Protecting Old-Growth Forest cont.

Redwood Rabbis, Northern California
Jewish, Non-denominational

The accelerated logging practices threatened not only the ecological integrity of the old growth forest, but the region’s economic stability. The sustainable logging practices advocated by the Redwood Rabbis aim at appropriate and steady employment that is not subject to boom and bust cycles.

Though Hurwitz and other Jewish officers and board members of Maxxam initially greeted the Rabbis’ biblically-based criticism with indignation and scorn, the disapproval from within Houston’s own Jewish community was mounting, and grew more the following year, when the national Coalition of the Environment and Jewish Life issued a call for the protection of Headwaters Forest. In 1999, the quiet campaign of community pressure -- brought about through public education and the contextualizing of modern issues within Judaism’s long-standing traditions -- paid off, and Maxxam made repentance, of a sort: agreeing to sell off enough forest acreage to create a 7,470-acre Redwoods reserve and conceding to new restrictions on logging and forest management requirements for the remainder of its property.

In the years since their victory at Headwaters, the Redwoods Rabbis have been active in pressuring former California Governor Gray Davis to support greater Redwoods protections in the Sierra Nevada region, where the clear-cutting of forests results in pollution of the state’s water resources, mudslides and destruction of the wildlife habitat. They have successfully aided an effort to oppose the appointment of forestry officials with pro-logging records, and continue to work in coalition with other Jewish, interfaith and secular groups to build a broad coalition of activists resisting commercial clear-cutting throughout the state.