r-p-h-y, like Murphy's Law.

05 I'm going to start my comments focusing

06 on the database which PL has presented to your

07 respective agencies for its consideration, using the

08 model that an inaccurate database in medicine or in

09 any other aspect of science leads to inaccurate

10 assertions, assumptions that cannot be tested, or

11 ultimately results derived from the data which do

12 not accurately reflect real world conditions in

13 biology or, for that matter, medicine.

14 If we turn to the Sustained Yield Plan,

15 the Sustained Yield Plan is flawed in numerous

16 areas. It fails to include accurate and impartial

17 data regarding the current condition of the aquatic

18 and riparian habitats. It fails to include a

19 current assessment of the results of the extensive

20 storm and erosive activity wreaked on the area by

21 the recent severe weather and the most recent

22 El Nino cycle in the winter of '97 and the spring of

23 '98.

24 It fails to take into account the

25 consequences of logging and road building activities

0125

01 carried out by PL and its subcontractors in a number

02 of areas including, but not limited to, the Bear

03 Creek watershed.

04 In addition, the Sustained Yield Plan

05 contains unfounded, undocumented, and arbitrary

06 models which are used by PL to generate numerical

07 values for, quote, sensitivity, unquote, measures of

08 the impacts upon watersheds and hill slope

09 activities of their extractive practices. A model

10 which boils down to numbers with no scientific basis

11 is a recipe for arithmetic delusions.

12 You can probably tell from my training

13 I'm a psychiatrist; however, I'm also familiar with

14 real world consequences. I'm a consultant for one

15 of our transplant teams at UCLA, so I see on a human

16 basis what happens when human beings due to -- how

17 can I put it? -- a concern about a desire to bring

18 about a given outcome would askew data for what they

19 would consider the best possible purposes to bring

20 about an outcome. I'm not saying that happens on

21 our team. We actually are there to provide

22 impartial assessments so it doesn't happen.

23 But if you consider the degree of need

24 and concern that a person who seeks a transplant or

25 their family members, you might have had a firsthand

0126

01 chance to see how individual passions can cause

02 people, even with the best of intentions, to shade

03 data. For the purposes of discussion, I won't limit

04 my assumptions to the idea that Mr. Hurwitz has the

05 best of intentions, regardless of how unsustainable

06 that hypothesis might be from the existing public

07 record.

08 In any event, with regard to the

09 Sustained Yield Plan, we at Physicians for Social

10 Responsibility ask your regulatory agencies and the

11 good scientists therein to resist the awesome

12 political pressures upon you and to reject the

13 equally flawed, quote, disturbance index, which is

14 yet another unscientific, undocumented model lacking

15 any validity in the world of conservation biology or

16 hydrology and which purports to assess the impact of

17 these extractive measures and yet actually reveals

18 nothing of scientific import or credibility.

19 Beyond that, we at L.A. Physicians for

20 Social Responsibility implore those of you in the

21 agencies to insist on what any good scientist would

22 want for their efforts; that is, independently

23 conducted, reliable, and valid assessments of the

24 critical data at hand.

25 If we think about the purposes of the

0127

01 Endangered Species Act, it's to protect species.

02 Virtually, all of the data in Pacific Lumber's

03 Habitat Conservation Plan and their Sustained Yield

04 Plan is generated by Pacific Lumber employees or

05 their subordinates. The role of impartial data

06 collection is limited. Certainly, where the data

07 has been collected by your agencies we trust that

08 it's impartial; however, these plans rely largely on

09 data regarding species number distribution and

10 habitat which were collected by the very partial

11 employees of Pacific Lumber or their subordinates.

12 Finally, with regard to the Sustained

13 Yield Plan, we at L.A. Physicians for Social

14 Responsibility ask that the relevant agencies limit

15 the calculations involved in the long-term sustained

16 yield thresholds to data which can be firmly based

17 in observable, preexisting conditions and growth

18 rates on the ground in the area.

19 In other words, the current long-term

20 sustained yield thresholds are based on

21 extrapolations of growth rates of Douglas-fir and

22 non-indigenous species and growth rates which have

23 never before been observed in Humboldt County or in

24 the affected areas.

25 The only conclusion biologically about

0128

01 the possibility of bringing about such sustained

02 growth rates would be a massive application of

03 herbicides which has not yet been proven, even if

04 one were to except its clear risk for public safety,

05 to bring about an adequate conversion of redwood

06 understory to Douglas-fir, which is the only

07 possible way that the projected growth rates can be

08 obtained, by a massive replacement of redwood

09 species by Doug-fir.

10 If we move on to the Habitat

11 Conservation Plan aspect of PL's assertions, many of

12 the same flaws exist. With regard to the marbled

13 murrelet calculations, the assessment relies heavily

14 on data regarding marbled murrelet habitat and

15 distribution which was gathered by PL.

16 As most of you probably already heard,

17 the HCP proposes to harvest 53 percent of the

18 available marbled murrelet habitat without any

19 survey to actually determine the number and

20 distribution of the nesting marbled murrelet species

21 in the habitat. Literally, the consequences of the

22 HCP, as written, for the murrelet are un-fathomable

23 because of the absence of credible and independent

24 data.

25 For this reason, we at L.A. Physicians

0129

01 for Social Responsibility assert that the current

02 HCP fails to meet the standards set forth in the

03 Endangered Species Act, standards which, quote,

04 require -- let me get the quote right -- quote,

05 minimize and mitigate to the maximum extent

06 possible, unquote, the impact of these extractive

07 activities on endangered species.

08 With regard to the endangered coho

09 salmon that's been a focus of so much attention, the

10 aquatic strategy is an example of Frankenstein's

11 surgery. The aquatic strategy, as most of you know,

12 places an interim strategy in place for three years;

13 however, during that time, extractive activities

14 will still be able to continue with relatively

15 limited constraints and controls.

16 Subsequent to that three-year period, a

17 watershed analysis will begin. There is no

18 specification for the exact date by which the

19 watershed analysis will be completed.

20 Moreover, the watershed analysis is

21 subject to the review and consent of PL. Should

22 they reject it, PL will be free to proceed under the

23 interim strategy, which is a radical departure from

24 the best available science; in other words, the

25 FEMAT alternatives.

0130

01 From a surgical point of view, this is

02 insane. This is literally making the incision

03 before the extent of the lesion or the patient's

04 condition has been fully documented or assessed.

05 This is malpractice if it is inflicted on one human

06 being. If it's inflicted on a vital ecosystem, I

07 lack the medical epithet to characterize the

08 disastrous results.

09 With regard to the potential risks of

10 the Habitat Conservation Plan to public health, in

11 general, the plan as currently construed would

12 permit a massive application of herbicides on

13 28,000 acres of watersheds on PL lands.

14 On November 11th of this month,

15 Californians for Pesticide Reform will be releasing

16 a publication called "Generations at Risk," which

17 looks extensively at a variety of environmental

18 intoxicants and how they can affect reproductive

19 health in California.

20 Virtually, all of the herbicides which

21 are used in commercial forestry are known endocrine

22 disrupters. Most of the herbicides used in

23 commercial forestry have been shown to bring about,

24 as well, developmental abnormalities which are

25 commonly called birth defects; and many of them are

0131

01 associated with permanent alterations in the germ

02 lie; in other words, capable of making changes in

03 genetic material which are handed down generation by

04 generation.

05 A permanent war on the genetics and the

06 genetic information of the generations of workers in

07 Humboldt County who have already been the victims of

08 Charles Hurwitz's depredations is an unacceptable

09 price to pay in the eyes of LAPSR for the cost of

10 Charlie Hurwitz's junk bonds.

11 Finally, and most controversially, we

12 at LAPSR would ask the distinguished members of this

13 committee to take into account the degree to which

14 one might expect the corporate agents of Charles

15 Hurwitz to carry out in good faith any plan which

16 has been agreed to. As you all know, there have

17 been numerous criminal violations of the California

18 state forestry codes.

19 Also, if we look at the assumptions

20 made in the HCP, which, after all, is supposed to

21 regulate an incidental take, without exception,

22 every single assumption is made in a direction which

23 would minimize the possible impact of these

24 extractive activities upon endangered species.

25 Every single model put forth by PL's alleged

0132

01 scientists again neglects current scientific data

02 regarding the projected impacts of these extractive

03 activities.

04 For this reason, we at LAPSR suggest

05 the take in this plan is not incidental. The fact

06 that the maximum logging is arranged to take place

07 in the first years of the plan is consistent with

08 the following hypothesis.

09 The purpose of the Habitat Conservation

10 Plan put forward by Pacific Lumber is to cause

11 maximum depredation of species habitat in the first

12 three to five years of the plan, thereby creating

13 facts on the ground which would obviate a need for

14 future effective species protections merely by

15 wiping out species and their habitats.

16 This plan comes from a man whose

17 corporation, his first public corporation, was run

18 into the ground when he was 23. The shareholders

19 were the losers. He walked away with a nest egg

20 which he subsequently, of course, made into MAXXAM.

21 We at LAPSR want to ask your agencies

22 to very carefully consider this very real issue, in

23 light of the numerous flaws and deficiencies in PL's

24 HCP, whether the plan is acceptable on its face or

25 whether, as LAPSR believes, the plan should be

0133

01 rejected as a prima fascie intent not to bring about

02 an incidental take of species, but a deliberate take

03 of species for the reasons I alluded to above.

04 I thank you all for your time and your

05 consideration. Good evening.

06 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, Dr. Murphy.

07 Peter Bralver, to be followed by

08 Mark Williams.

09 MR. BRALVER: Good evening. My name is

10 Peter Bralver, B-r-a-l-v-e-r, and I work with a

11 group which I founded years ago, Wide Network

12 Environmental Think Tank, and I'm also a consultant

13 with other scientific research groups and work in

14 scientific and ecological and biological

15 illustration and theoretical mathematics.

16 My comments tonight involve the fact

17 that Pacific Lumber Company and Charles Hurwitz, who

18 have held the world's largest unprotected stand of

19 ancient redwoods, his property, since 1985, that

20 although the core issue is the intrinsic value of

21 these groves and the over 34 species which are

22 imperiled along with their habitat, the questions

23 about overcoming the inadequacies of the HCPs

24 involve the foundations of economics and the

25 application of risk analysis and risk management to

0134

01 this and other issues of a larger scope in which

02 these hearings are nested.

03 Although time does not allow us to

04 actually perform a risk assessment or analysis in

05 any detail whatsoever, we can outline briefly a

06 strategic picture that shows the deficient basis of

07 the HCP/SYP.

08 In applying economic principles to

09 risk, we must remember that the argument for going

10 by the rules of "business as usual" actually

11 advocates the value-laden, normative premise that

12 the current structure or rights and entitlements is

13 good, fair, and just. But in the context of risk

14 analysis, what is important is for society to make

15 decisions based on good information so that

16 policymakers have at least thought about the likely

17 consequences of their choices.

18 Society has a long and well-established

19 role in guiding the market, including education and

20 standard setting, both of which can produce

21 cost-effective risk reduction over time, given

22 attention to opportunity cost; that is, attentions

23 to the value of the most desirable foregone

24 alternative to a particular decision or course of

25 action.

0135

01 That means that if you could get

02 $10,000 worth of vacation satisfactions in the

03 redwoods, it's worth more than an opportunity cost

04 of $350 in redwood furniture or $200 worth of an

05 exhibit of marbled murrelet nests in a museum,

06 assuming the furniture or the murrelet nests were

07 the most desirable foregone alternatives.

08 In fact, if some people enjoy the

09 benefits of habitat and species destruction for

10 lumber, others may suffer the risk of lost

11 ecological services and lost standing environmental

12 benefits; thus society may reserve the right to veto

13 the economists' judgments because the benefits go to

14 one group while the risks are imposed on another.

15 Fair compensation, then, must be

16 addressed in terms of the value lost to

17 consciousness, and the remediation to the risk

18 cannot always be shifted; thus value is more dynamic

19 than material and in the exchange more than in the

20 profit.

21 But to address the scientifically

22 pressing issue means a full RBA, or risk-benefit

23 analysis, for the risky activities where opportunity

24 costs transcend the individual actor's distribution

25 of benefits and risks.

0136

01 The key to a good risk-benefit analysis

02 is to carefully account for all costs, including, in

03 some sense, consciousness and the conscious

04 apprehension of intrinsic value. Accounting for all

05 opportunity costs requires consideration of all

06 alternatives. When alternatives are left

07 unexplored, economic analysis is incomplete and

08 often wrong.

09 In this discussion, I have quoted

10 extensively from James Swainey (phonetic),

11 Department of Economics, Wright State University,

12 Dayton, Ohio, Vlas DeMolok's (phonetic) work on the

13 fundamentals of risk assessment and risk management,

14 as well as my own experiences, and in other readings

15 on the basic economics of risk analysis.

16 And the basic point that I'm making is,

17 as an umbrella for all of these factors, when we

18 consider risk, it's the very immaterial and

19 difficult concept of consciousness, which is a

20 factor of value in risk assessment; and that is the

21 point which I made.

22 Thank you.

23 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, Mr. Bralver.

24 Mark Williams, to be followed by

25 Larry Wartel.

0137

01 MR. WILLIAMS: Good evening, gentlemen. My

02 name is Mark Williams, M-a-r-k, W-i-l-l-i-a-m-s; and

03 though I've been involved with several conservation

04 and environmental groups over the years, I am here

05 tonight as both a taxpayer and primarily as a

06 father.

07 I wish to speak about some of the

08 broader strokes of the Habitat Conservation Plan,

09 so-called Habitat Conservation Plan. There were

10 many speakers here who quite eloquently were talking

11 about the specifics and some of the flaws in both

12 the math and the science contained in this document.

13 I wish to challenge some of the

14 underlying, the undergirding assumptions of this

15 planning process, including the idea of the

16 incidental take; and I appreciate that Mr. Halstead

17 spelled out for us what we mean when we talk about

18 "take." We mean killing and maiming. We're talking

19 about the killing and maiming of endangered species

20 and the killing and maiming of ancient groves of

21 redwood trees that have been there for hundreds of

22 years.

23 No take can be viewed as incidental.

24 There is nothing incidental about taking notches out

25 of a fragile ecosystem in this day and age, and I

0138

01 think we need to bear that in mind when we attempt

02 to minimize the damage that this plan will

03 essentially set in stone if we approve it.

04 I also want to challenge the idea of

05 the so-called "no surprises" concept and locking

06 into place protections, if you will, for Mr. Charles

07 Hurwitz, of Pacific Lumber, so that they do not have

08 to adapt or change course for at least a half a

09 century, regardless of whatever new scientific

10 evidence or exigencies have come up.

11 "No surprises" is an absolutely fine

12 philosophy when it comes to raising children.

13 Children need constancy. They need a steady supply

14 of nourishment, both emotional and physical. But

15 that is because we have to prepare them for becoming

16 adults when real life is in fact constantly full of

17 surprises. Real life is comprised almost entirely

18 of surprises when we begin to live it.

19 And operating under the assumption that

20 Mr. Hurwitz is also an adult, I'm not sure why he

21 asks the State of California and its taxpayers to

22 guarantee for him half a century or more of no

23 surprises in a business dealing that he purports to

24 undertake seeking to extract profit from the

25 commonwealth of natural resources that we have here.

0139

01 Imagine, if you will, for example, a

02 hundred years ago, if the State of California had

03 locked a "no surprises" policy into place for Leland

04 Stanford or any of the Big Four building the

05 railroads. In fact, some of the legacy of that

06 earlier period is still with us; but if Leland

07 Stanford at the time of the last turn of the century

08 demanded protections for all of the 20th Century for

09 his corporate holdings, I don't know if we would

10 have thought that was the best legacy that the

11 public planners of California could have left us

12 back then, and I wonder if we really seriously

13 believe that the citizens here in 2098 would

14 actually be appreciative of the fact that we brought

15 all our laws to bear to lock in place protections

16 for a man I think that --

17 Well, I will not speak to the possible

18 legacy of Mr. Charles Hurwitz, but I find it hard to

19 believe that there would be great appreciation for

20 the fact that we would lock in a hundred years of

21 protection for a man who will long be dust by then

22 and who will have taken trees that actually would

23 have been standing at that time for those people to

24 enjoy. So I would like to question the whole

25 underlying assumption of guaranteeing at our

0140

01 taxpayer expense "no surprises."

02 And, finally, as a father, I wish to

03 say those redwood trees are native Californians, and

04 I'm a native Californian, and I don't appreciate

05 someone from outside being able to use the wheels of

06 state and federal planning to tell me and my

07 children and my family what is best for the land

08 that we grew up in and for the wilderness here that

09 we have come to appreciate. It smacks a bit of

10 carpetbagging, and I would hope that our public

11 planners would resist that and, again, not squander

12 public resources, to cast it in stone.

13 Thank you.

14 MR. ORTEGA: Larry Wartel, to be followed by

15 Jack Neff.

16 MR. WARTEL: I'm Larry Wartel, Urban Planner.

17 I just want to highlight some of the

18 critical points that will be devastating to the

19 ecology in the area, the Headwaters.

20 The HCP deals a lethal blow to

21 California's devastated fisheries. The coho salmon

22 and ancient species that has evolved on the Pacific

23 Coast over thousands of years will likely go extinct

24 if the aquatic provisions of this HCP are not

25 dramatically improved.

0141

01 Not so long ago, the coho salmon was

02 abundant in California's rivers and streams; but

03 with the onset of industrial logging over the past

04 century, salmon populations have plummeted to

05 2 percent of their original numbers. 98 percent are

06 already gone. The goal of the Endangered Species

07 Act and the goal of this process should be to save

08 and restore species like the coho salmon. Please

09 take every necessary step toward that goal. Federal

10 agencies themselves have documented the dwindling

11 numbers of salmon. They have found that every run

12 of California wild salmon is near extinction. The

13 source of this problem is loss of habitat.

14 I don't want to belabor the points, but

15 about a month ago, I was driving down a street, down

16 La Cienega Boulevard, oh, in West Hollywood; and I

17 saw some immigrant day workers in a pickup truck

18 hauling some redwood planks; and it doesn't take a

19 lot of common sense to know where they were going.

20 They were probably going up into the Hollywood Hills

21 or up into Beverly Hills and Bel Air, building

22 probably a redwood deck with a sauna for some very

23 wealthy people.

24 If these grand ancient trees are being

25 used for the benefit of just a handful of people,

0142

01 something is very wrong with this; and I think we

02 can do what the Swiss and the Swedes and the Germans

03 are now doing in sustainably using their forests;

04 and the only way to do it is to implement -- have

05 the courage to implement a policy of long-term

06 development where we don't take every tree in the

07 woods.

08 Thank you very much.

09 MR. ORTEGA: Jack Neff, to be followed by

10 Mehmet McMillan.

11 MR. NEFF: Jack Neff, J-a-c-k, N-e-f-f.

12 I'm not a paid lobbyist. I'm a citizen

13 activist. And as a citizen activist, I come here

14 with the question of whether the steps needed to be

15 completed for the Incidental Take Permit have a

16 deadline of March 1st, '99, and if there is a

17 deadline of March 1st, '99, whether the PALCO/MAXXAM

18 Corp.'s application for the Incidental Take Permit

19 is likewise discharged, never to be brought back

20 again, or whether they can reintroduce it with a new

21 deadline. And I think that this is a question that

22 is a fluid question that banks upon the solidity of

23 the trees and rocks and soil those trees stand on.

24 And the fluidity in which I speak is

25 another question of whether this is in fact a public

0143

01 comment hearing in which public input is considered

02 important, as this is a political process worked out

03 over the constituency of California and the

04 jurisdiction of the federal government, or whether

05 this is really a creation or a mitigation of public

06 sentiment put forth by large corporations who

07 wheedled considerable political influence in the

08 respective capitals of California and the

09 United States.

10 And I think when we decide whether this

11 is truly public input that is regarded by our public

12 servants who will process our comments and

13 creatively and responsibly apply them to reflect the

14 values of the nation and the State of California or

15 whether they will use it to apply the values of the

16 interest of a narrow few --

17 And I appreciate Mr. Ortega convening

18 again since the January '97 public comment hearings

19 on the Headwaters Forest and Humboldt County

20 logging.

21 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

22 Mehmet McMillan, to be followed by

23 Mary Loquvam.

24 MR. MC MILLAN: My name is Mehmet McMillan,

25 spelled M-e-h-m-e-t, M-c-M-i-l-l-a-n. I represent

0144

01 Action Resource Center and the working group to save

02 Headwaters. I'm a biologist, I'm a botanist, and

03 I'm an arborist.

04 I'm here to emphasize to the Department

05 of Fish and Wildlife, the National Marine Fisheries

06 Service, and the Department of Forestry that the

07 compromise thus far reached with PALCO falls short

08 of what is scientifically proven to ensure that

09 indicator species, some of which are endangered,

10 survive and recover. The indicator species offer us

11 a glimpse into the health and the safety and general

12 welfare of the public and the natural communities.

13 The remaining old-growth forested lands

14 in California is less than 5 percent. Only

15 20 percent remains functional residual and

16 second-growth forests. 50 percent of California's

17 surface water comes from these open spaces. They

18 are crucial for clean water, clean air, and public

19 safety.

20 My review of this document indicates a

21 strong political and economic agenda that needs to

22 be held in check by the public trust. I believe

23 that's you three regulatory agencies. You all must

24 demand and implement stronger science in the

25 Headwaters HCP.

0145

01 Scientifically, the parameters of this

02 HCP are inadequate. The Mantech and FEMAT are

03 federally produced scientific documents that support

04 this inadequacy. Good science from numerous other

05 studies and scientifically supported reports all

06 indicate that there are many serious areas of

07 concern for this HCP. Specifically, I'll mention

08 only a few.

09 Firstly, this HCP's prescriptions are

10 inadequate for stream-side slopes and old growth.

11 All THPs need stricter protection from

12 sedimentation, mass wasting, and habitat

13 destruction.

14 I am requesting that the public trust

15 agency require and include in final EIR and EIS

16 documents a copy of population viability analysis on

17 each of the 33 species proposed to be taken in the

18 HCP ITP and implementation agreements and that

19 habitat acreage area for the PVAs should be for the

20 entire Headwaters planning area of 210-some-odd

21 thousand acres; and in addition, I ask that the PVAs

22 and risk assessment should be performed throughout

23 the range and distribution of each of these

24 endangered species as well as other species in the

25 area. Example: northern spotted owl, mamu.

0146

01 This additional analysis needs to be

02 performed because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

03 has issued ITPs and proposals to issue additional

04 ITPs in California, Oregon, and Washington. I

05 believe there's a legal binding to that.

06 The Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act

07 requires consultation between all federal agencies

08 in regards to endangered species conservation and

09 proposal actions that may affect them. Regulatory

10 agencies should be in contact with all suboffices to

11 gather and analyze all permits and collateral

12 effects of permits when making their biological

13 opinion on the Headwaters HCP.

14 Thank you.

15 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

16 Mary Loquvam, to be followed by

17 Bruce Campbell.

18 MS. LOQUVAM: Good evening, gentlemen. My

19 name is Mary Loquvam, spelled L-o-q-u-v-a-m. Thank

20 you very much for having this hearing and letting us

21 come and speak before you tonight.

22 98 percent of our nation's old-growth

23 forests are gone. 98 percent of our native

24 California salmon population is gone, depleted. I'm

25 not a scientist. I'm not a biologist. I'm not in

0147

01 the medical profession. I simply represent myself

02 as a native of California. And I don't want to lose

03 the remaining 2 percent.

04 And I'm here tonight to ask you to

05 please do everything you can to save our state's

06 remaining 2-percent forests and the coho salmon and

07 our nation's forests. Let's stand up and use the

08 good science people here are saying you have to use

09 to fight a corporation that is, you know, doing this

10 to pay off a bad debt. Please help.

11 Thank you.

12 MR. ORTEGA: Bruce Campbell will be followed

13 by Bob Gornik.

14 MR. CAMPBELL: Good evening. I'm Bruce

15 Campbell from Los Angeles.

16 I mentioned this afternoon that my

17 scoping comments both on examining all ingredients

18 in herbicide formulations and their impact on

19 certain species on Pacific Lumber holdings were not

20 responded to and also my scoping comments regarding

21 the 11 wildlife areas and how their -- how Pacific

22 Lumber's lands affect wildlife habitat connectivity

23 between these areas and through Pacific Lumber's

24 land.

