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Clearcutting in California Watersheds

Clearcutting in California Watersheds:
Loss of Biodiversity of Wildlife and Native Plants

Forests of huge pines, firs and cedars covered the watersheds of the Northstate until the mid-1800s. Post-Gold Rush and into the early 1900s, the old original growth giants of the forests which were roughly 500 years old, fell to saws and were replaced with young 2nd growth forests.

The industrial timberlands of 2nd growth trees, 80 to 100 years old in the northern and central Sierra Nevada, the Trinities, and the Siskiyous, began being heavily clearcut in the 1990s.

The Battle Creek watershed, which lies in both Shasta and Tehama counties, begins on the west side of Lassen Forest and ends near I-5 between Redding and Red Bluff. It is one example of the clearcutting and salvage logging destruction which has occurred in California’s precious forests. Below are Google Earth images of the watershed in 1998 and 2020 that illustrate how much logging has occurred during drought and climate change. The blue line outlines Battle Creek watershed which consists of over 222,000 acres; 34% is industrial timberland.

Downstream of the industrial timberland, Battle Creek is home to one of the largest Chinook salmon and steelhead restoration projects in the country. Currently over $164 million have been spent on the project. Steelhead and spring-run Chinook are listed as “Threatened” and winter-run Chinook are listed as “Endangered” under the Endangered Species Act.

Fig. 1. The Battle Creek watershed in 1998. The blue line marks the boundary of the Battle Creek watershed in Shasta and Tehama counties. Lassen National Forest begins on the eastern edge of the watershed.
Fig. 2. By 2020, most of the industrial timberland had been cut. Each small brown hole is a clearcut of ~20acres. The orange oval marks the 2012 Ponderosa Fire area of over 27,000 acres which had been clearcut pre-fire, and salvage logged post-fire. The red oval marks a few of the “units” from logging plans.
Each unit is ~20 acres, equivalent to 4 square city blocks.
Figure 3. The larger surrounding area. The 2021 Dixie Fire burned to the eastern edge of the watershed. Where the clearcuts stop on the eastern side is where the National Forest begins.

Cal Fire is the agency which approves logging plans. According to their records, 67 logging plans covering over 61,000 acres have been filed  in the industrial timberland block of the Battle Creek watershed between 1997 and 2016.  The 61,000 acres of plans do not include additional acres logged under post-fire salvage and other types of exemptions. Two more logging plans were filed in 2019 and 2020 which would cut 2,000 more acres, which are situated between clearcuts from earlier plans. We have filed lawsuits to stop these plans due to the ongoing cumulative impacts from past logging. Climate, fire behavior, water quality, wildlife habitat, and native plants are just some of the irreplaceable natural resources and issues that are being endlessly assaulted and affected by the lack of understanding of ecology by the public agencies charged with protection of state lands.

Fig. 4. A proposed 20 acre clearcut unit marked to be logged in 2007. The blue spray paint marks the edge of the unit on a water ditch which supplies water to some residents of Manton.
Fig. 5. This is what the industrial timberland that has been clearcut and salvage logged in Battle Creek watershed looks like presently. The grown and shaded forests, such as in Fig. 4, have been turned into plantations of mostly one species of tree and invasive, non-native plants. The biodiversity and habitat that protect many species of animals, birds, insects, and fungi are gone. Ongoing, worsening climate change makes it unlikely that these will become functional forests for many decades, if at all.
Fig. 6. Cal Fire map of the Battle Creek watershed. Industrial timberland accounts for 34% of the watershed’s land area; about 80% of it has been cut. The salmon and steelhead restoration project is downstream of the industrial timberland. Some of Battle Creek’s tributaries suffer from high water temperature and excess sedimentation, which impair aquatic life.
Some of the Powerhouse logging plan’s proposed units are shown in orange. Red units are from the Rio Gatito plan, approved in April 2020. The Rio Gatito plan was approved as having “no significant effects” as was the Powerhouse plan. Every single past  plan has been approved as having no adverse impacts. This image illustrates that the recently approved plans abut the already logged ~20 acre units from past plans.

Decades of logging activities and road operations in the upper part of Battle Creek watershed has contributed to significant climate, water quality and wildlife habitat impacts downstream in the watershed. Despite substantial evidence of these ongoing cumulative impacts, the plans we are suing over never acknowledge the existing degradation of the Battle Creek watershed, or the potential for the addition of the plans to make things worse. In order to justify ignoring these impacts, Cal Fire followed its long-term standard practice of only addressing potential cumulative impacts associated with a single logging plan that are discernable within a smaller, limited “planning” watershed in which the plan is located, and refusing to address downstream watercourses where relevant cumulative impacts are or would be present.

This practice masked both the plan’s cumulative impacts, as it has done for numerous other logging plans in Battle Creek. In fact, Cal Fire’s practice is so effective at masking cumulative impacts that it has never found one cumulative watershed impact in Battle Creek, despite undisputed evidence of their existence.

Unfortunately, neither the Rio Gatito or Powerhouse plan is unique. Cal Fire has a pattern and practice of accepting the same type of factually void logging plans throughout the Battle Creek watershed as well as other watersheds, never providing the public or decision makers with the information necessary to knowledgably assess the cumulative environmental impacts of each logging plan.