1
1 PUBLIC HEARING
2 DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT/
3 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT/SUMMARY
4 FOR THE
5 HEADWATERS FOREST ACQUISITION
6 AND
7 PACIFIC LUMBER COMPANY
8 HABITAT CONSERVATION PLAN AND SUSTAINED YIELD PLAN
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12 Sacramento Convention Center
13 Sacramento, California
14 October 29, 1998
15 1:00 p.m.
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22 Taken before WENDY E. ARLEN
23 Certified Shorthand Reporter
24 State of California
25 CSR License #4355, RMR, CRR
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1 HEARING OFFICER: LOTARIO D. ORTEGA
2
3 PRESENT:
4 MICHAEL SPEAR, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
5 ROSS JOHNSON, California Department of Forestry
6 and Fire Protection
7 WILLIAM HOGARTH, National Marine Fisheries
8 Service (Afternoon Session)
9 VICKI CAMPBELL, National Marine Fisheries
10 Service (Evening Session)
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1 --o0o--
2 PROCEEDINGS
3 --oOo--
4 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: We'll go on record. Good
5 afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this public
6 hearing. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service,
7 the National Marine Fisheries Service, the California
8 Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the
9 California Department of Fish and Game are conducting a
10 joint process for the taking of comments on an
11 Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact
12 Report for the Headwaters Forest Acquisition and the
13 Pacific Lumber Company's Habitat Conservation Plan and
14 Sustained Yield Plan.
15 My name is Lotario D. Ortega. I am an attorney
16 retired from the United States Department of the Interior
17 solicitor's office. I will be serving as the presiding
18 official for this hearing.
19 Here with me are the following representatives of
20 the agencies involved. In the middle of the table to my
21 right is Mike Spear, who is the manager of the
22 California/Nevada operations office of the United States
23 Fish and Wildlife Service here in Sacramento. On the far
24 right is Mr. Ross Johnson of the California Department of
25 Forestry and Fire Protection. His office also is here in
4
1 Sacramento. And the man nearest to me on the table to my
2 right is Mr. Bill Hogarth, regional administrator of the
3 National Marine Fisheries Service. His office is in Long
4 Beach, California.
5 You will find a table in the lobby with written
6 materials of the proposed action and the documents that
7 will be referred to in this public hearing. At this
8 point I would like to introduce Mr. Mike Spear, who will
9 make a brief opening statement, presentation, and he will
10 be followed by Mr. Johnson of the California Department
11 of Forestry and Fire Protection. Mr. Spear.
12 MR. SPEAR: Good afternoon. My name is Mike Spear
13 of the Fish and Wildlife Service. The Endangered Species
14 Act has established protections for species threatened
15 and endangered and provides for authorization of certain
16 impacts where such impacts comply with criteria
17 established by the act.
18 The most fundamental protection provided by the
19 act is the prohibition against take of species listed
20 under the act. Take includes actions that would kill,
21 harass or harm listed species. Incidental take is
22 defined as take that is "incidental to and not the
23 purpose of the carrying out of an otherwise lawful
24 activity."
25 When incidental take may result from actions of
5
1 state or local governments, corporations or private
2 individuals, Section 10 of the Endangered Species Act
3 directs the secretaries of the Department of Interior and
4 the Department of Commerce to issue permits for
5 incidental take when certain conditions are met by the
6 applicant.
7 Those conditions are described in detail in the
8 act. Most importantly, the applicant must submit a
9 Habitat Conservation Plan, or HCP. Among other things,
10 the HCP must describe the impact of take and the steps
11 the applicant will take to minimize and mitigate such
12 impacts.
13 The standards for the agency's evaluation of the
14 HCP are also described in the act. Most importantly, the
15 agencies must find that the taking will not appreciably
16 reduce the likelihood of survival and recovery of the
17 species in the wild.
18 If the statutory conditions are met, the
19 incidental take permit will be issued by the Fish and
20 Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries
21 Service.
22 Pacific Lumber Company has prepared an HCP and
23 submitted an application for an incidental take permit
24 for several species. Also, the United States Congress
25 and the California Legislature have approved an
6
1 appropriations for acquisitions for portions of Pacific
2 Lumber's property if the HCP is approved.
3 Because the issue of an incidental take permit is
4 a federal action, the process is subject to review under
5 the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA. The State
6 of California has also undertaken environmental review
7 under the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA.
8 Therefore, the state and federal agencies have entered
9 into an agreement to prepare a single environmental
10 document called a joint EIR/EIS.
11 Impacts considered under NEPA and CEQA are not
12 limited to impacts on listed species but include all
13 impacts of the action affecting the human environment.
14 In addition to the evaluation of the effects of
15 implementation of the HCP, the joint EIR/EIS will cover
16 the impacts of the proposed acquisition.
17 This comment public hearing is part of the
18 proposed comment period on the proposed EIR/EIS. It will
19 be closed November 16th, 1998. Because the
20 incorporations include a deadline of March 1, 1999, for
21 completion of the entire process, the public comment
22 period will not be extended beyond November 16th.
23 On behalf of Fish and Wildlife Service, the
24 National Marine Fisheries Service, I thank you for the
25 effort you have made to attend this meeting and also
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1 thank you in advance for your comments. Now, we'll hear
2 some introductory remarks from Ross Johnson from the
3 California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection,
4 the representative of the State of California.
5 MR. JOHNSON: Good afternoon. My name is Ross
6 Johnson, deputy director with Department of Forestry and
7 Fire Protection. The department is a state lead agency
8 under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA,
9 for this project.
10 The department will use the Environmental Impact
11 Report to evaluate the environmental impacts of the
12 Sustained Yield Plan submitted by Pacific Lumber Company.
13 The department will use the EIR to identify potentially
14 significant adverse impacts and determine whether the
15 Sustained Yield Plan needs to be modified with
16 alternatives or feasible mitigations to avoid or mitigate
17 those impacts.
18 This EIR is a joint document with the Federal
19 Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS. The Sustained
20 Yield Plans, or SYP's as they are called, are one of the
21 mechanisms that timberland owners can use to meet the
22 state's requirement for maintaining maximum sustained
23 production of high quality timber products while giving
24 consideration to values relating to, among other things,
25 watershed, fisheries and wildlife.
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1 SYP's must include protections of timber growth
2 and havesting over a the hundred year planning horizon, a
3 fish and wildlife assessment and a watershed assessment.
4 Subsequent timber harvesting plans may rely on the
5 approved SYP to the extent that issues are addressed in
6 it.
7 Following approval, the SYP is in force for a
8 period of no more than 10 years. The department does not
9 normally prepare an EIR for Sustained Yield Plans and
10 usually uses its CEQA functional equivalency in the
11 Forest Practice Act. However, in this case it was judged
12 to be more efficient and fair for the EIR to be a joint
13 document with the federal EIS.
14 I am glad to see you here and look forward to
15 hearing from you in your testimony.
16 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, gentlemen.
17 Public comments on these comments will be accepted, as
18 indicated earlier, until November 16, 1998. After review
19 and consideration of your comments and all other
20 information gathered during the comment period, the
21 agencies will prepare a final Environmental Impact
22 Statement and Environmental Impact Report.
23 The purpose of this hearing is to receive your
24 oral comments on these proposals. The information you
25 offer on all aspects of these proposals is very important
9
1 and will be carefully considered. Because of the
2 importance of your comments, it is necessary that we
3 follow certain procedures in this hearing.
4 If you want to present comments at this hearing,
5 we would request that you register at the table outside
6 in the foyer. When you register, please indicate any
7 organization that you represent. When you are called to
8 present your comments, please come forward to one of the
9 two microphones here in the front. Please begin your
10 presentation by stating your full name and please spell
11 it for accuracy of the record, and then indicate what
12 organization you represent, if any. In order that we can
13 accept the maximum number of comments into the record, I
14 will call two names at a time, the speaker who will next
15 speak and the one to follow.
16 Now, we prefer not to limit the time allotted to
17 each speaker to make a presentation. However, in order
18 that we can accommodate all of those who have indicated
19 that they would like to make comments, I would ask you at
20 this time, although we are not going to impose any strict
21 time limits, to limit your comments to not more than five
22 minutes.
23 Now, this is an informal hearing. You will not be
24 questioned or cross-examined in connection with any
25 comment or presentation you make. Also, it is not
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1 possible in the time frame that we have allotted to us to
2 answer your questions here. Official response to the
3 issues raised during the comment period will be set out
4 in a Final Environmental Impact Report or Environmental
5 Impact Statement.
6 Your statements are being recorded by a certified
7 court reporter in order to accurately preserve them for
8 the record. Please keep in mind, however, the reporter
9 cannot and will not record any statements from the
10 audience or which are made to the audience. Comments
11 have to be made, please, into the microphone.
12 In order to allow everyone here to amply present
13 their comments, it is important that we maintain an
14 atmosphere of courtesy and respect for each speaker.
15 Therefore, we can't allow any applause, argument,
16 cheering or any other disruptions from the audience. We
17 will try and hopefully maintain a fair, neutral
18 atmosphere in order to record all comments into the
19 record.
20 Now, instead of presenting oral comments here this
21 afternoon or in addition to any oral comments you may
22 submit, you may also submit comments in writing. Written
23 comments may be submitted today to the staff at the
24 registration table in the foyer, or they may be mailed to
25 Mr. Bruce Halstead of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife
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1 Service. His address is 1125 16th Street, Room 209,
2 Arcata, California. The zip code is 95521-5582. That
3 address is available at the registration table in the
4 outer lobby.
5 Now, remember, written comments will be accepted
6 until November 16th, 1998, and also please bear in mind
7 that written comments will have the same consideration as
8 any oral comments presented here at this hearing.
9 At this point we will proceed with oral comments.
10 The first person to be called will be Charles Jourdain.
11 He will be followed by Camilla Hallinan. Mr. Jourdain
12 first.
13 MR. JOURDAIN: Good afternoon, gentlemen. My name
14 is Charles Jourdain, J-o-u-r-d-a-i-n. I'm a
15 representative of the California Redwood Association.
16 As vice president for technical and inspection
17 services for the California Redwood Association, I've had
18 the privilege of working closely with many employees of
19 Pacific Lumber Company for over a decade. During most of
20 this time period, controversy has surrounded the proposed
21 preservation of the Headwaters forest. Tens of thousands
22 of hours of scientific study and negotiations and
23 millions of dollars of public and private funds have
24 brought us to where we are today.
25 The September 28th, 1996, agreement and subsequent
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1 is Assembly Bill 1986 provide the citizens of California
2 with the best opportunity for preserving the largest
3 remaining stand of old growth redwoods in private hands,
4 while simultaneously ensuring the viability of fish and
5 wildlife populations and stabling the long-term economy
6 of the north coast.
7 The proposed action outlined as Alternative 2 in
8 the Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental
9 Impact Report would add approximately 7500 acres,
10 including over 3100 acres of uncut old growth redwood, to
11 the nearly 100,000 acres of old growth redwoods already
12 preserved in perpetuity in state, federal and other
13 parklands along California's north coast.
14 According to the draft EIS/EIR, the proposed
15 action will create a 7503-acre Headwaters forest reserve
16 and will transfer 7,704 acres of Elk River lands to PALCO
17 ownership. This proposed action will result in no
18 significant cumulative impact on the air quality and
19 overall beneficial net reduction in sedimentation to
20 streams, improved aquatic habitat and resources through
21 riparian zone management, improved habitat conditions for
22 marbled murrelets by virtue of providing higher quality
23 habitat with better productivity, less than significant
24 cumulative impact on harvesting of old growth redwood and
25 Douglas fir at 3.2 and 2.6 percent, respectively, of
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1 remaining uncut old growth, no long-term significant
2 adverse effect on northern spotted owl populations and,
3 finally, the greatest long-term sustained yield and
4 lowest economic impact and job loss.
5 It was in May of 1988 that the Pacific Lumber
6 Company put into place the first voluntary two-year
7 moratorium on the Headwaters in order to allow
8 environmentalists to develop a plan for acquiring of the
9 property. On August 31, 1998, the California Legislature
10 took the final major step towards ending the battle over
11 the Headwaters.
12 The Headwaters forest acquisition and accompanying
13 Sustained Yield Plan and Habitat Conservation Plan are by
14 far the most complex and comprehensive long-term land
15 management plans ever proposed for private property in
16 the United States. For the sake of the environment, the
17 marbled murrelet, the northern spotted owl, coho salmon,
18 and for the sake of the hard working people of
19 California's north coast, I respectfully urge the U. S.
20 Fish and Wild Life Service, the National Marine Fisheries
21 Service, California Department of fish and Wildlife and
22 California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to
23 accept the draft EIS/EIR for the Headwaters forest
24 acquisition. Thank you very much.
25 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, Mr. Jourdain.
14
1 Camilla Hallinan, who will be followed by Arthur
2 Freyer.
3 MS. HALLINAN: Good afternoon. My name is
4 Camilla, C-a-m-i-l-l-a, Hallinan, H-a-l-l-i-n-a-n, and
5 I'm attending this hearing as a private tax paying
6 citizen regarding Pacific Lumber's HCP/SYP, and I would
7 ask you excuse my mistake. I misunderstood the purpose
8 of this hearing. I thought I was appearing before the
9 Board of Forestry alone, and so any comments that I make
10 specifically to them I'd also like the federal to
11 consider my comments as well.
12 I think it would be unconscionable for the Board
13 of Forestry to approve Pacific Lumber's HCP/SYP as it
14 stands. This document is prepared by Pacific Lumber, so
15 it cannot be surprising the HSP/SYP favors the interests
16 of Pacific Lumber.
17 The Board of Forestry, however, has a fiduciary
18 duty to act in the best interests of all the citizens of
19 the State of California. It is incumbent upon the board
20 to ensure that the laws of our state are enforced.
21 The HCP/SYP suggests an unacceptable amount of
22 take for the marbled murrelet. To potentially and
23 irreversibly put such a large percentage of the bird's
24 population at risk is a slap in the face of the
25 California taxpayers who have just paid twice for the
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1 Headwaters so that we can protect the ancient, endangered
2 and threatened species.
3 The HCP will have a deleterious effect on the wild
4 salmon, and I don't see either how Fish and Wildlife or
5 the maritime association can deny that.
6 The no surprises clause grants protection only to
7 Pacific Lumber and gives no protection to the citizens or
8 the law should any natural or manmade catastrophe befall
9 any of the rare species which live in the Headwaters
10 forest complex.
11 The HCP/SYP does not adequately address the
12 prevention of erosion on water resources and waterways or
13 provide mitigation for the concerns I heard expressed by
14 long-time Humboldt County citizens of gradient being
15 added to their already impacted waterways. The
16 provisions regarding roads, road maintenance and hill
17 slope management are inadequate. Over and over there are
18 problems with this HCP.
19 The Board of Forestry must act with utter
20 scrupulousness to avoid the appearance of a financial
21 conflict of interest in this matter. As state employees,
22 the members of the board can anticipate payment of
23 dividends to their retirement funds from Maxxam
24 Corporation, Pacific Lumber's parent company, should this
25 HCP/SYP be approved.
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1 The Board of Forestry has an obligation to be
2 certain that HCP's, SYP's and THP's conform to the laws
3 of the State of California. California courts have made
4 rulings and judicial decisions on the way the law should
5 be applied in state forestry decisions. The Board of
6 Forestry must be certain that this HCP/SYP is in
7 accordance with those rulings and judicial decisions as
8 well as all of the law before it is approved.
9 Thank you. And I may, I add I appreciate John
10 Mund at Forestry, the courtesies that he's extended to
11 me.
12 (Applause.)
13 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. If you would,
14 please, before we proceed, I think I have to announce to
15 you according to the number of people that indicate
16 they'd like to make statements here, we're going to have
17 to limit you to four minutes. I will set the timer. The
18 timer will speak for itself.
19 Next speaker Mr. Arthur Freyer to be followed by
20 Chris Keyser.
21 MR. FREYER: Hello, my name is Arthur Freyer,
22 F-r-e-y-e-r. I'm a union electrician, and I also work
23 with Sierra Club.
24 We have a compromise, but we can do a lot better.
25 It's a very bad plan. Many of us know, many of the
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1 scientists, our speaker of the state assemby, Antonio
2 Villariogosa mentions in a letter to his constituents
3 that that's the best deal we can get at the time, but we
4 can do better.
5 You know, I feel for the loggers. I want their
6 kids to go to college. But, you know, when they come out
7 of college, are there any trees going to be left to cut,
8 you know, is there a future? What's going to be the
9 future of jobs in the economy?
10 There is a big future in the environment, in
11 fishing, in tourism. People from Europe and all the
12 world come to especially Northern California and look at
13 these trees. You know, five, ten years down the road,
14 when half the trees are gone anyway, we've got to look
15 ahead, you know, and we want foresight and long-term
16 thinking.
17 It's too bad about the, for instance, stockholders
18 of PL. They built a mill that was specifically designed
19 for old growth redwood. I feel for them, but on the long
20 term, given you see what's happening in the economy the
21 last year or so, you can't always protect the
22 stockholders. You kind of have to go with the future,
23 and the future is in the environment.
24 So I'd like you to make your recommendations on
25 10, 20 years in the future looking at the tourism, jobs,
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1 the jobs with fish, with the strong, clean water. You
2 know, we can send the tourists up there, you know, to
3 look at a few trees left, but if the streams are muddy
4 and dead running through these areas, it's not going to
5 do much good for the future. So I urge you to make your
6 decision looking at 10, 20 years down the road with your
7 kids and your grandkids and the future. Thank you.
8 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
9 (Applause.)
10 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Next, Cathie Tritel to be
11 followed by Phillip Batchelder.
12 MS. TRITEL: My name is Cathie Tritel, C-a-t-h-i-e
13 T-r-i-t-e-l. I am a member of the Sierra Club.
14 I thank you for the opportunity today to express
15 my opinion on the Habitat Conservation Plan for the
16 Pacific Lumber Company. I object adamantly to the
17 exemption from the Endangered Species Act which the
18 Clinton administration has promised Pacific Lumber.
19 Instead of our government enforcing this act, which is
20 our strongest protection for endangered species, it is
21 proposing to grant take permits in exchange for the
22 development of a Habitat Conservation Plan.
23 As for making comments on Pacific Lumber's farce
24 of a Habitat Conservation Plan, my comment is to throw it
25 away. It is a worthless document which does not conserve
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1 habitat, provides little baseline data surveys of
2 endangered species, has inadequate stream buffer zones,
3 allows clear-cutting of almost 19,000 acres of old
4 growth, is projected to kill 33 percent of the spotted
5 owl population, impacts 36 unlisted but sensitive
6 species, will gravely imperil coastal coho salmon and
7 allows clear-cutting of the remainder of a 210,000-acre
8 forest.
9 This should be called a habitat destruction plan,
10 not a Habitat Conservation Plan. We need to toughen up
11 to Charles Herwitz and his timber fellows and stop
12 allowing them to make the public and the government a
13 laughing stock.
14 Habitat Conservation Plans have been shown to lead
15 to the decline of endangered species. Their adoption is
16 a tactic used by groups such as the timber industry and
17 developers to be able to exploit the land and take
18 species, an euphemism for kill.
19 Why are we going along with this in any way at
20 all? Why are we allowing the Endangered Species Act to
21 be weakened through these HCP's? Environmental,
22 fisheries and recreation advocates in this area have been
23 trying to get federal and state governments to enforce
24 the Endangered Species Act, but officials have done
25 nothing.
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1 These officials are setting their agencies up for
2 lawsuits on not enforcing the law. We at least need to
3 make them accountable, and if they can't make the
4 decisions which will protect the public's interests
5 instead of Charles Herwitz's interests, we should ask for
6 their resignations. Thank you.
7 (Applause.)
8 MR. BATCHELDER: Hello. Thank you. My name is
9 Philip Batchelder. I'm here as a citizen, as a human
10 being, and my last name is spelled B-a-t-c-h-e-l-d-e-r.
11 I do a lot of work on a place called San Bruno
12 Mountain. This was where the very first HCP was
13 formulated, and it was touted at the time as an example,
14 a model for future HCP's. That was a long time ago.
15 That was 16 years ago. And in one very basic way I see
16 that it has served as a model.
17 You know, Palco says here in their material that
18 this is the most comprehensive Habitat Conservation
19 Plan/Sustained Yield Plan ever developed for privately
20 owned commercial timberlands. Well, this basic way in
21 which it is similar to the Habitat Conservation Plan for
22 San Bruno is that on San Bruno Mountain this habitat
23 conservation planning has been an utter failure, and this
24 is setting us up for utter failure as well.
25 I mean, 7500 acres, precious acres, but who are we
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1 kidding? It's part of a much larger complex ecosystem
2 that is endangered as a whole, not just the species
3 inside it.
4 No surprises. Who are we kidding? That whole
5 idea of no surprises violates basic tenets of
6 conservation biology. Scientists around the country,
7 around the world are refuting this idea. And, in fact,
8 the Clinton administration, which has been pushing it, is
9 under lawsuit right now because of it.
10 No independent monitoring. This is a basic flaw
11 in habitat conservation planning. Who are we kidding?
12 On San Bruno Mountain the people who had decades-long
13 contracts to carry out the work of the HCP are also the
14 ones who are given review and approval powers for any
15 changes in the HCP.
16 Compromise of dangerously endangered species is
17 compromise that is absolutely unacceptable. It equals
18 death. Palco suggests that by setting aside marbled
19 murrelet conservation areas that they are somehow
20 mitigating for the destruction of some of the other
21 marbled murrelet habitat. Give me a break. It is
22 already there. They are not giving us anything.
23 I suggest that we stop talking about these plans
24 in terms of habitat conservation. This is a profit
25 conservation planning process. The habitat conservation
22
1 planning, Section 10 (a), is a gigantic loophole in the
2 Endangered Species Act that violates its central core,
3 and that is to protect endangered species, to prepare
4 recovery plans for endangered species.
5 This is a farce. This plan that Pacific Lumber is
6 suggesting a farce. It flies in the name of the basic
7 tenets of conservation biology, and I ask that you reject
8 it. Thank you.
9 (Applause.)
10 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Alan Moore to
11 be followed by Judith Iam.
12 MR. MOORE: Before you start, when I first came, I
13 was to sign up for two groups, a nonprofit that I belong
14 to and the City of Berkeley. Then you put a time limit.
15 If I could get one extra minute to read the statement
16 from the City of Berkeley, would that be all right?
17 After my four minutes?
18 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: I believe not, sir.
19 MR. MOORE: My name is Alan Moore. I represent a
20 group called the Butterfly Gardeners Association. We do
21 environmental education work, work with children with
22 nonviolence and reading programs.
23 We got involved with a gentleman who is the
24 founder of San Bruno Mountain Watch, David Schooly, and I
25 wish he was here today to tell what you a failure the
23
1 first Habitat Conservation Plan really was. He has a
2 slide show and he'll gladly take you to that location
3 where, when they ceded this land to developers and then
4 replaced it with other habitat for butterflies, they put
5 it in a habitat that had no sun and was in a lower
6 elevation, and within three years of all of their
7 tremendous efforts of plantings it was all lost and grown
8 in by native vegetation there.
9 I also want to talk about we're in opposition to
10 the Habitat Conservation Plans because of their past
11 failings and because of the failings of Pacific Lumber
12 Company to follow regulations and have been numerously
13 cited for violations, and the forestry department has
14 done nothing. In fact, when I called them up and asked
15 them what they'd be doing, they got annoyed and hung up
16 on me.
17 I think what they need if this plan is approved to
18 put in a training program. Some of these loggers have
19 been riled up. It's resulted in a death. Pacific Lumber
20 Company has stated that no one knew David "Gypsy" Chain
21 was there, and later they proved to be lying after a
22 videotape was made public and put on the radio.
23 So I think there should be a training program of
24 nonviolence for these forestry people before they are put
25 into the forest to work with protestors that will be out
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1 there trying to stop any illegal acts that they do. And
2 I would think that should include a workshop where they
3 would act out and confront each other with some forest
4 protestors so they could see how a situation could arise
5 that would lead to some violence. They need to be
6 trained to watch out for that.
7 Two, I would suggest that in this plan there is
8 something that's called three strikes and you're out and
9 they put that law against most people, I think they ought
10 to use this law against the corporations.
11 (Applause.)
12 MR. MOORE: So I would say if you got all your
13 things there and you're going to monitor this and there
14 are violations, three strikes and they should lose all
15 rights to harvesting timber.
16 Now, I'm just going to read a letter that the City
17 of Berkeley has endorsed for Earth Day.
18 We are one people. We share one planet. We have
19 one common dream. We want to live in peace. We choose
20 to protect and heal the earth. We will defend and
21 preserve the redwoods, rainforest and other sacred
22 places. We will become stewards for the planet's
23 threatened and endangered species. We cherish the
24 Earth's bio and cultural diversity. We will do this for
25 our children and our children's children. We will choose
25
1 to create a better world for all. We will do our best to
2 make that dream come true. We will change what needs to
3 be changed. We will break free of our chrysalis
4 limitations. We will joyfully love, share and forgive so
5 that peace may prevail on Earth. May peace prevail on
6 Earth.
7 And not only has Berkeley endorsed this, but David
8 Brower and John O'Connell, the father of Earth Day,
9 people from all over the world. And I hope you think of
10 our children who will be holding you with their moral
11 outrage if any more destruction and the extinction of the
12 coho salmon is allowed to continue. Thank you.
13 (Applause.)
14 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Judith Iam will be
15 followed by Dottie Higby.
16 MS. IAM: Good afternoon. My last name is spelled
17 I-a-m.
18 I'd like to say that we're talking about of
19 remaining redwoods, there are three percent which exist
20 of the original redwoods which stood in this area. So
21 we're talking about cutting percentages of what is
22 already a very insignificant remnant of the most ancient
23 of trees.
24 Of the people who have spoken here and who are in
25 this room, there are a few who are paid. We've learned
26
1 from a couple of decades ago from Watergate to follow the
2 money when we look to see where criminal acts are being
3 committed. There are those of us who come because we're
4 motivated by something else. There are those of us who
5 are coming to speak because we are paid. That's the same
6 interest which motivates this HCP. This is a political
7 document. This is not drawn up by impartial people.
8 Those who are meant to represent the public and
9 the best interests of the people and the environment are
10 compromising. This is very evident to a layperson and
11 it's even more apparent to the scientists.
12 I have a list before me of what's wrong with the
13 Habitat Conservation Plan which does not have one or two
14 items. It has a dozen items on it. They range from the
15 coho status, no mention of watershed restoration, roads,
16 landslides, water temperature variances, sensitive
17 species, riparian protection.
18 There is no time or real reason for me to go into
19 these in detail because I think you are privy to this
20 material. Ignoring is what is both painful and egregious
21 in this case.
22 I heard something about a 10-year plan. For quite
23 a while now people have been aware of seven generations
24 being what we need to think about. Japan makes 50-year
25 plans. You know, it's a question of time. Whether the
27
1 trees run out in one year or the trees run out in five
2 years, the trees will run out, and as Joanie Mitchell put
3 it some time back, cut down the trees, put them in a tree
4 museum. We are already making tree museums. We don't
5 want slivers of forest that species -- it's not like a
6 zoo. There needs to be a larger vision. You gentlemen
7 are part of the process of holding that vision.