25 Anyway, since those seem to be entirely

0148

01 ignored in the DEIS/EIR, I thus call for a

02 supplemental draft EIS/EIR to address the issues

03 raised in scoping which were not addressed in the

04 draft documents. I'm not referring at this point to

05 the points which were listed in the Appendix D

06 scoping report and then responded to in that report

07 as to why they weren't being examined in the

08 document, some of which I agree with the reasoning

09 of and some of which I don't; but I'm referring to

10 the points ignored entirely because it would take

11 some serious study, essentially.

12 I complained in the scoping comments

13 that serious impacts on smaller watersheds were

14 essentially being swept under the carpet by looking

15 at a larger area for watershed analysis. At least,

16 Yager Creek watershed is now separated from

17 Van Duzen River watershed in the watershed analysis

18 process, but I disagree with the conclusion that the

19 Bear River and Mattole River watershed situations

20 should not be examined separately.

21 As far as some definitions, I don't

22 like the definition defining "Headwaters"; and when

23 environmentalists talk about the Headwaters complex

24 and the Greater Headwaters, I don't care to define

25 "Headwaters," which you seem to define it as the

0149

01 Headwaters stand Elk River throughout -- excuse

02 me -- Elk spring stand and the buffer area going

03 into the reserve. I believe the definition of

04 "Headwaters" should be more expansive.

05 Then there's a word called "decade."

06 Ever heard of that one? It's from the Greek root

07 "dec," the Greek root "dec" meaning ten. Now, the

08 Sustained Yield Plan is 120 years. It can be

09 divided by ten 12 times.

10 There's all sorts of confusing tables

11 in the HCP/SYP, and to an extent, in the draft that

12 seems to be maybe a four-year decade where they want

13 to do a hell of a lot of damage, like log over

14 50,000 acres, clear-cutting 35,000, spraying perhaps

15 up to 50,000. Look at Page 3.14-9 to get confused

16 as to how much they want to spray in the first

17 decade. Then is the first decade four years? Is it

18 nine years like it says in the summary, or is it

19 actually ten years, which could make it more easy to

20 figure out the 120-year scenario?

21 The draft referred to PL land, in

22 general, as mountainous terrain. It's generally the

23 steepest slopes which have yet to be logged, and

24 logging in these areas will exacerbate the very

25 serious problems, especially as of January 1st,

0150

01 1997, of erosion, landslides, mud flows, debris

02 torrents, and other serious concerns both for

03 homeowners nearby and for watersheds and the species

04 that inhabit them.

05 The draft claims that 10 percent of the

06 ancient coast redwoods ecosystem stands today. I've

07 never heard -- almost all statistics or estimates

08 I've heard in the last decade have said between 3

09 and 4 percent, and I don't know if they're counting

10 heavily cutover parks such as Redwood National Park,

11 counting every acre as ancient redwood forest; but

12 that's a pretty bogus static.

13 So now let's look at sustained yield in

14 a logical fashion. Now --

15 Also, I don't like the document talking

16 about historical rates and things. Anyway,

17 historical -- I think it might be longer ago than

18 13 years ago. They seem to talk about historical

19 like you have to be in a liquidation mode to pay off

20 junk bond debts. That's the historical rate.

21 I think the last 13 years of

22 liquidation logging should be taken into account

23 when figuring out how fast Pacific Lumber can log

24 from this point; but, instead, they want to continue

25 liquidation logging, wipe out most of the old stuff

0151

01 in the very near future, and then some points bring

02 up that you can't sustain -- you can't manage for

03 sustainable old growth, and they say, "We don't plan

04 to have sustainable old growth; we plan to wipe it

05 out, except for the reserve and except for the set

06 asides," so there's even more logging than various

07 management activity can go on in the set asides.

08 And if they happen to get rid of that,

09 if the murrelets aren't in the set asides after

10 50 years, according to the state -- or according to

11 state legislation, they're not supposed to do more

12 than a little managing in the set asides for

13 50 years. If they're not there, then they can wipe

14 them out after 50 years; and that gives another

15 incentive to Pacific Lumber to wipe out their

16 endangered and threatened species other than in the

17 incidental fashion.

18 As far as coho salmon streams, I

19 understand they're the five best in California, one

20 in Marin County, one in -- actually, I guess two in

21 Mendo County, then Noyo (phonetic), and then the

22 South Fork Eel, the Headwaters part. Obviously,

23 Pacific Lumber land is key to the coho getting from

24 the Eel River Delta and Pacific Ocean up into their

25 spawning habitat in the South Fork

0152

01 Eel -- also, Elk River, which has been decimated in

02 the last couple of years and Freshwater Creek, which

03 is in real sad shape in the last couple of years

04 especially; and yet how many of you know that the

05 Headwaters agreement gives Pacific Lumber additional

06 acreage in the Elk River watershed?

07 Anyway, Pacific Lumber should not get

08 additional acreage in the Elk River watershed. They

09 should get out of the Elk River watershed, the

10 Freshwater Creek watershed, the Mattole River

11 watershed, and others.

12 As far as alternatives, Alternative 3

13 is selective cut, Alternative 4 is acquiring

14 63,000 acres. Besides, I wouldn't mind if their

15 corporate charter's revoked and we got the whole

16 holdings; but, at least, we need to acquire the

17 63,000 acres, the Greater Grizzly Creek area, the

18 Mattole River watershed holdings of Pacific Lumber,

19 the Elk River and Freshwater Creek watershed

20 holdings of Pacific Lumber, no herbicide spraying,

21 protect List A species habitat, and they can

22 practice some selective cuts, preferably not on

23 steep slopes.

24 As far as the murrelet, now, the

25 murrelet recovery plan is pretty good, but it talks

0153

01 about protecting suitable habitat is the priority

02 goal in Zone 4, Recovery Zone 4; and yet the plan is

03 near-future clear-cut logging of thousands of acres

04 of -- let's see. I didn't add it up recently, but

05 there's identified occupied murrelet habitat which

06 would be clear-cut, logged, and then there's

07 thousands of acres of unsurveyed habitat, unsurveyed

08 both for owl and murrelet, which they also want to

09 wipe out in the -- I don't know whether it's four or

10 nine or fourteen or how many years, depending on

11 what table you look at.

12 MR. ORTEGA: Mr. Campbell, could I ask you,

13 please, to summarize and conclude?

14 MR. CAMPBELL: I object to the pre-permit

15 agreement in principle, which politicians stepped in

16 and shoved it down biologists' throats; that's that

17 either the Owl or Grizzly Creek area should be

18 logged entirely. I know the state legislation

19 should make that different, hopefully. But not only

20 was that not biologically based, but then they act

21 like they'd be good guys and they'd have some

22 limitations in logging one of those stands; however,

23 the limitation -- at any rate, they wouldn't log

24 between May 1st and August 10th.

25 However, the murrelet official nesting

0154

01 season goes through September 15th, and some say

02 even through September 30th; and anyways,

03 certainly --

04 Anyway, there's massive data gaps. It

05 seems like if you wanted to apply for a Habitat

06 Conservation Plan and an ITP, even though I don't

07 care for the process, get good data, good science,

08 thoroughly survey, bring it back in a few years, and

09 see if some things fit; but there's massive data

10 gaps; and plus, Pacific Lumber should be denied an

11 Incidental Take Permit because of their pattern of

12 serious criminal violations and convictions.

13 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

14 Bob Gornik, to be followed by

15 David Wolfberg.

16 MR. GORNIK: My name is Robert Gornik,

17 R-o-b-e-r-t, G-o-r-n-i-k.

18 Up until now, the abundance that we've

19 experienced which --

20 By the way, this is no scientific

21 discourse, okay? What this is about is our

22 children. This is about generations to come. This

23 is about the quality of life, okay?

24 And up until now, the web of life has

25 been of such abundance by way of the lack of

0155

01 population having impact upon the planet. We have

02 been somewhat inconsequential. Like the woman was

03 saying, 98 percent of our old-growth timbers have

04 been destroyed. In these vital forests lie the

05 seeds that will enable us to reseed the planet. It

06 will allow us, with all of our knowledge that we

07 have of genetics, to reseed and recreate a biosphere

08 that we can live in.

09 Does anybody realize the importance of

10 a biosphere, and that if we lose that biosphere, we

11 are all -- none of this matters? Okay. That's the

12 one point I want to make.

13 Another point I want to make is that,

14 economically, up until now, it has not been as

15 relevant as it is now to separate the difference

16 between human improvements -- that which are human

17 improvements and that which are of land and of

18 being, of existence itself.

19 In the world of economy, in the world

20 of trade and commodities, all of the things that we

21 have -- our pencils, our tennis shoes, you know, our

22 microphones -- these are all commodities. These are

23 all human improvements that the laws of economy and

24 commodities can apply to.

25 When it comes to land itself, the needs

0156

01 of our sustenance, that one person, by virtue of

02 their power, that they may take control of that land

03 and predispose the rest of our lives by the way in

04 which it is being used is synonymous with tyranny.

05 It has always been about land. It has always been

06 about the usurpation of land. You gain control of

07 the land, and you ultimately gain control of the

08 people who live upon it.

09 And all I want to say is that I hold

10 all of you accountable and I hold everyone

11 accountable to shift the economic discussion and to

12 separate that which is land and that which is human

13 improvement, because land is the basis of

14 everything. I mean, it's land, labor, and capital;

15 and without land, nothing else can exist. And when

16 capital is allowed to bear upon land and predispose

17 the lives of the people who live upon the land, then

18 what you have is tyranny. And all I'm saying is

19 that --

20 I want to also say that -- I want to

21 say one more thing, that I think that it's very

22 important that our freedoms be preserved in private

23 property. We all have need to direct the purposes

24 of the implements that we use in our lives to

25 maintain our lives, and this also applies to the

0157

01 principle that I was just discussing, is that land

02 itself is the fundamental implement upon which we

03 all base our lives.

04 That's it.

05 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

06 David Wolfberg, to be followed by

07 Linda Harmon.

08 MR. WOLFBERG: Thank you.

09 My name is David Wolfberg. My last

10 name is spelled W-o-l-f-b-e-r-g. I'm also with

11 Action Resource Center. A number of people here

12 tonight are part of our organization. Many others

13 are out of town or otherwise not able to make it,

14 but they share a very deep concern about this issue.

15 In California, we have a law through

16 which citizens who have three strikes against them

17 are out. They're out of business. They're thrown

18 in jail forever. Pacific Lumber has been convicted

19 numerous times in a number of different crimes.

20 They're responsible for lost homes and lives, and

21 yet we let them continue to operate in our state.

22 In Stafford, the river of mud was wholly sponsored

23 by Pacific Lumber.

24 On numerous occasions, PL has violated

25 its own THP or HCPs. The HCP we're discussing today

0158

01 will be meaningless to PL once the loggers are on

02 the slope. A total lack of oversight and minimal

03 fines where convictions are made have so far failed

04 to modify this company's behavior in any way. It is

05 now up to the Fish and Wildlife Service to study not

06 only the numbers in these documents, but the track

07 record of this company.

08 The request for a take permit, a

09 license to kill endangered species, should horrify

10 you. A plant or animal on the brink of extinction

11 cannot stop a chain saw or a bulldozer, and this is

12 why the Endangered Species Act was created.

13 Now, PL is telling us they'll protect

14 the coho salmon. This is a fish tale, if ever there

15 was one. Thanks to PL, Northern California salmon

16 fishing industry has collapsed. It would be nice to

17 still have salmon in California 15 years from now.

18 Sadly, every salmon run in California is near

19 extinction.

20 A 30-foot zone, the distance between

21 myself and the court reporter, is not an adequate

22 buffer zone for felling 300-foot tall trees. If I

23 were such a tree targeted for cutting and she a coho

24 salmon, she wouldn't stand a chance. The National

25 Marine Fisheries Service would insist on a buffer

0159

01 zone ten times this distance and so should you; yet

02 according to this so-called Habitat Conservation

03 Plan, PL will cut these old-growth giants 30 feet

04 from salmon-bearing streams. Use your own science

05 and I dare say your instincts before relying on

06 Pacific Lumber's.

07 Finally, I want to say that what has

08 become of California's forests at the hands of

09 corporate raiders could be called -- that if that

10 could be called habitat conservation, that concept

11 carries about as much weight as Michael Milken's

12 toupee. We should use our heads here and not rely

13 on Pacific Lumber's artificial science.

