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clear, enforceable standards for any of these mandates, and the decision of how much 

 and how fast to log the state's redwood forests are dictated purely by market 

 conditions. How have these market forces shaped the timber economy and the redwood 

 forest ecosystem? What can we expect in Humboldt County without the Headwaters 

 Forest Act? 



To look into the future of Humboldt County's timberland, one need only 

 examine Mendocino County, its next door neighbor to the south, where I live. Until 

 very recently Mendocino County was the second largest timber producing county in the 

 state, by value. But now, on the largest industrial timber holding in the county 

 (Louisiana-Pacific), company data supplied to the Board of Supervisors in 1992 shows 

 that 84 percent of the company's 300,000 acres is stocked with trees 35 years old or 

 younger, and only 4.8 percent consists of trees over 65 years old. If you wanted to cut 

 these trees when they produce the largest possible amount of lumber you would cut 

 them at around 100 years of age. The condition of the resource is very similar on lands 

 owned by the county's other major industrial owner, Georgia Pacific. There is no old 

 growth at all remaining on industrial lands, and only the tiniest of islands on other 

 private holdings and in state parks. The largest block of old growth redwoods in the 

 county is around 160 acres. 



Louisiana-Pacific has laid off over half of their workers since 1989, has closed 

 half their mills in the Western Division. Although industry has tried to blame reduced 

 timber supplies from federal sources for mill closures, a senior L-P company forester 

 testified in Mendocino County Superior Court that L-P got a maximum of about 20% 

 of their local timber supplies from the national forest before that source was severely 

 cut back. The unfortunate truth is we're almost out of merchantable trees in 

 Mendocino County, once the heart of the redwood region. 



What does the sorry Mendocino County timber story have to do with 

 Headwaters? The main differences between my home county and the Headwaters area 

 are time and ownership patterns. Mendocino's redwood forestlands were owned by 

 national, now internationally, operating timber companies. The Headwaters area was 

 owned until 1986 by a local company whose philosophy was sustained yield. 

 Mendocino was also closer to the timber-using urban markets. With the ownership 

 change at Pacific Lumber the last significant and unprotected areas of the original 

 redwood ecosystem are now fully at the mercy of market conditions. The price of old 

 growth redwood lumber is very, very high. 



I am sure you will be told by industry that California has the strictest logging 

 laws in the country for non-federal timberlands. This is probably correct. The 

 question is do they provide an adequate level of environmental protection? In a rare 

 moment of candor California's State Board of Forestry admitted in a 1991 document 

 supporting proposed new regulations that, "Past failure to regulate industrial 

 timberlands has resulted in long-term over harvesting, drastically reducing both the 



