42 



I will now talk to you about what has happened over the last 

 several years as I have been working with EPIC. As I was presi- 

 dent of EPIC, Maxxam took over the Pacific Lumber Company and 

 announced they would systematically liquidate all of their old- 

 growth forest holdings within 20 years. They weren't kidding. Since 

 the takeover, they have logged off more than half of the virgin for- 

 est that was part of their holdings, some of which was known to 

 be marbled murrelet nesting areas. They are already gone; the ex- 

 periment has already happened. To protect the remaining ancient 

 groves and species dependent on them, our organization was forced 

 to sue Maxxam, and State £ind Federal agencies more than eight 

 times since 1987. 



Under the Forest Practices Act in California, the industry can 

 appeal to the bosird of forestry if they don't like the decision that 

 has been made on a particular logging plan; but the public has only 

 one recourse, and that is to go to court and try to get protection 

 on behalf of the public interest. 



In many of our cases, the State agency and biologist and even 

 the attorney general have agreed with us, and they have not ap- 

 pealed to the higher court. They have even made some efforts to 

 address their failure to adequately consider the issues of wildlife 

 and fisheries in California. But for many years, Pacific Lumber re- 

 fused to conduct the wildlife surveys that the California Fish and 

 Game Department asked them to conduct so that they could create 

 mitigation measures to offset the impact that logging would have 

 on these species and on the fisheries, the watersheds and the other 

 public trust resources. 



As e£irly as 1988, we asked the agencies to require a full environ- 

 mental analysis of Maxxam's planned logging of the forest areas. 

 Unfortunately, this never happened and many of the resources 

 have now been destroyed. 



Maxxam has worked aggressively to isolate the ancient forest 

 groves and attempt to reduce their value as wildlife habitat, so 

 they would not be prohibited from logging these areas by wildlife 

 agents. The worst example of this bad faith occurred during two il- 

 legal logging examples in Elk Creek in 1992. Pacific Lumber went 

 in and cut 20 acres of the grove before they even completed the 

 marbled murrelet survey that they promised the board of forestry 

 they would complete. It is based on their promise that the board 

 of forestry approved this planning in Elk Creek. 



Although we have temporarily halted this destruction of Elk 

 Creek, through filing three lawsuits, it is only an interim strategy; 

 and indeed we do need legislation to finally protect this habitat for 

 these species. In fact, a P.L. forester, maybe 3 weeks ago or so, 

 threatened our litigation coordinator that they would go in and cut 

 Elk Creek the moment a stay would be lifted if that were to hap- 

 pen in the courts. And yesterday John Campbell testified before the 

 committee that they had gm approved logging plan in Elk Creek. 



We had to take this very seriously because, based on our past ex- 

 perience, the forest — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the 

 California Fish and Game Department will not take action to stop 

 a take of the species as it is occurring. In fact, it seems they will 

 not even prosecute after the fact. 