14 Thank you for holding these hearings.

15 MR. ORTEGA: Linda Harmon will be followed by

16 Joanne Attia.

17 MS. HARMON: Hello. My name is Linda Harmon.

18 I'm a concerned citizen of California. I want to

19 highlight some of the faults of the Headwaters

20 Forest Habitat Plan.

21 The HCP deals in a lethal blow to

22 California's devastating fisheries. The coho

23 salmon, an ancient species that has evolved on the

24 Pacific Coast over thousands of years, will likely

25 go extinct if the aquatic provisions of this HCP are

0160

01 not dramatically improved.

02 Not so long ago, the coho salmon was in

03 abundance in California's rivers and streams; but

04 with the onset of industrial logging over the past

05 centuries, salmon populations have plummeted to

06 2 percent of their original numbers. 98 percent are

07 already gone.

08 The goal of the Endangered Species Act

09 and the goal of this process should be to save and

10 restore species like the coho salmon. Please take

11 every necessary step toward that goal. Federal

12 agencies themselves have documented the dwindling

13 numbers of wild salmon. They have found that nearly

14 every run of California wild salmon is near

15 extinction. The source of the problem is loss of

16 habitat. You are in a position to stop the

17 devastation of the remaining natural habitat.

18 Please help protect what remains. Don't approve of

19 this plan.

20 Thank you.

21 MR. ORTEGA: Joanne Attia, to followed by

22 Susan Barr Nelson.

23 MS. ATTIA: Good evening, gentlemen. First of

24 all, my name is Joanne Attia. First name,

25 J-o-a-n-n-e; last name, A-t-t-i-a. I'm not here

0161

01 representing any group, but I am an elementary

02 school teacher here in Culver City, so I speak as

03 somebody who's concerned about our children.

04 Pacific Lumber has been convicted

05 several times of violating California forestry laws.

06 They should not even be allowed to do business in

07 California much less be granted special permission

08 to disregard U.S. laws in order to increase their

09 profit margin.

10 The Incidental Take Permit would give

11 PL carte blanche to violate the federal Endangered

12 Species Act, destroying the habitat of more than

13 30 endangered species, possibly driving some to

14 extinction. Pacific Lumber would not be required to

15 provide protection for these species for the next

16 50 years so that it would not allow for their

17 recovery in the wild.

18 The HCP, if approved, would mean the

19 logging of more than 54,000. Most of this would be

20 clear-cutting, including 2500 acres of virgin uncut

21 old growth, and that's just in the first four years,

22 which somehow comes out to be a decade in this HCP.

23 So the total harvest would exceed the total growth

24 just within the first four years by 32 percent.

25 That's not a sustainable plan.

0162

01 Basically, the HCP is misleading, it's

02 unsustainable, and it's scientifically unsound. The

03 only plan that should be considered is a

04 conservation-based plan. PL's HCP is not a

05 conservation-based plan, and it must not be

06 approved.

07 As a teacher, I do talk to my students

08 about my activism. I am concerned about these

09 issues, and I do want them to know what's going on.

10 One of my students, in discussing this, what's going

11 on in Headwaters, just said to me, "Ms. Joanne, this

12 is a bad idea." So if a six-year-old realizes that

13 it's a bad idea, I would implore you gentlemen to

14 also realize it's a bad idea and not to approve PL's

15 HCP.

16 Thank you.

17 MR. ORTEGA: Susan Barr Nelson will be

18 followed by Dang Ngo.

19 MS. NELSON: My name is Susan, S-u-s-a-n,

20 Nelson, N-e-l-s-o-n, and I'm a long-time activist,

21 here representing Friends of Santa Monica Mountains

22 and Seashore.

23 One of the goals of our organization,

24 beginning in '63, was to try to slow-growth the

25 massive urban sprawl that has made L.A., a

0163

01 megalopolis, a wasteland in many parts. So we

02 create a wasteland in the north, and we create a

03 wasteland here, and we create a wasteland on all the

04 Pacific Islands, and who's creating this? It isn't

05 the public. It is the -- it's the capital. It's

06 the financial capital run by the trade agreements

07 and the World Bank and whatever.

08 And I've lived a long time now, and I

09 remember the forests. I remember the forests and

10 the redwoods. I remember the sequoia and the sierra

11 when the air was really clear and beautiful, and it

12 was just an amazing place. Even the Santa Monica

13 Mountains in 1965 had huge tracks that had never

14 been entered, perhaps; and we're seeing devastation

15 on earth that is not what -- we will not be able to

16 go back, and restoration is not possible.

17 What comes to mind is, I hear this

18 eloquent and excellent testimony from many people

19 who I've known a long time on this heartbreaking HCP

20 and this rogue capitalist that's running all over

21 people in this state.

22 I'd just like to say that as far as the

23 HCP is concerned, it's an artificial construct meant

24 to confuse the public. It's meant to diminish

25 public discourse and channel it into a highly

0164

01 technical dialogue, which you've had the people here

02 meet you head on and pull apart the HCP so that you

03 know it's a fragment. It's just a fraud. It's a

04 mask for rape. And we know the crimes. Everyone

05 knows this.

06 We are in a time of political obscenity

07 that is very much like the '30s in Germany; and what

08 I felt here listening to this plan, it was like

09 counting the fillings of the people they were

10 picking up to put in the boxcars to send them to

11 concentration camps. I mean, nobody would believe

12 it then, but it was happening.

13 And one of the definitions of fascism,

14 which I see here, is the fat of the banality of it.

15 The decision makers sit on decision makers sit on

16 decision makers, and everybody passes the buck, and

17 you all take no responsibility; and that's what

18 happened in Germany. It happened in Italy, and it

19 destroyed huge numbers of people. These trees are

20 not even going to come back like the people did.

21 And the obscenity of now is that you

22 guys have got to get on the ball and choose sides

23 and not come down on the side of murder and rape,

24 which is what this is about.

25 MR. ORTEGA: Dang Ngo will be followed by

0165

01 Dean Walker.

02 MR. NGO: Good evening. My name is Dang,

03 D-a-n-g, Ngo, N-g-o. I am a biologist. I have a

04 background in biology, and I've read the HCP plan.

05 I find it willfully inadequate. It

06 doesn't take into account many of the fundamental

07 ecological concepts, and I brought this up last year

08 at the February '97 hearings, and many other people

09 have also; and they have not been addressed

10 adequately.

11 Many of the problems revolve around the

12 impacts of post-logging fragmentation and

13 degradation of the Headwaters Forest ecosystem, and

14 I'll list them for simplicity.

15 Number one, I'd like to know: What are

16 the effects of fragmentation at the gene frequency

17 of the population, meta-population, species

18 community, regional and continental levels of

19 biological organization on each of the species

20 within Headwaters?

21 Secondly, how much logging can the

22 Headwaters Forest ecosystem sustain before resulting

23 fragmentation declines biological integrity

24 dramatically? As far as I know, few fragmentation

25 studies have ever been conducted over a long enough

0166

01 period of time to find out.

02 Three, what are the subsequent

03 biological consequences of crowding effects after

04 logging in Headwaters? The individuals, the species

05 of plants and animals, have to go somewhere. What

06 are the biological consequences?

07 Four, what species are most vulnerable

08 to local and regional extinction following habitat

09 fragmentation and why? For instance, which species

10 are naturally rare, wide-ranging, dependent on

11 patchy or unpredictable habitats or our resources or

12 our interior species who don't adapt well to

13 secondary growth and edge habitat?

14 Five, if logging ensues, what are the

15 edge effects, for instance, in terms of the

16 microclimate or biological invasion impacts; and by

17 what percentage will the core interior habitat

18 reduce, and how will the increase in edge effects

19 affect each of the species within Headwaters Forest

20 ecosystem? Specifically, which interior species are

21 most vulnerable to invading edge species, and how

22 will the composition of interior species change as a

23 result of the logging?

24 Six, how will the natural fire regime

25 change as a result of the logging in Headwaters

0167

01 Forest?

02 Seven, surely, habitat patches differ

03 in quality for different species within the

04 ecosystem; and nowhere in the HCP does it explain

05 the sourcing habitat dynamics. If and when logging

06 plans are designed, are these extremely important

07 dynamics taken into account since the fate of a

08 population as a whole may depend on whether

09 reproductive success of individuals in a good

10 habitat outweighs the lack of success by individuals

11 in the poor areas?

12 Lastly, have the impacts of global

13 warning due to an enhanced greenhouse effect been

14 taken into account before logging plans are

15 designed? Global warming has the potential to be

16 the most ominous threat to bio-diversity. Will the

17 species within and below the habitat forest

18 ecosystem be able to migrate northward post-logging?

19 These are just some of the questions

20 that I raised last time and they weren't answered;

21 and I would really appreciate and other concerned

22 citizens and biologists especially would appreciate

23 a response to those, and they have not been

24 addressed at all.

25 Thank you.

0168

01 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, Mr. Ngo.

02 Ladies and gentlemen, we have to give

03 our reporter a little rest here. Let's take about a

04 ten-minute break, and we'll reconvene this session.

05 We're off the record now.

06 (A brief recess was taken.)

07 MR. ORTEGA: We're back in session in the

08 public hearing.

09 The next speaker will be Dean Walker,

10 who will be followed by Robin Barrett.

11 MR. WALKER: Okay. Thank you, gentlemen, for

12 holding this hearing.

13 My name is Dean Walker, and I'm a

14 resident of Venice, California, and I'm a business

15 manager involved in sustainable agriculture; in

16 particular, cotton, organic cotton. I'm not a

17 scientist. I'm a business manager, so I can't speak

18 on the flaws of the HCP, but I do ask you gentlemen

19 to reject the HCP.

20 From what I do understand and what I've

21 heard scientists so eloquently express tonight,

22 there is an awful lot of flaws in this particular

23 plan.

24 I understand that your agencies are

25 responsible for representing the public; and from

0169

01 what I see from my own experience, your agencies

02 have done an awful good job, though, of representing

03 the resource industries -- the timber industries,

04 the mine industries -- more than the public itself;

05 and that, to me, is fairly a disturbing trend that's

06 happened, you know, from the last ten years that

07 I've been involved in coming to hearings and voicing

08 my concerns as a community activist and a citizen of

09 the city of Santa Monica.

10 We hear again and again that about

11 95 percent of the capital in the United States is

12 owned by 5 percent of the population and that

13 5 percent seems to have a pretty good control as to

14 what the government agencies do; and that, to me, is

15 really disturbing. I ask that you end this trend

16 and truly represent the public.

17 As you can see, we've had a lot of the

18 public come and speak tonight, and we'll still have

19 another 12 people who have continued to voice our

20 concerns, and we will continue to voice our

21 concerns, even if this plan goes through.

22 Thank you.

23 MR. ORTEGA: Robin Barrett, who will be

24 followed by Tommie Faye Cooper.

25 MS. BARRETT: Good evening. My name is

0170

01 Robin Barrett, and that's spelled R-o-b-i-n,

02 B-a-r-r-e-t-t.

03 I have two children. I have four

04 grandchildren. I've taught school since 1970. It's

05 very important to me that on the day that I walk off

06 of this planet that I leave it a better place for

07 all these young people who have touched my life; and

08 at this point, I couldn't make that claim because of

09 all the destruction that has happened to our planet

10 and, thus, touches the lives of all these children.

11 You know, we're here today because

12 there has not been good government. I just don't

13 understand why we continually deal with a criminal

14 like Charles Hurwitz; but you four men, you have an

15 opportunity to help correct some of this chicanery

16 that has gone on at different levels of our

17 government that have brought us here today.

18 And I ask that you reject the HCP and

19 that you make several changes on it, and some of

20 them are the -- the fact that it would allow

21 clear-cutting of over 35,000 acres of forestland and

22 2,500 acres of ancient virgin forest in the next

23 four years. Change the HCP so that it would not

24 allow logging as close as 30 feet from fish-bearing

25 streams, one-tenth the no-cut buffer zone

0171

01 recommended by experts to protect coho salmon

02 habitat.

