Stockton Record, March 13, 2002, pp. B1, 6

Logger's use of herbicides troubles Lode groups

Sierra Pacific: Claims by environmentalists inaccurate

By Francis P. Garland
Lode Bureau Chief

ANGELS CAMP - Mother Lode environmental groups Tuesday called for closer
scrutiny of chemical pesticide usage by Sierra Pacific Industries after a
report showed the logging giant applied more than 2-1/2 tons of herbicide
last year on its Calaveras and Tuolumne county properties.

The Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center published results of a
study that showed Sierra Pacific applied 5,139 pounds and more than 2,800
gallons of herbicides in the two counties during 2001. The company owns
about 148,000 acres of land in the two counties.

The Twain Harte-based group said it obtained the herbicide information from
agricultural commissioners in the two counties.

Ed Murphy, a Sierra Pacific inventory-systems manager, said the company does
not keep a running tab on the amount of herbicides it applies in each county
but that all pesticide use is reported to the respective county agricultural
commissioners.
Sierra Pacific uses herbicides to eliminate vegetation that competes with
newly planted seedlings for soil moisture and other nutrients. Company
officials said herbicides are used after an area is logged and then once
again after the seedlings begin to grow, usually within a year of the first
application.

The Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center said Sierra Pacific used
herbicides last year to treat 6,930 acres of vegetation - an area they
equated to "a strip of denuded forest one mile wide and just under 11 miles
long."

Tom Nelson, Sierra Pacific's forest-policy director, called that description
inaccurate and said the chemically treated portions of forest "are in pieces
separated by lots of forest."

John Buckley, the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center's executive
director, said the herbicide usage and subsequent loss of vegetation creates
far greater potential for soil to wash into streams and rivers.

He also said the chemicals hurt wildlife, because they wipe out vegetation
that serves as food and shelter.

Nelson, though, said the chemicals "selectively" eradicate certain species
of brush and grass that compete with the seedlings.

"It doesn't mean you kill all the vegetation," Nelson said. "If the biggest
threat to our trees is a broadleaf brush species, we apply a chemical that
treats that. We don't harm the other vegetation."

Buckley and other environmentalists disagree. Warren Alford of the Sierra
Club said he has walked Sierra Pacific property that was clear-cut several
years ago, and although new trees are growing "there's nothing else. You
have exposed red dirt and very little is growing. Some common animals are
starting to reuse the area, but in terms of bird life or insect life, it's
just not happening."

Buckley said the group's review of the chemicals showed Sierra Pacific used
atrazine, imazapyr, hexazinone, triclopyr, glyphosate, 2,4-D, clopryalid and
simazine -three of which are no longer used by the U.S. Forest Service.

Matt Mathes, a Forest Service spokesman, said the agency stopped using some
chemicals following an environmental impact study done in the late 1980s.

However, Mathes said if the chemicals are deemed safe by the state, then
Sierra Pacific is "perfectly within their rights to do what they're doing.
The state of California has unusually stringent rules about herbicide use
when compared with other states."

Officials with Sierra Pacific, the nation's largest private timberland owner
with more than 1.5 million acres, defended the company's use of herbicides,
saying the chemicals are used according to the law.

Murphy said the company "carefully applies" the chemicals and uses wider
buffers than the labels require.

He also said the herbicide use "has no significant effect on wildlife
whatsoever," because there are vast areas of habitat available to wildlife,
even with Sierra Pacific's logging operations in progress.

Murphy said although herbicides set vegetation back "just for a short period
of time," within three years of the treatments "all the native biodiversity
is returned and then some."

Because Sierra Pacific applies the chemicals to its own property, the public
has little say about it.

But Buckley said two public resources are "undeniably affected" by
herbicides and clear-cut logging - wildlife and water resources.

"These are both state-controlled public benefits that the public does have
both a legal and an ethical right to defend," Buckley said.

Buckley said his group hopes to see the public become more involved in
changing state forestry-practice rules to better protect wildlife and water.
Possible changes would include limiting the amount of clear-cutting and the
amount of chemical treatments that could occur in any one watershed in a
given time frame.

Buckley said if Sierra Pacific were clear-cutting only a small portion of
its local holdings, his center wouldn't be as opposed to that method of
harvesting.

"But because they're applying clear-cuts or a variation of clearcuts across
the vast majority of their logging sites," Buckley said, "the use of
herbicides just compounds the problems for both watershed and wildlife
resources."

Sierra Pacific's Nelson said the company has monitored streams near
clear-cut logging operations in Arnold for the past two years and has yet to
find any detectable level of any herbicides resulting from those operations.

Still, Robert Stack, who heads the Jumping Frog Research Institute, said
he's concerned the herbicides could end up contaminating mountain water
supplies, which feed much of the rest of the state.

"The real question we have to ask ourselves is, is this what we want for our
water supplies?" Stack asked.

"If we contaminate our drinking-water supplies at the source because we're
starting to grow trees Re we grow corn, that's a big difference and a big
change. And we will start to see chemicals in the bottled-up water behind
our reservoirs."