8 I don't know what more you can be given in
9 materials of information and in terms of outcry. This
10 has been a battle which has been going on for 15 years
11 about this specific area. I don't know what more it will
12 take. I hope you can awaken in enough time to make a
13 difference. It does rest on your shoulders. No one
14 else's. On your shoulders.
15 So we come here to cry, to speak once again about
16 this same area and about the larger awakening to the
17 planet. May we all wake up and learn to do whatever is
18 necessary to beyond to save it, to protect it, but to let
19 it flourish back to where it was and where it needs to be
20 again. Thank you.
21 (Applause.)
22 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Dottie Higby will be
23 followed by Shamus O'Bryon.
24 MS. HIGBY: My name is Dottie Higby, and I am a
25 California resident. I'm here representing myself, my
28
1 family, my friends. I'm not paid. In fact, it just
2 occurred to me I am paying to be here because I'm not at
3 work making money and I'm possibly getting a parking
4 ticket as we speak.
5 I was born and raised in the Bay Area, in the San
6 Francisco Bay area. I went to college and now live in
7 the Sacramento Valley. I've been a resident of
8 California all my life, which actually is longer, I hope,
9 than I look.
10 I resent the outsider Charles Herwitz and his
11 methods of financing his company and vandalizing our
12 forests and our natural resources in California. Under
13 his management, Pacific Lumber Company has shown itself
14 to be less than ethical. I don't think that this lumber
15 plan or whatever you call it, HCP, has any teeth in it
16 whatsoever.
17 I don't believe in oops. You can't put a tree
18 back on the stump. It doesn't matter what type of
19 planning we come up with, if it's not enforceable or if
20 it's not enforced, we've all wasted a whole lot of time
21 and whole lot of effort.
22 So I ask that you please make sure there are teeth
23 into the forest plan, that it can be monitored and that
24 there are consequences for not following the plan once it
25 is approved. Thank you.
29
1 (Applause.)
2 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Shamus
3 O'Bryon to be followed by Rose Taylor.
4 MR. O'BRYON: Hello, my name is Shamus O'Bryon,
5 S-h-a-m-u-s O apostrophe B-r-y-o-n.
6 I would like to thank you for giving me the
7 opportunity to tell you how I feel. What I feel is that
8 the people who are making the decisions for the trees,
9 the land and the animals really don't know or care about
10 what they are doing.
11 To destroy the last three percent of one of the
12 most beautiful things on earth is wrong and doesn't make
13 sense at all. I learned in school how these big trees
14 put oxygen in our air and how they help get rid of a lot
15 of pollution.
16 If they keep clear-cutting up there and run out of
17 trees, then where will they start clear-cutting?
18 I think what they are doing is disgusting and
19 needs to stop. Thank you.
20 (Applause.)
21 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Ros Taylor to
22 be followed by Dave Casebeer.
23 MS. TAYLOR: Hello, my name is Ros Taylor.
24 Spelled R-o-s T-a-y-l-o-r.
25 I just wanted you to know that this brave young
30
1 man here is my son. I wanted you to know that he knew
2 that I was coming to speak here today and he asked if
3 they would let kids speak, too. The words he said, the
4 words he spoke were his words and his concerns.
5 It saddened me to think how adults' short-term
6 interests have compromised our children's long-term
7 interests. It sits heavy in my heart to think that our
8 children today can't have the freedom to run and play
9 without the ever-present concern of how high the
10 pollution standard index is and whether it is safe for
11 their health to do things as children do without second
12 thought of concerning -- being concerned about the
13 pollution.
14 This brings me to the subject of the Headwaters.
15 I understand that this temperate forest is one of the
16 densist biomasses on the planet. My concern as a mother
17 is we already have a serious pollution problem in most of
18 the cities in California, especially in Sacramento, and
19 if we continue to clear-cut our forests such as the
20 Headwaters, and I understand it is going on in the
21 Sequoias and in the Sierras also, when will we decide
22 that we've had enough, that we are sick of breathing
23 dirty air that is difficult to appreciate.
24 It wasn't until recently that I discovered the
25 truth about the Headwaters. It was about a month ago. I
31
1 was appalled to find out that the California Board of
2 Forestry had been allowing third world forestry practices
3 in California. Most of the Californians I have shared
4 this information with had no clue and were shocked to
5 find out that this state would allow such level of
6 destruction to our watersheds, to our fish, to the
7 wildlife and to the people of Humboldt County.
8 I think history is our greatest teacher. Before
9 Maxxam seized this family owned and operated company, we
10 had a thriving multi-million dollar a year commercial and
11 recreational fishing industry. We do not have one now.
12 We had rural towns and citizens who had a high
13 quality of life. Their families enjoyed clean, nontoxic
14 drinking water. They didn't have to concern themselves
15 of the -- I understood in one of the articles I read that
16 on a 312-acre parcel they had sprayed 2,000 gallons of a
17 very highly toxic herbicide and 6,000 gallons of diesel
18 fuel. And that is documented and I can get that for you.
19 They are doing it all over. It's madness. It
20 does not make sense to me and it makes me angry, because
21 we are leaving this to our children to enjoy.
22 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Would you please
23 summarize and conclude, Miss Taylor?
24 MS. TAYLOR: Yes, I will. I'm very near the end.
25 All I ask you to do is just to look at the
32
1 history. Before Maxxam took over the company, we had a
2 company that practiced six decades of sustainable
3 forestry. We now have a company that has clear-cut
4 probably half of the 210,000 acres it owns and has
5 totally divided that community and devastated so many
6 lives. It is about the wildlife. It is about the fish,
7 but it is also about the people of California. Thank
8 you.
9 (Applause.)
10 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Dave Casebeer
11 to be followed by Rosalind Berger.
12 MR. CASEBEER: Dave Casebeer, C-a-s-e-b-e-e-r.
13 Thanks to all for showing up and thanks for
14 allowing me to speak. I am not a member of any group.
15 My concern is for the children and the grandchildren of
16 the future.
17 I'm a human being who has grown up being given the
18 opportunity to experience a family who spent almost every
19 vacation camping, hiking, fishing, enjoying almost every
20 national park in this country. I was taught by my
21 parents, who loved camping and my grandfather who loved
22 farming for 40 years to preserve our Earth and wildlife,
23 not to destroy them. To always put back more than we
24 took from the Earth.
25 Thanks to all who have taught me that money is not
33
1 the most important thing in life. Thanks to all who have
2 taught me family comes first and preserving our planet
3 comes first. Charles Herwitz and all those who live
4 their lives placing money first, please change your ways
5 before it is too late.
6 What has happened at Headwaters has gone too far,
7 too many trees destroyed, watersheds destroyed, fish and
8 birds destroyed, homes destroyed, jobs destroyed, and,
9 yes, ultimately loggers' and mill workers' jobs will be
10 destroyed by clear-cutting.
11 Clear-cutting destroys the environment in a way we
12 cannot replace what has been destroyed. Clear-cutting
13 does not make any sense. Enough is enough. It is time
14 to give back more than we've taken from our planet. It's
15 time to place our planet first and our families first.
16 We cannot continue to rape and destroy our planet. When
17 it is gone, we are gone. I ask the powers that be to not
18 approve this HCP. It is not good for our planet and it
19 is not good for our families. It takes more than it
20 gives back. Thank you.
21 (Applause.)
22 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Rosalind Berger, to be
23 followed by Shawnee Alexandri.
24 MS. BERGER: My name is Rosalind Berger, and I am
25 a registered nurse. I'm also chairman of the
34
1 environmental committee of the Berkeley Grey Panthers and
2 I'm a member of a religious body, Subud. They have an
3 environmental sustainability committee, they have 3,000
4 members. But mostly I am here today for myself as a
5 concerned person because the Earth is dying, and as far
6 as I can figure out, it's dying for profit.
7 The six ancient groves of Headwaters forest are
8 the last significant unprotected stands of ancient
9 redwood forest remaining on Earth. 95 percent of the
10 California redwoods that were here when the Caucasians
11 first set foot here are gone.
12 I don't understand why the debt that Herwitz
13 racked up, the 1.6 billion dollars he made the taxpayers
14 pay for his diddling around with the Texas thrift and
15 loan banking business, I don't understand why that debt
16 can't be traded for the Headwaters forest, part of that
17 debt.
18 Herwitz is a man who diminishes benefits for the
19 workers of the companies he takes over, a man who
20 pollutes rivers and floods out the homes of his
21 neighbors, a man who permits his workers to log in
22 illlegal areas, causing the death of David Chain, who was
23 there to caution the loggers that it was an illegal area,
24 and then concurred in telling a grieving mother that her
25 son caused his own death.
35
1 That man, if he can't be locked up, he should be
2 watched like hawk with independent monitoring allowed in
3 the Headwaters forest of all his activities.
4 The plan as it stands only protects two of the six
5 groves. 92 percent is open to unrestricted industrial
6 logging operations. It is a 50-year management plan
7 designed by Pacific Lumber which covers all 211,000 acres
8 of Pacific Lumber holdings in Northern California which
9 include the Headwaters forest.
10 Now, half of the eight percent -- I think 92
11 percent of this can be logged and eight cannot be logged.
12 Half this eight percent can be logged in the future if
13 Pacific Lumber presents evidence that certain species no
14 longer exist in the area.
15 The incidental take permit would allow Pacific
16 Lumber to kill endangered species and destroy their
17 habitat for the next 50 years in exchange for a few
18 mitigation measures.
19 HCP's are loopholes in the federal Endangered
20 Species Act which allows developers and resource
21 industries to skirt laws protecting endangered species.
22 It would allow clear-cutting of over 35,000 acres. It's
23 scientifically and biologically deficient, and in view of
24 Herwitz's financial and environmental history and
25 criminal forestry practices, their request for a permit
36
1 to take endangered species should be denied.
2 The watershed assessment data of this plan is
3 outmoded, it's outdated and incomplete and should not be
4 approved. A stream buffer of going down to 30 feet and
5 clear-cutting allowed within 200 feet is inadequate
6 protection for species. Water temperatures, streams,
7 watershed, the forest, the whole works.
8 Therefore, I request that the HCP plan should not
9 be approved, but the guidelines drawn up by the
10 stewardship plan of the Tree Foundation be followed. I
11 thank you.
12 (Applause.)
13 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Sean Dockery
14 will be followed by Shawnee Alexandri.
15 MR. DOCKERY: Hello. My name is Sean Dockery,
16 S-e-a n D-o-c-k-e-r-y.
17 I was thinking you hear all the time that jobs
18 versus environmentalist, but Maxxam Corporation, first
19 thing they do when they come in and took over Pacific
20 Lumber is they cancelled the pension fund. Right now
21 they recently cancelled the pension fund for Kaiser
22 Aluminum. The workers for the Kaiser Aluminum went on
23 strike and Maxxam Corporation brought in scabs to take
24 their jobs.
25 And the HCP is going to have short-term maximum
37
1 logging and then there is going to be barely anything
2 left and jobs are going to go down. It's not
3 environmentalists versus jobs. It's Maxxam Corporation
4 and Charles Herwitz versus jobs.
5 The HCP plan is inadequate and it's inaccurate.
6 It's inaccurate in it's not in its current form going to
7 protect coho salmon and it's not going to protect many
8 old growth that are out there. In the first few years
9 they are planning on cutting 2,236 acres of old growth,
10 and that's the ones that they are going to clear-cut.
11 Also, it ignores data from the 1997 cutting around
12 Bear Creek where it plainly shows the destruction of the
13 water habitat there. They took a nice forest area and
14 they cleared it, and now it's basically gravel, cement
15 like gravel with water running through it, sediment
16 filling all the waterways, no salmon habitat left.
17 I don't see any reason why, first of all, we
18 should be giving Charles Herwitz, who is against the
19 common people with his junk bond deals and his
20 liquidation of the natural resources, why we should even
21 be giving him millions of dollars for 7,000 acres. We're
22 giving him half of the money he spent for all of the land
23 he acquired in the PL takeover, plus all the mills.
24 We're giving him half of the money that he paid for all
25 of that, and we're getting about 10 percent, less than 10
38
1 percent of his holdings. It doesn't seem like a fair
2 deal for the taxpayers. It's not a fair deal for the
3 trees. So to the HCP and the SYP, I say that should be
4 no go and I think we should have no deal. Thanks.
5 (Applause.)
6 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Shawnee
7 Alexandri to be followed by Kristin Van Til.
8 MR. ALEXANDRI: My name is Shawnee Alexandri,
9 S-h-a-w-n-e-e A-l-e-x-a-n-d-r-i, and I'm here as a
10 private tax paying citizen today.
11 Now, you cut my time or everyone's time and so I'm
12 going to cut to the chase. Which is basically the
13 incidental take in this HCP allows the destroying of at
14 least a quarter of all known murrelet habitat on Pacific
15 Lumber's land. My question is, how does that facilitate
16 for the recovery of the species.
17 The HCP has no protection whatsoever for steep
18 Class III streams. Now, when there is a landslide, they
19 go into these Class III streams and then they all run
20 into the Class II and Class I. So when you destroy the
21 Class III streams, you destroy all the streams and all
22 the fish habitat.
23 HCP's in general are nothing more than a loophole
24 around the Endangered Species Act. We might as well not
25 make laws we're not planning to follow.
39
1 No surprises clause allows other species that will
2 eventually inevitably become endangered or threatened
3 because of the PL's liquidation logging no protection in
4 future days. This plan, this HCP, is for 50 years, and
5 25 years from now when God knows how many other species,
6 you know, in that forest that live there become
7 endangered, there is no protection for them because we've
8 told Maxxam out of Houston that they can do what they
9 want.
10 Those are just a few concerns with the HCP, but
11 what I really want to say is when you are approving a
12 plan, you approve the plan, then you allot the money.
13 You don't allot half a billion dollars for something
14 before the plan is ever approved. What politician in
15 Sacramento or anywhere is not going to approve an HCP
16 that has half a billion dollars there waiting in the bank
17 for it. It's ludicrous.
18 This HCP no matter what gains are made from this
19 public comment is win-win situation for Charles Herwitz.
20 He is the only one who benefits from this, not the
21 forest, not the animals and certainly not the community.
22 So, in essence, in my opinion, this is actually
23 pretty much a token public comment period we're given
24 because I don't think anyone here thinks that this HCP
25 won't be passed.
40
1 Also, in my opinion, the only real chance to kill
2 this HCP, which is what should happen, is to pressure CDF
3 into revoking PL's license. In the last three years,
4 Pacific Lumber has over 250 documented violations. They
5 are on probation already. They've been given a second
6 license. This year alone they have 40 more. That's a
7 few more than three strikes. We need CDF to revoke
8 Palco's license and then they can't get an HCP.
9 Also, you know, we need ecosystems, not museums.
10 You know. Oppression really breeds resistance and this
11 is one of the worst kind of oppression to our Earth, to
12 everything that supports us. Believe me, there will be a
13 lot of resistance to this plan. For nature, jail
14 Herwitz.
15 (Applause.)
16 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Kristin Van Til will be
17 followed by Phil Pluckebaun.
18 MS. VAN TIL: Hi. My name is Kristin Van Til, and
19 you spell the last name V-a-n T-i-l. I graduated with
20 environmental policy at the University of Michigan a
21 couple years ago. I've been working on this issue for a
22 year, maybe a little more than that.
23 Every time I think about the deal I'm pretty
24 overwhelmed with its audacity. First of all, we're
25 giving half a billion dollars to someone who isn't proven
41
1 to be a criminal, but pretty much is a criminal, to go
2 ahead and clear-cut 85 percent of Headwaters forest.
3 Okay. That's pretty sick.
4 97 percent of our ancient redwoods are gone.
5 Headwaters forest is a good portion of what is left. 10
6 percent of our coho salmon are existing of the original
7 100 percent. We're going allow them to clear-cut up to
8 hundred feet along the streams and go in there almost
9 right next to the streams to take some trees out.
10 Basically, trees are 300 feet tall, you know. When a
11 tree falls across a stream, it's not going to stop at the
12 buffer zone. The rivers are going to be destroyed.
13 We're going to end up with three tree museums which after
14 20 years of wind and rain will be nothing because of, you
15 know, more and more erosion along the buffers. Doesn't
16 make any sense.
17 I implore you to please, please listen to all the
18 letters you're getting, that I know you're getting,
19 please listen to us at the public comment period. I know
20 we're only peons and that the deal was basically made
21 with money and politics and people don't really matter, I
22 guess, but pay attention to your children and your
23 grandchildren's future, please. Thank you.
24 (Applause.)
25 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Phil Pluckebaun to be
42
1 followed by Keith Quinn. Also says Nakoma.
2 MR. PLUCKEBAUN: Good afternoon, gentlemen, and
3 thank you for this opportunity to speak.
4 Earlier a gentleman in front mentioned incidental
5 take. Clearly in study of environmental science and
6 ecology there is nothing incidental. As I understand it,
7 the term incidental is used in a most restricted legal
8 sense to mean only those things which do not violate
9 existing laws. Surely you can agree that as no thing is
10 incidental in its relationship to the evironment that
11 therefore nothing deserves an incidental legal
12 definition.
13 Also mentioned was maximum high quality timber
14 production as a priority to the sustainable use plan.
15 This is clearly unwise. Consideration for fish and
16 wildlife should not be an afterthought. We must protect
17 our future and all of our environments.
18 This is my friend Aaron. I'd like you all to
19 consider Aaron when you're reviewing this plan. This is
20 going to be Aaron's plan. We're the guys who signed it,
21 Aaron is the guy who gets to live with it. Thank you.
22 (Applause.)
23 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Keith Quinn to be
24 followed by Dominik Zabern.
25 MR. QUINN: Yes, my name is Nakoma Keith Quinn.
43
1 N-a-k-o-m-a K-e-i-t-h Q-u-i-n-n. I represent myself and
2 along with many of the people of humanity. I'd also like
3 to state that I'm a 38-year-old adult and mature child of
4 the creator and I acknowledge every individual in this
5 room as such.
6 I would like to state in regards to this Habitat
7 Conservation Plan that it is completely unacceptable as
8 has been stated by the majority of the people that have
9 come here to speak today.
10 In regards to the incidental take permit, this is
11 basically a political loophole that was written in as a
12 rider on another bill to grant permission to take some
13 areas of endangered species while if there are landowners
14 that have other areas with the same endangered species
15 that they can protect a portion thereof.
16 As has been stated that is completely
17 unacceptable. An endangered species is an endangered
18 species. As I have acknowledged that we are all adult
19 and mature children of the creator that I believe the
20 creator who has instilled in us love and reasoning and
21 common sense and the ability to care for ourselves and
22 our children and our children's futures, I believe that
23 as human beings it is more our responsibility to take
24 into account all aspects of the living inhabitants on
25 this planet; and I believe that the creator through all
44
1 of the many spiritual and religious teachings throughout
2 all of creation has given us certain guidelines in how to
3 respect and take with honor and humility that which we
4 need and not to take in excess. And I would like to ask
5 all people that are responsible for these decisions,
6 please take into account that everything that we do,
7 every choice that we make, especially people that have
8 chosen positions of power and authority to make these
9 decisions for humanity, to please take this into account,
10 that every action that we do to helps to benefit humanity
11 and our children's future, that takes precedence over how
12 much financial stability or security people feel we have
13 to have.
14 I would ask that all involved -- I think that this
15 entire Sustained Yield Plan does not cover -- the no
16 surprises in regards to if an HCP is drawn up and it
17 comes out in the future, even if it's in the immediate
18 future after the HCP is approved that there are
19 endangered species or it could seriously endanger either
20 a watershed, fish habitat, endangered species that if it
21 was already approved, no matter what the destruction we
22 come to find out is going to happen, that it is already
23 approved. That is completely unacceptable.
24 Please, we vote you in as our polltations. Please
25 hear our voices and speak for us. Please come from a
45
1 true place. That is why I am here today, for my
2 children, for your children, for all of our children. It
3 is a responsibility to be a human being, and we come here
4 peacefully asking, begging, please, be leading examples
5 for our children and our grandchildren. Thank you.
6 (Applause.)
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Ladies and gentlemen,
8 we've been in session about an hour and a half. So let's
9 at this point break for about 10 minutes and give our
10 court reporter here a little breathing room.
11 (Recess taken.)
12 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: All right. We will get
13 back on the record and reconvene this session. The next
14 speaker will be Dominik Zabern, who will be followed by
15 Virginia Jane Harris.
16 MR. ZABERN: Good afternoon. I wanted to say that
17 I think that this is kind of a pathetic situation to have
18 one branch of the government suing Charles Herwitz for
19 one and a half billion dollars that were absorbed by
20 Charles Herwitz's savings and loan that went bankrupt
21 from American taxpayers and having another branch of the
22 government discussing how to give Charles Herwitz another
23 half a billion dollars. To me, this kind of situation
24 would only happen with a billionaire because I can't see
25 how if someone had stolen a hundred dollars and was going
46
1 to court for that would at the same time be figuring out
2 to get another sum of money from the same government, you
3 know. To me, it seems like one hand of the government
4 doesn't really know what the other hand is doing because
5 it's being manipulated by money, by large amounts of
6 money.
7 I also think that Republicans are probably going
8 to lose the race for Governor in this election and that a
9 lot of the loyalties in the bureaucratic system, they are
10 going to be changing.
11 And Charles Herwitz is on trial right now. The
12 trial is supposed to end sometime next year. If the
13 judge is impartial, I have no doubt that he is going to
14 be convicted for illegal financial practices. So to me
15 it seems absurd that while he's being accused of a
16 massive crime that one and a half billion dollars is a
17 massive thing we're talking about, that is at the same
18 time considered credible enough to be involved in another
19 transaction, you know, at the same level of billions of
20 dollars.
21 So I see things are going to be changing in the
22 next couple years. I don't think it's going to be in
23 Charles Herwitz's favor because I think in the end reason
24 is going to prevail and it's not acceptable any more to
25 cut ancient redwood trees, it's not acceptable to kill
47
1 blue whales or, you know, and to do things like that is
2 also a crime against all people and all life such as
3 destroying the ozone is a crime against everybody.
4 And I think in the future that's going to be
5 acknowledged by the court systems, even though nowadays
6 it's not. People that are involving themselves in this
7 way are going to be held responsible for the
8 irresponsible or responsible actions which they may be.
9 And also my understanding is that in the history of
10 California there was a time when the government of
11 California used to pay people certain amounts of money
12 for scalps of Native Americans and that a lot of the land
13 rights in this state are based on homicide, and I think
14 in the future that's going to be acknowledged a lot more
15 than it is now that just as nowadays a lot of things
16 associated with the Nazi Holocaust are being acknowledged
17 by the courts in terms of money that was taken from
18 victims of the Holocaust and never returned until now
19 until 50 years later. Maybe a hundred years later after
20 the Indian Holocaust maybe those property rights are
21 going to be acknowledged.
22 (Applause.)
23 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Virginia Jane Harris to
24 be followed by Carter Brooks.
25 MS. HARRIS: Good afternoon. Thank you for
48
1 inviting us here. My name is Virginia Jane Harris,
2 H-a-r-r-i-s, and this is the first secret public hearing
3 I have ever attended.
4 When I arrived today at the convention center,
5 there were no signs telling me what room this hearing was
6 going to be in. Finally, I am persistent, I called the
7 security and the lady brought me up here and said that
8 they had been requested not to advertise what room this
9 hearing was in. So I now refer to it as a private public
10 hearing.
11 (Applause.)
12 MS. HARRIS: I am here as a private citizen. I'm
13 81 years old and I have belonged to the Sierra Club for
14 60 years. As a youngster I spent my summer vacations up
15 in the redwoods near the Russian River and we would go up
16 frequently to the Eel River. We never got up as far as
17 the Headwaters project, but I was devastated to see the
18 damage that has been done to that area.
19 I regard this as the botanical equivalent of the
20 Holocaust where the Jewish peoples are replaced by the
21 redwoods, the other persons that were also killed in
22 large numbers are the magnificent Douglas firs that also
23 have been taken.
24 They are not only killing the trees, they are
25 killing the land. The brush that has been attempting to
49
1 grow to prevent the erosion is now being sprayed to kill
2 the brush and allow the erosion to continue.
3 I regard this entire plan as inadequate, and I
4 think that it needs to be redone entirely. The Pacific
5 Lumber Company has repeatedly broken the law and why do
6 we assume that they can now be trusted. I am not from
7 Missouri, I'm from San Francisco, but I certainly believe
8 that actions speak louder than words.
9 The arrogance of the lawlessness of Charles
10 Herwitz and the Pacific Lumber Company should not be
11 tolerated. The current California Board of Forestry
12 needs to be dismissed for malfeasance and replaced with
13 people who will enforce the laws.
14 (Applause.)
15 MS. HARRIS: It is incongruous to be talking about
16 saving the coho when the Headwaters area is being sprayed
17 with a combination of combination of herbicide and diesel
18 fuels. The herbicides ensure that the land will erode
19 into the streams and the diesel ensures if the silt
20 doesn't kill the coho salmon, the diesel residue will.
21 I urge you to start over again with another plan
22 better than this one. Thank you.
23 (Applause.)
24 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Carter Brooks
25 to be followed by Chris Keyser.
50
1 MR. BROOKS: My name is Carter Brooks, spelled
2 B-r-o-o-k-s. I am here today as bard. I first quote
3 Dr. Seuss.
4 I'm the Lorax. I speak for the trees, speak for
5 the trees for the trees have no tongues and I am asking
6 you, sirs, at the top of my lungs, Are you going to
7 sanction the killing of my family? The trees are my
8 family. The redwoods are my elders, and I don't mean
9 this as an analogy. I mean this quite literally. I look
10 you both in the eye, all three of you, the trees are my
11 family.
12 The actions of Pacific Lumber are to me a
13 Holocaust and like the Holocaust in the '40's are being
14 carried out with state sanction. These hearings do not
15 exist outside of the context of what goes on outside of
16 the HCP process. Other governing agencies are enforcing
17 the violence of this process. It does not exist outside
18 the context of the violence that being inflicted on those
19 courageous enough to stand in the way of this killing.
20 We should not, for example, view the swabbing of pepper
21 spray in the eyes of protestors any differently than,
22 say, beating them with billy clubs.
23 (Applause.)
24 MR. BROOKS: I wish we lived in a world where law
25 enforcement had the courage to stand in defense of the
51
1 protestors, to stand in defense of their right to stand
2 in front of logging trucks. I hope that you have the
3 courage to stop legitimizing the extermination of, again,
4 my family, my elders.
5 I'm going to read two things now. One is a piece
6 by Charles Finn.
7 It was my first day as a tree planter
8 working for a company of out of Burns,
9 British Columbia. I was riding in an old
10 converted bus with 20 odd other rookies on
11 our way to learn out to plant. We were in
12 a boisterous that day, young and lean and
13 bright-eyed, drawn to these woods by the
14 promise of good money. We thought we knew
15 enough about the world to kick around in it
16 and not get hurt. We were talking big and
17 acting big, yet beneath it all we were a
18 little scared and a little lonely and not
19 quite sure of ourselves. We laughed and
20 joked, hiding our fears. Then we came
21 around the last turn and all our big talk
22 was forgotten. It was the first time any
23 of us had seen the clear-cut. We fell
24 silent, staring at the moonscape before us,
25 trying to make sense of what we saw, an
52
1 endless expanse of compressed earth and
2 charcoal stumps. Blood drained from the
3 faces around me. Mouths hung open without
4 words and all I could think was this is
5 wrong. This is horribly wrong.