03 In reference to that, I lived up in the

04 north coast of California for over a year, and I

05 went up there originally to become part of forest

06 actions; and I have very many friends up there whose

07 homes have been destroyed because of storms and the

08 runoff and the degradation of the land. Their homes

09 floated down from Fort Bragg; and cutting these

10 trees would also contribute to not only the salmon

11 losing their homes, but people also.

12 Also, when I was up in Fort Bragg --

13 they have a yearly festival called the Salmon

14 Festival, and I was there, I think, in '93; and for

15 their Salmon Festival that year, they had to import

16 salmon from Japan because they didn't have enough

17 salmon for the festival. This impacts the economy

18 because California relies a lot on tourism, so it

19 isn't only that we're destroying 2,000-year-old

20 trees, that we're destroying species who we are

21 connected to; and the more of them that die and the

22 quicker that they die, the more of us will die. So

23 we have to save them, and so I please beg of you to

24 address the points that I've mentioned in the HCP.

25 And in addition to that, Mr. Hurwitz

0172

01 has broken the law 300 times in the last several

02 years in reference to his logging. It is very

03 important that any plan includes -- I'm sorry --

04 that the strict oversight and that the penalties for

05 breaking the law in reference to this sort of

06 project, that the people are punished; and I know

07 that this falls within your jurisdiction, and I do

08 hope that you address these issues.

09 Thank you.

10 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

11 Tommie Faye Cooper, to be followed by

12 Mitch English.

13 MS. COOPER: My name is Tommie Faye Cooper.

14 I'm a mother, grandmother, and an elder of the

15 community, and a member of the human race on this

16 planet.

17 The kind of actions that have been

18 taking place worldwide devastating the forests are

19 changing the planet drastically. It's been obvious.

20 We can see it in the changes in the climate around

21 the whole world, the terrible storms, the

22 devastation that's going on from these climate

23 changes.

24 If we don't take a stand and stop the

25 devastation that we're doing of trees and forests

0173

01 that have been here for thousands of years that

02 we're destroying in 10 or 20, within 50 years,

03 destroying whole ecological systems, there's not

04 going to be anything left. We should be responsible

05 for at least 10 or 12 generations ahead of us. No

06 one has taken responsibility.

07 The underlying issues are greed. A few

08 people are being incredibly paid money that it is

09 obscene, the amounts of money that is going to a few

10 individuals for this kind of destruction and,

11 ultimately, the destruction of the planet because

12 it's going to keep getting worse.

13 Anyway, thank you very much.

14 MR. ORTEGA: Mitch English will be followed by

15 Judy Andersen.

16 MR. ENGLISH: Hello, gentlemen. Thank you for

17 giving me the opportunity to speak to you directly.

18 The Eel River's Headwaters Habitat

19 Conservation and Sustained Yield Draft Plans are

20 scientifically, legally, and biologically deficient,

21 and should not be approved as written.

22 Pacific Lumber Company has been

23 convicted of over 250 criminal violations of

24 environmental and California forestry laws and has

25 evidenced a callous lack of responsibility. Taking

0174

01 the life of any individual of an endangered species

02 is not only immoral, but illegal; therefore, their

03 request for a permit to take endangered species

04 should be denied per 50 Code of Federal Regulations

05 Section 13.21(b)1.

06 The watershed assessment data for the

07 Sustained Yield Plan is incomplete, outdated, and,

08 in some cases, materially misleading. The Sustained

09 Yield Plan should not be approved in the absence of

10 current and accurate data describing the condition

11 of watersheds on Pacific Lumber land. Neither the

12 final Habitat Conservation Plan nor the Sustained

13 Yield Plan should be approved without public hearing

14 and comments of the plans in their final form. That

15 we are holding hearings on drafts seems to be an

16 irresponsible use of resources.

17 The draft Sustained Yield Plan proposes

18 to harvest 32 percent more forests than will grow

19 back over the first decade. This decade, as defined

20 by the plan, is oddly only four years long. During

21 this four-year period, over 25 percent or

22 54,382 acres of the company's land will be logged.

23 Over 35,000 of these acres will be clear-cut, and

24 over 2500 of these acres are uncut old-growth

25 forests. This is not a plan that will facilitate

0175

01 sustained production of high-quality timber products

02 while giving consideration to environmental and

03 economic values as required under 14 California Code

04 of Regulations Section 1091.1(b), but is a plan for

05 the short-term liquidation of forestry sources at a

06 tremendous long-term environmental and economic

07 cost.

08 There is no scientifically valid way to

09 mitigate the permanent destruction of ancient and

10 residual forest habitat on which the marbled

11 murrelet relies for its survival and recovery. This

12 plan would allow Pacific Lumber to liquidate

13 17,600 acres of ancient and residual forest habitat,

14 killing between 251 and 340 marbled murrelets in the

15 process. This would be killing 17 percent of the

16 local population while liquidating more than

17 50 percent of the potential nesting habitat for the

18 endangered marbled murrelet.

19 Logging and known occupied stands will

20 even take place during the murrelet breeding season,

21 increasing the chances that adult murrelets will be

22 directly killed by operations, as well as their

23 progeny, not to mention the prospective progeny that

24 may have come. This neither mitigates nor minimizes

25 the impacts of logging on murrelets and could well

0176

01 appreciably reduce the likelihood of the survival

02 and recovery of this species in violation of the

03 federal Endangered Species Act, 16 United States

04 Code Section 1539(a)2(b)4.

05 According to the final recovery plan

06 for the marbled murrelet, Habitat Conservation Plans

07 are supposed to contribute to and not undermine the

08 recovery of a species. No ancient or residual

09 forest should be sacrificed under this Habitat

10 Conservation Plan.

11 These draft plans for an area that is

12 within a quarter mile of another murrelet habitat

13 that Elk River Timber is preparing a 705-acre timber

14 harvest plan for -- that's nearby -- the effect on a

15 species' survival by the destruction of the habitat

16 covered by one plan cannot be adequately quantified

17 when the other possible habitat around it is also

18 being destroyed. The destructive effect should be

19 multiplied because of the interrelation of the

20 habitats that are separated only by arbitrary and

21 capricious boundaries.

22 The boundary of this plan takes on a

23 donut shape that also surrounds a large track of

24 unprotected, but critical second-growth redwoods.

25 Future logging in this area would cause even further

0177

01 deterioration of the habitat that is left in the

02 surrounding area covered by these plans since the

03 surrounding area must be traversed in order to

04 wreak destruction in the center area.

05 The measures regarding northern spotted

06 owls are also completely inadequate. Scientific

07 information on existing owl populations is either

08 missing or not analyzed. What data the company does

09 have on owls is ignored in favor of a habitat-based

10 approach that basically will force owls to find

11 homes in an increasingly hostile landscape where

12 most of the ancient and mature forest will be

13 quickly liquidated. At least a third of the owls on

14 their property could be killed before the rapid

15 decline could be detected and the company required

16 to take action to reverse the decline. Again, this

17 neither minimizes nor mitigates the impacts of

18 logging and definitely is not a strategy oriented

19 toward recovery of the spotted owl.

20 Pacific Lumber's strategy falls far

21 short of even other regional spotted owl Habitat

22 Conservation Plans.

23 Similarly, measures for mitigating the

24 impacts of logging on aquatic habitat for coastal

25 salmon are entirely inadequate. Interim buffer

0178

01 zones in the draft owl Habitat Conservation Plan are

02 100 feet far narrower than the 350 feet recommended

03 by federal scientists and allow for a substantial

04 amount of logging to occur.

05 The Habitat Conservation Plan,

06 processed for avoiding landslides, relies primarily

07 upon the reports of a geologist to be staffed by

08 Pacific Lumber. These interim measures are subject

09 to change under an ill-defined and artificially

10 constrained watershed analysis process that will

11 develop undetermined site-specific prescriptions at

12 some point in the future. A plan to do more

13 planning cannot be evaluated or approved under the

14 requirements of the federal Endangered Species Act.

15 A total of 36 protected and rare

16 species are included on Pacific Lumber's application

17 for Incidental Take Permits. Another 38 species are

18 pending. Under the Clinton administration's "no

19 surprises" policy, Pacific Lumber will not have to

20 provide any additional protection for these species

21 for the next 50 years. Instead, these fish,

22 amphibians, birds, and mammals, with their diverse

23 habitat needs, largely will be forced to depend on

24 the few sparse and fragmented areas of intact forest

25 that will remain standing under this Habitat

0179

01 Conservation Plan.

02 The species-specific conservation

03 measures that are provided are seemingly

04 afterthoughts and do not provide for any long-term

05 retention of essential, coherent, cohesive,

06 consistent, and stable habitat necessary to prevent

07 a further decline in listing of these species. This

08 is an inappropriate and unscientific approach that

09 should not be approved.

10 In order for endangered species in the

11 north coast community to survive and recover in the

12 future from the practices of the past, we must

13 pursue an alternative based on conservation of

14 ancient and residual forests, protection and

15 restoration of streams, and long-term certified

16 sustainable forestry.

17 Forgive me for restating so much that

18 has already been said in the past, but I haven't

19 taken the opportunity before to tell you what I

20 believe. I tell you these things not only because I

21 came to know them by standing on the shoulders of

22 others, but also knowing that one of my own species

23 was killed recently due to the same acts of the same

24 callous perpetuators of death and extinction for

25 selfish, shortsighted, lifeless shareholder values

0180

01 that these plans are supposed to control.

02 Regardless of how inadequate the plans

03 are, there's even less hope knowing that the

04 monitors of the implementation of these types of

05 plans have proven to be just as inadequate given the

06 unaccounted-for violations of the past.

07 If you are familiar with the skyline of

08 Westwood over the past decade or so, you may have

09 noticed an absence of a name on one of the buildings

10 fairly recently. If only the actions of the same

11 company named MAXXAM could have been absent in the

12 past, no junk-bond-based hostile takeover,

13 government bail-out, and subsequent pension fund

14 decimation of a fairly responsible company called

15 Pacific Lumber would have taken place; yet now

16 MAXXAM gets 300 --

17 I'm sorry. I'm going ahead of myself

18 or your approval of this plan.

19 Yet now MAXXAM may get 380 million for

20 land that, at best, is only worth one-seventh that,

21 and at worst, one-nineteenth that amount while their

22 entire 212,000-acre holdings, in their own

23 estimation, is worth $60 million less than what they

24 may get for 3500 acres of old growth and 4,000 acres

25 of mostly clear-cut lands.

0181

01 The takeover value of Pacific Lumber

02 was 900 million. After liquidating $1 billion worth

03 of timber over twelve years, the holdings have been

04 liquidated to their $320 million estimate. It would

05 appear, if things continue as they have been, in

06 eight years, or two of their decades, their holdings

07 will be worth about nothing. The only thing being

08 sustained by these draft plans is ignorance.

09 I believe all truths are simple. I

10 want to leave you with a few simple estimates of the

11 truth. One in ten tree species are threatened with

12 extinction in the world. 8700 of the world's tree

13 species are threatened with extinction. Only

14 12 percent exist in protected areas. Half of the

15 world's forests is destroyed. 77 tree species are

16 known to be extinct, which may mean 2,000 associated

17 animal species are extinct due to loss of habitat.

18 Unfortunately, I know of no estimate as to how many

19 of these animal species became extinct before the

20 associated trees became same.

21 I hope you will help to allow the

22 animal species dependent on the trees a chance to

23 recover and continue to evolve in their habitat

24 afforded by the Eel River Headwaters old-growth

25 forest. Please don't let MAXXAM continue its

0182

01 practices of the past. Please don't approve the

02 final version of these plans. Peppers are for

03 eating, not spraying or torture.

04 Gypsy Mountain, we remember you,

05 David Chain.

06 And thank you.

07 MR. ORTEGA: Ladies and gentlemen, in order

08 that we can accommodate all of the remaining

09 speakers, I'm going to have to ask the remaining

10 persons called please, under any circumstances, do

11 not let your presentation extend over five minutes.

12 Next, Judy Andersen, to be followed by

13 Chris Bowers.

14 MS. ANDERSEN: Gentlemen, thank you very much

15 for holding this hearing.

