State buys Pacific Lumber's Owl Creek land
January 03, 2001
By John Driscoll
The Times-Standard
600 South Spit acres also donated
The state has purchased 1,200 acres from the Pacific Lumber Co., finalizing the second of three land transactions of the Headwaters Forest Reserve agreement between the company and the state and federal governments.
The $67 million deal to buy the Owl Creek property was closed late Friday. The price fell short of the $80 million set aside by state legislators in 1998 to purchase the property as part of the Headwaters accord.
The parcel is located about 10 miles east and one mile north of Carlotta. A tributary of Yager Creek, Owl Creek runs through old-growth redwood and Douglas fir stands, which make up about nine-tenths of the land.
Al Wright, executive director of the California Wildlife Conservation Board, which negotiates land acquisitions for the state Department of Fish and Game, called the purchase a "wonderful success story."
"We were grateful that we were able to participate and help accomplish this for the state," Wright said.
Wright said that a final decision had not been made on which agency will manage the property.
The $13 million left over from the purchase can be re-appropriated to buy other PL land, notably more than 500 acres adjacent to the Headwaters reserve or timberland in the Mattole River area about 10 miles south of Fortuna.
The company maintains that it is not a willing seller of other timberland.
PL also has donated over 600 acres on the South Spit -- the peninsula south of the entrance of Humboldt Bay -- to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Humboldt Bay Wildlife Refuge. PL has owned that land since the late 1800s but currently has no interest in the property, said company spokeswoman Mary Bullwinkel.
"We've been working with the state for many years to preserve forest land, and here we have another special area that can be preserved for the public," Bullwinkel said.
Congressman Mike Thompson, who drafted legislation to acquire the South Spit, said that PL promised to donate the land during the Headwaters negotiations.
"They held true to their word," Thompson said.
Once a homeless encampment without water, electricity or sanitation facilities, and plagued by heaps of trash, the spit is now largely cleaned up.
The company's proposed logging of the Owl Creek area was hotly protested in the early 1990s. The company logged a portion of the property before the Garberville-based Environmental Protection Information Center sued, claiming that logging the old growth would destroy a large portion of federally protected marbled murrelet habitat.
A federal court agreed and placed a permanent injunction on logging in the area, essentially placing the entire property off limits.
Some question the price tag on the Owl Creek property, since almost none of the property could have been logged.
"We're paying $67 million for something that they couldn't have logged before or after the (Headwaters) deal," said EPIC executive director Paul Mason.
Mason called it a "fantasy assessment." On the other hand, he said, public ownership of one of the last large old-growth stands is a good thing.
Wright said that the conservation board was only following the direction of legislators, who ordered the property assessed as if the marbled murrelet protections were not in place.
Thompson chaired the budget committee for the state Senate at the time, and said that acquiring Owl and Grizzly creeks was in the discussion the whole time.
"If we can resolve the conflict between those that want to protect it and those that want to harvest it, Thompson said, "I think that's important."
During the Headwaters negotiations, the legislature allotted $100 million for Owl and Grizzly creeks in addition to the $380 million appropriated for the 7,470-acre Headwaters forest. The agreement also placed additional restrictions on PL timber harvesting until complex environmental studies could be performed on the company's timberlands.
Those restrictions have recently come under fire from state water quality scientists who claim the measures don't protect the beneficial uses of water. A three-day hearing in front of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is scheduled for February.
In April, PL announced its proposal to buy Eel River Sawmills Inc. As part of that arrangement, PL would acquire some 30,000 acres of timberland, the majority of which could be logged under state forest practice rules instead of the company's stricter guidelines.
Pacific Lumber president and CEO John Campbell would not comment on the status of the sale, but did say that the Owl Creek acquisition and the Eel River deal were not related.
"We look at this as completing another part of the Headwaters agreement," Campbell said. "We're pleased that another step has been taken."