Giant sequoias made news last month when President Clinton named part of the Sequoia National Forest a national monument. The sequoias' cousins, the slightly smaller coastal redwoods, recently got attention too, thanks to the intrepid tree-sitter Julia Butterfly Hill. Now, Big Trees State Park, where California settlers first discovered giant sequoias in 1852, is threatened by clear-cutting on its borders.

Clear-cutting is a logging practice that involves felling every tree on a given plot of land, scraping the land bare, spraying it with herbicides and replanting it as a tree plantation. Timber industry officials say that clear-cutting makes for healthier, more productive forests. Most environmentalists counter that the higher production comes at great cost to wildlife, habitat and the water supplies humans and animals depend upon.

What is indisputable is that clear-cutting is exploding in California, provoking a legislative showdown next week that may force Gov. Gray Davis to choose between environmentalists who once endorsed him and a timber industry that now bankrolls him. Fred Keeley, the second-ranking Democrat in the state Assembly and the sponsor of a logging reform bill that would discourage clear-cutting, says he expects Davis to work in good faith to pass a strong law. But he admits that Davis tends to see forestry issues through an industry-friendly lens. To Davis, says Keeley, "forestry is part of agriculture. Trees are just big, tall crops."

Clear-cutting is increasing in California largely because of one company, Sierra Pacific Industries, the same company that is responsible for the clear-cuts planned on the border of Big Trees State Park. "Clear-cutting isn't an industry-wide trend," says Dean Lucke, the assistant director for forest practices at the California Department of Forestry. "But Sierra Pacific controls such a large amount of land [in California] that its clear-cutting raises the industry's average."

Sierra Pacific Industries owns a whopping 1.5 million acres of California's forests, mainly in the Sierra Nevada. That's enough to make Sierra Pacific the second largest private land owner in the United States (behind media mogul Ted Turner), even though it owns no land outside of California. The company is privately held and thus not required to release figures on revenues and profits (though Forbes magazine recently ranked Sierra Pacific's CEO, Red Emerson, the 61st wealthiest person in America).

Data gathered by the Department of Forestry, however, reveals that Sierra Pacific's reliance on clear-cutting has skyrocketed over the past 10 years. While the company's landholdings roughly doubled, its clear-cutting increased by a factor of 24, to nearly 24,000 acres a year.

Sierra Pacific has also become more politically active. Like most of the timber industry, it backed Republican Dan Lundgren in the 1998 governor's race. But after Davis defeated Lundgren, Sierra Pacific hosted a fundraiser for the new governor on July 13 -- the same day Davis' administration issued logging rules that the federal government's National Marine Fisheries Service and environmentalists complained were too weak to protect coho salmon and other threatened species. The fundraiser netted Davis $129,000 in contributions from Sierra Pacific and other timber industry companies. Five months later, Davis appointed Sierra Pacific executive Mark Bosetti to the state Board of Forestry.

Tim Feller, a forester and spokesman for Sierra Pacific Industries, says there is no connection between the two events. It only makes sense, Feller says, to appoint timber industry experts to the board. "We are interested in having good regulation. It happens to be coincidental with the fundraiser. But we are involved in politics; most everybody is."

Davis' office declined requests for an interview for this story. But I finally did get to ask spokesman Byron Tucker the following question: "How can Californians be confident that the governor will fairly balance environmental and timber industry arguments, when the industry has showered him with campaign contributions?"

Tucker checked with his superiors and sternly replied, "Your question didn't go over very well here." He added, "You're making a connection between campaign contributions a year ago and a decision being made now? Clear-cutting is legal in California, so what's the beef?"

"Of course they're not going to talk to you," state Forestry Department spokesman Louis Blumberg exclaimed, when he learned Davis' press office was stonewalling requests for an interview. "This is a losing issue for them. They've got both the environmentalists and the industry mad at them."

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