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 ForestNorth America’s Forests: Page 13 One of the most heated debates over these forests involves the last privately-owned large tracts of redwoods. Commercial exploitation began in 1900 when Frederick Weyerhauser purchased 900,000 acres for $6.00 per acre, a ludicrously low price even in those days (Dietrich 1992). Almost all privately owned old-growth forests became depleted by the 1960s. One exception was a large tract of old-growth Coastal Redwoods and Douglas Firs in California's Humboldt County, in the northern part of the state, owned by the Pacific Lumber Company. This family-operated company had left most of its 200,000 acres intact and had been particularly protective of the most ancient trees in the 55,000-acre Headwaters Forest. In 1986, however, Houston financier Charles Hurwitz took over Pacific Lumber, using junk bonds. Hurwitz's United Savings Association of Texas failed, costing US taxpayers $1.6 billion, part of the savings-and-loan collapse (Brown and Stark 1995).
To pay his debts, Hurwitz began clearcutting the old-growth Coast Redwood and Douglas Firs. By 1995, he had cut 40,000 acres of the Headwaters Forest and nearby old-growth trees, leaving only 5,500 acres of virgin Coastal Redwood and 5,000 acres of virgin Douglas Fir (Brown and Stark 1995). This is one of the most extreme cases of abuse of private land in the history of this country. Two-thousand-year-old trees were turned into picnic tables, lawn furniture and patio decks. Logging was delayed by several lawsuits, and to protect nesting sites of Marbled Murrelets, the California Forestry Department recommended in 1995 that Hurwitz be refused permission to build a logging road into the 4,400-acre grove of the most ancient trees (Brown and Stark 1995). Two California Congressmen, George Brown and Pete Stark, proposed that the federal government engage in a debt-for-nature swap, in which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which has sued Hurwitz for his role in the failure of his bank, would, through a special arrangement set up by the President, exchange the redwoods for his debt (Brown and Stark 1995). Hurwitz rejected the idea, calling it a "so-called fantasy of debt for nature" and threatened lawsuits against the government for excessively limiting the use of his land (Goldberg 1996b).
The value of the Headwaters Grove is estimated at between $100 and $500 million, with many giant trees several thousand years old and 12 feet in diameter; individual trees are worth more than $100,000 each (Goldberg 1996b). The ecological and esthetic values, however, are inestimable. Hurwitz called environmentalists who blocked sale of these trees "extremists" and insisted that he expected to be paid "fair market value for these trees" (Goldberg 1996b). Acrimonious negotiations for the grove continued in 1996 and 1997, with environmentalists demonstrating against an agreement negotiated that would protect only 7,500 acres, instead of the 100,000 they wanted saved. Early in 1997, Hurwitz demanded that he be paid in cash rather than land that was offered by the state of California, land which many environmentalists thought should be protected (Golden 1997). The deal arranged with Hurwitz allowed extensive cutting of the remaining 100,000 acres of old-growth forest without regard for endangered species' habitat.
Members of Earth First! began protests, entering the land and attempting to block logging trucks, and a young conservationist, Julia Hill, who became known as Julia "Butterfly" Hill, climbed up near the top of an ancient redwood tree she called Luna and refused to come down. She stayed up in this tree for two entire years, until the spring of 2000, while trees were cut in the surrounding area, until a sum of $50,000 was paid to the Hurwitz lumber company for Luna and 2.9 acres of surrounding forest, which were donated to Humboldt State University. She came down from the tree at last, a symbol of the extreme devotion and zeal that have been expended in attempts to preserve these ancient trees. The forest will continue to be cut, however, which will be a permanent loss to the environment and a stain on state and federal governments for not taking a stronger role to preserve the entire forest.
In a sad footnote, in November 2000, a vandal sawed a cut 32 inches deep and stretching 19 feet, or half the circumference, across the base of Julia Hill's tree, Luna. It appeared to have been done by a professional logger, judging from the precision of the cut. A team of specialists--an arborist, an engineer and a forester--was convened to try to save the tree (Quinn 2000). Metal braces were drilled into the tree spanning the cut. All efforts are being made to save this ancient tree from falling in winter storms. Visitors are being asked to stay away because the soil and hillside are being deeply eroded. It is a symbol of the senseless destruction of ancient forests.
Only 4 percent of the once vast and magnificent Coastal Redwood forests remain. These trees covered at least 2 million acres prior to logging, but only about 84,000 acres of virgin redwoods have been protected in state parks and the Redwood National Park; another 66,000 acres of logged and second-growth redwoods have been set aside (DiSilvestro 1990).
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