Features

State sued over timber logging practices

By Don Thompson, The Associated Press
Friday April 26, 2002

SACRAMENTO — A Sierra Nevada conservation group sued the state Thursday over its approval of logging plans by the state’s largest timber company. 

Sierra Pacific Industries dropped plans last year to clear-cut three areas on its El Dorado County properties after Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch previously challenged them in court. 

But the Anderson-based company refiled the plans proposing to use a new practice it termed “visual retention,” which leaves several trees on each acre to soften the visual impact. 

The environmental group sued the California Department of Forestry in El Dorado County Superior Court over its approval of those revised plans. 

“The impact to water and wildlife will be just exactly the same as if they were doing straight clear-cutting,” said Warren Alford, a Sierra Club organizer and member of the forest watch organization. “The cumulative effect will be to have a million acres of tree plantations.” 

He cited the state’s largest landowner’s proposals to ultimately convert 70 percent of its 1.5 million acres to same-age trees. More than 200,000 acres have been cut since 1994, Alford said. 

Forestry Department spokesman Louis Blumberg and company spokesman Ed Bond each said they couldn’t respond to a lawsuit they hadn’t seen. 

But Bond said the company began its visual retention program to leave its cuttings more aesthetically pleasing, and noted it recently sold two pieces of property it determined were better suited for purposes other than logging. 

“I think we’ve been responsive to neighbors’ concerns,” Bond said. The Calaveras County-based conservation group organized two years ago to fight Sierra Pacific’s logging plans near Calaveras Big Tree State Park.