Emergency Timber Harvest Limits Upheld : Environment: An administrative law judge allows the state to implement new controls over logging on private land.

SACRAMENTO —  In a victory for state regulators who contend that California’s forests have been over-cut, an administrative law judge Monday upheld a decision by the Board of Forestry to enforce emergency rules limiting timber harvests on private lands.

The ruling by Office of Administrative Law Director Marz Garcia allows the state board to put into effect temporary regulations governing clear-cutting, logging in ancient forests and the harvesting of trees near environmentally sensitive watersheds.

By approving the emergency regulations, Garcia also affirmed the board’s findings that conditions in the forest were so critical that they had to be dealt with immediately.

“I think he (Garcia) sensed there was enough of an emergency in the forests to approve these regulations,” said Richard Wilson, director of the California Department of Forestry.

In its findings, the board said lumber companies had been allowed to create a “timber gap” by over-harvesting older trees and cutting young ones before they had a chance to reach maturity. It acknowledged that the over-cutting had been done with the approval of previous administrations, both Republican and Democratic.

Wilson said the board had not meant to single out any particular past board for criticism but was simply “looking realistically at the condition of things and pointing out that there is a management problem in the forest that needs to be attended to.”

The findings, however, were bitterly disputed by logging interests which insisted the board, led by three new appointees of Gov. Pete Wilson, was exaggerating forest conditions to win a political victory.

“What they are trying to do is justify emergency regulations and I think that they have really stretched things in order to do that,” said Bill Dennison, president of the California Forestry Assn.

Dennison said the board’s strongly worded conclusions had left impressions with the public that “private landowners must be doing something dastardly” when in fact all their actions had been approved by the state.

“We never have believed there is a need for emergency regulations, particularly when you consider California has the most stringent forest practice rules in the nation and probably the world,” he said. “Everyone recognizes California has been way out in the lead on forest regulations.”

He said the red tape created by the new regulations will effectively stop most companies from logging this spring. As a practical matter, he said, it will take most companies months to gather the data required by the new regulations before timber harvest plans can be approved.

Dennison said the industry was already reeling economically from reductions in the amount of logging permitted on federal lands. Then the state began to move to put additional restrictions on harvesting on private lands.

With the nation’s new environmental awareness, he said, loggers realize that they have to change their harvesting practices but he said they cannot do it “bang, overnight” without severe economic repercussions.

Dennison said he believed the industry could effectively challenge most of the data used by the board to back up its findings but had never been given an opportunity to do so.

But environmentalists, while praising the board’s findings, contend the new regulations provide enough loopholes that logging companies would still be able to harvest vast amounts of timberland.

“I am troubled by the content of the new regulations because I think they set the stage for permanent regulations that will provide the industry with loopholes,” said Sharon Duggan, an environmental attorney. The emergency regulations can remain in effect only for 120 days. The board is expected to approve permanent regulations after a series of public hearings and workshops.

Duggan said timber companies had submitted a record number of harvest plans in the last few weeks that will not be governed by the new regulations. She said she is fearful that these plans, some of which call for the cutting of old-growth forests, will be approved by the Forestry Department despite its findings.