When Julia's mom wrote to me last night, this is what I came up with off the top of my head, with a couple of revisions and additions. I welcome any corrections or omissions on my part. Thanks.
Andy
>Thanks for the info.
>Julia called me today to say PL is found guilty as charged. How did that affect HCP?
>butterfly's mom
>kat ~^..^~ bradley
Hi Kat,
Here's how one can understand it.
1) MAXXAM owns a company, PALCO (which used to be called PL--we still call it PL in tribute).
2) PALCO owns about 200,000 acres of forest lands. 60,000 acres or so of that territory is called Headwaters Forest. The HCP (Habitat Conservation Plan) is for all of PALCO's holdings, including Headwaters. It decides everything about what PALCO can log for the next 50 years on all of "its" land, including where Julia has been living this last eleven months (TODAY! ELEVEN MONTHS and not a day on the ground! Gandhian!).
This is because of the No Surprises policy of the Clinton/Babbitt administration. It will issue "Incidental Take" permits that are permits to kill endangered species in the short term.
The HCP is supposed to be a plan that assures the continued maintenance of endangered species habitat in the long term. The justification for issuing these Extinction Permits is that the company will set aside enough of its recovering habitat (e.g. they won't log it), over the next 50 years, that the degraded habitat will be restored, and become more robust by the end of the 50 years. The truth is, these Incidental Extinction Permits are absolutely in violation of the Endangered Species Act, which absolutely *prohibits* the "Taking" of any individual member of an endangered species. A taking is defined as the killing, injuring or harassing of an endangered species individual or group.
The problem with this concept is that the infrequent, yet intense weather and disease shocks that inevitably hit fragmented ecosystems every decade or two, can in a day or two obliterate a species if it only lives in a few surviving islands of habitat. This kind of assault is occurring all around the Gulf region nowadays with these wicked hurricanes and tornadoes, which I believe are intensified by and made more frequent because of global warming--which the govt. is still doing absolutely nothing about--this is all criminal activity.
That's why we need *redundancy* in habitat. We now have to think about creating habitat *abundance* for the restoration of endangered species, not scheme to find new legal loopholes to carve yet more billions of dollars out of areas that are already on, or beyond the brink of collapse. Areas that should, by current laws (if only the criminals in govt. would enforce them!) have been isolated from *any* human intrusion decades ago. But the citizenry of the world is not yet aroused enough by these atrocities to force adequate, definitive action by the politicians and corporations. No ifs, ands, or buts...!
We *are* demanding that the HCP be tossed out because of this criminal logging protocol by PALCO and for many other reasons, but there are no assurances that this revocation will impact the HCP.
3) About half of the logging operations on this land is done by PALCO employees. The other half is logged by gypo logging businesses (independent ma-and-pa operations of usually a half dozen or fewer loggers).
4) Today PALCO lost its ability to use *its* loggers in any logging operations on *its* lands for the duration of this year. So they announced today that they are laying off indefinitely their 180 loggers, and will have to contract more gypos to make up the labor short fall. (Gypos each have their own logging permits since they are independent businesses.)
5) According to attorney Jay Moller, who I spoke with today, there is nothing to imply that on January 1, they won't have a brand new 1999 timber operator's permit. These are apparently annual licenses, like fishing licenses. They consider this all about harvesting, right?
6) I think a lot of this is smoke and mirrors. The test will be if PALCO is refused a 1999 license. Otherwise there is no real enforcement of criminal logging in this country. And is it a coincidence that this permit revocation didn't happen until we reached the end of the traditional logging season, *right* as the daily-rain season began? The first good rains started about four days ago. And it has rained a little or a lot on each day since.
CONCLUSION: We have to do everything we can to pressure the government to refuse PALCO a 1999 Timber Operator's License until it becomes PL once again. MAXXAM is a criminal organization running a criminal timber operation. We should make it pay the penalty. We shouldn't pay it a penny. So we have to kill the bogus Headwaters Deal (like a drug deal, right?). We should use this permit revocation to kill the Headwaters Deal and get back from Hurwitz and MAXXAM assets worth at least the $1.6 billion Hurwitz and Michael Milken ripped off from the American taxpayers when they looted and bankrupted United Savings Association of Texas to buy PL. And we should make damn sure we don't allow the govt. any escape on this one.
So that means get everyone you know to put the heat on:
The Clinton Admin.:
But especially pressure Richard Wilson, director of the California Department of Forestry, to never give PALCO another TOP for as long as it is owned by Hurwitz and MAXXAM.
I'll have to dig up e-mails, phone numbers and addresses for all of these people. I should have them posted at the Earth First! Media Center web site by this evening, as well as the information on how to comment on the HCP. http://geocities.datacellar.net/RainForest/Vines/9901/
All HCP comments must *be received* by THIS MONDAY, November 16.
Hope this helps, Kat. More in the next day or two.
Out for justice,
Andy
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