Bruce Halstead, US Fish & Wildlife Service
1125 16th Street, Room 209
Arcata, CA 95521
fax (707) 822-8411
Re: Permit numbers PRT-828950 and 1157.

John Munn, California Department of Forestry
1416 Ninth Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
fax (916) 653-8957
Re: SYP 96-002

Dear Bruce, Dear John.

I am a PhD student at the STARLab at Stanford University. I am writing to ask that you deny Pacific Lumber's HCP and much more.

I needn't go over the technical flaws in the HCP -- the list is too long, and the few that you have heard thousands of times are enough to dismiss almost the whole of Pacific Lumber's document outright. Moreover, the HCP is not about creating or preserving jobs.  Hurwitz has an extremely poor record of showing any concern for such things, and if the loggers were unionized like the United Steelworkers, this whole issue would look very different.  Preserving local jobs and livelihood is the same fight as preserving local economic resources, and if it seems like an economic  gain to destroy a MASSIVELY PRODUCTIVE old growth ecosystem, then the economics is not doing the accounting correctly.  Maxxam is out to liquidate jobs, old growth forest, and eventually local good favor all as fast as possible.  Soon they will be gone or greatly diminished.  There is no beneficial side to clearcutting old growth, unless you can truly only see as far into the future as Hurwitz does.

Here is the point of view of the taxpayer and citizen.  This is all very clear to me.  For this deal to be at the stage that it is at, and for the CDF and USFWS to be as silent as they are, people in power must be working under some sort of effective bribe from the corporations' upper management or owners.  For elected officials, this is vaguely understood to be simply due to the campaign finance system, so that little hope is held for getting any sense or thoughtful (responsible) representation from people who have been financed in election by Maxxam, say.  But how can non-elected officials be working under the same or other illegal or quasi-legal corporate influence? Surely they cannot?!  How can the system, from the Humboldt County Sherrif department, to the state and federal public resources management agencies (you), all be acting in apparent concert to officiate the destruction of public resources for the "benefit" of a few corporate elite?

I don't know. I have little experience in politics, and I am only rationally observing.  I am trying to describe to you how this looks from the outside.  I would love to talk to either of you, just briefly, simply to hear some reasons that you believe for why any remaining old growth forest more or less anywhere on the planet should be allowed to be logged by governments that have the power to control such behavior.

On that note I'd like to comment that at the public hearings (eg Oakland), it was HEARTBREAKING for hundreds of people for you two not to have said even just a few words at the end to indicate that you were conscious beings, that you had heard people's voices, that they would be taken into account (?!), that you were thankful for their time, and thus have given them a chance to thank you for yours! Rather you seemed to think that it was your job description to appear as concrete walls for the entire process!  These people went home sad, and believed that the hearing was a farce and that you two had no backbone to implement anything, solely because you hadn't apparently the courage to say "thank you. good night"....

Summarizing: get some spine! Look out your window, realize the spirit of the law and what you represent and that maybe the dominant paradigm during your tenure has not been doing this; exercise the power that you might not realize you have, make yourself happy!  Steer a hard course NOW towards eliminating all old-growth logging!!   I have NO DOUBT that we will one day look back and shake our heads as we do at slavery about how the powers-that-be fought those who were trying to protect the last old growth, here and elsewhere.  Pacific Lumber under Maxxam should be suffering from 3-strikes-you're-out: e.g. out of Humboldt altogether, forever!

Thank you. Lead us!
 

Christopher Barrington-Leigh