State Tackles An 'Ancient' Issue/
Davis Backs Plan to Classify Old Growth Trees 
on Private Lands

Monday, September 10, 2001 (SF Chronicle)
Angelica Pence, Chronicle Staff Writer


For the first time in California history, private landowners could have to
secure state approval before cutting down ancient trees on their property,
under a plan outlined yesterday.
   
Gov. Gray Davis touted the proposal as California's most comprehensive
step yet toward protecting its old growth forests.
   
The plan, if approved by the Board of Forestry tomorrow, would require
landowners to conduct an environmental review before chopping down an
"ancient" tree.
   
"This new rule is the first time that the state has ever placed
restrictions on a private landowners' ability to cut down trees," said
Mary Nichols, secretary of the state resources agency. "This will expand
enormously on the number of old trees that will be protected in this
state."
   
The department's proposal includes four possible definitions of "old
growth, " and it remains to be seen which will be selected.
   
One would ban cutting down trees more than two centuries old. Others
prohibit cutting trees 150 years and older, trees that existed before 1800
or trees that were alive when California became a state in 1850.
   
Some environmentalists condemned the plan, saying it doesn't do enough to
safeguard California's oldest trees. The Sierra Club's Warren Alford, for
one, said the proposal allowed too many exemptions for timber companies.
   
The initiative is little more than "a political sleight of hand," he said,
"like putting a fig leaf over the forest."
   
Department of Forestry spokesman Louis Blumberg disagreed, saying, "The
rule treats all land owners the same -- small, medium or large, industrial
or non-industrial." As it stands, "there are some exemptions by which a
landowner . . . does not have to file a Timber Harvest Plan," he said.
"What this (new) rule does is closes the loophole."
   
According to the plan, landowners would be barred from chopping down a
single ancient tree unless it is deemed dangerous to humans; it is needed
for construction; it is diseased, dying or dead; or it is not needed for
environmental or biological reasons.
   
Even under each of those circumstances, the landowner would have to go
through a multiagency environmental review under the California
Environmental Quality Act, similar to the review required for timber
harvests by commercial timber companies.
   
But the proposal, which Davis' office trumpeted yesterday during its
regular Sunday morning conference call, is less stringent than a November
2002 ballot measure put forth by environmentalists. That plan would bar
all removal of virgin timber on non-federal land and forbid harvesting
trees that sprouted before 1850.
   
"Under current law, a landowner could legally cut down a 200-year-old tree
without paying any regard to its environmental impact," Davis said in a
53- second recording played during the call. "The proposed new rules will
close this loophole and require landowners to prepare a Timber Harvest
Plan assessing (the) environmental impact before any trees are cut. This
is an important step toward protecting part of our precious natural
legacy."
   
Cynthia Elkins of the Environmental Protection Information Center in
Garberville said that while the group liked the idea behind the proposal,
the plan outlined yesterday isn't all it's cracked up to be.
   
According to the group, fewer than 1 percent of all timber harvest plans
filed have been denied by the Department of Forestry, the lead agency in
approving such plans. Today, more than 90 percent of the state's original
ancient forests are gone.
   
Of California's 85 million acres of wilderness, 40 million are deemed
forestland, according to Department of Forestry statistics. Of those, 17
million acres are commercial forestlands; 45 percent of are privately
owned, and 55 percent are state land.
   
"To claim this rule package would 'ban' logging of any ancient trees is
not only plain wrong, but duplicitous and deceitful," Elkins said. .
   
For more information on the proposed rule changes see www.fire.ca.
gov/bof/board/ProposedRule
   
E-mail Angelica Pence at apence@sfchronicle.com.