6 When the bus lurched to a halt, none of us
7 moved at first. Then we filed out looking
8 as if we had just lost a hockey game.
9 There was a big clearing where dust devils
10 swirled and a pile of slash was plowed 15
11 feet high. The foreman was handing out
12 seedling bags and shovels. 'Welcome to the
13 future,' he said.
14 "Let the Trees be Consulted" by John Wright:
15 Let the trees be consulted. Before you
16 take any action, every time you breathe,
17 thank a tree. Let tree roots crackle
18 parking lots at the World Bank
19 headquarters. Let loggers be druids
20 specially trained and rewarded to sacrifice
21 trees at auspicious times. Let carpenters
22 be master artisans. Let lumber be treated
23 by gold. Let chainsaws be played like
24 saxophones. Let soldiers on maneuvers
25 plant trees. Give police and criminals a
53
1 shovel and a thousand seedlings. Let
2 businessmen carry pocketfuls of acorns.
3 Let newlyweds honeymoon in the woods.
4 Walk, don't drive. Stop reading
5 newspapers. Stop writing poetry. Squat
6 under a tree and tell stories.
7 To conclude my comments, I am with these people.
8 Unfortunately, I don't have faith that you also view the
9 trees as family. You use the word products. This
10 concerns me.
11 No HCP should be allowed.
12 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
13 MR. BROOKS: Let me finish my quoting, again
14 Dr. Seuss.
15 Unless someone like you cares a whole awful
16 lot, a whole awful lot, nothing is going to
17 get better. It's not. So catch, calls the
18 onceler, and lets something fall. It's a
19 truffula seed. It's the last one of all.
20 You're in charge of the last of the
21 truffula seeds. Truffula trees are what
22 everyone needs. Plant a new truffula.
23 Treat it with care. Give it clean water.
24 Feed it fresh air. Grow forests. Protect
25 it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and
54
1 all of his friends may come back.
2 Thank you for your patience.
3 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
4 (Applause.)
5 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Chris Keyser will be
6 followed by Michael Fry.
7 MS. KEYSER: Hello. My name is Chris Keyser I
8 live in Berkeley, California, and I am an environmental
9 writer. I've been writing about the destruction.
10 Redwood ecosystem for about 10 years.
11 This morning I was watching my cat, my tabby cat
12 Shua, enjoying herself in the sun, and I was instantly
13 reflecting on how her species evolved in north Africa and
14 the stripes of the tabby were because at that time in
15 history north Africa was densely forested with old growth
16 forest.
17 Well, we all know what north Africa is like today.
18 It's a Sahara desert. Same with the cedars of Lebanon.
19 Where are the famous cedars of Lebanon today?
20 There are two symbols of California which are
21 known worldwide and which people come from all over the
22 world to see. One is our redwood forests. The other,
23 unfortunately, is only now visible on the state flag, the
24 grizzly bear. It was state sanctioned hunted into
25 extinction at the beginning of the century.
55
1 Do we really want our redwood forests to perish in
2 that way? We have so few left.
3 Pacific Lumber's Habitat Conservation Plan is a
4 lawless document. It's using law -- it's using the smoke
5 screen of law to write into law things that will break
6 the law, mainly the Endangered Species Act.
7 Pacific Lumber rightfully should not be given any
8 incidental take permit to kill any endangered species
9 because of their hundreds and hundreds of violations of
10 state forestry law and the Endangered Species Act,
11 National Environmental Protection Act and so forth, as
12 witnessed by the Thanksgiving 1992 massacre in Elk Creek
13 grove where Pacific Lumber loggers went in and felled
14 dozens of old growth trees so they could destroy marbled
15 murrelet habitat.
16 It was only when the Environmental Protection
17 Information Center took them to court and got a federal
18 injunction and then actually they went all the way up to
19 the U. S. Supreme Court upholding the right of Endangered
20 Species Act, that it protects habitat as well as species.
21 Mr. Johnson, I'm sure you remember when we were
22 all up here in March 1996 when Pacific Lumber was trying
23 to punch a hole through the heart of Headwaters forest.
24 At that time in reply to someone from U. S. Fish and
25 Wildlife Service, a biologist, they said that they would
56
1 not prepare a Habitat Conservation Plan because they
2 didn't believe they would ever be given an incidental
3 take permit. So the fact that at this point the agencies
4 have signed off to this plan is very disturbing.
5 Another aspect of the plan which is extremely
6 disturbing is that it would allow Pacific Lumber to log
7 in the south fork of the Eel River. They have already
8 destroyed the north fork. They have already destroyed
9 the Freshwater watersheds. The residents of Freshwater,
10 the north fork of the Eel River and Stafford have all
11 filed lawsuits against Pacific Lumber for destroying
12 their homes. Pacific Lumber should not be given any more
13 watersheds to log. Maybe this is an old growth forest,
14 maybe it's second growth, but the impact on the entire
15 watershed will be devastating.
16 Thank you.
17 (Applause.)
18 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Michael Fry
19 to be followed by Craig Michaels.
20 MR. FRY: Mr. Johnson, Mr. Spear, Mr. Hogarth,
21 thank you very much for letting me speak. My name is
22 Michael Fry, F-r-y, with the University of California at
23 Davis. I've been the director of the Center for Avian
24 Biology, and I'm a former chairman of the Pacific Seabird
25 Group and former chairman of the Scientific Advisory
57
1 Panel for the Department of Interior's Environmental
2 Studies Program under Minerals Management Service.
3 I have five, six comments, excuse me, specifically
4 on the Habitat Conservation Plan and its implementation
5 that I think warrant considerable revision.
6 The Habitat Conservation Plan is carefully
7 designed for the protection of marbled murrelets. It
8 protects substantial portions of the known breeding
9 habitat within Palco land, but it clearly exempts known
10 nesting areas from protection. The best areas will be
11 protected. Assembly Bill 1986 assists further.
12 However, the plan admits that habitat for the
13 marbled murrelets will be degraded during the first 20
14 years of this, at least the first 20 years, and that only
15 with regrowth of existing residual habitat will, it is
16 hoped, that the marbled murrelets will find this land
17 acceptable so that there will be actually some recovery.
18 The habitat for marbled murrelets is already
19 highly fragmented and degraded and only a remnant
20 population of the birds exist in California, especially
21 compared to Alaska, for instance, but the species is not
22 listed in Alaska. It's listed in California. The
23 species is endangered now. It should be protected now,
24 not 20 years from now or 50 years from now.
25 With regard to spotted owls, there are many
58
1 spotted owls in the area, perhaps 120 sites. Many of
2 these will be protected, although only protected during
3 the nesting season. After the nest season areas can be
4 cut. It's presumed that the birds will move to other
5 reasonable habitat. The evidence for their moving to
6 other habitat is really shaky.
7 The habitat fragmentation is going to occur with
8 more clear-cutting around protected areas which, as it
9 has in other forests, will encourage the influx of barred
10 owls, which as a predatory species on spotted owls, may
11 in fact extirpate the birds themselves.
12 So irrespective of the plans to attempt to protect
13 spotted owls, the secondary loss of spotted owls through
14 the immigration of barred owls may occur; and the only
15 way you can prevent that is by reducing the amount of
16 cut.
17 With regard to salmonid habitat protection, the
18 federal protection guidelines called for riparian
19 protection corridors of 300 feet as a general guideline.
20 This HCP establishes 200 feet with selective cutting to
21 30 feet.
22 The riparian corridors are too narrow to prevent
23 siltation from clear cuts into streams, and selective
24 cutting within up to 30 feet may severely impact the
25 shade that is necessary on streams to preserve salmonid
59
1 habitat.
2 This plan is better than current practices, and
3 for that I am grateful, but it is still not really
4 adequate to protect coho salmon which, in addition to its
5 breeding habitat as an anadromous fish, is also a
6 commercial fish and has severe impacts at sea.
7 With regard to geological instability, the geology
8 of California north coast is highly unstable, with major
9 earthquakes within 30 miles. Part of the Palco land is
10 on very sleep slopes and the slopes are maintained only
11 by the tree roots that keep the land from moving down.
12 Clear-cutting will make many of the areas unstable and
13 highly prone to landslides.
14 Land slides are a major, probably the major
15 contributor to stream degradation, and in this plan the
16 protection of slopes will be the responsibility of a
17 corporate geologist without provision for review or
18 oversight by agencies. And with the corporate
19 responsibility demonstrated in the past by Palco, I think
20 that's an extremely unwise thing to have this corporate
21 geologist not have oversight management by agencies.
22 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Could you
23 please conclude?
24 MR. FRY: Yes. I'll conclude very quickly.
25 The granting of an incidental take permit on this
60
1 is your biggest hammer for enforcing things, and by
2 granting a 50-year incidental take permit without really
3 adequate monitoring and provisions for redress or
4 cancellation of the permit I think is really unwarranted.
5 Thank you.
6 (Applause.)
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Craig Michaels will be
8 followed by Robin Lindheimer.
9 MR. MICHAELS: Good afternoon. My name is Craig
10 Michaels. I have a Bachelor of Science from the
11 University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and
12 Environment. I've been doing environmental education on
13 the north coast of California for the past two years, and
14 I currently live in the Bay Area where I work for the
15 Headwaters Sanctuary Project.
16 The first 10 years of the so-called Sustained
17 Yield Plan called for logging over 25 percent of Pacific
18 Lumber's holdings, over 54,000 acres. Of these lands,
19 more than 45,000 acres will be clear-cut. Within the
20 first four years alone, 2,580 of old growth will be cut,
21 2,236 acres of which will be clear-cut.
22 This is clearly not a plan that will facilitate,
23 quote, "sustained production of high quality timber
24 products while giving consideration to environmental and
25 economic values," unquote, as required under Section 14
61
1 of the Code of Federal Regulations 1091.1 (b). In order
2 to facilitate this logging, 150 additional miles of road
3 will be constructed.
4 The stream survey data in these documents is
5 incomplete and outdated to the point where it provides an
6 extremely misleading picture of actual habitat
7 conditions. The Bear Creek watershed is a case in point.
8 The SYP stream data, which is several years old, shows a
9 high percentage of pools and shade cover even though
10 these conditions no longer exist. During the first heavy
11 rains of 1997, a massive landslide and debris torrent
12 originating on a recent logging plan eroded into Bear
13 Creek burying almost four miles of recovering salmon
14 habitat. Of the 84 habitat restoration structures placed
15 in the creek in previous years, all but one was buried or
16 swept away.
17 However, the SYP describes most of these instream
18 structures as, quote, "functioning," even though the
19 survey is dated five months after the landslide. This
20 example clearly illustrates the figures on which the SYP
21 is based on incomplete, inaccurate and intentionally
22 misleading.
23 Pacific Lumber has been convicted numerous times
24 of criminal violations of California forestry laws and
25 has displayed a clear disregard for public trust. Their
62
1 request for take permit should therefore be denied under
2 Section 50 CFR 13.21(b)(1).
3 The company's most recent crimes, and I'm sure
4 you're aware of these, Mr. Johnson, include clear-cutting
5 a stream-side buffer zone in THP 197004, overlogging in a
6 stream-side buffer zone in THP's 197221 and 198075,
7 clear-cutting around northern spotted owl nest trees in
8 THP's 198004 and 197548, and driving trucks directly
9 through fish-bearing streams in THP's 197401 and 197428.
10 Any one of these violations clearly, Mr. Johnson,
11 involves a, quote, "gross negligence or willful
12 disregard" of the Forest Practice Act and Forest Practice
13 Rules, as well as main other state and federal
14 environmental laws. Therefore, Pacific Lumber has
15 violated the terms and conditions set forth in their
16 stipulated agreement with the California Department of
17 Forestry which stated that Pacific Lumber was to remain
18 in, quote, "full compliance with the provisions of the
19 Forest Practices Act."
20 As an official of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife
21 Service, Mr. Spear, it is your responsibility to enforce
22 environmental laws. It is essential that this agency
23 institute a policy for strict oversight of the CDF since
24 the CDF is clearly unwilling to perform its duties and
25 suspend or revoke Pacific Lumber's operating license
63
1 pursuant to their stipulated agreement, paragraph four,
2 line 15 and/or Article VI, Section 4576 of the Forest
3 Practice Act.
4 The endangered species present on Pacific Lumber
5 property will undoubtedly suffer a lethal blow under the
6 company's Habitat Conservation Plan. The coho salmon in
7 particular will undoubtedly decline in numbers as a
8 result of the watershed analysis process being
9 predetermined. Although this watershed analysis process
10 is designed to prescribe site-specific recommendations
11 for logging practices in each watershed, the buffer zones
12 are arbitrarily capped at a maximum of 170 feet.
13 Any disagreement on the management prescriptions
14 are simply a failure to complete such process of
15 watershed analysis would result in a default prescription
16 which would not exceed 170 feet in Class I water courses
17 and 130 feet in Class II water courses. Such
18 predetermination negates the whole purpose of an
19 independent watershed assessment and clearly contradicts
20 the FEMAT recommended guidelines for protecting salmon.
21 In summation, Pacific Lumber's Draft Habitat
22 Conservation Plan and Sustained Yield Plan must not
23 approved as these plans scientific inadequate,
24 politically motivated and economically and
25 environmentally unsound at best.
64
1 Do your job, gentlemen. Thank you.
2 (Applause.)
3 MR. LINDHEIMER: My name is Robin Lindheimer.
4 This is a very bizarre process, sort of confuses
5 me, because it seems to me what we're coming here to do
6 is tell you many, many things that you already know. You
7 know the company that we're dealing with. You know it's
8 a company that violates California forestry code and laws
9 again and again and again and you're well aware of that
10 and we come up and tell you this. They just violated it
11 after the funding was approved. That's how audacious
12 they are about their violations. They just drive their
13 equipment right through rivers, thinking, you know, we
14 got guys in our pocket, we've got this HCP, we got this
15 money, so we can do what we want.
16 Seems like they think HCP stands for how crime
17 pays. With all due respect, you know what company you're
18 dealing with. You know the bad science that this is
19 based on. This is something that I can list. Many
20 people have come up and people who follow me will list
21 problems with the science. You're well aware of that,
22 but I wonder if it's going to do any good.
23 You know about the salmon. There's another thing
24 you know about. You know what's happened to the
25 population, how it's dwindled and dwindled and dwindled.
65
1 It's one percent, something like that.
2 So I wonder what I can come up and tell you that
3 you can make a difference. You know about redwood trees.
4 I hope you know about redwood trees. I hope you
5 understand there is no scientifically valid way to
6 mitigate permanent damage to ancient forests. I mean
7 it's just absurd.
8 But, you know, we come up because we care and it's
9 very important to us. So I hope that -- I guess what can
10 come out of here is that we can come here and show you
11 that we know what you know. We understand and we care.
12 And the fact that you know that we the people, the
13 experts, students, activists, residents, I mean people
14 really, really care about this issue and about this
15 forest and about these species.
16 Hopefully, if you understand that and you
17 understand how informed we are that maybe your conscience
18 will get the better of you and you'll do your jobs. I
19 don't mean to be disrespectful, but this is just a very
20 frustrating process.
21 My heart is with these people here who feel, I
22 mean they feel like coming up here and speaking is a
23 waste of time. And I feel that way, too, but I hope I'm
24 wrong and I hope you prove me wrong. Thank you very
25 much.
66
1 (Applause.)
2 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Harriet Bly
3 will be followed by Donald Taylor.
4 MS. BLY: My last is spelled B-l-y.
5 Corporate America runs the government. Case in
6 point is Herwitz, you know, bought the redwood with
7 illegal junk bonds. He still owns them. The bottom line
8 is money. I know it, you know it, the audience knows it.
9 I am currently a second year student getting my
10 master's degree in social work, and I am submerged for
11 the last two years in information on how the government
12 doesn't care about the homeless, the sick, the poor. Why
13 would I think that they are going to care about a tree?
14 You know, but a tree has a dollar amount. So what
15 you're all going to do -- I know it, you know, they know
16 it -- is that you will rewrite the HCP plan in order to
17 take, you know, if by some miracle you should actually
18 save those 7200 acres, you'll rewrite it and you'll
19 justify taking the last of them. We all know this.
20 And with my knowledge in social work and my
21 passion for the environment, trust me when I tell you as
22 a species we're screwed. Okay? I keep hoping there's
23 another Earth I can go to because this is getting so
24 hopeless, and us as an environmentalists, I read an
25 article that said we're scared. We are so scared because
67
1 you people won't listen, but I have to keep trying. I
2 can't give up. For my son's sake, I will not give up.
3 But in the end when mother Earth has had enough, and she
4 will, it will not be because God willed it. It will be
5 because of greed and because plans like the HCP. Thank
6 you.
7 (Applause.)
8 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Donald Taylor to be
9 followed by Phillip Guddemi.
10 MR. TAYLOR: Taylor, T-a-y-l-o-r. I am a small
11 businessman involved with the lumber industry.
12 Specifically, our three-person company sells lower grade
13 lumber to other small companies which process this
14 material into pallets, crates and packaging. In turn,
15 these products are used to store and ship a huge variety
16 of food and goods throughout our country and the world.
17 I am also a consumer of wood product, wood and
18 paper products in my home and business. I cannot imagine
19 my lifestyle without these vital and wonderful
20 commodities, nor can I imagine the world without the use
21 of these renewable resources.
22 I am also an outdoorsman and hiker. I have walked
23 in many of the redwood forests and treasure the emotional
24 and spiritual experience provided by them. I cannot
25 imagine a world without forests and wilderness.
68
1 When I evaluate a situation like the Headwaters
2 acquisition and related agreements with Pacific Lumber
3 Company, all of the above mentioned influences and
4 motivations come into play for me. The whole situation
5 is a complex one, requiring tradeoffs and balancing.
6 As I understand the agreement reached between
7 governmental agencies, environmental interests and
8 Pacific Lumber Company, I happen to favor its adoption.
9 This includes the Habitat Conservation Plan and the
10 Sustained Yield Plan which will allow Palco to operate
11 under a consistent set of guidelines.
12 I have heard a lot of impassioned talk to today,
13 especially about generations here and to come. And as I
14 see what is going on and I look at my children and my
15 hoped for grandchildren, to me there is no better product
16 than wood. It is intimately involved in the lives and
17 lifestyles of everybody in the world. If we don't let
18 trees be cut in the best growing areas in the world,
19 where is it going to come from? It's going to come from
20 third world countries which can be terribly devastated
21 and exploited.
22 So I hope that a process like this can lead to the
23 type of compromise that will teach our generation and
24 future generations how to do it. We do need the product,
25 we do need the forest and the wilderness. Let's come to
69
1 some sort of working arrangement where everything can be
2 utilized and still maintained. Thank you.
3 (Applause.)
4 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Phillip Guddemi to be
5 followed by Michael Passoff.
6 MR. GUDDEMI: Okay. My name is Phillip Guddemi.
7 That's spelled G-u-d-d-e-m-i.
8 I got my Ph.D. in anthropology from the University
9 of Michigan back in 1992, and I would like to mention a
10 phrase that was first written by the man who was my major
11 adviser there, Ray Rappaport, who worked for many years
12 with the National Academy of Sciences and was also
13 president at one time of the American Anthropological
14 Association. And he for many years studied in New Guinea
15 and elsewhere the adaptation of people to their
16 environment, many different types of peoples. His phrase
17 that he wrote is that "Knowledge can never replace
18 respect in human dealings with natural systems, with
19 ecological systems." Knowledge can never replace
20 respect.
21 So the question that occurred to me is whether
22 this Habitat Conservation Plan, whether it really was
23 serving either knowledge or respect.
24 My concern, and I'm sort of pessimistic about the
25 way this plan is put together, especially what's called
70
1 the no surprises aspect, because it seems to me that when
2 you have that type of plan where the ignorance of the
3 system as it is now is written into the actions 50 years
4 or however long into the future, that what you are doing
5 is creating a vested interest in ignorance, and I include
6 scientific ignorance in this.
7 That is, you don't know the full state of the
8 system as it is now. You don't know watershed by
9 watershed what really the optimum distance if there is to
10 be any cutting from a stream you should have. You don't
11 know what the real endangered species are. Because of
12 the partly political process, several species haven't had
13 a chance to be studied or put into the endangered species
14 categories, state and federal, and you don't know the
15 current conditions on the ground.
16 Someone mentioned that there is an allegation that
17 Bear Creek is substantially different now on the ground
18 than it is in the plan, but what counts for the plan is
19 what's written on paper, not what is on the ground.
20 So are we now putting ourselves in a situation
21 where any further information, including scientific
22 information, is irrelevant and therefore won't be done?
23 What is the payoff? You have then created a blind
24 process which has no feedback from the actual situation
25 as someone may find it or study it in the future. So
71
1 will it even be studied. That is my concern.
2 So it would be my concern that this type of
3 process would serve neither knowledge nor respect of an
4 ecological system. Instead, it would serve one cultural
5 viewpoint that we have, one cultural idea that we have in
6 this culture, which is the concept that a deal is a deal.
7 But can we manage complex ecosystems which we know
8 incompletely, which we do not have the full knowledge of?
9 Can we manage them according to the principle of a deal
10 is a deal even into the future when we might know
11 something more? And so that's my concern.
12 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
13 (Applause.)
14 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Michael Passoff to be
15 followed by Jennifer Schneider.
16 MR. PASSOFF: My name is Michael Passoff,
17 P-a-s-s-o-f-f.
18 I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Forest
19 Science, and when I read through the Habitat Conservation
20 Plan, maybe it's because I'm not a Ph.D. yet and still a
21 candidate, but I didn't see the conservation in the plan.
22 As far as I'm concerned, the HCP seems to stand for the
23 Headwaters Clear-cut Plan.
24 It's going to cut 85 percent of Headwaters forest.
25 It's going to cut over 90 percent of Pacific Lumber's
72
1 forest lands. And so I'm not sure where the conservation
2 comes in or where the recovery is supposed to happen.
3 I mean many people have already brought up today
4 different facts about buffer zones for coho. FEMAT
5 standards are between 170 to 300 feet of recommended.
6 Pacific Lumber suggests 30, you know, and the political
7 compromise on that leaves us a hundred for the next five
8 years and no more than 170.
9 So you also have no data whatsoever on over 20
10 species, or virtually no data, that are also going to be
11 included or affected by this plan.
12 This is all beside the whole point of the criminal
13 code that people brought up. I like that one so much I
14 just want to read a provision in the Code of Federal
15 Regulations CFR 13.21(b)(1) forbids the issuance of an
16 incidental take permit to an entity that has received a
17 criminal or civil penalty for the same type of behavior.
18 I mean you have almost 300 violations in the last three
19 years, violations up to this day and still there has been
20 nothing done about them.
21 So, first of all, I want you to reject this plan
22 because I final it grossly insufficient as far as the
23 scientific data. I also think this should be rejected
24 because I think the agencies have failed to oversee this
25 company. As criminal as the corporation has been, the
73
1 agencies are almost dealing in criminal behavior as well.
2 And I think, you know, there is a lot at stake
3 here, and I hope that you guys will listen to the science
4 and not the politics and call for -- we would like to see
5 an independent review by scientists because the HCP
6 process, the government does not seem capable of
7 reviewing it properly, the Pacific Lumber scientists,
8 it's almost tobacco science, it's self-serving and they
9 take information and they regurgitate that in a way that,
10 or mislead the public with it in a way that's going to
11 justify clear-cutting most of Headwaters forest and most
12 of Pacific Lumber's land.
13 So for those reasons, I'd like to see you reject
14 that. Also, I hope you guys are enjoying this day as
15 much as I am. It's been nice to hear people's opinions.
16 It's nice to finally meet some of you since I've written
17 to all of you and E-mailed you and faxed you and called
18 your offices.
19 But that's another thing I hope you keep in mind.
20 I mean your names are out there. Michael Spear. How
21 many times have we sent off postcards to you or given out
22 your name. Bill Hogarth, thank you for getting NMFS
23 actually going a couple months ago, and tell CDF to do
24 their job. I appreciate that. I think everyone here
25 appreciates that. I think we need more of that.
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1 But your names are out there and you're going to
2 be connected to this. And if another couple of decades
3 there is the review of this like there is tobacco
4 industry right now, it's all going to be coming back to
5 you. So, please. You're the guardians of the public
6 trust. You're the ones we're counting on. Please do
7 your job. Let scientists rule, not politics. Thanks.
8 (Applause.)
9 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Jennifer Schneider will
10 be followed by Sally Bell.
11 MS. SCHNEIDER: Jennifer Schneider,
12 S-c-h-n-e-i-d-e-r.
13 (Moment of silence)
14 I'm a member of the Earth and I'm here on behalf
15 of the animals and the plants and minerals and the nine
16 nonviolent civil disobedient protestors who were pepper
17 swabbed and sprayed last year trying to defend Headwaters
18 forest, and I don't believe that pepper spray or chemical
19 weapons or any form of torture is in our Constitution,
20 but I do believe that free speech, the right to assemble
21 and right to protest is in the Consitution or our
22 Amendments.
23 All these people that you see standing here, most
24 all of them have been in these forests and they can tell
25 you what it's like, the beauty, the destruction. All of
75
1 them have put themselves on the front line, have risked
2 their lives, have put their bodies where their beliefs
3 are.
4 I am sick and tired of seeing trees fall. I'm
5 sick and tired of seeing forests clear-cut. I'm sick and
6 tired of seeing women get breast cancer from the toxic
7 herbicides and pesticides that are sprayed on these
8 hillsides. I'm sick and tired of seeing ecosystems and
9 watersheds destroyed. I'm sick and tired of seeing my
10 friends tortured, and I'm sick and tired that my friend
11 last month, David "Gypsy" Chain was murdered trying to
12 defend these forests, and I want to know when it's going
13 to stop.
14 Most of the people here today have told you what's
15 going on out there in Headwaters. I'm going to tell you
16 what you can do. They have given you a great gift of
17 awareness, and with that gift goes hand in hand with
18 compassion. You need to use your compassion. You need
19 to put your compassion into action.
20 You need to reject this HCP. You need to reject
21 that the multinational corporations have the right,
22 because they don't have the right, to clear-cut our
23 forests. You need to understand that compassion is
24 something you're born with and it's not just something
25 that you just let someone else act with. You need to act
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1 with it.
2 The deal makes stumps out of our futures and this
3 HCP makes stumps of our futures. And like Chief Seattle
4 said, Man does not leave the web of life. He's merely a
5 strand in it. What he does to the Earth he does to
6 himself.
7 (Applause.)
8 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Sally Bell followed by
9 Lana Fredrickson.
10 MS. BELL: I'm Sally bell, B-e-l-l.
11 I was a teenage mother. I gave birth to my
12 daughter a couple months after my 18th birthday. And
13 with no job skills, I sought the financial help of
14 welfare, and that being an appreciated but unsustainable
15 amount of money for me to feed myself and my baby, I
16 accepted work to supplement our meager savings right here
17 in Sacramento.
18 So just right down the street from this meeting I
19 was jailed. I was jailed for welfare fraud because I
20 accepted work. I accepted that work. So I committed
21 welfare fraud.
22 In my holding cell and in the cell that I spent
23 quite an amount of time in, four out of five of us were
24 there for welfare fraud. Four of five of us mothers,
25 young mothers. One girl was there because a boyfriend
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1 was living with her in her home.
