WCB 7/2011: Re-Do of hearing to Save Usal Forest

50,000 Acre forest in Mendocino County to be saved, at July 26th hearing

 

(CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE)

 
The California Wildlife Conservation Board will hopefully ignore the protests from the owner of hundreds of thousands of  acres of redwoods to the north and south of the 50,000 acre Usal Forest, and then commit about $20 million to preserve the Usal land. The protestors, the Fisher Family of San Francisco who own the Gap clothing stores, as well as Banana Republic and Old Navy stores, also own both Humboldt Redwoods co., formerly known as Pacific Lumber, and the Mendocino Redwood Co. totalling nearly 400,000 acres of redwoods on the northern California coast.

Formerly owned by Georgia-Pacific lumber co., the Usal Forest land was sold to Hawthorne Timber, which then sold it to the local Redwood Forests Foundation (http://rffi.org/) with a loan from Bank of America. The state deal will help pay off the BofA mortgage. RFFI has managed the land as a sustainably-logged forest, unlike the industrial-style timber management by Georgia Pacific, and the state deal will help open some of it to public trails, etc. for an additional payment of $5.5 million ($3 million from the state, $2.5 mil. from the private Save the Redwoods League) which would give the Redwoods League full ownership of 957 acres known as Shady Dell.


AGENDA: http://www.nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=34542

APPRAISAL: http://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=31170

LOTS MORE INFO: http://rare-earth-news.blogspot.com/search?q=usal
http://rffi.org/Usal-ConservationEasement.html
http://www.rffi.org/InTheNews.html
http://www.wildcalifornia.org/blog/take-action-now-to-support-the-usal-redwood-forest/
http://www.times-standard.com/ci_17527762
http://www.wildcalifornia.org/blog/usal/
http://www.times-standard.com/guest_opinion/ci_17591051