A state appeals court Friday extended its bar on logging operations in Jackson State Demonstration Forest at least through Aug. 20, a move that blocks the state’s efforts to generate $7 million for it’s hard-pressed state budget.

The 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco is to decide then whether the logging ban will remain in effect until environmental legal challenges to a new state timber management plan for the 50,000-acre public redwood forest can be resolved. A local Mendocino County judge in early June had allowed the logging operations to begin in the forest, which straddles Highway 20 east of Fort Bragg.

The appellate court decision, announced Friday, delighted a Mendocino Coast environmental group that has been waging a two-year campaign to sharply limit future logging in the publicly owned forest. The Campaign to Restore Jackson State Forest wants to stop profit-motivated logging operations in the forest, and allow younger timber stands to mature into trees that would share similar characteristics with those found in old-growth forests.

"The court appears to be taking great pains to protect the public forest," said Vince Taylor, a former Vermont software executive and 14-year Mendocino resident who now heads the Fort Bragg-based organization.

In a statement issued Friday, Taylor said that state forestry officials' attempts to move ahead with two disputed logging sales to support "the private Mendocino timber industry is not reason to ignore legally, mandated environmental protection for the public forest."

But state foresters and timber representatives Friday lamented the delay, contending it will likely cost the state much-needed revenue, and possibly result in local job losses because the management plan implemented in September is now tied up in litigation.

"It's too bad. It represents a lost opportunity to get the logs and the revenue in this season," said Marc Jameson, chief forester at Jackson State.

Mike Anderson, head of a Fort Bragg logging company that started work June 11 only to be halted by a court order a few days later, said he has doubts whether he can keep his crews on the payroll.

"It's pretty hard to find work this late in the season to keep things going," Anderson said.

Willits Redwood Co., which purchased about one-half of the logs to be cut, anticipated the volume would be enough to supply its operations over the next 18 months.

"I'm not sure what we're going to be able to do," said company President Bruce Burton. "A lot of people just don't understand that real people get hurt in these disputes."

Willits Redwood and Mendocino Redwood Co. earlier this year bid successfully to buy the logs, despite the knowing that that previously filed litigation could prevent the timber operations from being carried out. The logging operations, which would have seen the removal of about one-third of 80- to 110-year-old trees spread across a total of 900 acres, started in early June. But the logging was quickly halted by an emergency order from the appeals court. On Friday, the court said it would continue the logging ban until the Aug. 20 hearing.

At the core of the dispute is a long-term timber management plan for Jackson that state officials had hoped would allow logging to resume after a two-year moratorium.

Unlike a state park, Jackson was established by the Legislature in the late 1940s to be a working forest dedicated to research, education and the demonstration of sustainable forestry techniques.

At the time, Jackson was mostly previously harvested private timberland, but with substantial stands of old-growth redwoods. During the first twenty years of state management, all of the old-growth stands and residual trees were cut. In the next thirty years many of the older second-growth stands were cut. Still, compared to the surrounding industrial timberlands, which were largely clearcut of all timber, Jackson is a relatively healthy forest with significant remaining stands of 100-year-old redwood trees.

State forestry director Andrea Tuttle and Resources Secretary Mary Nichols in November 2002 said the new management plan would permanently protect any remaining old-growth trees. The state also said at that time it planned to set aside within coastal state parks and Jackson State forest an estimated 13,000 acres of large second-growth trees in the Big River-Russian Gulch area. Of this total, approximately 4,000 acres lie within Jackson State Forest, according to the Final Environmental Impact Report for Jackson.

"Our vision is to recreate a large old-growth redwood forest with habitat for endangered species, including coho salmon and the marbled murrelet, as a natural legacy for the future," Nichols said at the time.

But the coast environmental group led by Taylor has protested the new management plan’s continued large-scale industrial logging, extensive use of clearcutting variations, and limited old-growth restoration. Taylor contends, "Jackson is a public forest and should be managed for the broad public good. Industrial logging on the only large public redwood forest between Humboldt County and San Francisco makes no sense in this day and age. There is no shortage of redwood timberland, but there is a huge shortage of mature redwood forest for habitat, public recreation, and education."

The Campaign’s court action does not dispute that current law sanctions timber production in Jackson State, but it contends that the state's environmental studies on Jackson do not meet the state’s legal requirements.

A Mendocino County judge's decision on the legal validity of the environmental studies is pending. The judge has already said that he is "very likely" to find the environmental studies to be legally inadequate.

On June 17, Taylor's group asked the state appellate court to put on hold the two disputed logging operations until its legal challenge to the state's environmental studies is complete.

You can reach Staff Writer Mike Geniella at 462-6470 or mgeniella@pressdemocrat.com.