Why is the Mattole Forest Futures Project a particularly good idea now?
Over the last two decades, a changing regulatory climate has greatly increased the cost of securing timber harvest permits in California. Non-industrial forestland owners who prefer to log with a lighter touch have been particularly hard-hit by these changes. The cost of permitting has made light harvests less feasible, creating economic pressures to either subdivide large land holdings, log more intensively than landowners would prefer, or leave the forest unmanaged, thereby allowing a hazardous build-up of fuels. We want landowners to be able, through light-touch timber harvest, to accelerate the return of previously logged forests to ecological maturity, to have the means to upgrade their roads so they are not dumping sediment into the river, and to have an incentive to retain their lands instead of subdividing them. Further, we hope light-touch logging will make possible a modest, sustainable harvest of timber that could support a moderate level of forest-based livelihoods in the M
