• Dutch Charlie Creek is one of two reliable coho spawning streams in the upper South Fork Eel River, which is home to the last viable metapopulation of California’s endangered coho salmon. Other streams in the region do not have the consistently cool temperatures and critical habitat necessary for coho. California Dept of Fish and Wildlife identify Dutch Charlie Creek as top priority coho habitat. (source)

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

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

• Dutch Charlie watershed is adjacent to over 30,000 acres of protected areas (see map below). Protecting Dutch Charlie watershed will extend this protected wildlife habitat connectivity another 3 miles toward the ocean.

• Exceptions to the standard Forest Practice Rules include bulldozing new roads near streams (source), using heavy equipment on steep slopes (source) and immediately adjacent to salmon streams (source), and cutting unmarked trees immediately adjacent to streams (source).  All of these activities will be done immediately adjacent to the pools where coho salmon spawn.  These activities are prohibited by California law unless the director of Cal Fire grants an exception.

• Cutting the largest oldest trees will severely set back the recovery of this forest, increase wildfire risk (source), cause landslides and erosion delivering sediment to the streams (source), increase stream temperatures (source), and reduce long term streamflows (source), directly killing coho and eliminating their habitat.

• Operating heavy equipment on dirt roads and steep slopes will dump sediment into the coho habitat. One of the primary haul roads is situated 20ft above the prime coho spawning pools. (source)  The plan includes winter operations, bulldozing new roads and stream crossings (source), and logging on steep slopes with identified landslide risk (source), which will contribute to slope instability and erosion and cause significant sediment impacts to the creek and the South Fork Eel River.

• Killing most of the tanoak and madrone across most of the THP area using herbicides, triggering a cascade of biodiversity loss.  These trees are a food source for most of the wildlife in this forest.  Their root systems have been in place for hundreds of years, and killing them with herbicides will replace the ancient diverse forest structure with a conifer plantation.  The herbicides are toxic to wildlife (source) and known to cause cancer in humans (source).

(See our public comments here to read about all of this in much more detail)

2001: the last logging in Dutch Charlie watershed.

2019: Millions in state funding was used in a restoration project to decommission segments of road within the Dutch Charlie watershed. To get to these bits of road, the entire road network, 12+ miles of roads, was reopened with bulldozers. This happened to be done and paid for by the State, just in time for Redwood Timber Company (RTC) to submit their plan to log the watershed using these newly reopened and maintained roads.

2020: RTC submiitted the “Charlie Eagle” Timber Harvest Plan (THP). California Dept of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and Friends of Dutch Charlie Creek pointed out numerous problems with that plan. It was withdrawn in 2021.

Summer 2025: RTC submitted these two new plans, “Hot Tuna” and “Lincoln Logs” for review. The new plans ignored CDFW’s prior recommendations and our comments and instead ask for exceptions to the standard Rules in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the people who review timber harvest plans at CDFW had been replaced, and the new people at CDFW completely ignored the previous recommendations and our letters.

Fall 2025: We wrote extensive comments on the plans, and prepared the lawsuit to stop them, and asked RTC to agree to wait on cutting trees until the lawsuit could be heard, but RTC ignored this request.

RTC then asked Cal Fire to delay approval of the plans, month after month, until right before the 4th of July weekend, apparently in hope that we would “fade away”.

July 2026: Cal Fire approved the plans on July 2 and 3 and posted what appears to be an AI-generated Official Response to public comments. RTC immediately began logging, and we filed the lawsuit on July 7. Shamefully, the trial court and appeal court stalled and then decided not to order a stay of logging. We hope for logging to be halted at the preliminary injunction hearing Aug 27. After that, the case should be easy to win on the merits, as the timber harvest plans simply do not assess their own impacts on coho salmon habitat, which is a clear violation of the California Environmental Quality Act.