Trucks Blocked from Logging Giant Trees

Nanning Creek, Humboldt County - In the pre-dawn hours today, two women put their bodies on the line for the ancient redwoods by locking themselves to gates and trucks entering the access roads leading to a controversial logging plan in Nanning Creek watershed outside Scotia, California in Humboldt County. The women and supporters unfurled banners reading “ Stop Maxxamum Greed/ Save Nanning Grove”, “Save Nanning Creek Ancient Forest,” “Extinction is Forever”, and “Save Scotia/ Kick Maxxam Out”.

Maxxam/Pacific Lumber (PL) subsidiary ScoPac began logging operations in the controversial plan on Nov.11, triggering protests that have included tree-sits high in the branches of the giant trees that measure more than 15 feet in diameter, vigils at the entrance to access roads, and a demonstration at Pacific Lumber offices in the company town of Scotia. The Timber Harvest Plan (THP) contains some of the highest quality murrelet habitat left on PL land, long seen by scientists as a crucial habitat area for the endangered bird. The plan was cynically named “Bonanza” by PL, and it is no coincidence that it is one of Maxxam/PL’s last shot at a sizable chunk of old growth before a possible bankruptcy reorganization forces a change in ownership of the timberlands.

THP # 1-05-097, at 249 acres, is in the Dean Creek and Nanning Creek watersheds and contains habitat for other sensitive and threatened species, including the northern spotted owl, and is upstream from coho and chinook salmon spawning habitat. Nanning Creek is a tributary of the Eel River, which is already listed as impaired under the Clean Water Act Section 303(d). The plan is adjacent to already clearcut forest, and impacts just about every sensitive ecological resource in the area.

Legal challenges to permits issued by US Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency charged with protecting threatened and endangered species, have thus far failed to halt logging in the rare habitat crucial to the endangered bird. At last report, logging was stopped by the blockade.

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