Dogwood THP Documents

The controversial Dogwood timber harvest plan (THP 1-15-042-SON) was filed by Gualala Redwoods, Inc. (now Gualala Redwood Timber LLC) in May, 2015. The plan calls for logging 90~100 year old redwood trees in 300+ acres along 5 miles of the floodplain of the Gualala River.

That plan was approved by the California Department of Forestry and Fire protection (CDF, also known as CalFire) in July, 2016. Following an outpouring of opposition from local residents concerned about harm to the sensitive environment of the floodplain, Friends of Gualala River, Forest Unlimited and California Native Plant Society (DKY Chapter) filed a legal challenge to the plan. The challenge was successful, and the plan was rejected by Sonoma County Superior Court.

GRT submitted a revised plan which was approved by CDF in March, 2018. Environmental groups again challenged the deficiencies of the plan in court, and the court again found that the plan violated the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Forest Practice Rules.

GRT submitted yet another (slightly) revised plan, which was approved by CDF in July, 2019. Environmental groups went to court for a third time, but this time, the court decided that the plan was good enough, and did not reject this third version.

Friends of Gualala River and the Center for Biological Diversity challenged the plan in federal court in September, 2020, under the federal Endangered Species Act, to protect Northern California steelhead, Central California Coast coho salmon, California red-legged frogs, and northern spotted owls from extinction.

The documents for the third version of the approved timber harvest plan are available below. CDF’s standard procedure is to print out the plan documents, scan them, and post the images to their publicly accessible database, CalTREES. As a result, it is impossible to search the documents, because there are no words in the documents posted, only images of words.

In order to make the documents more useful, we have used optical character recognition (OCR) on the documents posted below, so that you can search them.

Dogwood THP Section 1 – [1 MB, 9 pages] Legal description: Cover pages, signatures.

Dogwood THP Section 2 – [18 MB, 129 pages] Operations: Silviculture, Yarding, Erosion Hazard Rating, Winter operations, Roads & landings, Watercourse & lake protections, Alternative Watercourse & lake protections (in lieu of standard rules), Wildlife observances & enforceable provisions, Maps

Dogwood THP Section 3 – [4 MB, 23 pages] Supporting materials: Water drafting, Watercourse and Lake Protection Zone (WLPZ) Roads and Landings, “In-lieu practice for skid trails in WLPZ, Analysis of Alternatives

Dogwood THP Section 4 – [25 MB, 161 pages] Cumulative Impacts: Past, present and future projects, assessment of watershed resources, soil productivity, biological resources, recreational, visual, traffic, noise, global warming

Dogwood THP Section 5 – [45 MB, 365 pages] Attachments: Including soil erosion hazards, Erosion Control Plan, plant surveys, Northern Spotted Owl information, water withdrawal for dust control, stream temperature modeling, Streambed Alteration Agreement (1600 permit), marbled murrelet surveys, GRT’s response to public concerns, wetland designation review

Dogwood THP Section 6 – [1 MB, 3 pages] Archeological information: (confidential)