This fall, EPIC marks its 30th anniversary. According to Robert "Woods" Sutherland, Keeper of the Ancient Texts, the Environmental Protection Information Center was named by one Jim Demulling, a lifelong timber faller. Mr. Demulling was a great admirer of Upton Sinclair's Depression-era campaign for Governor of California, a frankly socialist program that drove big landowners and corporations into a frenzy of red-baiting, including pioneering use of advertising techniques in a political campaign. Thus was the "EPIC" handle used by End Poverty In California borrowed for the Environmental Protection Information Center: you might say that picking big fights with corporations and their pet politicians is in our organizational DNA.
After 30 years, the little organization that took root addressing problems of herbicide spraying and excessive logging on industrial timberlands in Humboldt and Mendocino counties has become one of the most significant small environmental groups in California history, and an indispensable force to protect industrial timberlands, public forests, parks, and imperiled species in Northern California.
| |||
* Protection of the Sally Bell Grove and establishment of the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park and Intertribal Wilderness.
* EPIC v Johnson, a pioneering case which established the requirement that state agencies consider and address the cumulative effects of their proposed actions under CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act).
* The long struggle to protect the redwood and other forests owned by Pacific Lumber from the attempt by Maxxam, Inc., to liquidate these holdings.
* The Headwaters campaign, which focused on protecting the largest remaining intact groves of redwoods on PL land, with some success.
* Clean Water protection--under both California and federal law, EPIC has worked to ensure that polluting companies like PL are prevented from abusing public trust values for private gain.
* Public lands: EPIC has helped save ancient forests, roadless areas, and key habitat from poorly planned timber proposals. We've beaten attempts to conduct post-fire "salvage" logging without considering science that shows that imperiled species use burned lands. We've guarded rules that protect the forest from the Bush administration axe, and led efforts to keep the worst environmental administration in US history from tearing apart the Northwest Forest Plan.
* Sharon Duggan, our accomplished Staff Attorney, has literally written the book--with co-author Tara Mueller--on California Forest Practice Rules and related laws. For a copy, go to www.solano.com/bookinfo_FP.htm.
Currently, EPIC is a voice on the creditors committee in the Pacific Lumber bankruptcy case. As a member of the committee, EPIC is working for the interests of all the creditors, including timber workers hurt by PL's broken promises of severance packages before filing its pre-planned bankruptcy.
Considering the size of the organization, EPIC has done amazing work. This legacy of accomplishing great things with limited resources should stand us in good stead as we turn to meet daunting future challenges. We must find ways to restore and protect our critical ecosystem if this region is to become what it should be--a landscape ark, a great refuge for wild things, for wildness itself, against the ravages of both industrial civilization's roads, sprawl, and poisons, and most of all against the global warming that industrial society has created. Our success in this enterprise is far from certain--but EPIC is committed to seeking a sustainable future for both our children and for nonhuman communities.
For more information: www.wildcalifornia.org
More Articles...
TOC for Forest & River News, Winter 2007