16 I really believe that this is an

17 emergency. I also believe that you are in a

18 position to be our heroes.

19 I don't know if anyone here has read a

20 book by F. Buckmintzer Fuller (phonetic) called

21 "Instructions for Spaceship Earth"; but in it, he

22 gives the metaphor of a chick within an egg that has

23 enough albumin to live on; and when the albumin is

24 gone, it pecks itself out of its egg and it

25 survives. It's like that's the moment.

0183

01 He uses that metaphor to explain that

02 we have had on -- as human beings on this earth, we

03 have had decades of time, which is likened to this

04 albumin, to make mistakes and to recover and to use

05 it all up. Well, he predicted that towards the end

06 of this century that the albumin would be gone, but

07 in its place would be the knowledge, would be the

08 technology.

09 And so now we know better. We do know

10 better. We are awake. We know what's going on.

11 There isn't any room for error. Just like the chick

12 has no more time left, now it's up to us; and we are

13 intelligent beings. We are the caretakers. I

14 really feel like -- I love animals so much. I

15 definitely see myself as a caretaker of all

16 creatures. I'm always rescuing things and taking

17 care of them. I see the wetlands here in California

18 that have been destroyed. We have so little left.

19 It's the same thing. We are destroying our own

20 habitat, and we know better.

21 I really feel it's our responsibility.

22 It's my responsibility, it's our responsibility,

23 it's your responsibility to protect the abundance

24 that was given to us freely. I believe that we are

25 creators and not destroyers.

0184

01 I think it is terrible to destroy the

02 home of anyone, besides the coho salmon, anything,

03 all the other creatures that live in this forest

04 that are facing destruction. The beauty and the

05 magnificence of this area that we're talking about,

06 it's just absolutely heartbreaking to think that

07 it's facing any kind of destruction at all. I think

08 everything has the right to live, every creature,

09 every being; and in particular --

10 My daughter lives in Arcata now, and I

11 was just really thinking about her and my

12 grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, what is

13 going to be left for them and what is going to be

14 left for yours.

15 And I just really appeal to you to do

16 the right thing. We know better now.

17 Thank you.

18 MR. ORTEGA: Chris Bowers, to be followed by

19 Nancy Pearlman.

20 MR. BOWERS: Good evening. My name is

21 Chris Bowers, B-o-w-e-r-s.

22 How many people here do not like to eat

23 salmon? Probably not very many. I like to eat

24 salmon, and I think we should protect these

25 fisheries in this Headwaters Forest. I don't want

0185

01 to go into a restaurant 20 years from now and --

02 "Oh, I'm going to order the salmon.

03 How much is that?"

04 "Oh, it's $285 for a salmon dinner."

05 I don't want to see that happen. I

06 want to see these fisheries protected, and that

07 means the only activity allowed, that should be

08 allowed in this forest is human footprints,

09 something very minimal like that.

10 Thank you very much.

11 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

12 Nancy Pearlman, to be followed by

13 Bess Carlisle Coleman.

14 MS. PEARLMAN: Hello. My name is Nancy

15 Pearlman, P-e-a-r-l-m-a-n. I am founder of the

16 Ecology Center of Southern California. In order to

17 be ecological and not to pollute by having lots of

18 people drive our freeways, our members have asked

19 that I represent them at this hearing.

20 And, indeed, I would like to thank you

21 very much for having a hearing in Southern

22 California because we are the consumers and the

23 users, and I think it's important that you do hear

24 from us as well as from people who live in the area

25 where these -- the Headwaters Forest is.

0186

01 Consequently, I am interested, if I --

02 I know I missed the afternoon session -- whether or

03 not there were speakers, consumer users and other

04 concerned citizens, who were speaking in favor of

05 this Habitat Conservation Plan, who were speaking in

06 favor of the cutting, because from what I've heard

07 this evening, I think it's evident that the majority

08 of people who use wood don't want to see these

09 particular forests cut, as being proposed.

10 In fact, the Habitat Conservation Plan

11 is inadequate in many ways. It needs larger buffer

12 zones for streams. Too much possible herbicide use

13 is being proposed. There is a lack of a guaranteed

14 marbled murrelet conservation area. Indeed, I'm

15 sure I could go on and on on the concerns that

16 you've heard from other environmentalists, such as

17 the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters; and our

18 organization would like to endorse some of those

19 concerns and hope that you will, of course, address

20 them.

21 What I don't think you've heard is

22 something that happened to me this last week. I had

23 the unfortunate situation of having to bury my

24 father, and I had to go to the mortuary and pick a

25 casket; and I was absolutely appalled that there

0187

01 were redwoods and fir and oak being used for

02 caskets. And, indeed, I know that my father would

03 be very pleased that I am here today under these

04 circumstances.

05 And you'll have to forgive me. I'm

06 feeling more emotional than I usually do in front of

07 a microphone.

08 But he would want that wood preserved

09 in its natural state, and I will plant a tree

10 instead of cutting one, and that's exactly what I

11 did in his honor.

12 In fact, the lumber from this area

13 isn't necessary. There are alternatives. This area

14 is a natural resource which should be preserved for

15 the public and the flora and fauna. If it stays in

16 private ownership, then sustainable, certifiable

17 forestry should be adopted and required. Certainly,

18 Pacific Lumber doesn't practice sustainability; but,

19 of course, they should.

20 I in the last few years was a guest of

21 the governments of Sweden and Canada to specifically

22 look at forestry practices there, and I found that

23 sustainability is possible and that ancient forests

24 can be preserved, and yet they can still have a

25 logging industry.

0188

01 I've also traveled in the last

02 six years to the rain forests of Brazil, Malaysia,

03 Peru, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Suriname, and Mexico. And

04 in those areas, we environmentalists are telling the

05 indigenous peoples, the local people, the

06 governments of these developing countries that they

07 shouldn't cut their ancient forests, that they need

08 to develop alternatives and that alternatives do

09 exist. So, then, why are we here in the developed

10 world, in the most developed country in the world

11 cutting our virgin forests?

12 It is possible to pursue other

13 alternatives. Let's develop eco-tourism. Let's

14 save this area for future generations. Let's see

15 this area protected in other ways.

16 Thank you very much for your

17 consideration.

18 MR. ORTEGA: Bess Carlisle Coleman, to be

19 followed by Mary Welz.

20 MS. COLEMAN: I just want to say thank you so

21 much for coming here and listening to all of us and

22 what we have to say.

23 You have a great responsibility on your

24 shoulders, and I could give a long spiel, but I just

25 want to say that I know you know what's right in

0189

01 your heart. I know that in your heart, you know

02 that a 30-foot buffer zone isn't going to protect

03 the salmon, and you know in your heart that

04 old-growth forests shouldn't be cut, especially when

05 there's only 4 percent of old-growth redwoods left

06 in the world.

07 Thank you so much.

08 Think about how proud of yourselves

09 you'll be when you don't let this HCP pass.

10 MR. ORTEGA: Mary Welz, to be followed by

11 Judy Brady.

12 MS. WELZ: Hi. My name is Mary Welz.

13 Thank you also. I appreciate having

14 this opportunity for a public hearing.

15 I'm a chemist, and I just tried to

16 imagine what it would be like to be in your shoes.

17 I think it would be very difficult to be sitting up

18 there and just having everyone talk at you in front

19 of you and try to be neutral. I think I would just

20 scream if I were up there. I'd just say, "Let's go

21 home. This is ridiculous."

22 But I guess MAXXAM is evil. They scare

23 me, and this is a bad plan, and I hope that you have

24 the power and --

25 Well, it's funny. On the news last

0190

01 night, there was a two-minute blurb about this, and

02 they said that, well, MAXXAM is private land, they

03 own the land, they have the right to cut it; but

04 it's like it's theoretically legal, but it's

05 illogical and it's irreversible.

06 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

07 Judy Brady, to be followed by

08 Ella Hope.

09 MS. BRADY: Hi. Thank you for being here for

10 us to talk to. You must be exhausted after

11 listening to this all day.

12 Can I just ask -- I'm just curious.

13 I'm a second-grade teacher, and we're doing a unit

14 on habitat. Can I just see a show of hands, how

15 many of you have actually been through Headwaters

16 Forest on foot?

17 Have you?

18 Were you being given a tour by Pacific

19 Lumber?

20 No?

21 You got to go in independently?

22 Okay. Good.

23 The last time I think I talked to you

24 you hadn't, so I'm really glad to hear that. So

25 you're probably impressed with the beauty of the

0191

01 area.

02 I used to live up there, and it's the

03 most beautiful area I've ever been to in my life,

04 and I've traveled a lot. I was telling somebody

05 that when you go and you climb on the logs, they're

06 like buildings, they're so high, the fallen logs,

07 and you fall off into the duff. The duff is

08 thousands of years old, and it's like dry snow.

09 It's beautiful in there.

10 So, anyway, I'm a teacher, as I was

11 telling you, for L.A. Unified, and I'm teaching a

12 unit on habitat to my second graders; and I thought

13 I would submit this comment from Gregory. He's

14 seven years old. After we studied habitat, he said,

15 "Never destroy an animal habitat." I think that's

16 something that all of us felt in second grade,

17 before we were influenced by deals and money and

18 things that Mr. Hurwitz is influenced by.

19 I think the last time I went to

20 Headwaters Forest it looked like a moonscape. I was

21 really shocked. I got to go through it ten years

22 ago. It was pristine. There were wildflowers in

23 there that I had never seen in my life. It was

24 unbelievable. It was better than anything that I

25 had ever seen. It's like a rain forest. There's

0192

01 constant drizzle.

02 I think you probably know about Julia

03 Butterfly, the tree-sitter. She's 180 feet up in

04 the air. That's 20 stories. I mean, I think most

05 of us who grew up in Los Angeles can't relate to

06 that scale of trees, and that's a monument. It's an

07 American monument, and to cut it down is like

08 filling the Grand Canyon or cutting down the Statue

09 of Liberty. It's a strong symbol for our country of

10 independence and freedom and what we can become.

11 So I think this is an opportunity for

12 you guys -- because you can't rely on the people who

13 live in a small depressed economy. They're going to

14 cut down the trees, if they have to. If they're

15 looking at jobs that pay $6 an hour at the mill, or

16 I'll get paid $45 an hour to cut down a big tree,

17 they're going to do it. They can't avoid it.

18 Also, they're going to these churches

19 where the ministers are saying, "Oh, Jesus is going

20 to bring in rapture and redo the earth, so go ahead

21 and cut it down to the last blade of grass."

22 I've lived up there the last ten years,

23 so I know this like the back of my hand. It's the

24 culture up there, and I think we have to be more

25 intelligent; and hopefully, you'll see this as an

0193

01 opportunity to say Hurwitz does not deserve this

02 opportunity of being given a handshake deal, where

03 we'll say you can disregard the Endangered Species

04 Act. He hasn't proven himself. It's not like he's

05 the City of Hope or some kind of humanitarian

06 organization. He's a corporate raider. He'll take

07 advantage of everything. How many times has he

08 been --

09 He's been assessed 270 violations in

10 the last three years. So it says right in the Code

11 itself, Section 50 -- let's see -- CFR 13.21 under

12 (b), "Incidental Take Permits": If a company has

13 been excessive and convicted of violations and fines

14 for breaking those rules, they cannot receive this.

15 That's how I read it. So I hope you see that as an

16 opportunity to stop the axe handle yourself; and

17 hopefully, I can tell my second graders, "Isn't our

18 state great, our Department of Fish and Game stopped

19 this maniac?"

20 And we have taken 97 percent of the old

21 growth. I think we can save the last 3 percent.

22 Thank you so much.

23 MR. ORTEGA: Ella Hope, to be followed by

24 Al Sattler.

25 MS. HOPE: My name is Ella Hope, H-o-p-e.

0194

01 I wasn't going to speak today, but I'm

02 an artist and I'm involved with a collective in a

03 number of women's organizations, and I'm speaking as

04 a ritual dance theater artist, although I have

05 studied graduate clinical psychology work in dance

06 movement therapy at UCLA and Princeton; therefore,

07 what I'm saying might seem a little esoteric, but I

08 do have study and background.

