• The upper South Fork Eel River watershed is home to the last viable metapopulation of California’s endangered coho salmon. Dutch Charlie Creek is one of two reliable coho spawning streams in the upper South Fork Eel River. Other streams in the region do not have the consistently cool temperatures and critical habitat necessary for coho. CDFW and NMFS have identified Dutch Charlie Creek as top priority coho habitat.

• The 2,800-acre watershed has no public roads. Roadless areas provide unique sanctuaries for wildlife that are increasingly hard to find.

• Hundreds of old growth trees still live in this watershed. While most nearby watersheds have been logged multiple times including very recently and have very few old growth trees left, the last significant timber harvest in the Dutch Charlie watershed occurred 25 years ago. The watershed’s remaining large trees and abundant diversity make it an extremely high priority for protection.

• Dutch Charlie Creek is adjacent to three protected areas totaling over 30,000 acres: the federal Elkhorn Ridge and South Fork Eel River Wilderness areas, and the UC Berkeley Angelo Coast Range Reserve. Protecting Dutch Charlie Creek will extend this protected habitat connectivity another 3 miles toward the ocean.

The logging operations currently being done in this watershed include:

• Cutting the largest trees, which will severely impair the recovery of this forest, reduce fire resilience [source], and cause significant sedimentation [source], temperature increases [source], and reduced streamflows [source], directly killing coho and eliminating their habitat.

• Operating heavy equipment on dirt roads immediately next to Dutch Charlie Creek [source] and its major tributaries. The plan includes winter operations, new roads [source], new stream crossings, and logging on steep slopes with identified landslide risk [source], which will contribute to slope instability and erosion and result in excessive sedimentation and other impacts to the creek and the S. Fork Eel River.

• Applying non-selective, highly toxic herbicides throughout THP areas [source], contaminating soil and water for generations. Constituents of these herbicides are known to be teratrogenic and carcinogenic to wildlife and humans. They do not break down, and would permanently contaminate and harm this biologically fragile ecosystem.

• Eliminating “undesirable” hardwoods such as tanoak and madrone which would trigger a cascade of biocultural diversity losses. For hundreds of years this landscape contained groves of giant tanoak and madrone, many of these original massive trees remain, and the root systems of those that were cut are still living in the same places growing new trunks.

[See our public comments here to read about all of this in much more detail]