Hi All, The revised "Dogwood" THP has been filed with CAL FIRE. Public comment will close 12/24/15. Dr. Peter Baye has read through the revised THP. He created the letter below delineating why this THP should be rejected. We urge you to contact your elected officials and let them know your concerns. You can also comment on our petition and it will go to CAL FIRE. The Burch family has hired Platinum Advisors, high-powered lobbyists to fight us. We have to speak for the river! Jeanne and Rick Peter's letter: Governor Jerry Brown c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173 Sacramento, CA 95814 Ken Pimlott, Director, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection 1416 9th Street Sacramento, CA 94244-2460 Dear Governor Brown and Director Pimlott: We urge you to disapprove the “Dogwood” Timber Harvest Plan (1-15-042 SON). This is an exceptionally large timber harvest plan entirely within the sensitive and unique floodplain redwood forest of the Gualala River in Sonoma County, bordering Mendocino County, where it extends over the lower five miles from the mouth of the river upstream. Over 1500 residents in the nearby communities of Gualala and The Sea Ranch have signed petitions and sent letters to their representatives to express their opposition and concern about the environmental and recreational impacts of logging of the floodplain redwoods next to Sonoma County Regional Park, and impacts on its planned future expansion upstream. The recirculated Dogwood THP offers only minor changes and fails to address the basic objections to the proposed logging plan. This timber harvest plan is located entirely in sensitive flood-prone (floodplain) redwood forest. Under Forest Practice Rules logging disturbances should be avoided in flood-prone forests. The Dogwood THP, in contrast, expands the scope of floodplain redwood logging beyond any previously approved timber harvest plan in the Gualala River watershed. It does not avoid or even minimize its reach into the limited floodplain redwood forest, where the most mature (80-100 year old) redwoods now grow in the floodplain. In addition, Unit 1 logging in this plan is adjacent to a Sonoma County Regional Park and campground, and it would log over land that has been proposed for decades by the County to be included in an expanded County river park. A protected redwood river park on the Gualala River, like that of the Navarro River and Big River (Mendocino County; California State Parks), would be a huge benefit to the local economy. The state’s long term direct and indirect economic benefits from a river park would vastly exceed the revenues from a short-term timber harvest operation. The Dogwood THP fails to consider the required range of feasible project alternatives to logging the floodplain redwood forest. The landowner, Gualala Redwoods Timber, simply declared that it is not willing or interested in any alternative to logging the mature redwoods of the Gualala River floodplain. It refused to consider feasible alternatives like alternative locations, reduced timber harvest area, different shapes of the timber harvest area. It also failed to consider feasible alternatives like land swaps with public agencies and nonprofit organizations that would enable a River Park footprint to be conserved in exchange for equivalent productive commercial redwood forest area and timber volume. Sonoma County government agencies and nonprofit partners had recently offered to purchase the controversial logging area. The Dogwood THP still contains incomplete, incorrect, and misleading information that precludes meaningful public comment. It still provides no current survey information about sensitive wetlands, amphibians, and rare plants specifically in the floodplain timber harvest plan area, making this information unavailable for public and expert review and comment. How can these resources be protected, with meaningful public input, if surveys are deferred to insufficient pre-harvest inventories after public comments are closed? How can the plan avoid long-term damage to sensitive species, or avoid irreparable damage to rare plants, if all scientific baseline surveys are performed after the THP preparation and public comment, without even a monitoring plan available for review by independent experts? The Dogwood THP is the first significant large-scale logging impact to the floodplain redwood forest of the Gualala River, and the plan preparer clearly states its intention (in the “alternatives” discussion) of eventually cutting the entire floodplain in its ownership. But the THP fails to provide any sufficiently clear and detailed assessment of cumulative impacts of further floodplain logging on the Gualala River, or cumulative impacts of logging the forested slopes above the floodplain. Instead the THP provides only routine, boilerplate wording about cumulative impacts, rather than a meaningful analysis. The Dogwood THP is an unacceptable precedent and should not be approved. CAL FIRE, Sonoma County, Senator Mike McGuire, and the plan submitter (GRT) should be encouraged to work out a feasible alternative that properly balances public and private interests and to resolve this conflict. Thank you for your help in bringing a collaborative solution that balances public and private interests to benefit California’s environment, economy, recreation, and commercial timber production, instead of a one-sided permit for private timber industry interest over all public interests. The first necessary step towards a better alternative is denial of this unacceptable industrial timber harvest plan at the mouth of the Gualala River. Sincerely, Copies furnished: Sonoma County Supervisor Efren Carrillo California State Senator Mike McGuire CAL FIRE Forest Practices, Santa Rosa