09 At this point in scientific

10 research-oriented history, we have not yet unveiled

11 the great mysteries of human consciousness and

12 awareness. We have only scratched the surface of

13 the great potentials we can manifest as a species.

14 This untapped knowledge lies in our old-growth

15 environments, which still conceal and possess these

16 unfathomed mysteries.

17 Other unseen worlds exist that we are

18 only beginning to unveil. Languages of the unknown

19 is perceived through the body at unconscious levels.

20 Research and science are going this direction. As

21 western science moves forward, we are going

22 backwards thousands and thousands of years to

23 understand what people knew before us.

24 Another reason for preserving the owl,

25 for example, is that we are connected at unconscious

0195

01 levels, interwoven with its energy matrices and

02 patterns. Our future medical and research solutions

03 lie in the unveiling and accessibility to these

04 nonhuman thought and energy forms.

05 Thank you.

06 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

07 Al Sattler will be followed by

08 Laura Louie.

09 MR. SATTLER: Hello. Good evening. Thank you

10 for being here and having the patience to sit

11 through all of our testimony.

12 I'll put some written comments in a

13 little bit later on.

14 But I guess I wanted to speak first

15 just saying this is basically -- we're making

16 sausages. This is a political process, and I think

17 each of us is hoping that by speaking out here

18 loudly that we'll help move the boundary a tiny bit

19 farther, maybe get another six inches farther away

20 from the streambed for logging. Maybe we can

21 actually get to a reasonable distance from the

22 rivers, from the spawning streams, so the salmon can

23 survive.

24 I like salmon. A lot of people here

25 like salmon, whether to eat or just to know that

0196

01 they're out there. And salmon are not going extinct

02 because of people eating them, by and large. I

03 think it's because of loss of habitat, loss of

04 spawning habitat.

05 I just want to say thank you again for

06 your time.

07 Let's hope that we can actually get

08 some more real biology into this rather than just

09 politics.

10 Thank you.

11 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

12 Laura Louie will be followed by

13 Paul Jackson.

14 MS. LOUIE: Hello.

15 A week ago today I was up in Luna with

16 Julia Butterfly, and it was my first visit to

17 Headwaters. It's changed my life. I am a mother of

18 two. I live here in Los Angeles currently.

19 We can't keep doing this. We've

20 devastated the land. Each one of us are part of the

21 human race, and I think most of us are here today

22 because you represent us and our voices in this

23 decision-making process, and it's quite obvious that

24 none of us are satisfied with this plan, and we

25 leave it up to you to make the right decision.

0197

01 So thank you.

02 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

03 Paul Jackson will be followed by

04 John Jay Ulloth.

05 MR. JACKSON: Thank you, gentlemen, for this

06 opportunity to speak. I'll be brief.

07 I just noted that I haven't heard one

08 person here so far tonight speak against the

09 forests. I wonder if that says anything. Maybe

10 they were all here during the earlier session

11 because they were paid to be here while the rest of

12 us are working.

13 I submitted my written comments rather

14 specifically. I just wanted to speak generally

15 about something for a moment. I want to speak about

16 private property rights and the public interest

17 therein.

18 I realize that Mr. Hurwitz and MAXXAM

19 Corporation --

20 A corporation, an interesting thing, an

21 entity that exists only on paper somehow still

22 manages to have rights.

23 -- they own that land; and therefore,

24 they have certain rights as granted by our

25 Constitution and further spelled out by subsequent

0198

01 law. But I don't think that the founding fathers

02 who designed that Constitution could have possibly

03 envisioned what we have today, the technology and

04 the level of population of our present world.

05 As the population goes up, the land is

06 going to be pressured more and more and more. The

07 population of the United States is expected to

08 double in the next 50 years, double over the life of

09 this HCP, 50 years. Can we predict that far in

10 advance?

11 We're destroying more and more of our

12 earth's resources because we are unwilling to

13 realize that we must consume less. As the

14 population goes up, we must consume less. Species

15 are dying, and species are like the canary in the

16 coal mine, indicating that something is wrong. At

17 some point, we must realize that the people of the

18 earth, just one of its species, have an interest in

19 this. At some point, we must realize that a

20 property owner does not have the right to damage

21 those interests. The environment is not out there

22 somewhere. It's right here. We're in it. You

23 breathe it, gentlemen. You breathe it. You eat it,

24 you drink it. We all do. We are the environment.

25 The public has rights too. We have a

0199

01 right to live. We have a right to a certain quality

02 of life. We have a right to pursue happiness. Our

03 ability to do that depends on what MAXXAM, among

04 others, does on its land. We are all in the

05 environment, and we all have rights to the land of

06 the planet Earth, and it's time that the government

07 started recognizing that some aspects of private

08 property are owned by the public.

09 Thank you.

10 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

11 John Jay Ulloth, to be followed by

12 Casey Peters.

13 MR. ULLOTH: I'm told this is the public and

14 your last legal option to stop the rape of the last

15 largest unprotected ancient redwood forest on earth.

16 A hundred years from now, what will our

17 descendents think of us? Will they think of us as

18 the executioners of the marbled murrelet, the

19 killers of the spotted owl, the destroyers of an

20 entire planet?

21 "Incidental take" is a nice word, but

22 it's really a criminal detour around the Endangered

23 Species Act. There's no getting away from this.

24 Incidental take is genocide. Let's call it by its

25 right name. Let's reflect in all future

0200

01 publications the word "genocide" instead of

02 "incidental take," in regards to endangered species.

03 There's a hole in the ozone the size of

04 the United States of America. That's pretty big.

05 I've been across the United States of America.

06 The Amazon is fried. Redwood habitats

07 have the highest density of flora on earth, places

08 like the Arkivella Forest (phonetic); yet somehow

09 your study has found that the proposed action on PL

10 land and by Pacific Lumber has no impact on global

11 climate.

12 This is junk science, gentlemen. When

13 the game ends in death, the rules are wrong and

14 immoral and they have got to change. I don't

15 particularly care how you want to change those

16 rules, but this is wrong and unacceptable. And I'm

17 here and many others today to say it's unacceptable.

18 Worst of all, the destruction of these

19 redwoods, in particular, is entirely unnecessary

20 when alternative products exist for every

21 application for redwood lumber. Unfortunately, many

22 of these giants are reduced to fences and

23 toothpicks. Will you and your agency be protectors

24 of our future? You must. And when you consider in

25 your decision what evidence is there that Pacific

0201

01 Lumber has done any restoration of the ecosystems

02 that it's currently degraded, what has Pacific

03 Lumber done to hedge its best, nothing. It's

04 cutting and running, and you guys know this.

05 A little more mundane note: In regards

06 to the specific document we were asked to comment on

07 today, not the general purposes which I've just

08 outlined, there are ridiculously high numbers of

09 acres claimed to be nesting or forging habitat for

10 the northern spotted owl. These numbers should be

11 reduced on paper, not by wiping out the forest.

12 Since it's not unusual for northern

13 spotted owls to take a few years off of a certain

14 nesting site and then return to it later, I strongly

15 disagree with the lunacy of the proposed action to

16 log supposedly, quote, inactive nesting sites.

17 It is appalling to allow at least a

18 67-percent reduction in northern spotted owl

19 population for three years in a row before Pacific

20 Lumber must meet with agencies to discuss the

21 no-take of the northern spotted owl. This is

22 certainly not good biology leading to recovery. It

23 is certainly junk science.

24 There are inadequate mitigations

25 regarding osprey, heron, and egret nesting trees;

0202

01 and it is not good science to assume that unlisted

02 species can cause inadequate habitat for a murrelet,

03 owl, and coho for their habitat needs; and other

04 mitigations for a whole range of species is not

05 sufficient. Conservation plans for unlisted species

06 are essentially in this plan afterthoughts. Again,

07 will you and your agencies be protectors of our

08 future?

09 Consider what Pacific Lumber has done

10 to restore all of the ecosystems it has degraded.

11 The alternative, gentlemen, if you don't stop this

12 plan, and you're our last hope, is that all Pacific

13 Lumber will be cut -- all Pacific Lumber lands will

14 be cut by the year 2015. That's not very long from

15 now, and that's it. It's on you guys.

16 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

17 Ladies and gentlemen, we have time

18 remaining for seven speakers, so I'm going to set

19 the time for each speaker at four minutes. That way

20 everyone will share in the same time limit.

21 We'll proceed with Mr. Peters, to be

22 followed by Lee Peters.

23 MR. PETERS: Thank you, gentlemen.

24 First of all, a few of us do know each

25 other here tonight. You might have noticed. I gave

0203

01 Nancy a hug. She's very brave to come here tonight;

02 and, you know, she just saw her father die and came

03 to share her feelings about the redwood being used

04 for inappropriate uses.

05 I just want to clarify that we didn't

06 all decide to come here as a group. We came here as

07 individuals. I happen to know a couple of people

08 here, perhaps because my friends are the sorts of

09 people who are concerned about our environment.

10 Of course, the redwoods are a long way

11 from here, but Woody Guthrie wrote a song: "From

12 the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters, this

13 land is made for you and me," and I really believe

14 that's true. And with only a small amount of the

15 old-growth forest left, I think it's important to

16 preserve that.

17 Some of those trees were alive when

18 Jesus Christ walked this earth, and I think it's a

19 very un-Christian thing to kill the only things that

20 were alive when Jesus walked this earth.

21 You know, corporations have no life

22 span, but it's going to be a long time before any of

23 them are 2,000 years old. And maybe it's some kind

24 of a power trip they're on that makes them want to

25 kill the oldest living things. It's very sad.

0204

01 My mother took me to Yosemite when I

02 was a small child, and it made a lot of impression

03 on me; but after going to an area where there

04 weren't cars driving around and tents and lodges and

05 all that, to see the redwoods in their natural

06 state, it's such an awesome, awe-inspiring thing and

07 it gives us a sense of perspective that I think

08 everybody needs.

09 My mother is going to say a few words.

10 She asked to come here tonight. I told her about

11 this, and she said that this is what she wanted to

12 do tonight. She's 80 years old, which sounds sort

13 of old until you realize that that's only 4 percent

14 of the life of a redwood tree.

15 MS. PETERS: I was thinking of the old poem we

16 learned in school about trees, and I thought that

17 now the children of the future will have to change

18 it to: "I think that I shall never see a tree,"

19 leaving out "a poem as lovely as," as everybody

20 knows. And that's very sad for all of us and all of

21 them.

22 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you.

23 I take it that was Lee Peters.

24 Priscilla M. Jones will be followed by

25 Bonnie Strand.

0205

01 MS. JONES: Thank you for listening to me.

02 Thank you for being here, and I hope I am coherent.

03 My plea would be to save humanity.

04 This goes so far beyond the simple act of monitoring

05 and caring for a spot on the face of the earth.

06 When I was a little girl, I was raised

07 in New York City. I didn't know what I was missing

08 in the way of nature until I went to my uncle's

09 house and I stayed for a week and I fell in love

10 with the forest, or the woods we called them back

11 East, and the water. And when I came back home to

12 Queens, I used to scrunch down in my bed so that the

13 maple trees out on the street -- I could see the

14 tops of the maple trees. I never forgot that.

15 And I really honestly think that we are

16 connected to natural things. Virtual reality does

17 not cut it. We have to have the real thing. And

18 we're not God. We did not create those things, and

19 it's interesting that when you get married, it says,

20 "What God" -- how does that go? -- "joins together

21 let no man put us under." And we are doing that

22 every day. I mean, how come that law does not apply

23 to everything that we do?

24 I read a horrific article yesterday on

25 the front page of the Wall Street Journal about

0206

01 Indonesia. They are having a lot of problems. I

02 would say the basis of all problems on the earth are

03 the fact that our species is much too numerous.

04 One of the things that they're doing:

05 The local tuna fishermen who are from a different

06 country order up macaw brains. So there are people

07 who go up into the high country and kill the

08 mothers, take the babies back down, take them on

09 board the ships, and their soft, little fontanels

10 are pierced with bamboo sticks; and when the

11 convulsions are over, they eat the brains.

12 Now, I know I'm going way, way off, far

13 afield; but considering what we're thinking about

14 doing with fetuses these days, have an idea that

15 once we run out of all these different species, we

16 will turn upon ourselves, and I kind of feel that

17 it's not too far off.

