Ignore the tone of this obviously biased piece, but this pretty much sums it up. Some stuff about Maxxam too, another problem company up there in addition to pacific. I think the issue is that some of these lands were in private hands historically. So borders on personal property issues.
The targets of the boycotts are large, very successful companies: the Gap, Gap Kids, Old Navy, and Banana Republic, all owned by the Fisher family; and Home Depot, Inc. The boycott against Fisher family businesses came about because of the family's treatment of another of its holdings: the last remaining old-growth redwood forest in California not owned by the state.
The Fisher family purchased the land, 230,000 acres located in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties, from Louisiana Pacific (L-P) Corporation. Unfortunately, the new owners have elected to continue L-P's destructive clearcutting practices.
The plight of California's remaining old-growth redwoods has received national attention for a few years now. Most of the news has been about Humboldt County's Headwaters Grove owned by Maxxam Corp. Maxxam originally planned to clearcut the forest in order to pay debts incurred by the man who controls Maxxam, Charles Hurwitz, as a result of a major savings and loan failure. Only a massive protest effort by environmentalists has stopped complete destruction of the grove and led to a "nature-for-debt" swap with the federal government, in which the government forgave a portion of Hurwitz's debt in exchange for part of the redwood forest. About 8,000 acres of land containing old-growth trees were saved, although environmentalists had hoped to protect a much larger amount.
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