High Drama Over Headwaters Purchase

In the end, it came down to the wire. After 12 years of protests, negotiations, offers, government appropriations, and a last-minute collapse of the deal, the agreement to purchase 10,000 acres (4,050 ha) of old-growth redwood forest belonging to the Pacific Lumber Company (PalCo) was finally concluded on March 1. But it was nip-and-tuck, right up to the deadline.

With the commitment for $250 million in federal funding for the purchase due to expire on midnight of Monday, March 1, PalCo rejected the final offer on Friday, February 26, citing the restrictions being placed on company logging practices as too extreme. As part of the agreement, the company is to be prohibited from logging within 100 feet (30 m) of streams on their remaining 200,000 acres (81,000 ha), and 11 additional old-growth redwood groves will be off-limits to all logging for 50 years. PalCo rejected the deal in part because of state estimates that timber harvests would be limited to about 138 million board feet per year (326,000 m3/year) under the agreement—a level not adequate to pay off $867 million in bonded indebtedness, according to company officials quoted in the Los Angeles Times.