Logging in Mendoland and Humboldt County

Interesting to see the above Forest Stewardship Council ad during the broadcast of the Niners' game yesterday, including the plug for the Mendocino Redwood Company, which now owns 440,000 acres of forestland in northern California. Recall that the lumber company was created mainly with Fisher/Gap money. The late Don Fisher, a Republican, was something of a political pinata here in Progressive Land even before he and his wife tried unsuccessfully to build a gallery for their large collection of modern art on the Presidio. They then gave the collection to MOMA.

Republican billionaire Fisher was abused by Matt Smith in the SF Weekly, since Fisher family money was used to create Mendocino Redwood. Fisher's offense that angered Smith: he got an initiative on the city's 2007 ballot that would have allowed developers to provide more parking spaces in their projects, the bastard! Bike guy Smith was outraged:

A truly awful ballot measure begins with repulsive financial backers. This one was launched with $30,000 from Gap founder Don Fisher, a Republican billionaire known for orchestrating his family's decision to buy and log 235,000 acres of endangered redwood forests...

After buying 220,000 acres of timberland in Mendocino County, the company bought another 200,000 acres in Humboldt County ten years later. Sandy Dean, chairman of the company, promised to continue in Humboldt Co. the sustainable logging practices the company was already practicing on its Mendocino County property:

A decade after Mendocino Redwood Co. was formed, Dean said, the standing inventory of redwood and Douglas fir trees has increased by more than 25 percent; 40,000 acres that had been overgrown with tan oak have been treated so that a conifer forest will again emerge in the next 30 to 40 years; and an investment of $11 million in sediment and erosion control has kept almost 700,000 cubic yards of sediment (the equivalent of almost 70,000 dump trucks) from fouling streams and rivers running through the forest.

Both the Mendocino and Humboldt operations have now been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Judi Bari would have been pleased.