18 I work in Huntington Park, and I see

19 how the people treat one another down there. I see

20 the gangs. I think these people are starved for

21 wilderness. They need that connection. If you take

22 a human being and pin them in tighter and tighter,

23 they will go crazy; and there are a lot of crazy

24 people out there.

25 Did I run out of time yet?

0207

01 Good.

02 I was going through my grandfather's

03 personal papers a couple weeks ago in New York, and

04 I came across the back of a newspaper article

05 printed in 1931, which was very interesting. It was

06 a statement about using straw and plant, dried plant

07 matter, to make paper, to make various products that

08 we normally make from trees. This was 1931.

09 That was it, huh?

10 MR. ORTEGA: Yes, ma'am.

11 MS. JONES: And we're still talking about

12 that.

13 MS. STRAND: I cede my time to you.

14 MS. JONES: Bonnie Strand ceded her time to

15 me.

16 MR. ORTEGA: Go ahead, please.

17 MS. JONES: Thank you very much.

18 I work for a company that makes

19 plywood. I am odd man out in the company. I have

20 been challenged many times. My boss said to me one

21 day: Well, how would you like to lose your job just

22 because you're -- because of the Sierra Club, for

23 example, which was a hypothetical question. And I

24 know now -- I was frightened then, and I felt

25 intimidated. I felt threatened, but his was a

0208

01 theoretical question at the time.

02 Oh, boy, I'm losing it now.

03 The people in that industry are

04 primarily out, as corporations are, to keep the

05 corporations alive and make money. I interfere with

06 that little pattern, and I'm not sorry because if we

07 change any laws at all, we have to take the dollar

08 sign and move it to the back of the line and put

09 natural things up front and control our population,

10 and we need to work on these things. Now, how we

11 can do it, I don't know; and I know that's not your

12 job. You're a cog in the big picture just as we all

13 are.

14 And most people -- most people spend

15 their lives having babies, taking mind-altering

16 drugs, such as alcohol, engaging in lots of sexual

17 activity, and working. Lots of people do just that

18 and nothing else. So I cannot say I speak for many

19 of the people that I know personally, because they

20 don't even know what's going on. They never heard

21 of Headwaters, and they may never hear of

22 Headwaters. It's up to the people who know and who

23 have the ability to do something about it to protect

24 all the people who are living with their blinders

25 on. So that's us.

0209

01 Oh, let's see. I know I didn't cover

02 all my points.

03 Oh, remember Easter Island, those great

04 big stone faces that are sitting on this barren,

05 desolate island? Well, I understand that once upon

06 a time, the island was a forested place, heavily

07 forested; and the way they moved those faces from

08 the quarry to where they set them up was by rolling

09 them on big logs. I read this in "Discovery"

10 magazine, which is put out by the Disney

11 Corporation.

12 These people would go fishing in the

13 boats that they made from the logs. They had a

14 pretty good thing going; but by the time, I think it

15 was, Captain Cook arrived in the 1500s, what he

16 found was scrub brush, lots of chickens, lots of

17 rats and people; and they were stuck because they

18 had destroyed all of their trees, and they couldn't

19 go anywhere else because they no longer had the

20 means to go anyplace else. And I equate that with

21 what's happening to this planet. Once we destroy

22 everything --

23 I mean, I don't want to go to the moon.

24 It does nothing for me. I want to stay here, and I

25 want to keep this place beautiful and wonderful and

0210

01 spiritual; and it has to come from whoever created

02 all of this wonderful stuff that we are enjoying.

03 We need to protect it. It's our job.

04 Thank you very much.

05 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you so much.

06 We'll show for the record that

07 Bonnie Strand yielded her time to the lady who just

08 finished.

09 Next is Robert Gelfand.

10 DR. GELFAND: Thank you.

11 I'd like to introduce myself as

12 Dr. Robert Gelfand, biologist and educator by

13 training and profession, concentrating mostly on

14 developmental biology; so I confess that I am not a

15 forestry biologist, but the hat I'm wearing right

16 now in talking to you is as the communications chair

17 for the Sierra Club, Angeles Chapter, so I'm not

18 going to go over a lot of material. I know you have

19 received a lot of information, arguments, and so on.

20 I just want to talk about two things

21 very briefly. Number one is the whole concept of

22 the Habitat Conservation Plan. I think that in

23 theory, in some ethereal sense, the idea of an HCP

24 is quite possibly a very good idea. The reality is,

25 the devil is in the details.

0211

01 I was part of a regional conservation

02 committee task force workshop that looked at the

03 concept of Habitat Conservation Plans. We

04 considered a substantial body of experience that

05 says that most HCPs that have been put forward that

06 have been put into place simply are terribly

07 inadequate; and so the Sierra Club generated a

08 series of proposals, if you will, principles, that

09 we wished to communicate about what a good Habitat

10 Conservation Plan is or at least ought to be. And

11 I'm sure that this will be put in your hands. If

12 it's not, I'm going to make sure that it is

13 communicated to you because it's about a ten-point

14 list and we certainly would like to communicate it.

15 I just want to underscore what you've

16 heard again and again, that when people look at this

17 particular proposed Habitat Conservation Plan with

18 emotion, without emotion, with careful scientific

19 spectacles on, and with integrity, it is found to be

20 very inadequate; and I'm simply going to point out

21 that the Sierra Club, 170,000, approximately,

22 members in the state of California, stand behind

23 this position, that this HCP is inadequate.

24 And the only other thing I want to talk

25 about -- if I have maybe another minute or so left,

0212

01 I just want to share some thoughts and an editorial

02 that I wrote and published to our local 50,000

03 members.

04 It's a whole concept that you start to

05 absorb and pick up when you study biology in some

06 depth, that the concept of species isn't just, you

07 know, there's a tiger, there's a lion, that's the

08 way they were, always there. It's a complicated

09 kind of subject; and when you look at the concept of

10 species, you're looking at the whole history of this

11 that goes all the way back for all kinds of things.

12 I mean, we look at marine invertebrates, and we look

13 at mammals and so on, and they all are a life

14 history, and it's not just the DNA. It's not just

15 the RNA. It's not just the shape and the size, but

16 it's the whole developmental life history; and we

17 have to try to appreciate the concept of species at

18 that level, that when you lose a species,

19 extinction -- to take the old joke about herpes is

20 forever and so on, extinction really is forever.

21 And when a species is made extinct, it's not just

22 the species; it's the whole life history of that

23 species, a whole branch of the evolutionary tree,

24 and all the intermediate stages from the embryo and

25 the larva and the intermediate and the adult and the

0213

01 children and the mommies and the daddies. All of

02 that is lost. So we have to be sensitive to that.

03 And, again, I just want to underscore

04 that the Sierra Club is solidly and pretty close to

05 unanimously on point that we find this HCP to be

06 seriously lacking, and we really want to ask that it

07 be looked at much more carefully.

08 Thank you.

09 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.

10 Our final speaker will be

11 Nima Dilmaghani.

12 MR. DILMAGHANI: I apologize for coming in a

13 little late. It's been a very hectic day. I'm sure

14 you feel probably the same way. I have good news

15 for you: I am the last speaker, and then we can all

16 go home.

17 Bear with me, please, for a moment

18 because I am a little disorganized.

19 My name is Nima Dilmaghani. First name

20 is N-i-m-a. Last name is D-i-l-m-a-g-h-a-n-i.

21 There are a few points missing in this

22 plan that has been proposed. One is the economic

23 impact of the loss to private property due to the

24 operations of Pacific Lumber. We know as a fact

25 that certain homes have been destroyed on property

0214

01 due to landslides caused by the clear-cutting in

02 Pacific Lumber property. This plan does not address

03 the losses to private property outside -- of people

04 outside of Pacific Lumber.

05 The second point is that the loss of

06 highways and the cost to the government of

07 rebuilding highways due to the flooding by

08 landslides by Pacific Lumber, that has not been also

09 addressed in this plan.

10 Also, the health consequences of

11 excessive pesticide use by Pacific Lumber has not

12 been considered in this plan. People up there by

13 now are having health problems because of this

14 excessive use of pesticides. That has not been

15 studied in this plan.

16 The impact on the fishing industry by

17 this pesticide use that goes into our waters has not

18 been studied in this plan. This plan needs to look

19 at these factors and consider them. The plan --

20 The Endangered Species Act -- I'm

21 reading from Volume IV, Page 53. There's a line

22 here that says, "The Endangered Species Act requires

23 that an applicant for an Incidental Take Permit

24 minimize and avoids take for the maximum extent

25 practicable." Not "the maximum extent possible,"

0215

01 but "the maximum extent practicable."

02 What is "practicable"? Who defines

03 "practicable"? What are the consequences of

04 "practicable"? If there's economic gain to be made

05 and taking the endangered species makes it

06 unpracticable to make the money, then it is

07 practicable to take the endangered species?

08 Pacific Lumber Company has been

09 convicted numerous times of criminal violations of

10 California forestry laws and, as evidenced, a

11 callous lack of responsibility; therefore, their

12 request for a permit to take endangered species

13 should be denied per 50 CFR 13.21(b)1.

14 The draft plans that are submitted here

15 are scientifically, legally, and biologically

16 deficient and should not be approved as written.

17 The watershed assessment data for the

18 Sustained Yield Plan is incomplete, outdated, and,

19 in some cases, materially misleading. The SYP

20 should not be approved in the absence of current and

21 accurate data describing the conditions of

22 watersheds on Pacific Lumber land.

23 The plan proposes to harvest 32 percent

24 more forest than will grow back over the first

25 decade. This decade, as defined by the plan, is

0216

01 oddly only four years long. During this four-year

02 period, over 25 percent of the company's land will

03 be logged, 54,382 acres. Over 35,000 of these acres

04 will be clear-cut, and over 2,500 of these acres are

05 uncut old-growth forests.

06 This is not a plan that will facilitate

07 sustained production of high-quality timber products

08 while giving consideration to environmental and

09 economic values as required under 14 CCR 1091.1(b),

10 but a plan for short-term liquidation of forest

11 resources at tremendous long-term environmental and

12 economic costs.

13 There is no scientifically valid way to

14 mitigate the permanent destruction of ancient forest

15 habitat on which the marbled murrelet and northern

16 spotted owl rely for their survival and recovery.

17 This plan would allow Pacific Lumber to liquidate

18 over 17,000 acres of ancient and residual forest

19 habitat, killing between 251 and 340 marbled

20 murrelets in the process. Such liquidation of

21 ancient forest habitat could well appreciably reduce

22 the likelihood of the survival and recovery of this

23 species in violation of federal Endangered Species

24 Act 16 U.S.C. 1539(a)2(b)4.

25 Thank you.

0217

01 MR. ORTEGA: Thank you, Mr. Dilmaghani.

02 Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to

03 proceed to close the hearing at this time, at least

04 this session of it.

05 On behalf of the United States Fish and

06 Wildlife Service and the cooperating agencies, we

07 appreciate the time and the effort that you took

08 this evening to come and present your comments.

09 Personally, I want to thank you all for your

10 attention and for your cooperation during the

11 hearing.

12 Let me just state that there is another

13 hearing scheduled, two sessions in Sacramento, and

14 there are two others that are scheduled in other

15 parts of the state of California that you'll find in

16 the federal register publication.

17 We'll proceed at this point to close

18 the hearing. We'll go off the record at

19 approximately five minutes before 9:00 P.M.

20 Thank you.

21 (Whereupon, the proceedings

22 were concluded at 9:00 P.M.)

23 * * * * *

0218

01 STATE OF CALIFORNIA )

01 ) ss.

02 COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES )

04 I, AMY R. KURAMOTO, C.S.R. No. 10157, do

05 hereby certify:

06 That the foregoing proceedings were taken down

07 by me in shorthand and thereafter transcribed under

08 my direction and supervision.

09 That the foregoing 217 pages contain a true

10 and correct transcription of my said shorthand notes

11 so taken.

12 I further certify that I am neither counsel

13 for nor related to any party to said action, nor in

14 anywise interested in the outcome thereof.

15 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have subscribed my name

16 this 10th day of November 1998.

20 _________________________________

20 AMY R. KURAMOTO, C.S.R. No. 10157