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Forest Congress as a means to elevate the constant debate o\ er natural resources and the use of 

 our forests to a solution oriented forum designed to reach agreement on forest management 

 direction for the 2 1st centup.. 



Management of our company's natural resources is guided by an eleven point 

 environmental strategy specifically designed to protect water quality, wildlife, recreational 

 resources, research and technical development, etc. This strategy also commits us to promoting 

 excellence in the management of all timberlands regardless of ownership. Our neighbors include 

 small non-industrial woodlot owners as well as national forest lands. Here at Martell, our 

 timberlands are intermixed with national forest lands. Our ownership spans both the El Dorado 

 and Stanislaus National Forests. Fortunately, we are largely independent of timber supply from 

 either of these national forests. However, given the intermingled nature of the national forest 

 ownership with our own, we have a great interest in their management activities in relationship to 

 our timberlands. 



Since the mid-eighties we have watched the Forest Service engage in a series of major 

 planning efforts to guide the management of the Sierra Nevada national forests. Initial efforts 

 focused on development of Land and Resource Management Plans for each of the National 

 Forests. This painful and expensive effort was largely completed in the early nineties. As with 

 most of the planning efforts nationwide, most of the plans were challenged in one form or 

 another. In California as in the Pacific Northwest, the debate over the forest plans focused on the 

 spotted owl and old growth. At the same time land managers were begirming to recognize that a 

 long period of fire exclusion, landscape disturbances and natural succession had created 

 conditions in the Sierras which were leading to unacceptable fu-e losses and unhealthy forest 

 conditions. 



In the Sierra Nevada it became apparent that the California spotted owl was not 

 dependent on old growth. It was also apparent that the history of logging within the Sierra 

 Nevada was different than in the coastal pacific northwest forests. The Sierra Nevada had a 

 history of selective logging as opposed to the clearcutting which had taken place in Oregon and 

 Washington coastal Douglas-fir forests. 



The Forest Service here in Region V faced two immediate problems which threatened the 



