Tuesday September 8, 2026
The Mendocino Voice —
Logging on 926 acres in the hills west of Laytonville is stopped under two court orders at once. The First District Court of Appeal froze most timber operations there on Aug. 17. Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Charlotte Scott granted a preliminary injunction, the second order, on Sept. 2, according to a Sept. 4 release from Friends of Dutch Charlie Creek, the citizens’ group that sued Cal Fire. A notice of Scott’s decision was filed in the group’s appeal the next day.
The fight is over two timber harvest plans the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection approved on July 2 and 3. The agency’s notices list Redwood Timber Company LLC as landowner and Redwood Forest Operating Company LLC as the plan submitter. The larger plan, called Hot Tuna, covers 594 acres. The smaller one, Lincoln Logs, covers 332. Both call for selection logging rather than clearcutting. Court papers also call Hot Tuna by a second name, Lincoln Ridge.
Friends of Dutch Charlie Creek, which litigates as Friends of Shaahnaa Lhook, sued Cal Fire on July 7, four days after it says the logging began. Its claim under the California Environmental Quality Act is that the plans never assess the sediment they will send into the creek, one of two reliable coho spawning streams left in the upper South Fork Eel, the group says. Coho on the Eel side of the county are listed as threatened under both the state and federal endangered species acts.