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The 23-year-long adversarial process that constituted Maxxam's regime in Humboldt ended in a different world than it began. It is hard to recall how many mills were operating in l985 that were long closed by 2007 or exactly how many jobs had dried up outside of PL.
In the Company itself, employment swelled and then rapidly declined as debt-driven managers ran up against the impenetrable wall of decreasing inventory. In 1985, PL employed about 800 people in the woods and mills. By the early 1990s, most estimates of the employment base were between 1500 and 1600, just about double those of 1985. This swollen workforce was required to increase the harvest from its `sleepy' pre-takeover volume of 120 million board feet (mmbf) per year to the 250 + mmbf per year or more to which it had probably risen by the early 1990s. Then the precipitous decline in the first decade of the new century set in and the work force dwindled to little more than 300 workers in 2007 when volume of cut declined to 77 mmbf. (This figure is deceiving since it was a partly a product of complexities that the business faced in the bankruptcy process rather than the intention of the Company.)
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In other words, the series of events provoked by the Maxxam takeover and ending with the confirmation of Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC)--now Humboldt Redwood Company (HRC)--spanned a period of substantial change in the economics of the County, one in which the dominance of timber waned and values in the community went through a responsive transformation, in part toward those that could be considered more urban or suburban.
One of the most interesting changes took place within the hearts and minds of many environmentalists. Though lip-service had regularly been paid to ecologically sound logging, there was a strong anti-logging bias on the parts of many, especially rank and file urban environmentalists and those whose commitments were more distant and intermittent. During the peak of PL's post-takeover boom, in the mid-to late 1990's, the Clinton Forest Plan had provoked the emergence farther north of the zero-cut position--activists against all logging, at least on public lands.
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Prior to this new emergence, unstated environmental policy relative to forest lands had basically been two-fold. The first aspect was trying to force effective regulation on an industry that seemed at times antipathetic to its own future supply. (This process still goes on as Richard Gienger can best attest and has been less than satisfactory from either an environmental or industry point of view.)
The second aspect of environmentally-driven policy was public acquisition and permanent protection of remaining old-growth forests. While preserving scattered remnants of undisturbed habitat was critical to the ultimate recovery of the landscape, this initiative was doomed to run up against limits to public willingness and ability to spend. As for the vast majority of forested land--the matrix of cutover lands--there wasn't enough money in the world to buy it all. Also, what would happen to the core reserves when they were surrounded by cutover lands with high forest fuel levels or, worse, by a broken up, developed and heavily roaded landscape?
By the fall of 2007, many of the most respected voices among environmentalists, in Humboldt County at least, had become overt proponents of sustainable forestry--perhaps the most overt proponents. For instance, during the hearings over the Humboldt Board of Supervisors' efforts to send a message to the bankruptcy proceedings by placing a temporary moratorium on issuance of building permits on TPZ land, one environmentalist after another spoke in favor of guaranteeing the ongoing practice of forestry while one logger or former logger after another spoke in favor, basically, of protecting the right to convert forest land to real estate. The old maxims and adages of the l990's often used to defame the zero-cut position--that logging was the preferred alternative to development--had been adopted whole cloth by former opponents while it was ignored by those who had originally given them voice. Environmentalists had come to realize that they had, for some degree, traded off timber issues for those of development.
A new expanded vision, which took in the cutover forest matrix, had developed. Now we could foresee a landscape in which preserved cores were surrounded by well-managed lands. Through all-age selection management, timber stands tended toward recovery of the structure and function of old growth, which provided greatly improved habitat and natural services and enabled the slow but steady expansion of employment in the woods upon which a strong, stable economy could be built.
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This story of the debate at the Board of Supervisors points at the following element, which made the PL Bankruptcy proceeding most unique: the involvement of the community--our community in Humboldt--and the inclusion of concerns for the health of the land into the overall considerations for confirmation of a plan for reorganization of PL. Even though legal events took place at a distance of over two thousand miles, the County was, in some crucial ways, enmeshed, participatory, and attentive. The normal bankruptcy process in which most elements were subject to the straightforward (though arguable) calculus of profit, loss, and market value was transformed into one that might best be called `social legitimization.'
After a certain point in the legal process, the judge began to make it clear to anyone listening that he considered this an unusual case, and that he was going to make every effort, within the law, to forge a conclusion that would be best for the land and people of Humboldt County. This had to be a major aberration from at least my impression of what drives bankruptcy resolutions.
One hears the first beats of the tribal drums of property rights advocacy quietly but with menace under one's feet when the idea that one ownership might be more "legitimate" than another enters the public discourse--especially if this legitimacy is a determining factor in who ends up in control of land and how much they pay. It is clear, in retrospect, that Mendocino Redwood Company ended up owning the former PL lands because, over and above its skill in maneuvering through the process, it promised to come the closest of all available alternatives to meet the valid needs of the community for healthy intact forest ecosystems and for employment in forest and mills. The other alternative on the table--the call by the major creditors for an auction--would very likely have produced more money for the creditors, but greater threat to land and people.
Will MRC/HRC live up to its promise? Will it be able to adhere to its commitments to the values and factors that legitimized it in the bankruptcy proceedings? Time will tell. The current financial meltdown makes the working environment around these lands ever more uncertain and difficult. There will also be vigilant oversight from some elements in the community, and the new operators will have to pay deference to this oversight with a level of transparency, which is unusual in private capital investment enterprises. A much enlarged access by concerned watershed residents to information and to the land itself will be expected as well as candor about intentions and underlying premises.
If the new company can manage this candor and transparency--and early indications suggest that they are trying--and their management allows recovery of damaged watersheds, then their legitimacy will be substantiated and their ownership will be stable and secure. If not, then the community must prepare itself for the fiscal and ecological exigencies and responsibilities of full-on ownership, preferably one that is private and non-profit. The community will probably have to do this anyway before too long to build a feasible alternative to the runaway development that will likely ensue in the county upon the recovery of the economy.
For more info: David Simpson at hnpetrolia@aol.com
Excerpted from a speech given at the Community Forestry Conference on October 30, 2008