PTEIR Frequently Asked Questions

Why a PTEIR for the Mattole?

Why pursue a PTEIR?
Over the last two decades, a changing regulatory climate has greatly increased the cost of securing timber harvest permits in California. Non-industrial forestland owners who prefer to log with a lighter touch have been particularly hard-hit by these changes. The cost of permitting has made light harvests less feasible, creating economic pressures to either subdivide large land holdings, log more intensively than landowners would prefer, or leave the forest unmanaged, thereby allowing a hazardous build-up of fuels.
We want landowners to be able, through light-touch timber harvest, to accelerate the return of previously logged forests to ecological maturity, to have the means to upgrade their roads so they are not dumping sediment into the river, and to have an incentive to retain their lands instead of subdividing them. Further, we hope light-touch logging will make possible a modest, sustainable harvest of timber that could support a modest amount of forest-based livelihood in the Mattole.


Where did the MRC get the idea for the PTEIR?
The Mattole PTEIR was conceived at the California Forest Futures conference in Sacramento in 2005, the brainchild of then-MRC executive director Chris Larson, along with Richard Gienger (involved for many years in restoration and the reform of forestry regulation in the Mattole and nearby areas) and Sally French (Mattole landowner). The project grew out of the recognition that THP costs force high levels of harvest and tightly focus the environmental analysis to single harvests, and that timber across the Mattole is reaching harvestable age.