2 So we were criminals. And it didn't take those
3 government agencies long to track me down and to enforce
4 the laws that said that I was -- what I was doing was
5 illegal. So why has Charles Herwitz never spent a moment
6 in jail? We all know why. Because look who am I and who
7 is he. He's a powerful man. He's a powerful
8 businessman.
9 I've been in the woods exposing illegal and
10 immoral forestry practices for 13 years now, and I'm very
11 inspired to see a lot of young citizens here that I don't
12 even know. A lot of these activists I don't even know,
13 and that inspires me to know that people are going to
14 continue to be moved by their conscience and to come out
15 into the woods and to enforce the policies and try to
16 correct the policies that you all, you three and others
17 in your positions are not.
18 That's going to continue, and I'm here to promise
19 you that I'm going to continue doing that. I'm going to
20 continue to do what I have to do. We go through these
21 steps here, which I agree feels very token, absolutely.
22 Most of us probably feel, I would assume, that the HCP is
23 probably going to go through fine. So that's why we have
24 to go out, we have to go out and blockade the roads
25 because it's just not acceptable. It doesn't stop right
78
1 here. It doesn't stop today.
2 So I'm really inspired to see that the movement is
3 continuing and it's going to continue. This child that
4 spoke earlier is very possibly going to be a 21-year-old
5 out in the woods in the future, unfortunately.
6 And so since we know that what it really gets down
7 to is money, I was thinking that maybe -- this is my
8 conclusion -- is that maybe what you all need is a raise.
9 Maybe that would help you, right? It gets down to money.
10 Seriously.
11 And so I'm going to empty my pocket here, which
12 means, I guess, me and my daughter won't have lunch
13 today. I got about, oh, looks like 78 cents here. So
14 I'm going to give you a raise. I'm the public. Thank
15 you.
16 (Applause.)
17 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Lana Fredrickson, Kerry
18 McKee.
19 MS. FREDRICKSON: Hello. Fredrickson,
20 F-r-e-d-r-i-c-k-s-o-n.
21 Excuse me if I my voice trembles. I am a citizen,
22 graduate educated social worker, a lover of the
23 environment. I drove hours to get here today, and why?
24 Why? Why did I come? Why did I take off work to come
25 here? Because I care very, very, very much about this
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1 matter. Clear-cutting and herbiciding of irreplaceable
2 and treasured old growth and second growth redwood is
3 wrong. It is wrong.
4 Killing all the species that live therein is
5 wrong. I ask you to rise above greed. This ancient and
6 priceless area belongs to all of us and we belong to her
7 and this is a sacred connection. You cannot kill her
8 without destroying us all.
9 This plan is reprehensible and I hold it to be
10 such. I ask you to have to the courage as individuals,
11 if not as a group, to listen to the will of the people,
12 to listen to the voice of those of us who speak for the
13 sacredness and connectedness of all living things.
14 Sustainable forestry practices and nonuse of
15 herbicides can be done. As a previous speaker said, and
16 you need to know, history shows that the sentiment of
17 people catches up to the errors and wrongs of people in
18 authority. To those errors that they make. And
19 attempting to redress those wrongs often occurs, not
20 benignly faulting those who were in charge.
21 I believe this is a real possibility here. The
22 time does not support this plan. The people do not
23 support this plan. We hold this truth to be
24 self-evident. Do not violate this truth. Thank you.
25 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
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1 (Applause.)
2 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Kerry McKee, to be
3 followed by Richard Hunt.
4 MS. McKEE: Hi, I'm Kerry. I don't really know
5 what to say right now. I'm feeling a lot of anger,
6 frustration, confusion, pain, and I don't really know
7 what I could do to express that to you folks up there to
8 let you know where I'm at with this.
9 While we sit here and talk, there are big trees
10 just falling over, just getting cut and all the erosion
11 is doing this and that to the habitat and we're just
12 going to sit here and talk about that, and I just came to
13 look into your eyes and to speak and to be a presence
14 here to say that we do know what's happening. We see it,
15 we read it, we understand it, and it's not right. And
16 please, please stop while we still have something left.
17 Thank for listening.
18 (Applause.)
19 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Richard Hunt
20 will be followed by Michael Benton.
21 MR. HUNT: Thank you for giving me the opportunity
22 here, gentlemen. I'm here to ask you to please do your
23 job and try to protect these species. I think you're
24 probably aware we're living in the sixth great age of
25 extension on this planet Earth right now. Five are in
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1 the fossil record and the scientists are telling us we're
2 in the sixth one right now. It's happening as we speak,
3 as the trees are falling, we're losing species faster
4 than we can count them in the forests around the world.
5 We're losing the forests not only in the Headwaters, but
6 all around the world at a very rapid rate and even the
7 Vice President has had the courage to stand up to the
8 corporations in one of his brilliant moments and say
9 there is a global warming problem.
10 And you can't, you know, separate that from the
11 endanger of these species. And I don't know if you've
12 ever gone through like even driving up I-5 around Mount
13 Shasta or up through the Headwaters area. Every time you
14 go through a little clear-cut area it's 10 15, degrees
15 warmer. You go back into the dense forest, this
16 Headwaters forest happens to hold more moisture, if I'm
17 not mistaken, than any other ecosystem on the planet.
18 So I really want you to consider that and keep the
19 Endangered Species Act strong. You've heard a lot of
20 reasons that this particular Habitat Conservation Plan is
21 woefully inadequate. The buffer zones are very poor.
22 The self-monitoring by a corporation that should have had
23 its license revoked by the California Department of
24 Forestry a long time ago just continue to this day.
25 Where the gentleman was killed was in debate whether that
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1 was even a legal to even be cutting because of some trade
2 deals that were made for the rights to cut that land.
3 So, I mean, that's almost a joke to have them monitoring
4 themself there.
5 The clear-cuts don't regrow. Clear-cutting, if
6 you're going to forest at all, is the wrong way to go.
7 There are some areas on the steep slopes where they've
8 tried to replant time and time again, up to five and six
9 times, and they just are not successfull but the slopes
10 are so steep, because there's not the cool temperature of
11 the deep forest to keep it that way.
12 And if I'm not mistaken, Herwitz really wants to
13 cut as fast as he can because he's in trouble trying to
14 pay off these junk bonds so Maxxam doesn't go in the hole
15 like other corporations he's owned in the past. And if
16 I'm not mistaken, the gentleman earlier pointed out that
17 you shouldn't be giving these Habitat Conservation Plans
18 to people who are possible criminals to begin with.
19 And when Herwitz, you know, cuts all he can, he's
20 not going to hang around for 50 years. He's going to be
21 moving on. And the mud slides, they'll come 10 years
22 later when the tree roots finally decay enough to let the
23 hillside come down to the stream and rivers.
24 If you drive up just as a tourist to the
25 Headwaters area now and go along the Eel River at Dyer's
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1 Overlook, there is just a placard there put up by the
2 state. It says that in one net they caught 4500 salmon
3 30, 40 years ago. They don't think that many came up the
4 Eel River south fork this year. There are two that they
5 found in the San Joaquin River, I believe. In the
6 Sacramento River, they're gone already.
7 The no surprises, I mean that is -- there is no
8 biology, there is no security for the future in that
9 because that was, you know, put into the law by the
10 corporations.
11 I've got on one of these T-shirts today just to
12 join people who wondered if our comments would even be
13 listened here today because of the all power and money.
14 So I'm asking you gentlemen to please have courage,
15 courage to stand up to the political people that appoint
16 you and have power over you that depend on those huge
17 campaign funds. Please stand up to Charles Herwitz and
18 Maxxam.
19 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
20 (Applause.)
21 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Michael Benton, Scott
22 Overby will be followed by Ayla Wolf.
23 MR. OVERBY: Hello, I wonder in my heart who you
24 guys are, where you come from, why you think our trees
25 are money. These are our trees with all of the Earth.
84
1 They come from the energy deep within, and you cut them
2 down and put them on a semi-truck and send them down the
3 road and what used to be a forest that rises to the sky
4 which has its roots deep down into the Earth, now lays
5 sideways on the side of the freeway, and many forests lay
6 here sideways laying dead. My brothers.
7 And then I think to myself, they must not see
8 these trees as our brothers as I do. And then I realize
9 that you don't care about our brothers either because you
10 killed Gypsy. And you're getting away with it, and
11 you're lying about it and we know it. And so did the
12 people that lived here on this Earth.
13 Many days ago here in the state in the same place
14 that you cut down trees many peoples lived. They lived
15 off the salmon that came up the creeks, came up the
16 streams and they created nets so that they can live and
17 they can feed off these people.
18 What would the Indians live on now, our natives?
19 They have nothing to live on because all the streams are
20 polluted, all the trees are cut down. They clear-cut.
21 What used to be a forest is now a grasslands. They write
22 in history books and they tell in the geography books and
23 they tell what type of terrain is there on the land, and
24 you're going to have to go back and change what used to
25 be a redwood forest into grasslands, into a Sahara which
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1 is all around this land.
2 And I wonder, you know, do you go to sleep
3 thinking it's all right? Because it surely ain't. The
4 elders, our elders as peoples that lived on this Earth
5 before the white man came, he prophesied this day when
6 people were destroying the Earth would up come a Rainbow
7 Nation, and here we are, a tribe of all nations to stop
8 you. And It's not I who will stop you. It is my mother
9 Earth and she'll throw a volcano. And I wonder what
10 she'll do then.
11 I wonder if you know in Japan that they buy air in
12 the bars because they can't breathe air. They have to go
13 somewhere into a bar where they can get it pure from a
14 can, and I wonder if you know that that same can is a
15 tree that produces oxygen and you're cutting it down, and
16 I wonder what you're going to breathe when that day
17 comes.
18 I love you guys and I forgive you. I have a
19 present for you. I carry this around because it helps me
20 move. And it's very stuck. But here it is. It's made
21 of bone. Let me tell everybody what it says. Here on
22 the back it says it's a home of inner magical working and
23 spiritual motivation, and that's what I wish upon, that
24 your spirit moves and it learns and understands that
25 life, life is precious and it's not money and it can't be
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1 torn down. And you can't take our brothers and you can't
2 pepper spray us, the people that fight for our trees.
3 I am in fact a redwood tree, and when you cut me
4 down many years ago I was born again here a human to
5 fight you. The more redwood trees you cut down, the more
6 people like me can come back.
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: All right. Thank you,
8 sir.
9 (Applause.)
10 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Ayla Wolf will be
11 followed by Paula Swanson.
12 MS. WOLF: My name is Alay Wolf, W-o-l-f. I am
13 17. It's taken me all my life to have this chance, the
14 first chance I've ever had to tell you who you are. How
15 long will you deny yourselves? How long till you are not
16 blind? How long till you will let our trees grow and our
17 marbled murrelet fly?
18 We have come to rally for the death of my brother
19 from our life, for we all are one and the same. If you
20 cut down our trees, you destroy your breath. Pacific
21 Lumber with their money and greed won't stand up in the
22 end to justice. So give the lumberjack man a chance to
23 let him fix what he has turned to a mess. Raise up hemp.
24 Raise up truth.
25 Please don't who you are. No compromise. It's
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1 the same protest as before. In the '60's Earth children
2 begged you peacefully. Now in the present time, people
3 are starting to finally see. Now we're raging with love
4 to give care to what's God's.
5 Do away with take permits for who holds these
6 endangered lives in their possession to give that greedy
7 rapers may take them? What's with no surprise? The
8 incivility of plans such as this grant Pacific Lumber to
9 take lives of species not previously stated in a plan
10 arranged to destroy.
11 No HCP. No deal. I have come to you with bare
12 feet from the Earth and sorrow in my heart, raging with
13 love, begging you to simply open your eyes and see that
14 honest people, we are honest people and we do take a
15 rebel stand and will not sit by silently as our family
16 suffers brutality while defending what gives them breath
17 and at the same time the lumberjack does his job, feeling
18 justified because they are uninformed of the underhanded
19 fashion in which their corporation manipulates this plan
20 in order to gain quickly that's which they call profit.
21 I want to see how they are profiting when they are
22 killing themself. Now is the time and, Jah willing, no
23 compromise, no compromise. Earth first.
24 (Applause.)
25 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Paula Swanson to be
88
1 followed by Isadora Sicking.
2 MS. SWANSON: Hello. My name is Paula Swanson,
3 S-w-a-n-s-o-n.
4 I qualify myself to speak today because I love
5 this Earth and I know I am nothing if I do not speak and
6 act to save the last of these tall trees. The number one
7 worldwide concern today is the environment. That there
8 is still opposition to the deal being made over the
9 remaining redwood forest must not be ignored. We must
10 trust the bold citizens who find it important to give of
11 their time, to bear hardship, to risk their lives for the
12 conviction that it's wrong to log the remaining redwood
13 forests of the Earth.
14 We must listen to those who know firsthand the
15 grandeur of ancient forests. There is no mistaking that
16 a ring of redwoods is called a cathedral. There is no
17 mistaking that these tallest trees on the Earth are named
18 Sequoia simpervirens, Latin for always living.
19 It is a matter of where we draw the line of
20 respect for ourselves and for the living planet. We must
21 observe and acknowledge the consequences of the
22 disturbance and destruction we have wrought upon the
23 natural Earth. What we have allowed to happen is
24 outrageous and irreversible. The forest has been
25 violated, the laws have been violated and citizens have
89
1 been violated. It is folly to think an ancient forest
2 can be replaced.
3 I implore you to stand true to yourselves and the
4 citizens of today and tomorrow and to do everything in
5 your power to protect and preserve our remaining
6 redwoods, one of the greatest forests on Earth. I ask
7 you to deny this HCP and to search for solutions not yet
8 considered that are amenable to all of life.
9 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
10 (Applause.)
11 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Isadora Sicking will be
12 followed by Ed Runnen Bear.
13 MS. SICKING: Hi there. I was just wondering if
14 you've seen this picture. Have you seen this picture?
15 Can I show it to you? This picture is a picture of the
16 redwood forest. Isn't it beautiful? It's like lovely
17 glens. You've seen the pictures like the clear-cuts,
18 what they look like, right? Oh, man. It will never look
19 like this again once they clear-cut it.
20 This is my home. I don't have like a house like
21 you do. I live in a school bus and we drive around the
22 country and we park in the forest and we go out there and
23 camp and live and that's the way I live.
24 One day I'd love to just live off the land
25 entirely and not have to go into the city to buy food or
90
1 tarps or whatever I need to go out and get.
2 I don't know, the more you destroy these natural
3 resources, the less chance I have of following my heart
4 and my dreams, and maybe that's kind of selfish of me.
5 But maybe you don't understand like why I'd want to live
6 that way. We as a people, like human beings, we're
7 native to this Earth, too, you know, like all of us.
8 You, too. And you live in a house and I live in the
9 trees.
10 I'm not trying to tell you the way you live is
11 wrong. I'm just trying to tell you I don't live the same
12 way. If these trees get cut down, I don't have a home
13 and, I don't know, what would I do then?
14 I guess that's all I really need to say. But my
15 friend wanted to read something out of the Bible to you.
16 MR. DOG: My name is Sun Dog, and that's D-o-g.
17 I'm a nonconformist. That's why I went out of order. I
18 wanted to read this to you brothers that might understand
19 a little bit from this good book. It's Revelations
20 12:17-18.
21 We give you thanks, oh Lord, God all
22 mighty, the one who is and who was and who
23 is to come, because you have taken your
24 great power and reigned. The nations were
25 angry and your wrath has come in the time
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1 of the dead that they should be judged and
2 that you should reward your servants and
3 the prophets and the saints and those who
4 fear your name, small and great, and you
5 should destroy those who destroy the Earth.
6 The last line in Revelations 11:18 was, "You
7 should destroy those who destroy the Earth."
8 This isn't a warning. It's not a threat. It's a
9 guideline for life and how to live it correctly. It's to
10 love your brothers and your mother, and that's all these
11 kids here. Stop the pepper spray, and stop the
12 desecration of Mother Earth. Thank you.
13 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
14 (Applause.)
15 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Ed Runnen Bear will be
16 followed by Andrea Meyer.
17 MR. BEAR: Well, they say you can't judge a book
18 by it's cover. So I'm going to call this book by how it
19 reads instead of how it's labeled.
20 From what I understand, this habitat destruction
21 plan has been rubber-stamped and approved, bought and
22 paid for pretty much before it ever hit the drawing
23 board, which is why most of us here are standing with our
24 backs to this abomination that you call a meeting.
25 There is a lot of greasy palms involved in this,
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1 more than just Herwitz. I met a man in the Freshwater
2 district recently where a local person name Nate is
3 sitting in a tree. This man said he drove up the hill he
4 saw spray paint on the residual old growth on his back
5 yard basically.
6 He called the president of PL, John Campbell,
7 asked him what he could do about this. He said, well,
8 you could buy these trees. The guy was a
9 multimillionaire. He said, No problem. I'll buy all the
10 trees. Give me a net value.
11 John Campbell never called him back. He called
12 his office every day asking what to do about buying these
13 trees. He never got through to John Campbell. He was
14 basically stonewalled, wasn't able to buy these trees.
15 He drove up the hill one day, all the trees were cut.
16 Obviously, somebody's palm wasn't going to get greased on
17 the bottom levels or the upper levels, whatever it may
18 be.
19 The fact of the matter is, is this supply and
20 demand is just self-destruction. If they can create the
21 illusion that there is not enough trees, there is not
22 enough food or not enough this or not enough that, then
23 they can oppress us and control us by scarcity.
24 This has to stop or we're all going to die.
25 That's just the fact of the matter. And I came from an
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1 industrial family. My dad was a steel mill worker on the
2 East Coast. Michael Milken's transactions was a direct
3 result of that industry failing and falling. My dad was
4 working double shifts. He went to work one day, there
5 was a lock on the gates. Everybody lost their jobs
6 overnight. They had no notice.
7 The people out here know what's up. They know
8 they're going to lose their jobs in the future, but the
9 industry isn't big enough for them to walk out on strike
10 or to stand up. That's why we have to do it. That's why
11 we have to come out in the forest and stand up for them.
12 Well, those palms don't have just grease on them
13 any more, now they have blood. They have Judy Berry's
14 blood, they have David "Gypsy" Chain's blood. There was
15 a little boy last year, his name was Forrest. He used to
16 be five years old. He died 24 hours after drinking out
17 of a stream in Willits.
18 This is just a small amount of the blood. There
19 is a lot of blood that's been shed, and these people will
20 be held accountable. They need to hold themselves
21 accountable right now, right here and do what's right for
22 the sake of us all.
23 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
24 (Applause.)
25 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Our final speaker for
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1 this session will be the next party, Andrea Meyer. We
2 will have another session of this hearing this evening
3 commencing at 6:00 o'clock, but for practical reasons, we
4 have to have of a break between this session and the
5 next. This will be our final speaker for this session.
6 Andrea Meyer.
7 MS. MEYER: Hello. I just wanted to say and
8 remind people that Headwaters forest will not be saved by
9 this HCP, but isolated groves in a sea of clear-cuts.
10 All marbled murrelets, spotted owls and coho salmon will
11 not rush to these reservations, but die where they stand,
12 much like David "Gypsy" Chain, my friend and comrade.
13 This HCP is a loophole in the integrity and
14 purpose of the Endangered Species Act. It is a license
15 to kill not only the above mentioned species, but 36
16 others through the destruction of their habitat.
17 I'm a Humboldt County resident. I have seen PL
18 land firsthand. I have seen Bell Creek, a Class I
19 fish-bearing creek, go dry under the intensity of the sun
20 when the canopy was removed. I have seen trees felled
21 and left to rot. I have driven down 101 with PL property
22 as my landscape and not seen one old growth tree outside
23 state parks.
24 I have seen hillsides fall on steep and unstable
25 slopes upon homes. Might I remind you of Stafford. I've
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1 seen communities rise up in protest, Mattole and
2 Freshwater, who have no affiliation at all with Earth
3 First, sit in trees, locked down, get shot at for their
4 actions.
5 I have seen loggers put down their axe in defiance
6 and join the environmental movement after witnessing and
7 partaking firsthand in these wastes that PL logging
8 practices bring. I'm not a scientist, but I have eyes
9 and I have legs and I know the difference between walking
10 through a forest and a tree farm.
11 No HCP. No deal. And if you actually ask the
12 people what to do with a half a billion dollars Pete
13 Wilson is paying Herwitz to kill our endangered species
14 with, it would go towards rehabilitation of the ruined
15 ecosystems and watersheds of Humboldt County. Thank you.
16 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
17 (Applause.)
18 MS. REMMENGA: Would you please let me speak? I
19 was after her. I was the last name on the list when I
20 got here.
21 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: What was that again? I
22 don't think I understand you.
23 MS. REMMENGA: Would you please let me just say
24 something because my name was after hers and it was at
25 the bottom of the list.
96
1 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Will it take more than
2 two minutes?
3 MS. REMMENGA: Three? I'll be quick.
4 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Make it quick. Go ahead,
5 please. your name.
6 MS. REMMENGA: My name is Julia Remmenga. My last
7 name is spelled R-e-m-m-e-n-g-a. And there are basically
8 four things I just want to mention, Herwitz, streams,
9 carbon dioxide and habitat.
10 Charles Herwitz and Palco, they have submitted
11 this plan on the concept that it never hurts to ask.
12 They are going to see if you'll approve something that is
13 nothing and because they are not going to save any life
14 that they don't have to. The way they operate is that
15 they'll violate laws, they'll violate agreements and then
16 if they get caught, well, they'll see what they get, but
17 it's worth to it to try.
18 Regardeing streams, you have to have buffer zones
19 along tributaries that feed into larger streams. If you
20 choke the streams with silt, there is no way they can
21 support life. If the streams aren't bearing life right
22 now, it's not because they never did, it's not because
23 they can't. Okay? There has to be shade or there is not
24 going to be any fish there. We need fish. They are part
25 of the food chain. We depend on fish. They give us
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1 life.
2 Carbon dioxide, I'm sure you know, contributes to
3 global warming. Global warming contributes to climate
4 change. Climate change contributes to alteration of food
5 chains, and we're a part of that.
6 The Exploratorium had this display where you
7 stopped the photosynthesis on a leaf, and they had a grid
8 showing the C02 level in the chamber, and the rise was
9 almost vertical. It was like 86-degree angle. And then
10 you restore the light. Photosynthesis restarts at the
11 same rate and the C02 level drops so slowly. It takes so
12 long to bring C02 levels down once you remove a source of
13 photosynthesis.
14 These trees are old, they are dense they have a
15 lot of leaf matter. So if we restored them with old,
16 dense, highly respiring trees, it would take a long time
17 for the CO level to go back down. And nobody is going to
18 be replanting old, dense, 2,000-year-old trees. They are
19 going to replace them with saplings, and they are going
20 to cut them every 50 years. And that's not a forest.
21 That's a tree farm.
22 And he doesn't have to mow an old forest to have a
23 tree farm. He can go to Sonoma County, and I'm sure
24 people would like to see their soil stay on the ground
25 and not in the ditch, and he can have tree farms there.
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1 Habitat. You can't save habitat in patches. You
2 have to have continuity of the habitat. The reason why
3 there's all this habitat there now is because it was
4 semi-sustainably logged in the recent past. The Fish and
5 Wildlife Services' own web page says that the reason why
6 spotted owls are found in second growth forests is
7 because there is a lot of canopy, and Charles Herwitz
8 wants to get rid of all the canopy fast.
9 We need species diversity, we need genetic
10 diversity, we can't create biological islands. Okay. So
11 please reject this.
12 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you very much.
13 (Applause.)
14 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Ladies and gentlemen, as
15 I indicated earlier, we will adjourn the public hearing
16 at this moment. We will be back on record again this
17 evening at 6:00 o'clock. Same time.
18 (Whereupon the hearing was recessed at 4:00 p.m.)
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
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1 --oOo--
2 RESUMPTION OF PROCEEDINGS
3 --oOo--
4 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Ladies and gentlemen, if
5 you would please take your seats, we will proceed to
6 proceed with the second session.
7 All right. We are on the record now. Good
8 evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this public
9 hearing. This is the second session of the public
10 hearing held here in Sacramento this date.
11 The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National
12 Marine Fisheries Service, the California State Department
13 of Forestry and Fire Protection and the California
14 Department of Fish and Game are conducting a joint
15 process for the taking of comments on an Environmental
16 Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report for the
17 Headwaters Forest Acquisition and the Pacific Lumber
18 Company's Habitat Conservation Plan and Sustained Yield
19 Plan.
20 My name is Lotario D. Ortega. I am an attorney
21 retired from the United States Department of the
22 Interior's Office of the Solicitor. I will be serving as
23 the presiding official for this hearing.
24 Here with me are the following representatives of
25 the agencies involved. On the table to my right in the
100
1 middle is Mr. Mike Spear, manager of the
2 California-Nevada operations office, United States Fish
3 and Wildlife Service, here in Sacramento. On the far
4 right is Mr. Ross Johnson, deputy director of the
5 California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection,
6 and to my right closest to me is Vicki Campbell, who is
7 the private forest lands team leader and HCP coordinator,
8 National Marine Fisheries Service.
9 You will find information in the table outside in
10 the lobby or foyer with written materials about the
11 proposed action and documents that are going to be
12 discussed in this public hearing.
13 At this point let me introduce to you first
14 Mr. Mike Spear of the United States Fish and Wildlife
15 Service who will make an introductory statement, and
16 following that will be an introductory statement by the
17 representative of the California Department of Forestry
18 and Fire Protection. Mr. Spear.
19 MR. SPEAR: Good evening. I'm Mike Spear of the
20 Fish and Wildlife Service and my office is here in
21 Sacramento.
22 The Federal Endangered Species Act has established
23 protections for species listed as threatened and
24 endangered and provides for authorization of certain
25 impacts where such impacts comply with criteria
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1 established by the act.
2 The most fundamental protection provided by the
3 act is the prohibition against take of species listed
4 under the act. Take includes actions that would kill,
5 harass or harm listed species. Incidental take is
6 defined as take that is, quote, "incidental to and not
7 the purpose of the carrying out of an otherwise lawful
8 activity," unquote.
9 When incidental take may result from the actions
10 of state or local governments, corporations or private
11 individuals, Section 10 of the Endangered Species Act
12 directs the secretaries of the Department of Interior and
13 the Department of Commerce to issue permits for
14 incidental take when certain conditions are met by the
15 applicant.
16 Those conditions are described in detail in the
17 act. Most importantly, the applicant must submit a
18 Habitat Conservation Plan, or HCP. Among other things,
19 the HCP must describe the impact of the taking and the
20 steps the applicant will take to minimize and mitigate
21 such impacts.
22 The standards for the agency's evaluation of the
23 HCP are also described in the act. Most importantly, the
24 agencies must find that the taking will not appreciably
25 reduce the likelihood of survival and recovery of the
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1 species in the wild.
2 If the statutory conditions are met, the
3 incidental take permit will be issued by the Fish and
4 Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries
5 Service.
6 Pacific Lumber Company has prepared an HCP and
7 submitted an application for an incidental take permit
8 for several species. Also, the United States Congress
9 and the California Legislature have approved
10 appropriations for acquisition of portions of Pacific
11 Lumber's property if the HCP is approved.
12 Because the issuance of an incidental take permit
13 is a federal action, the process is subject to review
14 under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.
