LOGGING INDUSTRY ADVOCATE SPEAKS TO REDDING REALTORS
LOCAL GOVERNMENT, REDDING LIFESTYLES, SHASTA COUNTY
September 17th, 2008
Nadine Bailey, a legislative advocate with Senator Sam Aanestad’s office, spoke to Realtors today about the state budget negotiations and this years horrible wildfire season. She stated the Senator voted against the budget due to the smoke and mirrors tactics used to do nothing more than postpone a financial crisis until next year. He is likely to vote against a veto override should that occur.
Mrs. Bailey’s family started a logging business in the early 1990’s, only to see the demise of the timber industry devastate their business. The population decline of the spotted owl was used by environmental groups as the basis for halting timber sales on national forest lands. Independent loggers relied on these timber sales to earn a living.
She became an outspoken advocate for the timber industry in the years that followed and was almost a 
victim of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Her office in Sacramento, the California Forestry Association, received a package from the Unabomber and it did explode killing her good friend and business associate, Gilbert Murray. She would speak to large groups about forestry issues and felt very uneasy at times due to the fact many in the audience despised her pro-logging position.
She moved to Wisconsin for a few years and worked as an advocate for the pulp wood industry. Her family disliked Wisconsin so she moved back to the north state and continued as a forestry advocate. She will be meeting with the Undersecretary of the Dept. of Agriculture to review the reasons and response to the catastrophic fires that plagued the north state this summer.
She theorizes that the state and federal firefighters have changed their strategy to fight fires due to loss of life of firefighters in recent years. Instead of dropping firefighters near the front line of a fire to get a line around it, the strategy today is to stay back and light back burns to contain the fire. If this in fact is a policy change, this should have been disclosed and reviewed using the environmental impact report process, Nadine stated. In Trinity County, fires on fuel-choked federal lands were contained by lighting backfires on well managed private timber tracts which caused their destruction to control wildfires on the overgrown federal properties.
She also pointed out that several ridges around Hayfork were bulldozed to create wide fire breaks that will certainly erode if this winter brings heavy rain events. The environmentalists shut down the logging industry for species protection only to have devastating fires destroy the preserved forests. Eventually, this leads to erosion that chokes streams with mud and debris which in turn leads to fish kills and bark beetle infestations that damage otherwise healthy trees.
She feels the solution is to develop a coalition of logging and environmental advocates that can agree on a course of action that will reach mutually beneficial goals. All but the most radical treehuggers recognize that good forest management includes resource extraction and utilization. Allowing fuels and fuel ladders to proliferate in our public lands is not only bad for national forest health but can and will cause damage to adjacent private timber lands that are being properly managed for fuel risks.
The questions that must be answered soon are what is going to be done to prevent environmental catastrophe if heavy winter rains arrive and what will be allowed in the way of salvage logging before the bark beetles move in and destroy any remaining resource value. I found this to be a timely discussion, in light of this summer’s devastating fire season, which is not over yet!
530-224-6767 or 530-941-7492
BRAD GARBUTT
REALTOR/BROKER ASSOCIATE
REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS GMAC
QUARTER CENTURY LOCAL REAL ESTATE EXPERIENCE
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