You are right on about the Water Quality Control Board and their heavy handed tactics. WQCB & Fish and game rule the roost when it it comes to logging today. There is just a hand full of independent sawmills left in Humboldt County. Ell River saw mills just sold last week to an unknown group.(a front for some corp?) Barnum Timber Holdings sold out this month and laid off all but two employees. Timber consulting firms are laying off foresters. The pulp mill can't get enough chips to operate. Power generators are running out of wood waste(hog fuel) to run the plants. PL sold all their logging equipment, dump trucks and logging trucks and are contracting out the work. Loggers have payments to make so they are bidding lower to get work and going broke in the process. Schmdbauer Lumber is importing logs from New Zeland and Wash to keek his mill running.
BTW Doug Bosco is married to the daughter of V Guynup a logger and exporter of logs in Humbold Co.
Timber consulting firms are laying off foresters. Maybe now the professional foresters will finally stand up for their clients and quit seeing this regulatory quagmire as a giant job security program.
I must admit tubebender, I didn't know the timber industry on the northcoast was in such bad shape. I figured that the timber values there would support the new rule package. The effect on those of us inland was immediate...my workload went down 65% almost overnight.