15 The State of California is also undertaking environmental
16 review under the California Environmental Quality Act, or
17 CEQA. Therefore, the state and federal agencies have
18 entered into an agreement to prepare a single
19 environmental document called a joint EIR/EIS.
20 Impacts considered under NEPA and CEQA are not
21 limited to the impacts on listed species but include all
22 impacts of the action affecting the human environment.
23 In addition to evaluation of the effects of
24 implementation of the HCP, the joint EIR/EIS will cover
25 the impacts of the proposed acquisition.
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1 This public meeting is conducted as part of the
2 public comment period on the EIR/EIS. The public comment
3 period will close on November 16th, 1998. Because the
4 appropriations include a deadline of March 1, 1999, for
5 completion of the entire process, the public comment
6 period will not be extended November 16th.
7 On behalf of the Fish and Wildlife Service and
8 National Marine Fisheries Service, I thank you for the
9 effort you have made to attend this meeting and also
10 thank you in advance for your comments.
11 Now, we'll hear some introductory words from Ross
12 Johnson of the California Department of Forestry and Fire
13 Protection, representative of the State of California.
14 MR. JOHNSON: Good evening. I'm Ross Johnson,
15 deputy director for Department of Forestry and Fire
16 Protection here in Sacramento.
17 The department is the state lead agency under the
18 California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, for this
19 project. The department will use the Environmental
20 Impact Report, or EIR, to evaluate the environmental
21 impact of the Sustained Yield Plan submitted by Pacific
22 Lumber Company. The department will use the EIR to
23 identified potentially significant adverse impacts and
24 determine whether the Sustained Yield Plan needs to be
25 modified with alternatives or feasible mitigation
104
1 measures to avoid or mitigate these impacts.
2 This EIR is a joint document with the Federal
3 Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS. Sustained Yield
4 Plans, or SYP's, are one of the mechanisms that
5 timberland owners can use to meet the state's requirement
6 for maintaining maximum sustained production of high
7 quality timber products while giving consideration to
8 values such as, among other things, as watershed,
9 fisheries and wildlife.
10 SYP's must include projections of timber growth
11 and harvesting over a hundred year planning horizon, a
12 fish and wildlife assessment and a watershed assessment.
13 Subsequent timber harvesting plans may rely on the
14 approved SYP to the extent that issues are addressed in
15 it.
16 Following approval, the SYP is in force for a
17 period of no more than 10 years. The department does not
18 usually prepare an EIR for Sustained Yield Plans and
19 usually uses its CEQA functional equivalency under the
20 Forest Practice Act. However, in this case it was judged
21 to be more efficient to prepare an EIR as a joint
22 document with the federal EIS. I'm glad to see you here
23 and look forward to your testimony.
24 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, gentlemen.
25 Public comment on these documents will be accepted until
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1 November 16, 1998. After review and consideration of
2 your comments and all other information gathered during
3 the comment period, the agencies will prepare an
4 Environmental Impact Statement and Environmental Impact
5 Report.
6 The purpose of this hearing is to receive your
7 oral comments on these proposals. The information you
8 offer on all aspects of these proposals is very important
9 and will be carefully considered. Because of the
10 importance of your comments, it is necessary that we
11 follow certain procedure here this evening. If you want
12 to present comments at the hearing, we ask that you
13 register at the table in the outer lobby. When you
14 register, please indicate any organization that you
15 represent. When you are called to present your comments,
16 please come forward to one of the two microphones in the
17 front. Please begin your presentation by stating your
18 full name and spell it for the accuracy of the record,
19 and then indicate what organization you represent, if
20 any.
21 In order that we can accept the maximum number of
22 comments into the record, I will call two names at the
23 same time. In other words, the speaker that is called
24 first will come forward and the one who is to follow will
25 be on notice that to be prepared.
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1 Because of the number of people who wish to
2 comment and the limited time that we have available, we
3 are going to request and ask that you limit your
4 presentation to four minutes. I have a timer here. You
5 will hear a beep or beeper when your time is up.
6 Now, this is an informal hearing. Therefore, you
7 will not be questioned or cross-examined in connection
8 with your comments. Also, because of the time limitation
9 it is not possible to answer your questions here.
10 Official responses to any issues raised during the
11 comment period will be stated in the final Environmental
12 Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report.
13 Your statements are being recorded by a certified
14 court reporter to accurately preserve them for the
15 record. Please keep in mind the reporter will not record
16 any statements from the audience or which are made to the
17 audience. Comments must be made into the microphone at
18 the front here.
19 In order to allow as many people as possible to
20 speak within the time frame allowed, it is quite
21 important that everyone maintain an atmosphere of
22 courtesy and respect for each speaker. We will not allow
23 applause, argument, cheering or any other disruptions
24 from the audience. We wish to maintain a fair, neutral
25 atmosphere in order to record all comments into the
107
1 record.
2 Now, instead of presenting oral comments here this
3 evening or in addition to any oral comments you may have,
4 you may also submit comments in writing. Written
5 comments may be submitted today to the staff at the
6 registration table or they may be mailed. Please mail
7 them to Mr. Bruce Halstead, U. S. Fish and Wildlife
8 Service, 1125 16th Street, Room 209, Arcata, California
9 the zip is 95521-5582. That address is available at the
10 registration table.
11 Written comments, again I wish to emphasize, will
12 be accepted until November 16th, 1998. And please bear
13 in mind, the written comments will be given the same
14 consideration as any oral comments presented here today.
15 At this point we'll proceed with the speakers.
16 Please come forward to the microphone and again state
17 your name and spell it for the record.
18 First Gary Bailey to be followed by George Little.
19 MR. BAILEY: Good evening. I'm Gary Bailey,
20 G-a-r-y B-a-i-l-e-y. I live in Sunnyvale, California.
21 I'm an engineering manager for an electronics company in
22 San Jose, and I don't represent any group. I'm here
23 because I'm very concerned about the salmon and other
24 wildlife in the Headwaters area as a result of the effect
25 of this proposed Habitat Conservation Plan.
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1 I did a little research and learned what I'm sure
2 those of you at the table know. There are existing some
3 existing Habitat Conservation Plans already in place
4 which should be used as models for Headwaters and other
5 plans to come. For example, as you know, I'm sure, the
6 Natural Communities Conservation Plan in the San Diego
7 area which sets aside large segments of connected
8 habitats in the multi-species apporach and also the gnat
9 catcher Habitat Conservation Plan in Orange County is
10 another example which it preserves large amounts of
11 critical habitat owned by the Irvine Corporation in
12 exchange for development rights in other areas and, if I
13 understand correctly, this is without financial
14 compensation. This is, if I understand correctly, to
15 comply with the law.
16 These existing plans establish and reinforce clear
17 principles that a Habitat Conservation Plan should have
18 the overriding purpose of species preservation and
19 restoration and moving listed species in the direction of
20 delisting.
21 Sadly, it doesn't appear to me that the proposed
22 plan for Headwaters accomplishes this species
23 preservation and restoration. These existing plans also
24 reinforce the principle that areas which are not
25 prevented from development must be managed so that
109
1 endangered species are protected. With or without
2 compensation. And I believe this is required by law and
3 certainly it's required by our obligation to future
4 generations of mankind. Sadly, it doesn't appear to me
5 that the proposed plan accomplishes this.
6 A Habitat Conservation Plan must be based on real
7 scientific evidence and evaluations of what is needed for
8 species preservation and recovery. And it doesn't take a
9 scientist, though, to know that if you conduct logging
10 operations near a stream that before long you'll have
11 silt burying the spawning gravel that the salmon have to
12 have to spawn and so the species can survive, or if you
13 have clear-cutting on slopes nearby because of the
14 erosion. It doesn't appear to me that the proposed plan
15 prevents this kind of destruction to the salmon spawning
16 grounds.
17 The Habitat Conservation Plan also must be
18 flexible enough to allow adjustments over time for
19 changing conditions, but sadly it doesn't appear to me
20 that the proposed plan allows that flexibility.
21 And when we're dealing with a company whose
22 management has repeatedly violated codes and regulations,
23 it's imperative that planned mitigations must be
24 implemented before the associated logging is allowed to
25 proceed. Otherwise, the mitigation will never take
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1 place.
2 Thank you for listening.
3 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
4 (Applause.)
5 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: George Little will be
6 followed by Francis Dahl.
7 MR. LITTLE: Mr. Ortega, members of the Fish and
8 Wildlife and Forestry Board, ladies and gentlemen, I am
9 George Little, L-i-t-t-l-e. I'm with Union Planing Mill
10 in Stockton, California.
11 Speaking for the 60-plus employees of Union
12 Planing Mill, I am here tonight on behalf of Pacific
13 Lumber and all producers of forest products in the
14 Pacific Northwest to urge you and the State of California
15 to approve the Sustained Yield and Habitat Conservation
16 Plans.
17 My family has been involved in the lumber business
18 for over 75 years and the company was founded in 1891,
19 making it 107 years old. Through the years we have
20 engaged in many conversations with timber producers
21 regarding their products and practices. My son is a
22 graduate of California State University at Humboldt with
23 a degree of forestry and currently is employed by a
24 California-based forest products company. We have had
25 many, many talks regarding the pros and cons of forestry
111
1 and its practices.
2 When he was a young man first beginning, he had
3 very strong environmental leanings against forestry, and
4 as he matured, he began to see where as a forester he
5 could influence his company or any company that he would
6 work for to practice more responsible forestry practices.
7 And I asked him how he compromised the situation
8 and he explained to me and he said, Dad, sometimes you
9 have to go in because that's the way the company wants it
10 done to make a clear-cut. Other places I have a chance
11 to practice my philosophy of forestry. I go out in the
12 forest and I mark trees the way that I think is a benefit
13 for my company, but mainly a benefit for the forest. And
14 I know the Palco's lumber forestry people probably have
15 much the same feelings.
16 My family, our employees and their families rely
17 on steady and sustainable supply of lumber and related
18 forest products. Our customers both in California and
19 nationally rely on us to provide products that are based
20 on forest generated items. Pacific Lumber's proposed
21 HCP/SYP, when approved, will force our industry to
22 rethink their efforts involving habitat conservation and
23 timber harvest plans and sustained yields.
24 I'm not a professional scientist, and I'm not a
25 professional speaker. Rather, a businessman who cares
112
1 about his family, his employees, their families and the
2 forest. The forest which provides for all of us.
3 Who is us? Why, it's me, it's you, it's
4 California, America and the world. My grandfather and my
5 dad passed down to me the knowledge that if you take care
6 of the forest, it will take care of you. The forest is a
7 bank from which you may make withdrawals. However, if
8 you do not make deposits, your bank is no longer open for
9 business. Pacific Lumber's plans guaranteed continued
10 deposit to that forestry account. Thank you very much
11 for listening.
12 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
13 Francis Dahl will be followed by Greta
14 Hendrickson.
15 MS. DAHL: Excuse me. I'm Francis Dahl and I'm
16 not going to speak.
17 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Greta
18 Hendrickson will be followed by Kent Stromsnoe.
19 MS. HENDRICKSON: In the last century, the North
20 American buffalo, which numbered about 32 million, were
21 slaughtered to near extinction. Only about 500 were
22 left. These animals were shot and stripped of their
23 skins and their carcasses left to rot. The same
24 mentality of greed, arrogance and short-sightedness has
25 claimed all but three to four percent of the ancient
113
1 redwood ecosystem as well, ecosystems that support a
2 myriad of plant and animal life, life that cannot exist
3 anywhere else, life that needs far more than a small
4 stand of tree.
5 The proposed deal for Headwaters forest calls for
6 only about nine to ten thousand acres to be protected.
7 This is totally inadequate to preserve species dependent
8 upon the old growth ecosystems.
9 The Habitat Conservation Plan that Pacific Lumber
10 Corporation has submitted is a plan that would allow for
11 the destruction of endangered species and their habitat
12 for 50 years. How is it that a corporation that has
13 violated the California forestry practices law so many
14 times and has shown such contempt for people's lives and
15 property -- and I reference this in regard to the seven
16 homes wiped out by mud slides in Stafford. It's just a
17 miracle that nobody died. How can they even be
18 considered responsible enough to be allowed to go ahead
19 with a good HCP, let alone the destructive one that they
20 have submitted.
21 Who are we to wipe out other life forms and, as we
22 do so, do not even understand the consequences of our
23 actions. We need a biological solution, not a political
24 solution. We need a solution grounded in science. We
25 must care about the intrinsic value of nature to exist as
114
1 it is. We need to look at our connection with it and the
2 fact that we cannot thrive or survive ourselves without a
3 healthy, viable ecosystem. What kind of world will we
4 leave to our children, grandchildren and future
5 generations?
6 (Applause.)
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Kent Stromsnoe to be
8 followed by Sue Cipolla.
9 MR. STROMSNOE: Kent Stromsnoe, K-e-n-t
10 S-t-r-o-m-s-n-o-e.
11 A variety of concerns tonight and I'm going to try
12 to get into an area that I don't usually get into. In
13 anticipating the human effects of this HCP, there does
14 not seem to be any evaluation of the very real
15 possibility that this HCP as it stands will leave a
16 continuing and ongoing civil disruption in Humboldt
17 County without any real means of mitigating it.
18 Another real concern of the HCP is a phenomenon
19 that we see in which the regulated public sees in its
20 interests the usefulness of donating considerable sums of
21 money to political campaigns which inevitably develops
22 into affinities between politicians, elected officials
23 and those regulated public which can translate downwards
24 into the agencies to where you find a situation where you
25 have long-time career bureaucrats who know what their
115
1 job, who know what their responsibilities are, but find
2 themselves caught in the trap of knowing what they should
3 be doing, knowing that in their hearts and finding that
4 the instructions come down from on high that they are not
5 to do that, even when their agencies are being approached
6 by other agencies, indeed admonished by other agencies
7 for failing to do their duty.
8 You have someone whose entire career is tied up in
9 getting to where they are, maybe not that terribly many
10 years from retirement and finding that when they need to
11 take an action against the regulated public that they are
12 incapable of doing so because it costs them their career,
13 and I see no provision in the EIS/EIR to evaluate that
14 effect. It's anticipatable, it's real, it happens all
15 the time. It will happen throughout the life of this HCP
16 in all likelihood, yet I see no provision, alternate
17 provision in the EIS/EIR for enforcement of the terms of
18 this HCP when those anticipatable effects occur.
19 And that seems to be a very failing of this
20 EIS/EIR, that it does not deal with the issue of what
21 happens when the agencies that are supposed to regulate
22 and enforce this EIS/EIR cannot for the various reasons
23 of pressure coming down from above.
24 Thank you.
25 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
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1 (Applause.)
2 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Sue Cipolla to be
3 followed by Terri Compost.
4 MS. CIPOLLA: My name is Sue Cipolla, S-u-e
5 C-i-p-o-l-l-a.
6 A little perspective on what's going on here. If
7 anybody has read the book called "This Land Is Your
8 Land," and the author escapes me now, you would see that
9 East Coast to West Coast when we had a frontier has been
10 systematically destroyed and the agencies such as
11 yourselves represented here today have systematically
12 kept their eyes shut or were in concert in that
13 destruction.
14 The bottom line here is we don't have a frontier
15 any more. What we have now is all we have. No
16 incidental take of species. In 1892, I believe that was
17 the year, the Supreme Court said all wildlife is to be
18 held in trust for all citizens. That means no take of
19 wildlife, in my interpretation.
20 So we want to play little games now of incidental
21 takes of species who will never be around once they're
22 gone. If they are listed, there is something wrong here.
23 If they are listed or threatened, that means they're on
24 their way out. No incidental take of those species or
25 their habitat destruction.
117
1 Like I said before, we have no more frontier.
2 This is it, folks. I am not inherently against industry.
3 However, industry that has repeatedly violated the law,
4 violated ethics really should not be trusted to watch
5 themselves and submit their own environmental impact
6 reports. My God, that stands to reason.
7 Industry is in business for profit only. Profit
8 is not inherently bad, but many times greed takes over
9 and we cannot trust them to do the right thing without
10 some kind of safeguards for the species and for the
11 environment.
12 I'm not totally for the destruction of jobs in
13 that area, but however in my case and a lots of people's
14 cases, I have retrained three times in my life and I'm in
15 the process of retraining for my fourth career. Those
16 people involved in logging and mill operations can
17 retrain also. All right? And that's all I have to say.
18 Thank you very much.
19 (Applause.)
20 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Terri Compost will be
21 followed by Ron Deluce.
22 MS. COMPOST: Hi, I'm Terri Compost, and I want to
23 speak about the passion of why so many people speak up,
24 thousands and thousands of people have come forward about
25 Headwaters forest, and I believe that is because we know
118
1 in our heart what is left and how precious it is and how
2 irreplaceable it is and how little we know about what it
3 is that is being destroyed, and now we have this little
4 section left and people know in their hearts all across
5 this country how important this is forever, forever.
6 And so now we're being asked, you know, and we
7 come together and there has been movement to try to
8 preserve part of it, but now we're being tossed a side
9 thing, a little, a little, the HCP, the Habitat
10 Conservation Plan, which is almost poetic double-speak
11 because it's asking you to approve the destruction of
12 that very habitat that we know is so important to
13 maintain.
14 And I have to, you know, we have to look, what
15 level of corruption can allow us to give permission to a
16 company, to Charles Herwitz, who I've heard has earned
17 over 200 percent profit on his investment in that area.
18 I mean this is not somebody that is suffering for
19 business use.
20 I mean we are trying to find a place, we are
21 trying to find a way to protect it. Now is not the time
22 to allow a company that has consistently violated rules,
23 as we all know, to go in and kill in another area, you
24 know, just down the street. Well, okay, you know that's
25 not acceptable.
119
1 We need to preserve that whole area. It is so
2 vital. We don't even understand it all, you know. We
3 can't let the species disappear, the salmon and the
4 spotted owl. They need to be a part of what that whole
5 forest is. We can't neglect it. We can't allow the
6 corruption of basically one man, one corporation go over
7 what thousands and thousands of people know in our heart
8 must go on for more and more and more generations really,
9 really, really. Thank you.
10 (Applause.)
11 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Ron Deluce will be
12 followed by Susan Wilcox.
13 MR. DELUCE: Hi, my name is Ron Deluce, spelled
14 R-o-n Deluce, D-e-l-u-c-e. And I appreciate being here.
15 I know this is a good function for people to be able to
16 vent their steam at their government.
17 Anyway, just a little history which will be
18 relevant here shortly. I was raised in southern Oregon
19 in Medord. It's a mill town, Boise Cascade Forest
20 Products Corporation. I even worked at Boise Cascade and
21 helped make plywood. And I'm really appalled at how the
22 trees are being cut and species around the globe are
23 being killed, carbon dioxide is going up and the people
24 that are running this world are asleep at the wheel. You
25 guys are way fucked up. You guys are just asleep. You
120
1 need to wake up because it's your children on the line
2 just like ours.
3 And the people here, the Earth Firsters are out
4 here in the forest, they're the freedom fighters of our
5 day, not you fat cats sitting behind, stealing our money.
6 We live in a kleptocracy and you represent it, rule by
7 thieves, kleptocracy, and that's what we have here.
8 And I do have some experience with kleptocracy. I
9 was helping lobby when this state was ratifying this and
10 P&L's lobbyist was around paying off everybody and that
11 was really pissed me, the results that we're seeing right
12 now because this is just a hearing to kind of vent spleen
13 and Herwitz is going to get along and take our 1.6
14 billion dollars that he's ripped off from us from S&L's
15 that Janet Reno won't even file a fucking charge.
16 Anyway, that's really my just bottom line on that.
17 Headwaters, I have a procedural issue about these
18 hearings. It's basically this afternoon I made up some
19 signs of a political nature and I brought them here to
20 the hearing so that I could bring them in, and, anyway,
21 as I walked in, Officer Bassett and Officer Wimple of the
22 Sacramento Police Department said I couldn't bring the
23 signs in, and they said you, Lotario Ortega, the
24 facilitator here, did not allow signs.
25 I grew up in a law enforcement household. My a
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1 mom's probation officer, and I'm not here to cause
2 problems with the police because, you know, they're just
3 here doing their job just like all of us do when we do
4 our job. So I'm not here to fight them and my signs are
5 still out there.
6 I should read them so we get them in the record.
7 Jail Herwitz. Habitat Conservation Plan, which I put
8 Habitat Collapse Plan. Kleptocracy, rule by thieves. No
9 more tax theft by Maxxam. Like clean water? Stop HCP.
10 Boycott Home Depot, because they lie, too, just like a
11 lot of corporate America does, which you represent.
12 Anyway, no signs, and as a lawyer, you should know
13 a little bit about law. The first law of the land is the
14 right of free speech shall not be abridged.
15 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Can you please conclude?
16 MR. DELUCE: Yes, sir. Anyway, as a lawyer, I
17 think you should be aware of that. I think when you
18 don't allow signs that's called prior restraint on the
19 First Amendment. So not only do we have kleptocracy in
20 the forest, we have violations of First Amendment. These
21 hearings should have to be redone because you've already
22 messed them up. You're stopping the chance for people to
23 vent their spleen. What harm do signs do? Officer
24 Bassett said it might be used as a weapon but my visual
25 basic study book isn't.
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1 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
2 MR. DELUCE: And I do respect the police.
3 In conclusion, I think you should be disbarred for
4 not following law. So kiss my ass, butthole.
5 (Applause.)
6 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Next speaker will be
7 Susan Wilcox to be followed by Richard Mills.
8 MS. WILCOX: Hello. My name is Susan Wilcox.
9 It's spelled W-i-l-c-o-x.
10 I want to tell you who I am with reference to the
11 redwoods. In the mid-1850's my grandfather's
12 grandparents came out from Illinois and Ohio to live and
13 work in the redwood country. My grandfather was born in
14 Scotia. My son and my daughter -- my two sons and my
15 daughter are the seventh generation in my family since my
16 family came to Humboldt and Mendocino County.
17 I can only imagine what they saw when they came
18 here back in the 1800's. It's certainly nothing like
19 what exists there now.
20 I have a letter to read you which I wrote to
21 Mr. Bruce Halstead of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife
22 Service.
23 Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the
24 Draft Habitat Conservation Plan prepared for Pacific
25 Lumber and its subsidiaries in contemplation of public
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1 acquisition of Headwaters forest and adjacent lands.
2 I followed with great interest the development of
3 an agreement to preserve a portion of the old growth
4 redwood ecosystem still in private hands. I fervently
5 hope that the American public and its representatives
6 will accomplish the preservation of a vibrant, healthy
7 forest and not just a sterile relic of that magnificent
8 wilderness that graced the Pacific Coast for eons.
9 Assembly Bill 1986 recently passed by California
10 State Legislature included several provisions in the
11 final HCP intended to strengthen protections for
12 threatened or endangered species. While this is a
13 laudable goal, I was unable to ascertain a sound
14 biological premise for the specific provisions. It
15 appears instead that the Legislature is giving equal
16 weight to the least conservative biological opinion and
17 to PL's interest in maximizing its timber harvesting
18 operations.
19 Environmental documents presented to lead federal
20 agencies by applicants for permits and/or funding
21 invariably contain the minimal provisions for sensitive
22 environmental resources required by the National
23 Environmental Policy Act and other laws and policies. If
24 a recommendation for a streamside buffer of 170 to 600
25 feet represents a consensus of biologists for Class I
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1 watercourses, I have no doubt that the smaller number
2 would be the minimum necessary buffer, and this is in an
3 optimal situation. This is not an area surrounded by
4 clear-cuts.
5 Surely the size of a minimally effective buffer
6 zone varies with terrain, density of vegetation and other
7 conditions and should be reasonably assessed for each
8 stream in question rather than limited through
9 ill-conceived averaging and capping.
10 The minimal environmental conditions for
11 sustaining plant and animal life are not negotiable,
12 however well-intentioned the negotiators may be. A
13 compromise of a species' requisite conditions for
14 survival may slow down the process of extinction, but a
15 slow death is still a death.
16 There is a bit more here, but I think I'll leave
17 off the rest of the letter and just tell you that my
18 whole family is involved in the preservation of the
19 Headwaters forest. My son is living in the woods right
20 now. My son was one of several people who were a few
21 feet away from David Nathan Chain when he passed away.
22 We're very serious about our concern for the
23 forest. We're very serious about our obligation to the
24 Earth and to protect a viable ecosystem wherever we can.
25 It's time to stop, slow down and think and do the right
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1 thing. Thank you.
2 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
3 (Applause.)
4 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Richard Mills will be
5 followed by Jamie Jones.
6 MR. MILLS: I'm Richard Mills. That's spelled M
7 as in Mary i-l-l-s. I'm a professional engineering, but
8 I'm not here speaking as a professional with expertise in
9 forestry or in biology or ecology. I'm here as a
10 citizen, but not as a citizen of the United States, but
11 as a citizen of humanity of the planet, because what we
12 are talking about here is a forest, a gift from God to
13 all of us, not just to Pacific Lumber or to Charles
14 Herwitz, but to all of the public, to all of the people,
15 indeed, to all of the creatures that depend on that
16 forest.
17 We also have been given a gift from God of wisdom,
18 however deficient it seems to be at times, and with that
19 wisdom we should be managing this forest with all of the
20 attributes that it has, not only for harvesting lumber at
21 times, yes, harvesting the fish, but also to provide
22 space so that we can wander through it, to wander in its
23 beauty, that we can meditate, but I'm not seeing this
24 wisdom reflected in the Habitat Conservation Plan or in
25 the Sustained Yield Plan.
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1 I have to admit that I have not read the plan when
2 the web site said it took two megabytes of memory to
3 download it. I don't have two megabytes of memory to
4 spare, nor the time to delve through it. So I'm having
5 to rely upon people whom I trust to come to the
6 conclusion that, as I say, the plan does not seem to be
7 living up to the names of habitat conservation or
8 sustained yield.
9 Habitat conservation, in my mind, and I think in
10 the public's mind when we read press reports, should mean
11 the preservation of not only the endangered species or
12 the owl and the murrelet or the coho salmon, but of the
13 rare species, the common species, preservation of the
14 complex ecological network, the web that makes up a
15 vibrant forest, not a unidimensional tree farm. A
16 sustained yield should be sustaining not just for 50
17 years, 120 years, but for 500 years, a thousand years,
18 10,000 years.
19 These do not seem to be the definitions that are
20 reflected in the plan. The "Sacramento Bee" reports that
21 the plan has ignored the advice of government scientists
22 and is weighing in on the side of Pacific Lumber.
23 I've seen a photograph of a 45-degree slope that
24 was clear-cut, and I'm not even saying that that's the
25 steepest slope. As an engineer, I know enough about the
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1 coastal range which is geologically very fragile.
2 Pacific Lumber even recognizes this when they excuse the
3 demolition of homeowners from their clear-cuts saying
4 homeowners should just expect this.
5 The 45-degree slope completely denude of any
6 trees, of any vegetation, completely ripped up, exposed
7 to the full impact of the rain drops, the first driving
8 force for the erosion with nothing to restrain the flow
9 as it comes down, cutting through the land, bringing more
10 sediment with it. The only thing to stop it is, what, a
11 30-foot buffer? I mean how many tons of sediment do we
12 expect 30 feet to absorb. Even 100 feet, 150 feet.
13 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Would you please briefly
14 summarize and conclude?
