PROPOSITION 130 : Logging Firms Portray Themselves as Environmentalists

SACRAMENTO —  Logging companies from across the nation are spending millions of dollars this election season to cast themselves as environmentalists who will protect California’s redwood forests and halt excessive logging.

It is a campaign strategy that has angered the state’s environmental organizations and, they fear, succeeded in confusing voters about who is behind two rival timber initiatives on the Nov. 6 ballot.

“The timber industry campaign has been a monumental attempt to deceive the voters,” charged Gail Lucas, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club. “The timber industry realizes that the public wants to stop the massive clear-cutting of ancient forests, so they have designed an initiative that pretends to address the public’s concerns.”

More than 200 environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation, are supporting Proposition 130, a measure they call “Forests Forever.” The logging companies have sponsored their own initiative, Proposition 138, which would cancel out Proposition 130 if it receives more votes.

Representatives of the timber industry insist that their measure would be good for the state’s forests.

“It’s an environmentally sensitive measure,” said David Fogarty, a campaign consultant for the timber industry. “It’s a measure that will better protect our forests than Proposition 130 will do.”

In mailers, television commercials and radio ads, the timber industry has portrayed Proposition 138 as an environmentally beneficial proposal--in some cases even adopting the title of the environmentalist initiative.

While the industry continues clear-cutting forests and logging trees at a rapid rate, it says its proposition would save the redwoods and protect wildlife.

One timber industry television commercial shows aerial footage of a forest stripped bare of trees by the industry’s own loggers and proclaims that Proposition 138 would ban such clear-cutting. “Proposition 138 protects our ancient redwoods and dwindling forests,” the ad claims.

The advertising blitz has frustrated the backers of Proposition 130, who are worried that they may lose because voters are fooled.

“If they want to save the redwoods, if they want to stop clear-cutting, why don’t they just do it?” protested Lynn Sadler, campaign director for Proposition 130.

Specifically, Proposition 130 would ban the practice of clear-cutting, in which loggers cut all the trees in sections of forest as large as 120 acres. It also would put a 60% limit on the amount of timber that can be harvested. And it would allocate $710 million in state funds to buy thousands of acres of ancient redwoods from timber companies.

Proposition 138, the industry countermeasure, says it would ban clear-cutting but contains loopholes ultimately allowing loggers to take every tree in a given area. It also would allocate $300 million in state funds to plant trees--including many that could later be logged by private companies.

Some timber industry officials concede that they do not really want to halt the practice of clear-cutting but wrote their ban into Proposition 138 as a way of attracting votes.

“We don’t want to do that, but in order for us to survive, we have to have some reason to defeat Proposition 130,” said Milt Shultz, a spokesman for Sierra Pacific Industries, which has contributed more than $1 million to the timber industry campaign. Asked whether Proposition 138’s clear-cutting ban is hypocritical, Shultz replied, “Sure it is.”

The Sierra Club and other environmentalists argue that Proposition 138 will exempt the major logging companies from the California Environmental Quality Act--the state’s landmark environmental law that, among other things, requires detailed environmental reviews.

In its place, they contend, major timber companies would carry out their logging activities under timber management plans that could cover huge tracts of land and that would be in effect indefinitely. Furthermore, any company operating under a timber management plan would be exempt from Proposition 138’s clear-cutting ban.

“Basically, if Proposition 138 passes, you can write off the forests in California,” said Harold Arbit, the principal backer of Proposition 130, who has contributed $5 million of his own money to the measure. “California would be in worse shape than if I’d never done anything. That’s what keeps me awake at night.”

But Fogarty, the timber industry spokesman, argued that the initiative’s timber management plans help protect the environment because logging companies would be required to conduct a wildlife review in forests to be logged.

“Proposition 138 is designed to balance the need for protecting our forests while taking into account human and economic concerns,” Fogarty said. “It’s not as extremist as 130.”

Even so, the timber industry campaign run by the consulting firm of Woodward & McDowell liked Proposition 130 well enough to use a portion of its title as a description for Proposition 138 in millions of campaign mailers.

The Republican Party, based on information provided by the campaign firm, sent mailers to more than 4 million households statewide identifying Proposition 138 as the “Forest and Wildlife Protection” initiative.

In fact, Proposition 130 declares that it shall be known as the “Forest and Wildlife Protection Bond Act of 1990.” The official title of Proposition 138 is the “Global Warming and Clearcutting Reduction, Wildlife Protection and Reforestation Act of 1990.”

Environmentalists, who have nicknamed Proposition 138 the “Big Stump,” contend that its primary backers, Louisiana-Pacific Corp. and Georgia-Pacific Corp., are now cutting California forests two to three times as fast as the trees grow.

A recent UC Berkeley study concluded that Proposition 130 would do a better job of protecting California forests and their wildlife. Under Proposition 138 and current logging practices, the study found, all of the privately owned mature forests in California are likely to disappear during the next 120 years. By contrast, if voters approve Proposition 130, one-third of these forests would still be standing more than a century from now, the UC researchers concluded.

“Proposition 130 offers greater protection to the state’s privately owned forest lands and their natural biological diversity than does Proposition 138,” a summary of the report said.