SAN FRANCISCO, California, August 6, 2002 (ENS) - As activists prepare to take a $6 million anti-logging initiative to California voters, the state's timber industry is gearing up to oppose the measure as both unnecessary and economically damaging to commercial forest owners.

The battle indicates that California' perennial war between tree preservation advocates and logging proponents is heating up after a period in which both sides of the controversy had lowered the volume of their rhetoric.

Julia Butterfly Hill, the famous tree-sitting defender of old-growth forests, and singer Bonnie Raitt are two leading proponents of the Heritage Tree Preservation Act on its second try for the state ballot, campaign officials say.

Old-growth California redwood (Photo courtesy Trailmonkey)

Healthy old-growth groves stabilize the water purity, geology, and biology of the ecosystems they inhabit," says Hill, who became an environmental celebrity after living for two years and eight days on a small tarp covered platform nestled in the upper boughs of a redwood tree she named Luna. "After cutting, topsoil becomes unstable, water quality diminishes, and countless animal and plant species die off."

"We have a lot of people stepping up to say, 'What can I do to help?'" said former U.S. Congressman Dan Hamburg, co-author of the initiative. The Heritage Tree Act would prohibit the cutting of any tree standing since 1850 on state or private forest land that also meets specified diameters.

"The aim is letting old trees live," Hamburg said.

But the measure is not needed because the "vast majority" of California's old-growth trees are on land owned by the federal and state government, countered David Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association, a timber industry group.

Of 133,513 acres of old-growth redwood in California, 80,000 acres are in parks and 33,513 are on federal lands, according to the timber trade association, which speaks for 250 timber related companies.

Bischel said their analysis of the heritage tree measure found it would put $6 billion to $11 billion worth of timber land off limits to commercial harvest, due to protective zones around old-growth trees.

"The economic impacts on rural communities are very significant," Bischel said, adding that further restrictions on logging will result in further job loss in the timber industry.

A previous attempt to present the heritage tree measure to California voters fell far short of the necessary 420,000 signatures needed to qualify the ballot measure.

If the new initiative makes it to the March 2004 ballot as supporters hope, it is likely to enjoy the active support of environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, as well as former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and an ensemble of celebrities, including musicians Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and Natalie Merchant and actors Gillian Anderson, Martin Sheen, and Woody Harrelson.

California Senator Barbara Boxer announces the California Wild Heritage Wilderness Act on May 11. (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator)

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, has introduced a bill that would designate 2.5 million acres of California public lands and 400 miles of the state's rivers as wild, to safeguard them from the effects of California's booming population.

The California Wild Heritage Wilderness Act of 2002, would incorporate 73 public land parcels into the National Wilderness Preservation System and add 22 rivers to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

The Wilderness Act would protect approximately 2.5 million acres of public lands in 77 different areas across the state, Boxer says.

Boxer's bill culminates two years of statewide organizing efforts and represents a key milestone in the campaign to permanently protect California's dwindling wild lands.

The bill will be introduced in the House as two bills – the Northern California wilderness bill sponsored by Representative Mike Thompson and the Southern California wilderness bill sponsored by Representative Hilda Solis.

Timber industry representatives say they are hopeful the legislation can be stalled, given that U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, has yet to decide whether to back the Boxer bill.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved.