For more than twenty years EPIC has been working to protect the North Coast's vanishing ancient forests, to restore the integrity of coastal watersheds, to recover vanishing fish and wildlife, and to bring about a better understanding of the important laws protecting our public trust values. Using their three principal programs of Outreach and Education, Advocacy, and Litigation, EPIC has been one of the few groups to challenge ecosystem destruction on corporate-owned lands. Some of EPIC's achievements include adding thousands of acres to the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, the campaign to save Headwaters Forest, and litigation to protect Gilham Butte until key areas were permanently protected through acquisition.


August, 2003 Update
Judge to Strike Down Maxxam's Logging Plan (read more)

Engaging Timber: The Timber Harvest Plan Process: An Explanation
May 11, 2010
Looking out over the hills of the North Coast region, the expansive patchwork of clearcuts and young tree plantations marks a stark contrast from the tiny patches of preserved old-growth redwood forests within parks and the Headwaters Preserve. Private timber operators logged for years without effective regulation, and nearly destroyed the integrity of forest ecosystems for all of the species that depend on them. Since the 1970s local community activists and EPIC have worked to support better logging practices and provide habitat protection in our region, by monitoring industrial timber operations through the Timber Harvest Plan (THP) process. (read more)


Engaging Timber: Northwest California's National Forests in the Big Picture
May 11, 2010
A decade into the 21st century, the US Forest Service is only beginning to face the challenges that nearly overwhelmed it in the 20th. The tension between competing desires to exploit western forests for immediate gain or to protect them to provide for long-term sustainability first drove Teddy Roosevelt to create the National Forest system to secure both forests and key sources of clean, abundant water. But following World War II, the National Forests became the focus of an enormous logging and road-building boom. (read more)


Fire On the Mountain
August 19, 2009
The Forest Service seems to be learning some lessons from the fire season of 2008­--but it's also reverting to the fire suppression policies which have caused so many problems. (read more)


Conditions Worsening for Imperiled Salmon
April 15, 2009
It has been a scary beautiful winter on the North Coast. Even in our wet-winter corner of California, shifts in weather are amplifying changes in climate. We're getting a preview of our future, on a world where water scarcity will make life more challenging for human communities, and may threaten the viability of species and ecosystems. EPIC is working to ensure that our rich, wild corner of the continent remains an ark for biological diversity, especially for keystone species like salmon. (read more)


Pacific Lumber is Out of the Picture
September 2, 2008
A glimmer of hope graces the Redwood coast this summer as decades of wrangling between environmental activists and Pacific Lumber Company (PL) over their liquidation logging has finally passed. Twenty-three years after corporate bandit Charles Hurwitz's Maxxam took over Pacific Lumber, the company spiraled into a complex bankruptcy process that has resulted in the Mendocino Redwood Company (MendoRC) reorganizing the company and operating the mill. In the final weeks of PL's existence, the Environmental Protection Information Center's (EPIC) decade-long legal battle challenging permits issued after the Headwaters Deal also reached a climax, in a unanimous California Supreme Court case affirming environmental positions on two of the central legal issues the case presented. (read more)


Environmental Protection Information Center
December 10, 2007
This fall, EPIC marks its 30th anniversary. According to Robert "Woods" Sutherland, Keeper of the Ancient Texts, the Environmental Protection Information Center was named by one Jim Demulling, a lifelong timber faller. Mr. Demulling was a great admirer of Upton Sinclair's Depression-era campaign for Governor of California, a frankly socialist program that drove big landowners and corporations into a frenzy of red-baiting, including pioneering use of advertising techniques in a political campaign. Thus was the "EPIC" handle used by End Poverty In California borrowed for the Environmental Protection Information Center: you might say that picking big fights with corporations and their pet politicians is in our organizational DNA. (read more)


The Environmental Protection Information Center
April 5, 2006
The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild), and Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) have filed suit against the California Departments of Forestry (CDF) and Fish and Game (DF&G) for approving logging of crucial habitat for the newly discovered Scott Bar salamander. The species was first described in May of 2005 and has one of the smallest ranges of any salamander. (read more)


Sustainability and Big Changes
September 20, 2005
Sustainable forestry, we're told, is the rising tide. On private industrial lands "certified" under the industry's standard, on public lands under "ecosystem management," we are assured that practices now in place will maintain the productivity and diversity of our forests for the future. Facing climate change in a realistic way requires us to rethink those claims. (read more)


Environmental Protection Information Center: EPIC Helps Carlotta Resident Resist Timber Harvest Plan--CDF Improperly Approves THP
April 4, 2005
In midsummer 2004, Kathleen Teague, a resident of the Cummings Creek watershed near Carlotta on the Van Duzen River, learned that the California Department of Forestry (CDF) was reviewing a timber harvest plan (THP 04-144) on adjacent private lands above her property. She had good reason to be concerned: in 1997 a landslide on the slope between the proposed THP and her residence had stopped just short of her home. Kathleen immediately contacted CDF and asked them to visit her property, to evaluate the risk that the THP might trigger slide movement. Her requests were ignored, and CDF approved the plan at the end of November. So she called EPIC for help. (read more)


Epic Report
April 28, 2000
The first few months of the new year have been very busy ones for EPIC, as we work toward comprehensive logging reform on a number of related fronts. We hope to successfully meet the immense challenges ahead of us through a combination of new litigation and sustained public advocacy. EPIC and nearly twenty other conservation, Native American and fisheries organizations filed a sweeping new federal lawsuit on March 1, charging the California Department of Forestry (CDF) and other state officials with violating the Endangered Species Act by approving logging plans that harm Coho salmon. Substantive hearings in the case should begin shortly. In the meantime, we?re still pursuing a challenge to Pacific Lumber Company?s Sustained Yield Plan, a 120-year forest liquidation plan prepared as part of the Headwaters Forest deal. (read more)


Reining In the Cows (and Goats): EPIC Gets Results on Uncontrolled Grazing
In recent months, EPIC has acted to highlight and rein in inappropriate grazing on public lands along the North Coast. We've made real progress documenting and changing routine but destructive grazing practices on lands the public owns. These not only include our national forests, but also wildlife areas managed by the California Department of Fish and Game, and even State Parks. (read more)



Volunteer Opportunities

• Front Office Assistance
  Help carry out the daily functions of EPIC's office by assisting staff with answering phones, handling walk-in traffic and other administrative duties.
• Mailing Parties
  EPIC periodically schedules mailing parties, in which a group of volunteers helps to prepare a large mailing through such tasks as stuffing, sealing, labeling and sorting envelopes.
• Newsletter Distribution
  Help us spread the word by distributing our newsletters in your area. We will send you as few or as many as you like to place at locations in your area, such as natural food stores, libraries, coffee shops, and elsewhere (please ask permission before you drop off a stack).