National Audubon Society, Sierra Club Ancient Forest Committee
and Earth First! Media Center, make an urgent plea!
Drop what you're doing right now and call the President!
Corporate raider Charles Hurwitz sees only money in the last forest on Earth of 2,000-year-old Coastal Redwoods, this magnificent emerald cathedral seen nowhere else on the planet, which soars upward toward the stars to the height of 36-story buildings. He gets tens of thousands of dollars from each tree he logs: he can make a million dollars in a weekend. And he's done it before... illegally. He knows there's a fortune to be made in the illegal trafficking of this endangered species, and he's been getting away with it for nine years, in violation of every state and federal wild lands protection law on the books.
So why did President Clinton make it possible for Hurwitz and his investment company MAXXAM to go in and begin dissecting the largest, most ecologically crucial grove of the entire redwood ecosystem, just as the park land forests are beginning to collapse from forest fragmentation and global climate change?
Hurwitz specializes in bringing down giants. He brought down United Savings Association of Texas in one of the largest S&L scams of the Reagan era. Hurwitz was controlling owner of the S&L and invested its deposits in convicted Wall Street criminal Michael Milken's junk bond scams in exchange for Milken personally issuing Hurwitz three quarters of a billion dollars in loans and junk bonds to wage a hostile takeover of the Pacific Lumber Co. in 1985. Once acquired, Hurwitz began looting the company, selling off properties, raiding the workers pension fund, and developing a plan to log off all of the remaining ancient redwoods outside the parks within seventeen years by immediately tripling the rate of cutting in the ancient groves. He's successfully done this now for nine years, consistently in violation of state and federal law. And, along with the trees, the S&L came crashing down, costing U.S. taxpayers a whopping $1.6 billion FDIC bailout. Last month the FDIC filed suit against Hurwitz to recover $250 million for this scam.
Despite the fact that the purchase of PL was therefore paid for with our money, Hurwitz is still looting the company, making millions every week. Earlier this year U.S. District Judge Louis Bechtle found PL had conspired to commit fraud and coerce bird surveyors to evade the Endangered Species act by waging two round-the-clock, weekend logging assaults in 1993 on the ancient grove Owl Creek. These assaults were designed to pull out one million dollars worth of trees on each occasion while the courts were closed and helpless to stop the illegal logging. He ruled that any logging of any of PL's ancient groves would violate the ESA, and he placed a permanent logging injunction on Owl Creek.
Tragically, around this same time, in an attempt to reduce the intensity of right-wing threats to gut the Endangered Species Act, President Clinton banned enforcement of the Act by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Seeing the opportunity of a lifetime, Hurwitz filed for a California logging exemption on virtually all of his lands, which allows taking out 10% of the standing trees, and everything on the ground. It's a fast track loophole, supposedly granted only to facilitate a quick response to a disease outbreak or pest infestation, but does not require any of these conditions to actually exist! And they don't exist anywhere on PL lands! It's an exemption from all state wild land protection laws and an exemption from citizen lawsuits and state court review.
So with enforcement of state laws successfully shackled, and the President's federal enforcement moratorium keeping the feds at bay, Hurwitz, three days after the judge's ruling, announced he was going to commit the most outrageous and egregious ESA violation possible, he was going to log in all of the ancient groves, of Headwaters Forest, including the largest and most ecologically crucial grove of all, the 3,000 acre jewel itself, Headwaters Grove. He would do this as soon as nesting season closed!
This is only possible because of the President's order to the Fish and Wildlife Service banning enforcement of the law! He can change the fate of these forest groves and save them all by calling the Fish and Wildlife Service back and saying, "OOPS! Better get in there and enforce the Endangered Species Act after all. The entire Redwood Forest, which already totals less than 90,000 patchy fragmented acres, are beginning to go, and may not survive at all if Headwaters goes down. The Redwood Forest will not go down on my watch!" Last year he said he wanted to save Headwaters. Call the president and tell him to be a hero! One call from the President is all it would take to save Headwaters.
One call from California Governor Pete Wilson to California's Fish and Game Dept. ordering them to enforce the ESA could save Headwaters too. One of his first promises to Californians upon taking office in 1991 was to save Headwaters immediately. It's been four years and he hasn't done it, perhaps because of Hurwitz's campaign contributions. Call Governor Wilson RIGHT NOW and tell him to keep his promise: SAVE HEADWATERS!
There's no time for letters and postcards. Phone, fax or e-mail this one simple message to both President Clinton and Governor Wilson: "Stop the Redwood massacre! Enforce the Endangered Species Act in Headwaters Forest NOW!"
If we all just focus on this for the next few days, we can get a ban on logging all of the ancient groves, and forever keep them away from the murderous hands of Charles Hurwitz! Become a Call Captain. Open up your phone book and get twenty of your friends to make these calls. We need 50,000 to remove Clinton's hesitation. Get prominent members of your community, such as church leaders, labor and business leaders, famous people and YOUR KIDS to call today!
TO FIND OUT OTHER CREATIVE WAYS YOU CAN HELP OR CONTRIBUTE CALL: Earth First! Media Center @ 707/923-4949. Tax deductible contributions to cover phone bills for this emergency effort are welcome and needed, payable to:
Earth Regeneration Society
P.O. Box 324
Redway, CA 95560
Vice President Al Gore: Phone: 202-456-2326, E-mail: vicepresident@whitehouse.gov
Bruce Babbit (Secretary of the Interior) Phone: 202-208-7351
White House: Phone: 202-456-1111, FAX: 202-456-2883, E-mail: president@whitehouse.gov
Governor Wilson: Phone: 916-445-2864, FAX: 916-445-4633