15 MR. MILLS: There was deal done by the politicians
16 in which we agreed as the public to provide 495 million
17 dollars for not only the purchase of the 8,000 or
18 whatever acres, but also for a scientifically based
19 conservation plan and sustained plan. We are paying for
20 that. Pacific Lumber may prepare that plan, but that is
21 our plan and when you folks approve it, it is your plan
22 as well.
23 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
24 (Applause.)
25 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Jamie Jones to be
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1 followed by Cougar Black Paw.
2 MS. JONES: My name is Jamie Jones, J-o-n-e-s, and
3 I am here because this is also a passion of mine and I
4 have heard several people speak of passion, and it is
5 important. It is maybe the most important. And I'm here
6 as a mother, which I feel is my most important
7 distinction.
8 Headwaters forest represents to me everything that
9 is wrong and broken in our government. I looked up
10 oligarchy and tell me that we do not live in an
11 oligarchy. It is about corporate greed, and we all know
12 this. One billion dollars will be spent in this election
13 that's coming here now. I certainly couldn't run for an
14 office.
15 There are so many issues here, so many people have
16 spoke to the science. I am very educated about this
17 issue. I have researched it. I'm just not, you know,
18 oh, cool, peace, love, hug a tree. That's fine with me.
19 I love that.
20 I have come to support Earth First and I will
21 continue to do so with money, with letters. I'm one of
22 those people that have faxed, written, marched. I
23 have been -- this is my second hearing. I will continue
24 to do this for our children who I have given
25 presentations at school and these children are very
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1 bright. It is perhaps the most ecologically aware
2 generation ever to come. They know what acid rain, they
3 know why you should recycle, they know our oceans are
4 polluted. They know this stuff. Any 10-year-old can
5 tell you that without a scientific degree.
6 We grew up in illusion that there was infinite
7 resources, and our children are growing up in a much
8 different world and they are very much aware of these
9 categories.
10 Some of the papers spin the story that David Chain
11 shouldn't have been there. Well, obviously, nobody
12 remembers our history, because any cause of social
13 justice in our history, you name one, the women's
14 movement, the labor movement, any social justice civil
15 rights history you find out what people have done and the
16 torture.
17 I know the police, they aren't all bad, but
18 Amnesty International has now put out a book about police
19 abuse in America, not a Third World country. Putting
20 pepper spray in nonviolent young people's eyes is
21 torture.
22 I wrote a poem that I'd like to read when I heard
23 about David Chain and I want you to know that the chain
24 will not be broken, no matter what you do or say, because
25 we will not stop coming, writing, faxing, calling. We
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1 know the country we live in and we know what talks in
2 this country, and it's called lots and lots of money.
3 My mother's heart weeps for David Chain, but I am
4 comforted in knowing that there is a special place in
5 heaven for one who lays down their life for justice. All
6 religions tell us this, and my mother's heart validates
7 it. We have lost others in this war. Their light was
8 bright and rippled out large like spirit does. This
9 chain will not be broken. My mother's heart testifies to
10 this truth.
11 You may -- I wrote this to Charles Herwitz.
12 You may be surprised to know that I pray for your
13 soul. Where is your heart? My mother's heart feels even
14 for you in your lack of understanding of simple truths.
15 I do not cast blame on the logger. It belongs to you and
16 Pacific Lumber for the blatant disregard for truth and
17 justice.
18 Consciousness is a slow dance in this decade for
19 some. Headwaters evolution has taken millions of years.
20 I hear Mother Earth's weeping heart. When will you?
21 You must have children. I beg you, ask the
22 children. They will tell you. I wish I had a dollar for
23 everyone who didn't even know what Headwaters was and I'd
24 give it to Earth First because there are lots and lots of
25 people. And when I tell them, not one of them has said
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1 to me that it is okay what is going on.
2 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you very much.
3 (Applause.)
4 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Cougar Black Paw to be
5 followed by Ayla Wolf.
6 MR. BLACK PAW: Greetings, ladies and gentlemen.
7 My name is Cougar Black Paw. I'm an ambassador,
8 representative, messenger of the Earth tribes of Mother
9 Earth, other known as Rainbow Family, the Living Light.
10 I am here in response to call from a sister that
11 was there when David Gypsy Chain died. She called and
12 she let all our families know in North America of his
13 death.
14 In response of his death, in memory of his death,
15 our family has awakened, because in one death 10 sprouts
16 have risen. I am here to remind you gentlemen and
17 women -- I don't know how to say it right in the
18 professional way -- but I was in the military. I was in
19 the Gulf War. I used to be a very obedient person just
20 like police officers that are very obedient here and
21 doing their job. I used to be one of these people that
22 did things under orders. I used to be a person that
23 believed in the system.
24 Ever since I swore to that Constitution of freedom
25 and what is right and what I've seen since after the Gulf
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1 War in my path and what I've seen in native America, what
2 I've seen in our corporations, I don't know any more.
3 I am here to bring awareness, not hate, awareness,
4 awareness of the love and the unity within the younger
5 general. Of the X generation, which stands for Malcolm
6 X, of freedom and truth. I'm here to bring awareness to
7 you gentlemen of an older generation that if this HCP is
8 approved, all I can advise is to my brothers in uniform
9 to not be violent to nonviolent people.
10 We will stand strong in the thousands. We will
11 come and occupy Mother Earth and protect her as we do in
12 the national forest during Rainbow gatherings, the one
13 and only standing place of the First Amendment in which
14 the government has not been able to stop the last 30
15 years.
16 We are here in memory of David "Gypsy" Chain. In
17 the thousands representing from musicians to artists to
18 film makers, we will continue on and your names will be
19 remembered as it was in '89 when the walls fell in the
20 East, in the eastern block that I used to think were my
21 enemies which are my family and my brothers and sisters
22 now.
23 I love you and I hope you in the suits will think
24 of your children and will think of your grandchildren as
25 I do for my child who is only one-year-old. I hope you
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1 will think of the generations to come and think of
2 something beautiful that you could have helped create
3 like a beautiful new national forest in that area and
4 been a part of something, hopefully will be a part of
5 something, but if you create this and allow this HCP to
6 come through, I hope that you will not look back five
7 years later and see the thousands and the reports and the
8 people that have died because of your decision here and
9 now in the moment.
10 So, please, when you return home tonight, in the
11 these weeks, in this coming year, how long this ever
12 process takes in the bureaucratic world, please think
13 from your heart, think with the love of your God, think
14 of the children of the future. In the memory of David
15 "Gypsy" Chain, one love.
16 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
17 (Applause.)
18 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Ayla Wolf will be
19 followed by Scott Overby.
20 MS. WOLF: We are all one and the same. I want to
21 apologize to Mr. Ortega for what the brother man said
22 earlier were some harsh words. It was simply the balance
23 of all the emotions that we fully feel coming through us.
24 What the trees would wish to say is that they we
25 love you. They stand the strongest, they stand the
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1 truest and in the end, when they fall, they are the ones
2 that have conquered. When you cut down my trees, you cut
3 down me. When you cut down my trees, you cut down
4 yourself.
5 There is not much more I can say. If you're not
6 already convinced, it saddens me to say that I doubt that
7 you will be. The truth has been spoken in many words,
8 big and small, and in the silence of the great redwoods
9 and the animals and all the other trees and the brother
10 Gypsy and all the brothers and sisters of mine that have
11 been tortured. It has been spoken, and the truth has
12 been heard and the truth is don't deny yourselves. You
13 can't deny yourselves. No matter how hard you try, you
14 can't. No matter how much you don't listen, how much you
15 don't see, how little you say to stand up for the truth,
16 the truth is still the truth. And in the end, the truth
17 will still be the truth and love will still be love.
18 Whether there's trees or not. The time is now. The day
19 is now. Say what you mean, mean what you say. Lift the
20 day, then let it go. But I tell you, brothers and
21 sisters, that if you don't abide by this, surely you can
22 feel what words cannot bring.
23 I made a vow to Jah-Jah that I would try to speak
24 only words that would uplift my brothers and sisters, and
25 today I want to uplift you with what I have seen and I
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1 have seen that Maxxam is destroying my home. If I lived
2 in a structure in a city and someone destroyed my home, I
3 could seek justice for this. Somehow I don't see why now
4 seeking justice I find that there is no justice except
5 for the divine will of that which is and I can only
6 depend on you truly seeing who you are to save my home.
7 I hope I have made myself clear.
8 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you very much.
9 (Applause.)
10 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Scott Overby followed by
11 John Darian Walkstrom.
12 MR. OVERBY: I don't even want to speak words of
13 death of the ancient redwood trees and the Douglas firs
14 and other trees and animals that die and our brother
15 Gypsy that died. I want to talk about the life of hemp
16 and how that can replace what you use redwood trees for.
17 Every product you make with wood can be made with hemp.
18 Brother man said that his company had been alive
19 for 170 years and before that there was a hemp company
20 and they wrote our Constituion on it. And Jesus' shoes
21 were made of it. That was the first product that we ever
22 made in agriculture.
23 It's time for us to go back, because our
24 grandmother's back.
25 (Singing)
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1 Say my grandmother's back, she been pressed to the
2 ground by the oppressor man who bring her down, down
3 down. Oppressor man, see what you doing, oppressor man,
4 see what you ruin. Oppressor man, here what I saying,
5 oppressor man, be changing your ways now. Her body is
6 not a commodity. Her body is not a commodity, not a
7 prodouct to be bought or sold, not to be mined for oil
8 and gold. She's not a product to be bought nor sold, not
9 to be mined for oil and gold. No. She give what she got
10 to give, she gives so that we can live. She makes the
11 world alive. Without her we don't survive. So wake up.
12 Na-na-na-na-na. I say wake up, people, and hear the
13 call. I say wake up children, one and all. This is
14 disposable society we're living in today, this disposable
15 society is going to throw itself away. It's going to
16 throw itself away. Don't throw us all away. Say please.
17 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
18 (Applause.)
19 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: John Darian Walkstrom
20 followed by Christian Brownrigg.
21 MR. WALKSTROM: I go by my middle name. It's
22 Darian, and my last name is Walkstrom, and it won't be
23 forever.
24 I appreciate your time and I'm very concerned. I
25 don't know that there is much more that I can say that my
137
1 brothers and sisters have not said already. But I can
2 tell you one thing. If you poison the Earth, if you
3 poison the air, if you poison the trees, you poison
4 yourself because you poison the water and you are water.
5 If you take away the trees that hold the ground firm, the
6 land will slide away and it will be no more.
7 I pray every day to the one mighty Jah that I will
8 live to see another because I am disgusted. I am
9 disgusted with myself being a human, being a creature of
10 this planet and not finding some way to redeem what my
11 forefathers have already done.
12 In the name of peace on Earth, in the name of the
13 Rainbow Tribe, in the name of the warriors of the family
14 of Living Light, I beg of you, I beg of you, reconsider
15 your plans many times. I always do, and I can only speak
16 for myself, because -- I can only speak for myself
17 because that's the only truth that I know and I'm guided
18 directly and I love you all. Peace.
19 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
20 (Applause.)
21 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Christian Brownrigg will
22 be followed by Dave Casebeer.
23 MS. BROWNRIGG. My name is Christian Brownrigg,
24 C-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n B-r-o-w-n-r-i-g-g.
25 I'm here tonight because I'm concerned about the
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1 world I'm inheriting. From what I understand, HCP's are
2 supposed to protect the health of the land for which they
3 are designed. Yet this plan allows for clear-cutting, it
4 allows for the take of 300 endangered birds among many
5 other things, and it has such gaps in logic as allowing
6 the trees to be cut that contain nests just because it
7 isn't nesting season. It also fails to account for all
8 of the unlisted species that are nonetheless rare and
9 equally sensitive.
10 For 50 years Maxxam will not have to take into
11 account any new information, and this I find to be one of
12 the most frightening parts of a potential Habitat
13 Conservation Plan. It's as if I were to sign up for a
14 health insurance company that wouldn't allow its doctors
15 to have access to new research. It wouldn't be in the
16 best interest of my health, and I don't think that this
17 plan is in the best interest of any aspects of the life
18 in Headwaters.
19 In our culture, science is given a great emphasis
20 and I find it appalling that in a case like this when
21 it's needed it's not taken into account. When federal
22 scientists say that stream buffers need to be at least
23 300 feet, they need to be at least 300 feet, not 30.
24 I think we also need to consider who this HCP is
25 being issued to. Now, the Code of Federal Regulations
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1 forbids the issuance of an incidental take permit to any
2 entity that has criminal citation for the same type of
3 behavior that it's seeking the permit for. And given the
4 hundreds of instances that Maxxam has been convicted of
5 criminal violations of California forestry laws, issuing
6 them any incidental take permit such as those provided in
7 the HCP is violation of federal law.
8 We have already lost 96 percent of our ancient
9 redwoods, or thereabouts, and we should not leave the
10 rest in the hands of a company that has already
11 demonstrated that they cannot or will not be responsible
12 for the land and has shown a utter lack of conscience
13 regarding the species that it harms. We need to take
14 better care of the land than this.
15 In a recent article in the "Sacramento Bee" they
16 called my generation the most optimistic and the most
17 environmentally minded. I would like to say as one of
18 the youngest speakers here that this total disregard for
19 the Earth is unacceptable. We will not, because we
20 understand that we cannot, sit by and let it happen.
21 Thank you
22 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
23 (Applause.)
24 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Dave Casebeer will be
25 followed by Craig Michaels.
140
1 MR. CASEBEER: Dave Casebeer, C-a-s-e-b-e-e-r.
2 I was here earlier today and I read a little
3 statement that I spent some time preparing. Now, though,
4 I'm doing something extemporaneous, so hopefully I won't
5 blow it.
6 Some people have talked about awareness today --
7 by the way, thanks again for everybody for showing up and
8 thanks to all for letting me speak.
9 I want to let you know that I stepped outside the
10 hallway earlier when, I don't remember the gentleman's
11 name, but he had a green shirt on like mine and he spoke
12 in support of the HCP. I confronted him in the hallway
13 and I asked him if he'd seen Joan Dunning's book with
14 Doug Thron's photographs. Immediately, though, he very
15 angrily looked at me and said, "Who are you with?"
16 I said, I'm with no one. I'm a citizen. I'm a
17 dad. I'm a guy who cares. I then asked again, Have you
18 seen Joan Dunning's book, have you seen Doug Thron's
19 slide show. He said no. I said, Well, maybe you ought
20 to. I said, Have you been on the land and see what you
21 claim that it was going to be sustainable and you're
22 going to be able to reforest. He said, No, and he
23 angrily walked away.
24 I suggest that all the powers that be take a look
25 at Doug Thron's slide show and read Joan Dunning's book
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1 before making any more decisions. I'd also like to thank
2 Mr. Ortega and Bill Hogarth, who I saw in the slide room
3 earlier, for looking at that program.
4 I met a man named Dan Bacher who I hoped would be
5 speaking tonight outside of the co-op Friday night. He
6 put this publication in my hand, and I'd like to read a
7 few statements from it. He interviewed Merle Haggard.
8 Merle said:
9 "Clear-cutting is rape. Several years I drove
10 along the coast from Coos Bay to Crescent City and the
11 destruction I saw made me sick to my stomach."
12 Haggard, a lumber millworker before launching his
13 recording career, said, quote:
14 "I fished in the stream of the north coast
15 since I came to Eureka to work in a plywood
16 mill in 1955. The problem is that many of
17 the people who work in the mills aren't
18 aware what logging companies like Pacific
19 Lumber are doing. Their management of our
20 forest resources over the past 20 years is
21 proof enough that they don't know what
22 they're doing. The people responsible for
23 this destruction, government officials and
24 timber co-owners, should be taken out of
25 their positions. These forests support the
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1 grandest life on Earth. To have no feeling
2 for it is criminal. Only money is being
3 heard now, not the voice of the people."
4 Bill Hogarth said the plan violated the
5 agreement's principles. Hogarth said the plan failed to
6 protect hillside slopes from activities that could cause
7 landslides as well as allowing timber harvesting in
8 riparian management zones that don't meet planning
9 standards for planting conifers along a stream.
10 Hogarth recommended that CDF immediately revoke
11 its approval of the THP. Palco began cutting trees and
12 the local restoration activists moved onto their land to
13 protest the logging. After Hogarth personally toured the
14 area, a gentleman's agreement between NMFS and Pacific
15 Lumber reached, but the company apparently reneged on its
16 agreement a few days later.
17 Over 150 locals, former Pacific Lumber employees,
18 commercial fishermen, sport anglers and community
19 activists held a rally on the Mattole River on July 25th
20 to protest Pacific Lumber's logging of valuable salmonid
21 habitat.
22 The Mattole is the birthplace of the stream
23 restoration movement in California said Craig Bell,
24 executive director of Northern California Association of
25 River Guides, president of the Salmonid Restoration
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1 Federation. The approval of this plan has the potential
2 of undoing 20 years of restoration work.
3 I'll wrap it up with Bill Hogarth's statement.
4 All along Pacific Lumber has been ready to log over the
5 Mattole saying it's just a few environmentalists and
6 hippies opposing the logging, he said, but the opposition
7 is broad-based. This is a sacred river to fishermen. It
8 has the purest and hardest-fighting strain of steelhead
9 in California. We're drawing the line at the Mattole.
10 We will on the Mattole fishery.
11 And I'll end with this last statement. I truly
12 believe that when we die the only way we will die in
13 peace is to know that we will leave our children and
14 grandchildren something that we feel good about. It's
15 not about the money we're getting for whatever end that
16 means. Let's put our children first. Let's put our
17 grandchildren first.
18 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you sir.
19 (Applause.)
20 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Craig Michaels will be
21 followed by Melinda Leithold.
22 MR. MICHAELS: Good evening. My name is Craig
23 Michaels, M-i-c-h-a-e-l-s. I spoke earlier today. I
24 just wanted reiterate a few points and bring up some new
25 ones.
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1 Just to reiterate, the first 10 years of this
2 so-called Sustained Yield Plan will call for logging over
3 25 percent of Pacific Lumber's holdings, over 54,000
4 acres. Of these lands, more than 35,000 acres will be
5 clear-cut. Within the first four years alone, 2,580
6 acres of old growth will be cut, 2,236 acres of which
7 will be clear-cut.
8 This is not a plan that will facilitate, as
9 Mr. Johnson said earlier, this will not facilitate,
10 quote, "sustained production of high quality timber
11 products while giving consideration to environmental and
12 economic values," end quote, as required under Section 14
13 of the Code of Federal Regulations 1091.1(b).
14 I talked earlier about the stream survey data
15 being incomplete, outdated and intentionally misleading.
16 The marbled murrelets survyes are similarly inadequate,
17 to say the least. Although Pacific Lumber has surveyed
18 for murrelets every summer since 1972, the HCP admits
19 that surveys were, quote:
20 "...conducted primarily for the purpose of
21 determining whether a specific stand of old
22 growth could be cleared for harvest, not
23 conducted uniformly or with a design
24 intended to determine the distribution of
25 densely murrelet on the entire property."
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1 End quote.
2 As a result, much of the potential murrelet
3 habitat on the property has never been adequately
4 surveyed. The Habitat Conservation Plan estimates a take
5 of between 251 and 340 of the slightly less than 1500
6 birds assumed to nest on Pacific Lumber land. However,
7 the HCP clearly proposes to harvest more than 53 percent
8 of available habitat, most of it unsurveyed, residual,
9 old growth redwood. If occupancy rates are in fact
10 higher than those estimated by Pacific Lumber, which,
11 hmm, I wonder if they are, the rate of take could be much
12 higher. As many as 700 murrelets, or half the local
13 population, could die.
14 Interestingly enough, Pacific Lumber proposes to
15 sacrifice this habitat without doing a single additional
16 survey to determine whether murrelets nest in these areas
17 or how many birds actually will be or displaced by their
18 destruction.
19 The company also plans to log areas occupied or
20 potentially occupied by murrelets throughout the species'
21 summer breeding season, thereby increasing the chances
22 that murrelets will be directly killed by timber
23 operations.
24 There is absolutely no legal or biological
25 justification for logging areas known to be occupied by a
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1 critical threatened species when that species is present.
2 In fact, in order to meet the minimal legal standards
3 under the Endangered Species Act, an HCP must, quote,
4 "minimize and mitigate to the maximum extent practical,"
5 unquote, any damage to endangered species and their
6 habitat.
7 I just wanted to reiterate that Pacific Lumber has
8 been convicted of numerous criminal violations of
9 California forestry laws and has displayed a clear
10 disregard for the public trust. Their request for a take
11 permit should therefore be denied under Section 50 of the
12 Code of Federal Regulations 13.21(b)(1).
13 Just to wrap up, the company's most recent crimes
14 including clear-cutting a streamside buffer zone,
15 overlogging in a streamside buffer zone, clear-cutting
16 around northern spotted owl nest trees, and driving
17 trucks directly through a fish-bearing stream.
18 I'll just wrap it up here.
19 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, but you're
20 going much too fast for the reporter to keep up with you.
21 MR. MICHAELS: I'm sorry. Well, you can read this
22 from right there. This is an ad that was in the "New
23 York Times" today. It says 99 percent of coho salmon are
24 already gone. But don't worry, federal bureaucrats are
25 taking care of the last one percent.
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1 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
2 MR. MICHAELS: Now, who could those federal
3 bureaucrats be and what are they doing to protect that
4 last one percent?
5 (Applause.)
6 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: On that note, we will
7 take a 10 minute break. Thank you. We'll be back in
8 session. We're off record.
9 (Recess taken.)
10 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: All right. Ladies and
11 gentlemen, we will reconvene this session of the public
12 hearing. The next speaker is Melinda Liethold, who will
13 be followed by Lorraine Webb.
14 MS. LEITHOLD: My name is Melinda Leithold,
15 spelled L-e-i-t-h-o-l-d.
16 I'm a third generation California person. I'm a
17 grandmother. My oldest grandchild is about the age of
18 some of the kids that are up in the woods now. I have a
19 Bachelor of Science degree from U. C. Berkeley. One
20 thing I remember from my anthropology was this theory of
21 diffusion of responsibility, and the theory is based on
22 some studies of people watching crime being committed
23 from apartment buildings down on the street. You may be
24 familiar with some of these studies.
25 Anyway, in this case, a murder was being watched
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1 and a lot of people saw it, but nobody did anything
2 because everybody sort of hoped somebody else would do
3 it. And so I'm sort of noticing that maybe we've got
4 some diffusion of responsibility going on in our country
5 now. And it's interesting that these marginalized
6 people, the hippies, are the ones who are out there
7 taking responsibility.
8 They are actually acting on their beliefs and, you
9 know, I didn't do it for a long time. I heard about
10 Redwood Summer, and I heard about these two Earth First
11 activists bombed themselves. I thought that doesn't
12 sound right. I don't think they bombed themselves. I
13 think there is something going on here.
14 And I really got, after I read more about it and
15 heard more about it, that they didn't bomb themselves.
16 They were taking responsibility. They were trying to get
17 other people to do it, to take responsibility for
18 standing in their truth. And, you know, something else
19 happened there, and it was trying to stop people from
20 taking responsibility.
21 Anyway, as far as this HCP goes, I've been up
22 there. I've stayed a little bit at the Earth First base
23 camps, mainly as a kind of elder observer. I haven't
24 been up in the woods lately, but I have hiked around in
25 the woods around the clear-cut in Stafford, and, you
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1 know, I know how slippy and slidy it is just to hike
2 through there and it's steep.
3 So, you know, I'm a permaculture design
4 consultant. That's one of my hats, and I'm a gardener,
5 you don't have to be brilliant to know that there is a
6 lot of destruction going on up there. When you've got a
7 35-ton caterpillar dragging trees off of hillsides, you
8 know, they make an eight-foot rut when they make these
9 cuts to get the cut down logs off and then they compact
10 the soil. You know, there is not going to be much, I
11 know from gardening you can't really garden in something
12 that's been compacted by 35 tons of pressure. That's one
13 thing I think that might be looked at in the HCP is kind
14 of logging practices that Maxxam Pacific Lumber is using.
15 If they could return to what was going on before
16 Maxxam leveraged this buyout and do the logging the way
17 Pacific Lumber Company under as the Murphy family was
18 going on, that was sustained forestry. That wasn't, you
19 know, what do you call it, liquidation logging. You
20 know, this liquidation is liquidation in more ways than
21 one. They're liquefying the hills. The liquidation is
22 coming down in mudslides and then the millions of dollars
23 are rolling out of the county.
24 I want to read a little bit from "What Is Wrong
25 With the Pacific Lumber Habitat Company Conservation
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1 Plan" the ones that get me. Well, there is no mention of
2 watershed rest, and as we all know as human beings,
3 everything needs rest. So recent studies indicate that
4 there is no substitute for watershed rest if salmon
5 restoration is to succeed, and they don't make any
6 mention of that in here.
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
8 (Applause.)
9 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Lorraine Webb followed by
10 Brian Dunbar.
11 MS. WEBB: Hello. My name is Lorraine Webb,
12 W-e-b-b. I am speaking today as a representative of
13 founding board members of Yuba Watershed Institute, which
14 is a Nevada County based environmental preservation
15 coalition of approximately 1400 members.
16 YWI, in conjunction with the Bureau of Land
17 Management and Timber Framers Guild of North America have
18 created a model forest inventory assessment of the Inimim
19 Forest of the Sierra Nevada, and founding members include
20 Bob Erickson and Gary Snyder.
21 YWI reknowned silviculturists concur with commonly
22 held good science that Pacific Lumber's proposed HCP
23 would essentially bequeath itself a legal license to kill
24 endangered species, most especially with regard to the
25 obviously inadequate stream setback recommendation, and
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1 it is evident that the point of this document is to
2 institutionalize management of a single species tree
3 plantation.
4 In light of current FDIC charges against Charles
5 Herwitz, we hope to see this man pay and not be further
6 rewarded for his pillage. Hopefully, any restitution
7 that he may be compelled to repay to taxpayers will not
8 come too late and at the expense of this great
9 rainforest, and may include restoration of pirated
10 loggers' benefits and implementation of volunteer
11 training programs such as have been offered from other
12 industries in times of change.
13 Please do not allow him to destroy this ecosystem
14 as well as the town of Scotia. I was there when 8,000
15 people came to protest the salvage logging. Associate
16 Press reported 1200. I was there, and I can tell you
17 that it was probably between six and eight thousand
18 people.
19 And so with the intention that we may not be
20 remembered as the generation of agencies who stood by to
21 watch this irreplaceable treasure and coastal air quality
22 benefactor be pillaged and sold for fire sale prices, we
23 ask you to implement comprehensive habitat plan reform
24 and these changes and the measures by which Pacific
25 Lumber should be held accountable should be open to
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1 public review as the regulatory conditions that CDF that
2 has prescribed are not enforceable, its personnel is
3 inadequate to the scope of Maxxam's historically evident
4 bad faith intention.
5 And so on a personal note, since forests
6 apparently travel in dream time, that particular forest
7 has been coming into my dreams on curling fingers of
8 trailing mist for about 12 years. It won't leave me
9 alone. I'm blessed in that regard, actually. But I have
10 a few points to make of my own.
11 That this is being called a Sustained Yield Plan
12 is insulting to all that's holy. Well, I'm just going to
13 say that incidental taking, that quote that you state so
14 dryly is probably the most obscene thing I've ever heard
15 spoken of. Once this irreplaceable old growth coastal
16 redwood forest is gone it's gone. I thank you for
17 listening. I hope you've heard.
