Judge halts logging above Dutch Charlie Creek with most of it already done

by Roger Coryell
September 7, 2026
The Mendocino Voice

[Excerpt:]

MENDOCINO CO., 9/7/26 — Logging on 926 acres in the hills west of Laytonville is stopped under two court orders at once.

…

The fight is over two timber harvest plans the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection approved on July 2 and 3. The agency’s notices list Redwood Timber Company LLC as landowner and Redwood Forest Operating Company LLC as the plan submitter. The larger plan, called Hot Tuna, covers 594 acres. The smaller one, Lincoln Logs, covers 332. Both call for selection logging rather than clearcutting. Court papers also call Hot Tuna by a second name, Lincoln Ridge. 

Friends of Dutch Charlie Creek, which litigates as Friends of Shaahnaa Lhook, sued Cal Fire on July 7, four days after it says the logging began. Its claim under the California Environmental Quality Act is that the plans never assess the sediment they will send into the creek, one of two reliable coho spawning streams left in the upper South Fork Eel, the group says. Coho on the Eel side of the county are listed as threatened under both the state and federal endangered species acts. 

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Dutch Charlie Creek is the same water the state has spent more than a decade and a million dollars trying to repair.

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The group’s press release says the timber harvesting plans include three miles of new road construction, including on steep slopes and near the creek. Its website says “millions” in state money went into road removal in the watershed. The grant record shows at least $1.03 million from the fisheries program. Other state funding sources were not checked. 

Roads shed fine sediment into streams, and fine sediment buries the gravel coho spawn in. The appellate court’s own briefing order in July asked the parties to address whether it is undisputed that logging would add sediment to what the court called an already impacted stream system. Cal Fire’s response to public comment says the Hot Tuna plan itself recognizes that the waters downstream are listed as impaired for sediment and temperature. 

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Judge halts logging above Dutch Charlie Creek with most of it already done