Another View: Give managed forestry credit for the fish habitat at Battle Creek

Re “Governor needs to keep pledge at Battle Creek” (Editorial, June 21):

The Bee’s editorial board took what should have been a positive story about removing dams and instead pandered to unfounded fears to suggest that forestry harms fish-recovery efforts, even though forestry is included in watershed restoration precisely to benefit salmon. Not only is forest management not an obstacle, forestry helps fund restoration that must otherwise be paid for by taxpayers or wouldn’t happen at all.

At issue is the Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration project, which according to the California Department of Fish and Game will “re-establish access to 42 miles of premier spawning and rearing habitat for spring- and fall-run chinook salmon and steelhead.” This ideal fish habitat has been created by decades of active forest management in the watershed, including clear-cutting that some want to ban.

Science shows that carefully managed forestry operations can create ideal spawning habitat, conserve water resources and protect watersheds against high-intensity wildfire. California clear-cuts create small openings, are replanted with native species by law and establish biologically diverse forests of all ages on the landscape.

Humboldt State University’s John-Pascall Berrill notes that “clear-cutting is a process that cannot be judged in a single moment in time” and that the “water-quality impacts of clear-cutting in California are likely within the range of natural disturbance.” Site-specific research from Battle Creek shows virtually no negative impacts on water quality from harvest activities.

Rather than note that forest management has established ideal salmon habitat at Battle Creek, The Bee assumes that restoration will not be managed carefully and that having two agencies work to conserve water quality is a conflict of missions.

The Bee’s editorial went on to encourage Gov. Jerry Brown to adopt a budget that would impose new harvest-plan review fees. We think this could add about $40,000 per plan to fees already roughly 10 times higher than those in neighboring Oregon and Washington. This short-sighted suggestion fails to recognize that additional fees would cripple businesses already reeling from the highest permitting costs in the nation, cost jobs in rural communities suffering disproportionally high unemployment, and dismantle the infrastructure absolutely essential to addressing California’s wildfire crisis.

Harvest-plan review costs have nearly doubled since 1997 despite an 80 percent decline in harvest operations. Imposing fees on forest landowners will not make the process more efficient but could eliminate the forestry sector in California, bankrupt counties struggling to provide social services and kill the rural way of life.

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