Campaign to Restore Jackson State Redwood Forest

Background Information

Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) is the formal name of Jackson State Forest. It is public land owned by the people of California and managed for their benefit by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF).

• Jackson State is a 50,000-acre redwood forest containing more than 100 miles of perennial, salmon-bearing streams. Almost 10,000 acres now threatened with logging haven’t been cut since the initial harvest almost 100 years ago.
• It is located in Mendocino County, 4 hours from the Bay Area and Sacramento.
• It lies between the tourist destinations of Mendocino and Fort Bragg on the Pacific Coast and reaches twenty miles eastward to the edges of the inland valleys near Highway 101.

The Campaign to Restore Jackson State Forest

The Campaign to Restore Jackson State Forest was founded in January 2000 by concerned local citizens. Its mission is to change the mission of Jackson State from large-scale logging to restoring the forest to old growth for recreation, habitat, and education.

The need for a restored redwood forest has increased enormously since Jackson State Forest was acquired in 1947 to demonstrate that second-growth redwood could be logged profitably. This has now been amply proven. Meanwhile California’s population has tripled, open spaces have been consumed by suburban sprawl, and the once-vast forests destroyed by logging. People, plants, animals and fish would all benefit greatly from a restored Jackson State Redwood Forest.

The Campaign maintains a website at www.jacksonforest.com.

The Lawsuits

The original suit filed in Mendocino County Superior Court charges that the state’s current large-scale logging in Jackson Demonstration State Forest is illegal. Regulations of the State Board of Forestry require that all logging in Jackson Forest be done under a "current management plan." The management plan, supposed guarantor of the forest’s economic and environmental value, was last revised 1983 and is now eight years past its 1992 legally mandated revision deadline.

The California Department of Forestry (CDF) still runs Jackson Forest on a cut-heavy plan developed in 1983. Despite steadily growing protest, CDF-approved logging in Jackson Forest takes an average of 28 million board feet of lumber every year, enough to build a foot-wide path from Mendocino to Paris.

This case asks the court to stop all logging in JDSF until CDF prepares and implements a new management plan, Mendocino Superior Court number SCUKCVG '0083611, Campaign to Restore Jackson State Forest et. al. v. CDF and California Board of Forestry. It was filed June 12, 2000 and is scheduled to come to trial in May 2001.

The case to invalidate the approval of the Timber Harvest Plan (THP) to log Brandon Gulch is Mendocino Superior Court number SCUKCVG '0084903, Campaign to Restore Jackson State Forest et. al. V. CDF. It was filed December 19, 2000.

The attorney representing the Campaign is Menlo Park lawyer Paul V. Carroll, (560) 322-5652.