18 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
19 (Applause.)
20 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Brian Dunbar to be
21 followed by Scott Schroder.
22 MR. DUNBAR: My name is Brian Dunbar, D-u-n-b-a-r.
23 I'm an electrical engineer. I drove down from Nevada
24 County also.
25 First I'd like to address the argument the
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1 gentleman made earlier that you should approve the plan
2 because of the economics of his business. We cannot
3 justify continuation of nonsustainable practices just so
4 some people can keep their lifestyles. If someone has
5 made their living forever pouring toxic chemicals into
6 the ground, does that mean he should be allowed to keep
7 doing it forever? And train his sons to keep doing it?
8 While I don't envy you your role here, you must be
9 under incredible pressure when so much money and
10 political capital is at stake, on the other hand, you
11 have a resource whose value cannot be calculated, a
12 resource which cannot be owned by one person or one
13 company, something we all depend upon, not just us
14 humans, but all members of the affected ecosystem.
15 Several of these members are several endangered.
16 The marbled murrelet population cannot sustain the
17 allowed 17 percent kill-off that is allowed by the plan.
18 The stream buffer zones are entirely too small to protect
19 the coho salmon. The lack of protection could actually
20 cause extinction of the local coho salmon population.
21 Also, when making your decision, you must take
22 into account the past history of the applicant. Pacific
23 Lumber has proven themselves irresponsible and incapable
24 of following responsible logging practices.
25 In summary, I'd just ask you to please reject this
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1 plan. You have this responsibility on your head. If
2 that is not enough to make the right decision, please
3 think of the quality of life of your children's children.
4 Thank you.
5 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
6 (Applause.)
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Scott Schroder will be
8 followed by Paulette Cuilla.
9 MR. SCHRODER: Hi, my name is Scott Schroder.
10 It's spelled S-c-h-r-o-d-e-r.
11 I honestly believe that the question of whether or
12 not the no surprises policy has any credibility
13 whatsoever doesn't warrant any further conversation in
14 the scientific community. I think it's been thoroughly
15 established that it doesn't have any credibility.
16 Insofar as it's been codified in public law, it
17 can be implemented with or without scientific
18 credibility, but following the mandate of the national
19 environmental protection act, I believe the U. S. grants
20 it a great deal of credibility in the language it uses to
21 describe the HCP and the policy contained therein and
22 that that does not follow the mandate of the national
23 environmental protection act and that it's illegal.
24 The 50-year plan itself I don't think is
25 sustainable or not worthy or a great deal of very good
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1 science went into the actual, into laying the groundwork
2 of the scientific knowledge that formed the foundation of
3 the plan. I think the conclusions that were drawn from
4 it were completely foolhardy and irrelevant. Thank you.
5 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
6 (Applause.)
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Paulette Cuilla be
8 followed by Janna Bennett.
9 MS. CUILLA: My name is Paulette Ciulla. That's
10 spelled C-u-i-l-l-a. I'm a member of the Serving the
11 Earth Committee of Noetic Sciences, and I'm here to speak
12 to you today because I'm very, very concerned about this
13 Headwaters HCP.
14 I believe that it's based on misleading
15 information. It allows for the destruction of critical
16 habitat. It will not protect threatened and endangered
17 species. As a matter of fact, it works against their
18 recovery.
19 I understand that this is the first HCP to include
20 coho salmon in California and will probably be used as
21 the model for future HCP's, and yet it allows for
22 critical destruction of the salmon habitat, and that's
23 before a recovery plan has even been established.
24 The streambed protection in this HCP must be
25 strengthened. It calls for only a 100-foot no-cut buffer
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1 zone, and even then it allows for some logging to be done
2 right up to the edge of the fish-bearing streams, and the
3 best science available says that it should be a minimum
4 of 300 feet up to 600 feet, and yet this HCP states that
5 under any circumstances the no-cut buffer zone shall not
6 be more than 170 feet. That's inappropriate.
7 The watershed assessment plan has not been
8 completed yet, as I understand. Biologists need to be
9 able to look at the unique conditions of each watershed
10 and determine the needs of the species in that area. If
11 we force a politically predetermined no-cut buffer zone
12 on them, then a -- well, a good scientific report is not
13 possible.
14 I also question the legality of whether we should
15 even be issuing Pacific Lumber a permit to take
16 endangered species. They have time after time after time
17 violated the California forestry laws, and they continue
18 to do so, and lack of enforcement allows them to continue
19 that process because, let's face it, they make more money
20 by doing whatever they want to do and maybe get a fine
21 and, you know, if they get caught, who knows.
22 I maintain it's illegal to issue them a permit to
23 take endangered species. This HCP is not based in
24 science, it's illegal, and the biology is based on
25 politics. You have a grave responsibility here to stand
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1 up to the politicians and the opportunity to bring
2 science back into this process. I hope you take that
3 responsibility seriously because our children depend on
4 it, both yours and mine.
5 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you very much.
6 (Applause.)
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Janna Bennett will be
8 followed by Keith Quinn.
9 MS. BENNETT: As much I want the full 60,000 acre
10 ecosystem preserved and it should be because we the
11 taxpayers of America have already paid Charlie Herwitz
12 for it to the tune of 1.6 billion dollars, I'm here
13 tonight to urge you to not pass this piece, the HCP/SYP.
14 Approval of HCP would give the company an incidental take
15 permit allowing it to kill endangered species and destroy
16 their habitat for the next 50 years in exchange for a few
17 mitigation measures. Would we have approved incidental
18 take of dinosaurs?
19 This HCP/SYP should not be approved as written.
20 In order for endangered species in the north coast
21 community to survive and recover in the future, an
22 alternative must be pursued based on conservation of
23 ancient and residual forests, protection and restoration
24 of streams and long-term certified sustainable forestry.
25 What will their economy be based on in 50 to a
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1 hundred years when the natural beauty is destroyed, the
2 water polluted, the land raped by clear-cutting, the fish
3 gone? Will we visit it like we visit Pompeii?
4 The reasons that you should reject this plan, it's
5 illegal, a provision in the Code of Federal Regulations
6 forbids the issuance of an incidental take permit to
7 Pacific Lumber because they have received criminal
8 citations for the type of behavior for which the entity
9 seeks a permit. Under these situations, the issuance of
10 an incidental take permit would violate federal law.
11 Mitigation for endangered species is inadequate.
12 There is no scientifically valid way to mitigate the
13 permanent destruction of ancient forest habitat. This
14 plan would allow Pacific Lumber to liquidate over 17,000
15 acres of ancient and residual forest habitat, killing at
16 least 17 percent of the local marbled murrelet population
17 in the process.
18 The protection for coastal streams and salmon is
19 inadequate. Interim stream buffer zones are far
20 narrower, in some instances as little as 30 feet, than
21 those recommended by federal scientists, 300 feet. And
22 anybody with a brain knows that if you log within a
23 watershed, you're going to damage the water at the bottom
24 of that watershed.
25 The HCP would allow clear-cutting of over 35,000
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1 acres of forest land of 2,500 acres of ancient virgin
2 forest in the next four years and most of it would be
3 clear-cut.
4 The HCP fails to adequately address the
5 significant potential important landslides, and a good
6 example here is that of the town of Stafford. The HCP
7 would allow radically increased herbicide use.
8 In summary, California possesses a world class
9 jewel. We must preserve this global treasure. We must
10 act to promote sustainable practices to ensure that our
11 children and our children's children and future
12 generations' heritage is preserved. I urge you to insist
13 on a scientifically based, factual sustainable yield
14 plan. Don't be deceived by the smoke and mirrors of
15 corporate financial greed. Preserve the few remaining
16 watersheds. Have the courage to stand up to corrupt,
17 illegal, immoral and unethical business practices. Speak
18 for us, the people.
19 (Applause.)
20 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Keith Quinn
21 will be followed by Marylou Knapp.
22 MR. QUINN: Thank you. Nakoma Keith Quinn,
23 N-a-k-o-m-a K-e-i-t-h Q-u-i-n-n.
24 I spoke earlier this afternoon about an
25 acknowledgement that we are all children of the creator,
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1 adult, mature and wise beyond our years, all of us in
2 this room, I would say.
3 I wanted to just go over some of what I think many
4 of us within the community of humanity see as gross
5 injustices that have been going on. I heard someone
6 earlier state that Pacific Lumber has not been doing a
7 good job. I think Pacific Lumber has been doing the job,
8 that the Maxxam Corporation and the holding corporations
9 that have controlling interests within Pacific Lumber are
10 the ones who have been cheating, not only the loggers,
11 not only the environmentalists, not only our children and
12 our children's children.
13 I am not here to shut down logging. I am here to
14 offer alternatives to the old process of logging. I have
15 worked in my younger years with the California
16 Conservation Corps, California Department of Forestry as
17 a forest fire fighter and for the Lassen Hotshots as a
18 forest fire fighter. I did not know that I was saving
19 these trees so corporations could take them not only from
20 the environmentalists, but also from the loggers and all
21 of our children.
22 I know that there is a moratorium on building on
23 property owned up by Lake Tahoe, and I envision that a
24 moratorium on all old growths, no matter who retains the
25 legal title of ownership on paper, that a moratorium for
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1 the preservation and a sign of goodwill as a humanity
2 collectively and globally. I think it should be put on
3 to a vote of the public, of the people.
4 I think that it is clear that there are
5 improprieties that go way beyond the realm of criminal in
6 regards to the processes and the monies that were --
7 monies, corporate stocks that were shuffled around to
8 obtain the 51 percent plus stockholder shares that Maxxam
9 corporation and the holding corporation companies that
10 have been pitting loggers against environmentalists
11 against -- pitting anyone and everybody against anyone
12 and everybody. But all of us really do know that we have
13 all been living our entire lives on the same planet,
14 sharing the same planet, and I think all of us are ready
15 to see some justice and equality.
16 Corporations are ficticious entities that become
17 an entity, yet within the same structure, they take
18 individual human beings with names that are given to us
19 and they assign us birth numbers, social security
20 numbers, driver's license numbers and try to do
21 everything to take away our humanness. And as I stated
22 earlier, I would really in my heart of hearts and I think
23 that any of us that ask what is it truly to be a human,
24 it is more a responsibility as a stewardship for all
25 species, responsible management. Responsible harvest
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1 plans.
2 I worked with the State of California doing
3 precommercial thing when I was 20 years of age. I'm not
4 looking to shut down the logging industry, but we need to
5 have a sustainable managed forest. There is enough
6 second growth and third growth forests that there can be
7 responsible managed forestry.
8 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
9 MR. QUINN: I would like to see Pacific Lumber go
10 back to the people and be put in charge of responsible
11 harvest management, the old growth have a moratorium put
12 on it and the corporation and holding companies that have
13 I think illegally obtained the controlling interest of
14 Pacific Lumber to be removed.
15 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
16 (Applause.)
17 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Marylou Knapp to be
18 followed by Nan Gustafson.
19 MS. KNAPP: Hi, I'm Marylou Knapp, K-n-a-p-p.
20 I came here this evening because I know in my
21 heart that what happens with the Headwaters is of such
22 import to all of life on the Earth. I didn't come to
23 speak, but here I am speaking. I've learned a lot from
24 being here this evening about the illegal actions that
25 Maxxam have already used.
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1 Just to my understanding from what I hear, it's
2 simple to see that this plan is not one that can in any
3 clear conscience be implemented, that we can take upon
4 ourselves and to say yes, this is what we would choose to
5 have happen.
6 All I can do is be here this evening and speak
7 with you all, ask you to open your hearts and your minds
8 to take whatever influence that you have and to share
9 what you perceive to be the truth. It seems, like I say,
10 a simple understanding.
11 I thank you very much, you know, for being here.
12 I see that you're listening and I appreciate that. I
13 know that you're in a position that must feel between a
14 rock and hard place, must not feel that comfortable. So
15 I do thank you.
16 A quote comes to my mind. Only up to the last
17 tree has been cut down, only after the last fish has been
18 eaten, only after the last river has been poisoned, only
19 then will we know that money cannot be eaten.
20 Thank you.
21 (Applause.)
22 MS. GUSTAFSON: Good evening. My name is Nan
23 Gustafson. My first name is N-a-n, the last name,
24 G-u-s-t-a-f-s-o-n.
25 Thank you for listening to us all tonight and I
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1 hope very much that our words can be recorded and taken
2 seriously for this.
3 I'm with the Serving the Earth Committee, and I'm
4 also a psychotherapist. And one of the things that is
5 most important, I notice, in working with clients is what
6 heals us and makes us sane is coming to the truth,
7 whether it's in our own selves or whether it's in our
8 relationships. And this is what you're faced with.
9 I've heard many things, and there was a press
10 conference earlier where we had a number of scientists
11 who spoke about what the situation actually is based on
12 their studies of the HCP. And what we have got here is a
13 situation where you have to look for objective science
14 now. What has been put out by Palco is for their benefit
15 and is very obvious. So we have to listen, you have to
16 go to your conscience and pay attention to that and look
17 for objective science.
18 There has not even been watershed investigations
19 on many of these streams that are going to be absolutely
20 destroyed that are put in there that there is over these
21 next years they can go in and they can log up to 30 feet
22 on these streams. And when you think of 30 feet, we're
23 talking here. This is what we're talking. And these
24 giant trees to be felled and destroying these streams.
25 So we have to have objective science brought in
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1 and enough time to look at it so that it can really be
2 put in place. We're talking about the future of a system
3 is not going to be replaced. There is never going to be
4 anything like this again, and it is our time. It's our
5 time in this space here that we have to make the
6 decisions that will affect the entire future.
7 We don't even know what is on these lands. There
8 are 37 species that we know are rare species, some of
9 them endangered, that will be affected, and we are
10 mitigating for the marbled murrelet is the one thing that
11 is really having land set aside and not even enough.
12 There is a space that is considered to be the hole in the
13 doughnut, it's referred to, that hopefully the extra
14 money that makes up this half billion will be able to
15 purchase so that there will be enough land for murrelet.
16 But that's not even a guarantee.
17 And the coho is just going to be devastated. The
18 coho is going to go extinct with this plan. According to
19 the Endangered Species Act and Habitat Conservation
20 Plans, as bad as they are, to have any incidental take is
21 ridiculous, but with this plan the coho is going to go
22 extinct. If you use objective science, that is just
23 inevitable to see and that has to be seen and then you
24 have to let yourselves look to your own responsibilities
25 in this.
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1 It has been such a political dilemma of our
2 Governor and our boards being so influenced, and now we
3 may have a turn in government, but who knows how long any
4 turn will last. So whatever is written, if there is even
5 an HCP granted, which it should not be, but if you decide
6 you have to go with a HCP, guarantees have to be written
7 in there so strongly that any Board of Forestry that
8 wants to go ahead and authorize logging in areas that
9 shouldn't cannot do that. That it is written down that
10 they may not.
11 And I hope very much that you all will be able to
12 sort through all of this, take the scientists' thoughts,
13 the objective science with this and really come up with a
14 plan that will save this land. It is the last we have.
15 Thank you very much.
16 (Applause.)
17 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Mark Rentz to
18 be followed by Anna Mosqueda.
19 MR. RENTZ: My name is Mark Rentz, spelled
20 R-e-n-t-z.
21 I'm here tonight on the behalf of the California
22 Forestry Association, and California Forestry Association
23 wants to go on the record in support of the HCP and the
24 SYP that's being proposed.
25 Appreciate the opportunity for everybody to have a
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1 chance to speak equally tonight and for all comments to
2 be given due consideration.
3 Couple points I'd like to make tonight, couple
4 factual items. I think the previous speaker I agree
5 totally with one of the comments she made I believe that
6 any decision should be based on objective science. I
7 further believe that's what Pacific Lumber Company has
8 strived to do as it's formulated this HCP. Other may
9 disagree. As the comment period evolves and the review
10 of the HCP/SYP is continued then we'll have a chance to
11 discuss it, but I think it's important to keep in mind
12 that what we're talking about is not just the Headwaters.
13 We're talking about a plan that proposes to manage
14 200,000, more than 200,000 acres over the next 50 years.
15 That's quite an endeavor. I've been a forester for 20
16 years and I never imagined that we'd have the science,
17 the skills and the capability to try and assess a
18 landscape of that size, look at it over a time horizon of
19 that period.
20 Let me turn to some of the issues that have been
21 raised tonight, give you my opinion on how they are
22 beeing addressed. First of all, the issue has been
23 raised that hasn't been enough protection for old growth
24 forests. Like I said, this plan is beyond just the
25 Headwaters. Already it has been determined that those
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1 7500 plus acres will be set aside in perpetuity for the
2 public domain.
3 What else does this plan propose? For the next 50
4 years, an additional almost 8500 acres will be, of
5 unentered old growth, about 1500 of it is unentered old
6 growth and 3100 of it contains residual old growth, will
7 be protected for life of HCP.
8 Concern has been raised for the marbled murrelet
9 with the purpose of setting aside these acres is to
10 provide a set of reserves to protect the habitat for the
11 marbled murrelet.
12 Concern has been raised adequacy of the stream
13 buffers. Scientific studies, objective scientific
14 studies that have been requested by the previous speaker
15 conducted indicated that more than 93 percent of the
16 shade requirements for more than 95 percent of the
17 habitat forming large woody debris requirements will be
18 formed, that are found in old growth forests will be
19 formed over the history of this HCP and beyond.
20 Concern has been raised about sediment levels and
21 reducing sediment levels. Pacific Lumber HCP has four
22 approaches for dealing with sediment that I think is
23 quite a commitment.
24 First of all, Pacific Lumber Company has agreed to
25 upgrade or storm proof its roads to prevent road-related
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1 land slides. This will involve replacing culverts,
2 stabilizing unstable road fill and including drainages.
3 They will inspect every road mile in their ownership.
4 They have hired a geologist to evaluate the potential for
5 land slides before they conduct harvesting or build
6 roads.
7 And, finally, concern has been raised that there
8 will not be an opportunity for Pacific Lumber -- to make
9 changes in the Pacific Lumber HCP. That is just not the
10 case. The HCP provides for extensive monitoring and
11 adaptive management component. Throughout the life of
12 the HCP, scientific studies will be conducted on the land
13 and the land must demonstrate to all of you, the agencies
14 that are here before us tonight, that fish and wildlife
15 will be protected and habitat conditions are improving or
16 the HCP must be modified.
17 With that, I close my comments. Thank you very
18 much.
19 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir. Anna
20 Mosqueda will be followed by Andrea Wilson.
21 MS. MOSQUEDA: What I've just given you is just a
22 slight packet of notes of what basically I'm going to say
23 I'm just going to make some comments off of that.
24 I have a couple of issues regarding this HCP/SYP.
25 Mainly, that this is basically more political than
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1 scientific. There is no enforcement whatsoever of this
2 HCP, if it does ultimately become an HCP. And the fact
3 remains this is still an HCP, a Habitat Conservation
4 Plan, which is inherently wrong.
5 Regarding some scientific errors, the big thing
6 everybody seems to be bringing up is the buffer zone.
7 There have been scientists and not even scientists from
8 an educational institution or a nonprofit or an
9 environmental institution or anything like, but
10 scientists from government institutions, from NMFS,
11 National Marines Fisheries, and FEMAT, Federal Ecosystem
12 Management Team, that say that they prescribe a minimum
13 buffer zone equal to the height of one site specific
14 tree, which we're speaking about the Headwaters forest.
15 So this is about approximately 300 feet.
16 Yet the HCP for Class I streams indicates a buffer
17 zone of 170 feet and also authorizes the use of the land.
18 Both FEMAT and NMFS do not recommend using the land near
19 Class I and Class II streams and recommend limited use of
20 Class III streams.
21 We are all here because endangered species are
22 involved. Obviously, there's the marbled murrelet, the
23 coho salmon and northern spotted owl and I'm not going to
24 take the time explaining that because I have other issues
25 that I'd like to bring up.
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1 The fact remains, though, that HCP affects others
2 besides the marble murrelet, the coho salmon and northern
3 spotted owl. You'll see in there there are three pages
4 of species. There is the Pacific lamprey, there are four
5 amphibians, one reptile, I don't even know how many
6 birds, but I'll just name a couple. A double-crested
7 cormorant, great blue heron, great egret, snowy egret,
8 American peregrine falcon, western snowy plover,
9 burrowing owl, Vaux's swift, pilliated wookpecker.
10 There are mammals, including us. And perhaps a
11 lot of people here are forgetting that. That this HCP
12 has no indication of watersheds and the affect that this
13 will have. The watersheds of the north coast are already
14 in despair with no signs of restoration and no
15 indications in this HCP as to what will become of those
16 watersheds.
17 There is the potential for economic dislocation
18 over the long term. This HCP indicates that after the
19 first two decades extensive layoffs may be necessary and
20 since younger forests can be cut and milled in an
21 automated fashion, the need for skilled jobs will cease
22 to exist.
23 Otherwise, old growth forests are part of what
24 make California distinct and special. I guess I'm out of
25 time, so I just want to make a couple quick comments
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1 conclusions. The innate problem with the HCP is the fact
2 that it is a license to kill. And what is the exchange?
3 What is the mitigation? A lot of people here are
4 wondering what allows the license to kill.
5 Just to conclude, whatever you choose to do,
6 please use scientific evidence in determining the
7 validity of this HCP, although that is a rather
8 paradoxical statement in and of itself, and do not use
9 empty words as enforcement.
10 There is actually a document that back in
11 September of '96 CDF gave Pacific Lumber conditions to
12 follow. They did not follow them one month after. CDF
13 stopped a work order and two days after that, the work
14 order was rescinded. No explanation as to why.
15 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
16 MS. MOSQUEDA: Please. The world was not given to
17 you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your
18 children. Thank you.
19 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
20 (Applause.)
21 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Andrea Wilson will be
22 followed by Ed Runnen Bear.
23 MS. WILSON: Hi, I'm Andrea Wilson, W-i-l-s-o-n.
24 And first for the record I just want to say I
25 object to the HCP for all the reasons that are in all the
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1 documents you're getting, all the comments you're getting
2 from all the environmental organizations, take the Sierra
3 Club, Epic and Forests Forever and all of them and I
4 object for the technical reasons they have in there.
5 More importantly, I object to us cutting
6 Headwaters forest at all or any of our old growth here.
7 I think it's really tragic that given we have less than
8 five percent of our old growth forests that we are having
9 this discussion, that we have to beg to keep these trees.
10 I think anyone who is alive and feeling and thinking
11 knows that this is wrong. This is just a no brainer.
12 This is just unjust that is happening.
13 I have redwoods -- I live in the Santa Cruz
14 Mountains, and I have redwoods and they are the most
15 precious things that I have that I, quote/unquote, own.
16 Our forests or precious they harbor life and
17 diversity and species. They are just very crucial to our
18 health. So I really beg to really think about what is
19 going on here, less than five percent, cutting down these
20 forests, they're really forever.
21 But the next comment is that we really don't need
22 the wood that badly. It's very distressing to me that
23 the agencies are charged with protecting our forests are
24 also looking out and they are charged for the
25 responsibility for looking out for our needs for wood.
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1 It seems to me to be a very inherent, inappropriate
2 conflict of interest given the way things work.
3 But if you are looking out for our needs for wood,
4 I think it's very incumbent to look at how we need to be
5 reducing our consumption of wood and I think you have to
6 take that into the equation, the fact that we really
7 don't need this wood, we certainly don't need Headwaters
8 wood.
9 There are many, many alternatives that are out
10 there these days and there is lots of businesses. I
11 actually happen to be on environmental entrepreneur that
12 sells environmentally responsible products. But there
13 are lots of products out there.
14 And certainly we need to be looking very, very
15 forcefully at how we reduce our consumption of wood, how
16 we use wood a lot more efficiently, we recycle the wood,
17 we promote the reuse. Hopefully you have a lot of this
18 information with some of you other agencies like
19 recycling agencies.
20 The use of agricultural materials is very
21 prevalent right now. We can reduce our consumption of
22 wood by using straw bale houses and using agricultural
23 waste for paper. That exists. There is a paper out
24 there that's made from agricultural waste. As well as
25 looking at things like there is paper made out of hemp
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1 and canaf, organic cotton. There are materials that are
2 made in the recycled world as far as plastic lumber that
3 can replace our need for wood in decks and other
4 products.
5 And I think given that you do have that as part of
6 at least the California Department of Forestry that I
7 think it's critical that you look at that and look at
8 that very, very, very seriously because I think when you
9 look at all those products that are out there, you should
10 know we do not need wood from Headwaters forest.
11 And if we had a more appropriate economic system
12 that really did full costing and that really looked at
13 all the costs of just destroying our beautiful forest and
14 all the habitat and all the health risks, I think you
15 would see, if we had the full costing, that the price of
16 a board foot from Headwaters forest should in reality be
17 a billion dollars and so not even Ross Perot or Bill
18 Gates would decide that it was worth having any wood from
19 Headwaters forest.
20 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
21 (Applause.)
22 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Ed Runnen Bear will be
23 followed by Ron Glick.
24 MR. BEAR: I am Ed Runnen Bear, E-d R-u-n-n-e-n
25 B-e-a-r.
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1 As of August 27th, 1998, the date of my baptismal,
2 I'm a child of love, the creator, as are all of you
3 whether you acknowledge that fact or not.
4 I've witnessed three people out of roughly 70
5 voice their outrage and disapproval to this habitat
6 destruction plan, yet it will most likely still be
7 passed, but I can tell you it won't be tolerated.
8 I bet the deal that Mike Milken made that wiped
9 out the steel industry on the East Coast along with my
10 dad's job and 30,000 of his friends looked pretty good on
11 paper. It looked good to Charles Herwitz. He ended up
12 with a logging industry and Headwaters forest out of the
13 deal.
14 I don't think that deal would have been tolerated
15 if people knew the outcome ahead of time like they do
16 here. And if this deal is tolerated knowing the outcome,
17 what deal is going to be next?
18 I've been up in these clear-cuts and I can tell
19 you there's a pretty good view, especially since all the
20 trees are cut down. Looks like prime real estate.
21 What's going to be the next deal? Subdivisions in the
22 forest? Is that the next deal that we have to tolerate?
23 I'm not going to tolerate it. I know a lot of other
24 people who aren't going to tolerate it either.
25 We have to stop this corporate gluttony. This
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1 gluttony is creating the illusion that we don't have the
2 resources that are abundantly there because when it
3 comments down to supply and demand, if you have an
4 overabundance of supply and it's readily available to
5 everybody, it's pretty much free, which it is free,
6 because it comes from God.
7 And these trees, this forest has to be respected
8 as such as a gift from the creator and not thrown away.
9 We shouldn't be making toilet paper and chopsticks out of
10 old growth redwood so we can create the illusion there is
11 not enough redwood. I could go into the alternatives for
12 hours, but I don't need to do that.
13 All I have to say is that we have to stop the
14 gluttony our resources and start appreciating them and
15 using them properly or they're not going to be there any
16 more, and without these resources, this is more than just
17 trees and environment. This is lives and livelihood.
18 They go hand in hand. Without one, you can't have the
19 other. When it's all gone, we're all gone.
20 That's all I have to say.
21 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
22 (Applause.)
