Redwood Forests Certified
for Sustainable Harvests

Four of every five acres of commercial redwood forest are now independently certified as well managed and harvested on a sustainable basis. The major redwood lumber mills and landowners have completed independent third-party certification of their redwood forestlands. As a result, over 1 million acres, approximately 80 percent of the available redwood commercial forest are certified under one of the two most widely recognized certification programs: Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI SM ) program.

There are 1.74 million acres (1) of Coastal Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests on California’s north coast. About 26 percent, or 450,000 acres of these forests are preserved in national, state and municipal parks, national monuments and other administratively withdrawn lands (2) where harvesting is prohibited.

Of the remaining 1.29 million acres where harvesting can take place, approximately 1.03 million acres (3) (80 percent) are currently being well managed according to independent third-party certification programs.

Forest certification provides consumers with assurance that the redwood products they purchase have been harvested in an environmentally sound manner. The basic tenants of certification programs include:

sustainable forestry
prompt reforestation
protection of water quality
enhancement of wildlife habitat
minimizing the visual impact of harvesting
protection of unique sites
improvements in wood utilization
These voluntary third-party certification programs are in addition to the mandatory requirements of California’s Forest Practices Act, recognized as the most thorough timber harvesting regulation in North America. Section 913 of the Forest Practices Act requires that any company owning commercial forests greater than 50,000 acres prepare a Sustained Yield Plan. These plans must project an equal balance of growth and harvest over a 100 year period while ensuring sustainability of all forest resources, including wildlife, watershed and soil.

References:

1 U.S. Forest Service Inventory and Analysis, Pacific Northwest Forest Range and Experiment Station, Portland Oregon reporting 1,244,000 acres with a plurality of redwood trees and another 496,000 acres with redwood present. (See also Fox III, Lawrence, “A Classification, Map and Volume Estimate for the Coast Redwood of California,” 1988, revised Oct. 1989, Humboldt State University, Arcata, Calif., with California Department of Forestry; reporting a plurality of redwoods on 1,663,000 acres and occurring on another 287,000 acres.)

2 Solinsky, Frank and Dean, Consulting Foresters, Trinidad, “Acreage and Volume of Coast Redwood Timber in Public Ownership In California”, Sept., 1990. (More recently withdrawn acreage added.)

3 Forest Stewardship Council, www.fscoax.org. American Forest & Paper Association’s Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI SM) Program, www.afandpa.org/forestry/sfi or www.aboutsfi.org.

Group buys forest to log, shield it from development
By Tim Reiterman
June 15, 2007

With 100% financing from the Bank of America, a nonprofit conservation group has purchased 50,000 acres of redwood forest along the Mendocino County coast north of Fort Bragg for $65 million and plans to use it for commercial timber harvesting while shielding the land from development.

“We know that this property without protection would have been subdivided into smaller parcels,” Art Harwood, a sawmill operator and president of the Redwood Forest Foundation, told reporters Thursday in the redwood grove outside the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. “Every year in the U.S., millions of acres of forest are bought and sold, and the pressure is particularly high in Northern California.”

Bank and foundation officials said the deal is the first of its kind that relies entirely on private financing.

However, much of the debt is to be paid through the sale of a conservation easement to another nonprofit group that plans to seek state funding.

Harwood said the land, acquired from Hawthorne Timber Co., was heavily logged in the 1980s and ’90s and now consists primarily of second-growth redwood and Douglas fir. “There are a few old-growth trees scattered out there, but we will not be cutting them,” he said.

Foundation officials said they plan to do very little logging at first, and never on more than 3% of the property a year to ensure a long-term supply of jobs and timber. The Redwood Forest Foundation, which is dedicated to restoring working forests, plans to use logging revenue to help pay off the 20-year loan.

The foundation, based in the southern Mendocino County town of Gualala, intends to sell the conservation easement to the Conservation Fund, which plans to use state money approved by voters last year in Proposition 84, the clean water, parks and coastal bond measure.

“We haven’t negotiated the cost of the easement and the terms,” said Chris Kelly, who manages California operations for the fund. “But our intention is to have an agreement allowing no subdivision, development or conversion to non-forest uses, and possibly there will be a cap on harvesting.”

The land is north of Fort Bragg and about 50 miles north of two other parcels purchased recently by the Conservation Fund.