DENSE FORESTS OF COASTAL REDWOOD trees once covered 2.2 million acres of southern Oregon and northern California. Today, only about 86,000 acres of virgin redwood forest remain. Most of this is in public parks and preserves, but about 6,000 acres of old-growth forest are privately owned—nearly all of it by the Pacific Lumber Company, headquartered in San Francisco.

Founded in 1869, Pacific Lumber owns 220,000 acres of the world’s most productive timberland, including the oldgrowth redwoods. For years, the family-run company was a model of social responsibility and environmental awareness.

Pacific Lumber paid its employees well, supported them in bad times, funded their pensions, and provided college scholarships for their children. It sold or donated nearly 20,000 acres of forest to the public, and instead of indiscriminate clear-cutting, the company logged its forests carefully and selectively. Throughout its history, the company harvested only about 2 percent of its trees annually, roughly equivalent to their growth rate. After other timber firms had logged all their old-growth stands, Pacific Lumber had a virtual monopoly on the highly durable lumber that comes from the heart of centuries-old redwood trees.111 Because Pacific Lumber was debt-free and resourcerich, its potential value drew attention on Wall Street, where the firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert suspected that the company was undervalued—and thus ripe for raiding. In 1985, Drexel hired a timber consultant to fly over Pacific Lumber’s timberland to estimate its worth. With junk-bond financing arranged by its in-house expert, Michael Milken, Drexel assisted Charles Hurwitz, a Texas tycoon, and his firm......

Discussion Questions 1. Does an ancient redwood forest have value other than its economic one as potential lumber? If so, what is this value, and how is it to be weighed against the interests of a company like Maxxam? Are redwoods more important than jobs?
2. Is it morally permissible for private owners to do as they wish with the timberland they own? Explain why or why not. What’s your assessment of Hurwitz? Is he a robber baron, a socially responsible businessperson, or something in between?
3. Were mainstream environmentalists right to try to thwart Hurwitz, or were they simply trying to impose their values on others? Does a radical group like Earth First! that engages in sabotage go too far, or do its ends justify its means?
4. Do we have a moral obligation to save old redwood forests? Can a forest have either moral or legal rights?
Does an old-growth forest have value in and of itself, or is its value only a function of human interests? How valuable is a small but endangered species such as the murrelet?
5. Before its takeover by Hurwitz, did Pacific Lumber neglect its obligations to its stockholders by not logging at a faster rate? What would be a morally responsible policy for a timber company to follow? Do we need a new environmental resource ethic?
6. How would you respond to the argument that there is no need to try to save the Headwaters (or any other private) forest because there are already tens of thousands of acres of old-growth redwood forest in parks and preserves?
7. Was the deal that the U.S. government and the state of California struck with Pacific Lumber a fair and reasonable one? Did the taxpayers end up paying too much, as environmentalists think? Was Pacific Lumber squeezed too hard? What about Scotia and its laid-off workers?