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Published Wednesday, March 15, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News Compromise likely in logging rules Amid loggers', Earth First protests, forestry board delays vote to today BY PAUL ROGERS Mercury News Staff Writer SACRAMENTO -- With logging trucks circling capital streets and police arresting Earth First activists, Gov. Gray Davis and his lieutenants on Tuesday scrambled to find compromise on contentious new logging rules to protect California's struggling salmon populations from extinction. The State Board of Forestry held a six-hour hearing, adjourning without a vote, on a package of new rules that would set tougher restrictions on millions of acres of privately owned timberland from Santa Cruz County to the Oregon border. The seven-member board, appointed by the governor, is scheduled to vote on the new rules today. However, by the end of the day Tuesday, it appeared Davis' office, working with state Fish and Game Director Bob Hight and Resources Secretary Mary Nichols, had hammered out a deal with top environmental legislators, including state Sen. Byron Sher, D-Redwood City, and Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Fred Keeley, D-Santa Cruz, to alter the changes. The latest version of Davis' plan -- which still must be approved by the Board of Forestry -- would establish interim rules for the next six months that would reduce logging along streams, Keeley said in an interview. The plan would set tougher regulations to reduce cutting along those rivers and creeks where endangered coho salmon and steelhead trout live. It would put stricter regulations on road building to reduce erosion that harms endangered fish. "It's definitely a move in the right direction. They have my support," said Keeley, who was named environmental legislator of the year Tuesday by the Planning and Conservation League, a Sacramento conservation group. The rules would affect logging on more than 16 million acres of privately owned forests in California. Keeley said they could be replaced after six months by two measures currently in the Legislature: A $7 million item in Davis' proposed budget that requires the State Resources Agency to assemble stacks of biological data about dozens of watersheds in Northern California, attempt to fill the gaps in information, and then have scientists review the documents. A bill by Keeley that would require the Resources Agency to set standards for water temperature, sedimentation and other indicators in streams statewide. These benchmarks would be used to determine rules on each timber harvest plan, region by region. "We're heartened," said Elyssa Rosen, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club. "But we're very concerned that in six months Gov. Davis applies Endangered Species Act protections fully to help salmon." Every coho salmon population in California is on the endangered species list. Steelhead trout are listed as threatened in most of the state. Biologists disagree over the reasons. But most say the fish have been devastated by large dams that block spawning runs, as well as mining, logging and cattle grazing, real estate development, overfishing, sea lions and natural cyclic changes in ocean temperatures. Along the southern Oregon and Northern California coasts, there were an estimated 150,000 to 400,000 coho salmon half a century ago. Today there are fewer than 10,000 native coho. Federal biologists have recommended that California ban logging for 180 feet on each side of streams. Environmentalists want 300-foot buffers. The original proposal to the Board of Forestry would set 150-foot buffers and require loggers to leave 85 percent of the tree canopy in the first 75 feet and 65 percent of the canopy in the next 75 feet. More than 300 loggers who packed the board hearing Tuesday said the rules were a one-size-fits all approach that could bankrupt them. They drove two dozen logging trucks, some with raw logs, through Sacramento streets in protest. "This is like setting a speed limit of 5 mph to avoid all risk," said Lloyd Tangen, a forestry supervisor from Simpson Timber in Orrick. William McKillop, a professor emeritus of forest economics from University of California-Berkeley, said the rules would cost up to 8,000 jobs and reduce the statewide cut on private lands by as much as 24 percent. Logging levels already have fallen 58 percent in California since 1988. "We normally don't do demonstrations," said Bud McCrary, co-owner of Big Creek Lumber in Santa Cruz. "But this is a matter of life and death. All 200 employees in our company are watching this." Meanwhile, nine chanting Earth First protesters were arrested at the front of the hearing when they linked themselves together with paper handcuffs. The National Marine Fisheries Service says the old rules are inadequate, and if no action is taken, the agency could go to court, acquire an injunction and potentially shut down all logging in California. Contact Paul Rogers at progers@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5045.
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