Photos

Logging Road (1-3)

Staging Area (4-5)

Pampas Grass (6)

An Occasional Large Tree Left (7)

Thin Stands of Trees (8)

Camp 3 Plan Area -- One Hundred Year Old Forest (9-11)

Biggest Trees To Be Cut (12-13)

  The Camp 3 Timber Harvest Plan

On May 25, 2000, the staff of the Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest visited the "Camp 3" Timber Harvest Plan (THP) -- one of the 3 plans submitted by CDF (as managers of Jackson State Forest) to CDF (as administrators of the state's Forest Practice rules) for approval.  Camp 3 is in the center of Jackson State Forest, northeast of the Egg Collecting Station and in the most heavily used recreation area of the Forest. 

Camp 3 has not been logged for over eighty years.  If logged as CDF proposes, the complex redwood forest ecology now re-established in Camp 3 would not return  for  another 80 years -- even if not further disturbed.   But under current and proposed management schemes of CDF, these areas will be entered and logged every ten to twenty years.  There will be no chance for the forest to heal itself.

We approached the new plan through areas that have been logged in the past 10 to 15 years.  The road built for these prior logging operations is a disgrace and was probably illegal when built: it lacks waterbars, improperly drains inslope in places, and outslope drains go into sediment piles, and lacks proper rock on steep slopes (Photos 1, 2, 3).   Improperly constructed and maintained, the road pours sediment every year into already degraded salmon streams.  Staging areas contains piles of sediment and slash (Photos 4, 5). Invasive pampas grass has spread into openings left by heavy logging. (Photo 6).  An occasional large tree has been left in "Seed Tree Management" areas (Photo 7). Standard practice is to come back and cut these ten years later (though CDF is promising to keep the few survivors in this area for future "structure elements"). There is no true forest left in these logged areas, only thin stands of trees (Photo 8).

The Camp 3 plan area contrasts sharply with the adjacent logged areas. We walked through filtered sunlight, surrounded by huge trees, feeling the awe inspired by even the adolescents of the tallest trees on the planet (Photos 9-11).  But, we were dismayed to see the blue paint rings around most of the biggest trees -- the rings that mark the trees for cutting (Photos 12,13).  Throughout the planned harvest area, we found that most of the clusters of the biggest, most magnificent trees were slated to be entirely cut down.  No survivors allowed! (Photos 14, 15).

The Camp 3 logging plan comes right down to the flats of  a major fork of the Noyo River, to an area  heavily used by the public for recreation and education (a large group of local school children arrived here at the same time as we did).   This part forest is magnificent (Photo 16), but if CDF's plan goes forward, it will be bordered by devastation.

We left Camp 3 inspired by its beauty, horrified by the prospect of its destruction, and determined not to let it be destroyed here or elsewhere in Jackson State  Forest.

If you share our vision of preserving and restoring this incredible, publicly owned forest, please join our Campaign.

Biggest  Clusters to Be Cut  (14-15)

Magnificent Forest at edge of Camp 3 Plan (16)