Save The Redwoods/Boycott The Gap: Biodiversity Council meeting / Gap Boycott meets privately with Tuttle

Biodiversity Council meeting / Gap Boycott meets privately with Tuttle

Jun. 10, 1999. Ft. Bragg. SRBG activists attended and spoke at the Biodiversity Council meeting, with CA Sec. of Resources, Mary Nichols, faciliating. We met with Nichols and newly appointed CA Dept of Forestry head Andrea Tuttle over lunch and got our first warning that something was rotten in Sacto.

Jun. 14,1999. Sacramento. SRBG activists Mary Pjerrou, Mary Bull, and Norman de Vall met privately with Tuttle to ask her to end liquidation logging in Mendocino County and to halt some of the worst timber harvest plans (THPs) there. She stated to us flatly, "You will not get what you want-we will not disapprove any THPs." ... An illegal policy that defies the Forest Practice Act and Rules.

The Press Democrat
June 11, 1999 - www.pressdemocrat.com
Warning sounded for coho, steelhead
N. Coast task force proposed

By ANDREW LaMAR
Staff Writer

FORT BRAGG - Government 'agencies aren't doing enough to protect rivers and watersheds critical to the survival of coho and steelhead salmon and time is running out for the two species, several officials said Thursday.

Representatives of environmental groups, local governments and 'fishing interests sounded the warning at a quarterly meeting of -federal, state and local officials dedicated to safeguarding California's biological diversity.

The comments led Mary Nichols the state secretary of resources who presided over the meeting, to say she hoped the agencies could rise to the challenge of protecting both rural natural resources-and the economies that rely upon them.

Nichols proposed creating a task force to explore North Coast watershed issues and how to improve cooperation among agencies and groups working on them.

"We've talked about sex and we've talked about passion," Nichols said, drawing laughter for her reference to earlier speeches on salmon spawning and the desire to protect the fish. "I'm going to be here for awhile and I want to talk about commitment"

The remarks followed the skeptical assessment by Craig Bell, a former logger and commercial fisherman now working with the Salmonid Restoration Federation, who said be welcomed attending hundreds of meetings with agency officials leading up to another change In state administration.

Mary Pjerrou, the president of the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance, drew cheers and shouts of encouragement from dozens of the 100 people attending with a bleak analysis of the state of salmon and forest protection in Mendocino County.

In three years of conducting fish surveys before it sold its land to the Mendocino Redwood Co., the Louisiana Pacific Corp. found coho salmon in only 8 of 27 watersheds, Pjerrou said.

Plans by another timber company, Coastal Forest Lands, to convert 10,000 acres of redwood forest land into vineyards is a sign of things to come as large timber companies, such as. Mendocino Redwood Co. and Georgia-Pacific, continue to overcut, she said.

"We all know, although it is a very difficult thing to face, that the old forest and Its creatures are nearly gone in Mendocino County, that the timber resource itself Is nearly gone and we are fast approaching the point of no return," Pjerrou said.

She admonished the gathering of agency officials to lead the way to straightening out natural resources priorities.

"We are the forgotten county," Pjerrou said. "Our government has written Mendocino County off as to the protection of natural resources and this natural resourcebased economy.'

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