23 MR. GLICK: Good evening. My name is Ron Glick,
24 G-l-i-c-k.
25 I'd like to begin with a quote from Dylan Thomas.
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1 "Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage
2 against the dying of the light." And I used to think
3 that that was about growing old, but now I've come to
4 realize it's the failure of democracy. Tonight, it's
5 about the failure of government, and this is the failure
6 of democracy. It has all the trappings of democracy, but
7 listen to the people and they are not being heard.
8 I have lived in Humboldt County on and off for 25
9 years there. I own property there. I own timber
10 property there. I'm a steward of the land. I know about
11 stewardship. I know Pacific Lumber before Maxxam. They
12 had less than 700 employees. In this HCP it says that
13 their growth potential is 125 million board-feet a year.
14 At modern milling techniques of three people per million
15 board-feet per year, the old Pacific Lumber Company had
16 it just right. You do the numbers.
17 Maxxam has come in there and destroyed everything.
18 They've destroyed the forest, they're destroying the
19 endangered species, they're destroying the downstream
20 neighbors, they are destroying the future jobs of the
21 people of Humboldt County with going from sustained yield
22 to cut and run, and government is allowing it to happen.
23 I just wonder if you people when you got into
24 resource management thought that you would ever become
25 what you have become, that you would allow this plunder,
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1 that you would allow one rich white bastard from Texas to
2 come to Humboldt County and destroy it, destroy the
3 communities, destroy the people.
4 You have police putting pepper spray in the eyes
5 of children. You have David Chain dead. Why? Because
6 the government hasn't done its job. You have Julia
7 Butterfly sitting in a tree for 11 months because the
8 government hasn't done its job.
9 It is the failure of government. You have failed.
10 You are failures. How can you live with yourselves and
11 let this go on? It is shameful. It's shocking. It is
12 disgusting.
13 I would like to close with the words of Bob Dylan,
14 another Dylan. He said, because I'm from a rainforest,
15 he said: "What will you do now, my blue-eyed son? What
16 will you do now, my darling young one? I'm going out
17 back 'fore the rain starts afalling."
18 Gee, I forgot my lines.
19 "I'm going out back 'fore the rain starts
20 afalling. I'll walk to the depths of the
21 deepest dark forest where the people are
22 many and their hands are all empty, where
23 the pellets of poison are flooding our
24 waters, where the home in the valley meets
25 the damp dirty prison, where the
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1 executioner's face is always well hidden,
2 where black is the color, where none is the
3 number, and I'll say it and speak and think
4 it and breathe it and reflect it from the
5 mountains till all souls can see it, and
6 I'll stand on the ocean until I start
7 singing, but I know my song well before I
8 start singing, and it's a hard, it's a
9 hard, it's a hard rain that's going to
10 fall."
11 (Applause.)
12 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Richard Estes will be
13 followed by Susan Stevenson.
14 MR. ESTES: My name is Richard Estes.
15 You know, once again we find ourselves in that
16 situation where we have a result in search of a process,
17 and the result, as everyone here is well aware, is that
18 it has been determined that Charles Herwitz and Pacific
19 Lumber must be allowed to log as much as they desire from
20 the Headwaters forest for as much profit as they desire
21 regardless of the effect on the environment and
22 communities of Humboldt County, and yet we have to go
23 through this process and, you know, to be here tonight, I
24 mean it's sad to say, but you really have to be powerless
25 because the people that want the HCP go through, I've
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1 heard one person here tonight speak in favor of the HCP
2 the whole time I've been here, I gather a lobbyist from
3 the forestry association, and everyone else that wants
4 the HCP to go through, they've already given lots of
5 money to Bill Clinton, they've already given lots of
6 money to Pete Wilson, Dan Lungren, Gray Davis, Diane
7 Feinstein. They've lobbied those people privately,
8 they've lobbied their staffs. They don't have to be
9 here. So instead what we have are you here tonight here
10 and we have the reporter and we have all the audience,
11 and we have to, all the powerless people like me, get to
12 be humored.
13 Back in the old days I think there was a lot more
14 integrity because at the turn of the century, you know,
15 the lumber companies came to the West Coast and they just
16 pillaged the landscape and clear-cut and they made their
17 money and we didn't have to go through this kind of
18 process, but apparently that wasn't the most economically
19 efficient use of the redwood, because we didn't have to
20 pay people to come in and hear us tonight, and we didn't
21 have to pay for court reporter to transcribe it and we
22 didn't get to pay the convention center to rent the room
23 and we didn't get to pay cops to be here and so we sort
24 of determined we weren't getting the bang for the buck
25 that we should be getting, so we created this illusory
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1 process. It's kind of the tawdry end to a hundred years
2 of rape and pillage of the forest on the West Coast.
3 That's essentially what you're presiding over. That's
4 essentially what you are going to approve and that is how
5 you will go down in history books of American history.
6 You know there has been plenty of speakers that
7 have spoken about the loss of species on the north coast.
8 There is nothing more I really need to say about that. I
9 will like to add as Ron Glick said, you're also going to
10 destroy the community.
11 When this plan is concluded and Charles Herwitz
12 and Pacific Lumber is permitted to destroy the forest,
13 the north coast will look very much like the abandoned
14 mining towns of the Nevada, Utah, Arizona, the towns that
15 have enormous mountains of mine tailings full of uranium,
16 whatever toxics substances were extracted from the
17 landscape, and nobody lives there any more because, after
18 all, you don't live around toxic tailings and no one's
19 going to want to live around a clear-cut forest either
20 when this plan is finished and Herwitz has logged his
21 timber.
22 The last point I'd like to make to conclude with
23 is, you know, the level of violence by the police that is
24 required to push this plan through is really frightening
25 to me and when pepper spray is used on people in the way
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1 that it has been, I think any decent person should be
2 outraged. And the point I would like to make about this
3 is very important. It is establishing a precedent that
4 will haunt us for many years to come because it won't
5 just be used on Earth First. It will used on the UFW in
6 Monterey County, it will be used on police brutality
7 protestors in San Francisco, it will be used on Act Up,
8 it will be used on everyone and that's because, as Ron
9 Glick said, government has failed and police violence
10 will be required to impose it on people and to keep
11 people from resisting it.
12 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
13 (Applause.)
14 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Susan Stevenson will be
15 followed by Lucky.
16 MS. STEVENSON: Thanks for the chance to
17 incorporate public input into the Habitat Conservation
18 Plan.
19 I have a number of problems with this plan.
20 Number one, most importantly, being that this Habitat
21 Conservation Plan doesn't actually conserve habitat. The
22 document that we're commenting on today is essentially a
23 tawdry political document. It's not a scientific
24 document. But your agencies, Fish and Wildlife Service,
25 National Marine Fisheries Service, as I understand it,
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1 are not charged with getting involved in politics and
2 protecting political careers. You're charged with
3 protecting endangered species.
4 We, the taxpayers, in good faith fund you to do
5 that. We also provide the funding for your research to
6 determine the best ways to protect habitat for endangered
7 species. We, the taxpayers, are also even providing a
8 half a billion dollars to fund this Headwaters agreement
9 with the expectation that endangered species of
10 Headwaters forest will be protected.
11 Imagine our dismay in learning that the wildlife
12 agencies we are funding are not even using the studies
13 that we have funded to preserve the Headwaters agreement
14 that we have funded and the species of Headwaters forest.
15 I would like to urge you to utilize the best
16 available science in the final HCP. Someone mentioned
17 earlier tonight that 99 percent of the coho salmon is
18 already gone. That's not a very good record. If I were
19 charged with protecting something and 99 percent of it
20 was gone, I'd be looking at a way to do it better, and
21 perhaps you should start with looking at your own studies
22 that we the taxpayers have funded.
23 I refer you specifically to the Mantac report
24 commissioned by the National Marine Fisheries Service in
25 1996 which recommends minimum no-cut zones of 170 feet
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1 for all types of streams, also the FEMAT standard already
2 implemented on public lands throughout the Pacific
3 Northwest incorporates 300, 150 and 100-foot buffer zones
4 for Class I, fish-bearing, Class II, nonfish-bearing, and
5 Class III, seasonal streams, respectively. Yet the draft
6 HCP contains buffers less than 10 percent the size of
7 these recommendations.
8 The Fish and Wildlife agency and National Marine
9 Fisheries Service must stand up to Pacific Lumber and
10 insist on sound science.
11 And just as the gentleman from the forestry
12 association mentioned earlier that sound science may be
13 debatable, the best available science may be --
14 reasonable people may disagree. Well, the Fish and
15 Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries
16 Service have made it clear that the documents and the
17 standards that they consider to be the best available
18 science. I refer you back to the hearing last year
19 before the joint, the legislative Joint Committee on
20 Headwaters Forest and Ecosystem Management where
21 Mr. Hogarth testified that the documents that I have
22 mentioned before and the FEMAT standard and the Mantac
23 study, are the most credible reports that are based on
24 the best available science. He said, quote: "These are
25 the cornerstone of the HCP." Please incorporate these
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1 standards in the final document.
2 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
3 (Applause.)
4 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Lucky will be followed by
5 Fred Pepper.
6 LUCKY: I'm Lucky, L-u-c-k-y. And I'd like to get
7 the names of the panelists, if I may. I did earlier, but
8 could you tell me your names, please?
9 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: The names were announced
10 earlier. They're on record. Go ahead.
11 LUCKY: Okay. I have everyone but your name.
12 I guess I would want to ask each of you, all three
13 of you on behalf of your specific agencies, Ross Johnson
14 with the CDF, California Department of Forestry, Mike
15 Spear on behalf of a federal agency, U. S. Fish and
16 Wildlife Services, and I don't know your name, but with
17 the National Marine Fisheries Service, that all the words
18 that have been said here tonight and this afternoon and
19 that will continue to be said, have been said and will be
20 continued to be said over and over and over again, that
21 it will have some sort of impact. And also on the
22 biologists who are going to be reviewing this, our words,
23 the words from these public hearings, that it will be
24 heard.
25 I guess I feel like I'm sort of here with a
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1 prayer. I'm thankful for all the people who have come
2 tonight because we are here and we do care, we all care,
3 and it's not too late to save the trees that are already
4 there, even though they are getting cut every moment and
5 it hurts.
6 I also want, I'd like to -- I wrote a postcard the
7 other day when I was taking a little time, a little break
8 from doing some Earth First work, and I guess I decided I
9 would just address it to you all. I didn't address it to
10 anybody when I wrote it a few days ago, but here this is
11 for you. The trees are so beautiful, so wise, hundreds
12 of years old. Sacred. We don't have to cut any more of
13 them. There are other ways, creative ways to live. No
14 more destruction. As I sit here by the sacred water, the
15 ocean, I pray that clear-cutting stops, that it is deemed
16 unlawful. Corporate greed is on a killing rampage and
17 I'm here to say no more killing. I stand for life and
18 love. I actively resist and with my body, hope and heart
19 pray for recognition, acknowledgement and respect for the
20 sacredness of life.
21 And since I can't get all the names because it was
22 announced already and we don't have repetitions of
23 information, I'll just pass this forward. I put a
24 woman's symbol for you.
25 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
188
1 (Applause.)
2 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Fred Pepper will be
3 followed by Brion Burkett.
4 MR. PEPPER: My name is Fred Pepper, same spelling
5 as in pepper spray victim.
6 I urge you to deny this Habitat Conservation Plan
7 and SYP. It's not based on good science. But I know how
8 hard it is to rock the boat. But I urge you to do just
9 that, and when you're back in your office, rock the boat.
10 When you have to talk to your boss, act up a little.
11 You know, when I look at this HCP, it's obvious to
12 me that it just demonstrates that the industrial economy
13 is destroying our biosphere. And who profits from that?
14 We all get to make a living. We bust our butts for a
15 buck, but who really profits is that one-half of one
16 percent of our population that owns 50 percent of the
17 wealth.
18 This is kind of a formality, but I would like a
19 message given to those guys, those big money guys, and my
20 message to them is, give up your privileged position.
21 It's based on the blood of the Earth and the blood of the
22 people. Use the money to create ecotopia. You'll be
23 much happier as a sovereign member of a consensus circle.
24 And for you that are going to deny this HCP, I
25 would like to quote one of our first ladies, Nancy
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1 Reagan. When it comes to HCP, just say no.
2 (Applause.)
3 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Brion Burkett
4 be followed by Amanda Longcar.
5 MR. BURKETT: Brion, B-r-i-o-n, Burkett,
6 B-u-r-k-e-t-t.
7 Basic truths that no amount of money, government
8 or self-praise are so evident here. Come to listen to a
9 few. Is your government and its policies concerning this
10 and many other issues really for the goodness and
11 betterment of mankind? If so, where do you intend to
12 stand witness to the betterment of very necessary natural
13 environment in 30 to 50 years. You can't listen to the
14 eternal song of a natural spring babbling from snowcapped
15 mountains or witness a family of deer eating grass in a
16 bank or in a tract home.
17 Where your grandchildren going to commune with
18 their animal spirits? Where will they go camping? Where
19 will all of our good old Boy Scouts go romping and
20 stomping? Your laws are the laws Babylon as in very
21 definition of Babylon, a society that inevitably eats
22 itself and turns in on itself.
23 Are your hearts really talking? Take away
24 monetary goals and manufactured conveniences and what is
25 left? Nature. God's gift. Our force are not a style.
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1 You cannot make them plastic tree. When a tree die, you
2 die. Jah live, peace and love. Wake up.
3 I'm not here try to change a new law. I'm here to
4 change the way you listen to your heart. These politics,
5 these lies, you don't listen to your heart and to us
6 people. It is your job to listen, but who do you turn to
7 after tonight with real decision, turn you to your hearts
8 or turn you to big wigs and fat cats burning monies to
9 keep the smoke screen up.
10 The PLC got their blinders up, but that's their
11 right of them to be blind. Blind anger Jah. Open up.
12 These things ain't right. Your heart know. We know it.
13 Do your job as God does his. Service people and the
14 goodness for all for us children, future and present.
15 Thank you. Namas day.
16 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
17 (Applause.)
18 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Amanda Longcar will be
19 followed by Carmen Pereira.
20 MS. LONGCAR: I wasn't planning on speaking
21 tonight. I don't have anything prepared. I'm speaking
22 from my heart.
23 I am 16 years old. I feel it necessary to speak
24 tonight because we've been talking so much about the
25 future generations. Well, I feel I can accurately
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1 represent future generations.
2 I was blessed enough to be born in one of the most
3 beautiful places in the world, Arcata, California. I
4 lived there for the majority of my life surrounded by
5 forests and surrounded by trees and wildlife and nature.
6 I feel that it is my birthright and it is my peers'
7 birthright, it's my brother and sisters' birthright, it
8 is the birthright of my generation and my children's
9 generation. It is our responsibility to maintain that
10 birthright and to pass it along from generation to
11 generation. It cannot be destroyed. It is not
12 replaceable.
13 Sorry. I'm here tonight to remind you that the
14 future generations are watching, and I beseech you not to
15 let us down. Thank you very much.
16 (Applause.)
17 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Carmen
18 Pereira will be followed by Dr. Robert Blackstone.
19 MS. PERIERA: My last is spelled P-e-r-e-i-r-a.
20 People here tonight have expressed their concerns
21 regarding this HCP plan beautifully, bringing forth sound
22 scientific research and information on this plan and
23 words of love from their hearts, love for Headwaters
24 forests and the Earth. So I would like to say something
25 from my heart.
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1 This plan is grossly flawed and it should not be
2 passed. We are taking more from the Earth than we are
3 giving back and that has to stop.
4 I went camping for the first time two summers ago
5 in our northern redwood forests, and the experience was
6 uplifting. You know, the feeling of resting your back
7 against a big, strong, sturdy trunk of a tree that's been
8 there for hundreds of years, listening to the sounds of
9 the night and of the forest, it was truly uplifting and
10 healing.
11 I went to a wake a couple months ago for a tree
12 that was dying and was going to be cut down. I know that
13 sounds kind of silly to go to a wake for a tree, but it's
14 not. We have to see that the Earth, the trees, the air,
15 the water, the ground, the animals have a spiritual
16 value, they have an innate value that goes beyond the
17 dollar value. Thank you.
18 (Applause.)
19 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. Dr. Robert
20 Blackstone will be followed by Dan Bacher.
21 DR. BLACKSTONE: I'm Dr. Robert Blackstone,
22 B-l-a-c-k-s-t-o-n-e.
23 I am coordinator of the Sacramento member group of
24 the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and I'm here in support
25 of our members of the Serving the Earth Committee, Nan
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1 and Paulette and others that you have heard from already.
2 We were founded 25 years ago by an astronaut,
3 Edgar Mitchell, who as he was returning from walking on
4 the moon saw the Earth very much as his good friend John
5 Glenn is seeing it tonight orbiting over our head. He
6 saw that the whole Earth is living and interconnected and
7 alive and that something really important needed to be
8 done to shift the consciousness of the most dangerous
9 species on the planet, the humans, so that we would not
10 destroy our home, but turn around and begin to save it
11 and think of sustainable plans for the future.
12 For 25 years we have been working on sustainable
13 plans. We believe in good government. I have worked for
14 the State of California for 15 years and have helped
15 draft much of the recycling legislation that is in
16 operation in this state now, and I believe that one of
17 the things I do disagree with that I've heard is despair
18 and cynicism about government. I believe there are good
19 people in government.
20 Only you know what is in your hearts and what is
21 possible for you to do in this situation, either to
22 reject or to modify so that it is scientific and based on
23 good conservation principles as HCP. But I believe is
24 that there are good people, and that you are among those,
25 in government that can make a difference.
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1 And I am calling for sanity and for sustainable
2 models of what can be done with the forest. One of the
3 things that's needed is to think of the next generations
4 as that eloquent young woman spoke a few minutes ago. We
5 are at a watershed. It's not just the watersheds in the
6 forest that we're talking about. We're at a watershed of
7 choice about what to do with these dwindling resources.
8 There are many, many computers models that play the
9 growing populations all over the planet together with the
10 growing demand for resources and we run out of supply
11 very soon after the millenium unless we are able to pass
12 the watershed of choice that we are at right now.
13 The old growth redwoods are almost gone. Four
14 percent of what was there a hundred years ago. They are
15 an endangered species, and it's insanity to cut any more
16 of them. We do not know yet how many rare species of
17 plants that could be life-saving for our own species may
18 grow in these old forests. Some have been discovered
19 already and research need to be done. We need to think
20 for the long haul.
21 One other picture I want to leave with you about
22 the relative importance of jobs and industry, and I have
23 worked for many years with the state to foster good
24 business and encourage good industry. A study done for
25 the draft Resources Planning Act of 1995 as quoted by
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1 U. S. Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons -- this is
2 from a "San Francisco Chronicle" article about two years
3 ago -- pointed that in the national forests projected for
4 the year 2000, a total of 130 billion in gross domestic
5 product revenues. We're talking about jobs, we're
6 talking about good economics here. Of that 97.8 billion
7 derives from recreation, 12.9 billion from fish and
8 wildlife benefits. Only 3.5 billion, a tiny fraction of
9 the total, will be generated by timber harvest.
10 Yet we are letting the demands of one single, not
11 even the original Pacific Lumber Company, but a takeover
12 person who bought it, Charles Herwitz, those demands
13 completely obliterate the needs of the fishing industry
14 of the coho salmon that has almost been destroyed at
15 least 10 times as many jobs --
16 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you, sir.
17 DR. BLACKSTONE: -- are at stake there.
18 I leave you with one final image. If you have
19 ever stood in an old growth redwood forest, you will
20 understand what I mean when I say it makes no more sense
21 to cut down these God-made cathedrals for the value of
22 their boards than it would make to dismantle the Notre
23 Dame for the value of its bricks.
24 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
25 (Applause.)
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1 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Dan Bacher will be
2 followed by Zoe Zalia.
3 MR. BACHER: My name is Dan Bacher. I am the
4 managing editor of Northern California Angler
5 publications. We publish a biweekly publication about
6 fishing in California. I'm also a member of the Outdoor
7 Writers Association of America and Outdoor Writers
8 Association of California.
9 I'm environmental activist, and as both a
10 fisherman and an activist, I'm completely opposed to the
11 HCP as it is written now for a number of reasons, but
12 mainly because it's inadequate to protect coho salmon,
13 steelhead and other species that exist in the delicate
14 ecosystem of the north coast rainforest.
15 For one thing, it has inadequate stream buffer
16 zones and also it allows for the incidental take of coho
17 salmon, which I find really strange because while lumber
18 companies are allowed incidental take, fishermen can be
19 arrested for keeping a coho salmon on the river now. Of
20 course, you can't even go out to the river and fish for
21 them or in the ocean, and this has been done for many
22 years. The first time that this law was enforced, the
23 Endangered Species Act, was on fisherman, but it's
24 different when it comes to lumber companies and
25 agriculture.
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1 It's not just the destruction of species that will
2 occur with this Habitat Conservation Plan. It's also
3 sustainable jobs. Jobs in sport fishing and commercial
4 fishing are being destroyed by the destruction of
5 California's redwoods and people sometimes try to portray
6 it as a thing it's jobs, economic growth versus the
7 salmon and the fish and the trees.
8 No. What it's about is sustainable jobs versus
9 unsustainable jobs. And as this Habitat Conservation
10 Plan is now written, it would eliminate sustainable jobs
11 and only allow unsustainable jobs which in the long run
12 are going to run out.
13 In summary, the Habitat Conservation Plan is a
14 joke, it's a sham and I'm reminded of a quote from Merle
15 Haggard when he spoke before the State Capitol at a press
16 conference with Woody Harrelson. Merle didn't talk a
17 whole lot, but he said a few very choice words and a
18 thing that really stuck with me. "Clear-cutting is
19 rape." And he said it again. "Clear-cutting is rape."
20 If clear-cutting is rape, the lack of habitat protections
21 of coho salmon, steelhead and other species in this rape
22 amounts to genocide or ecocide.
23 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
24 (Applause.)
25 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Zoe Zalia.
198
1 MS. ZALIA: Hello my name is Zoe zalia.
2 Z-a-l-i-a.
3 And I know before we asked the people's names on
4 the board. I know everybody's names except for woman
5 that was added in the second session. Can I ask what
6 your name is and who you work with?
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Her name is Vicki
8 Campbell and she works with the National Marine Fisheries
9 Service.
10 MS. ZALIA: Okay. Thank you. I come to you to
11 ask you first a question. To those of you who sit behind
12 these tables, these desks and work in these offices and
13 push the pen to sign these deals with Pacific Lumber and
14 to the CDF, Ross Johnson, California Department of
15 Forestry, who rubber-stamp approves timber harvest plans,
16 have any of you ever stepped your foot in Headwaters
17 forest? Have any of you ever walked inside the Humboldt
18 redwoods and felt her, touched her or smelled her, or do
19 you only base your feelings upon what other people are
20 telling you?
21 You're hearing us, you're hearing Pacific Lumber,
22 you're hearing other people, but how can you really make
23 a decision unless you yourselves walk into the forest and
24 feel her and know what she has to say to you.
25 I have seen PL's destruction over and over. I
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1 know that old growth redwood is not a renewable resource.
2 I know that it does not simply grow back. We do not need
3 redwoods to make paper or to sustain ourselves. We can
4 use second growth and sustainably harvest. We are not
5 radical environmentalists asking you for zero cut. We
6 are asking you to sustainably harvest.
7 There was a Headwaters Stewardship Plan that was
8 design by the Trees Foundation. That is the plan that we
9 should be talking about, because it looks at both sides
10 and still provides jobs for loggers, sustainably
11 harvesting and doing reforestation and completing the
12 destruction that they have ongoingly destroyed.
13 We can sustainably harvest hemp and second growth
14 Doug fir, oak, pine, even second growth redwood. PL
15 claims to plant redwoods where they clear-cut. I have
16 never seen one. I have seen scrub brush and grass and
17 mud.
18 PL's criminal record and corporate
19 irresponsibility supersedes any good plan they can come
20 up with. PL has continued to rack up violations, yet
21 CDF, U. S. Fish and Wildlife and the Board of Forestry do
22 anything to stop this.
23 The Sustained Yield Permit is a joke to me. It is
24 not sustainable. The plan will harvest 32 percent more
25 forests than will grow over the first decade. The decade
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1 defined by the plan is only four years long. During this
2 four-year plan, over 25 percent of PL's land will be
3 slaughtered 54,382 acres, over 35,000 of these acres will
4 be clear-cut and over 2500 of these acres are uncut old
5 growth forests. This is not a Sustainable Yield Plan.
6 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you very much.
7 MS. ZALIA: I'd like to close with this. This HCP
8 allows PL to kill between 250 and 340 endangered species.
9 How long are we going to just keep on letting the killing
10 of species and people go on. We are here for David
11 "Gypsy" Chain, and we will not let you cut down
12 Headwaters forest.
13 (Applause.)
14 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: We have time only for two
15 more speakers. I will call their names and they can be
16 prepared David St. George will be followed by Rainy
17 Greensfelder.
18 MR. ST. GEORGE: Hi my name is David St.George.
19 S-t period G-e-o-r-g-e.
20 I'm an out-of-stater from Massachusetts, but I
21 have something to say. I've been here traveling around
22 the West Coast for seven months. About a month ago I saw
23 a ugly clear-cut ridge which introduced me to the works
24 of another out-of-stater, a man from Texas. I found out
25 he was a slob and murderer to your forests. He's
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1 irresponsible in his cutting practice. I learned a long
2 time ago you have to be responsible and accountable for
3 all environmental actions.
4 I don't see how you can allow someone with so many
5 violations to keep tearing up your backyards. Don't let
6 this out-of-towner wreck your backyard any more. If you
7 pass this HCP, you're just giving a criminal a license
8 for destruction. That's all I got to say.
9 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you.
10 (Applause.)
11 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Rainy Greensfelder.
12 MS. GREENSFELDER: Good evening, my name is Rainy
13 Blue Cloud Greensfelder. I'm Native American. My father
14 is the poet Peter Blue Cloud and my mother is Sarah
15 Greensfelder, executive director of the California Indian
16 Basket Weavers Association, which is an organization that
17 is opposed to this as well.
18 I want to speak on behalf of the Native Americans
19 in this country. I see a direct correlation between the
20 killing of native lands to the decline of native peoples.
21 My father was on the Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island
22 in 1969-1971, and he has given up. He doesn't fight any
23 more for land and my people. They don't fight any more
24 on the reservation.
25 And to me, saving Headwaters is in a way bringing
202
1 back hope to my people because we don't have anything
2 left. They've all given up hope. They're all walking
3 around and they're all half dead and this land is dead.
4 So for the hope of the Native Americans of this
5 country, this is our land. So oppose this. Thank you.
6 (Applause.)
7 HEARING OFFICER ORTEGA: Thank you. That's all
8 the time we have left to our commitment we have for the
9 hearing room here. Let me at this time inform you that
10 anyone who has not had an opportunity to make an oral
11 presentation here, there is still plenty of time between
12 now and November 16th to submit written comments. You
13 can get the address at the table as you leave.
14 On behalf of the United States Fish and Wildlife
15 Service and the cooperating agencies, I want to thank you
16 for the time and effort that you took to come and present
17 your comments this evening. Your comments have been
18 informative and will be considered in making the final
19 decision.
20 At this point the meeting, the hearing will be
21 closed. I show the time to be approximately 9:00 p.m.
22 We are going off the record at this point.
23 (Whereupon the Public Hearing was adjourned at
24 9:00 p.m.)
25 ---oOo---