The company's activities have attracted criticism from
environmentalists. By the late 1980s, public opinion had begun to turn against corporate irresponsibility in the environment, and several
amendments had been passed to tighten the 1964
Wilderness Act.
Clear cutting and harm to wildlife Environmental activists have been particularly concerned about the practice of
clear cutting. The
San Francisco Chronicle described the results of clear cutting in the
Sierra Nevada as leaving "a blank spot in the forest, a treeless zone, littered with charred stumps". SPI has argued in response that it is "in the business of growing forests, not destroying them", and that while the company does clear cut in bulk, it replants quickly, and also replants
brushlands with new saplings, effectively creating a new forest, and that therefore "[W]e're growing more timber than we're harvesting". Local activists have further complained that application of
herbicides in the replanted areas harms the local ecology, especially rivers. In summer 2000, protestors from the
Yuba Nation chained themselves to SPI logging equipment and vehicles and
occupied the company's head office in
Grass Valley, California; some protesters did jail time. Soon after, SPI placed continuing logging activities in the Sierra under a
moratorium. The
Earth Island Institute, through its John Muir Project, investigated SPI over several years and describes itself as "a clearinghouse for SPI-related information". Earth Island Institute has said that SPI "embodies the worst practices in the timber industry" around the turn of the century, and that while other logging companies, such as the
Pacific Lumber Company, had been in the spotlight for a decade, SPI "has been quietly plundering the state's forests on a scale that makes
Charles Hurwitz look like a novice". In the 1990s, protestors began to target SPI mills in Northern California over concerns for the
Northern Spotted Owl, whose habitat is
old-growth and mixed-growth forests. The logging industry estimated up to 30,000 of 168,000 jobs would be lost because of the owl's
protected status, and indeed the lumber harvest declined by 80% in the Northwest. In turn, supply fell, and consumer prices rose. Former
Pacific Forest Trust director Dr Andrea Tuttle has identified 1990 as a pivotal year in the political campaign against companies such as SPI. She recalled that several measures intended to limit logging had finally achieved sufficient public support in California to be placed on the ballot as
initiatives. Although on election day, they all eventually failed, she recalls receiving a phone call from Red Emmerson telling her, "Andrea, I never want to go through that again. What can we do?". From then on, she says, SPI became part of the debate: "All these pressures were just hammering the industry. It was piling on them from every direction. They were losing their social license to practice forestry in California." A lawsuit was filed against the company in January 2008 for
deforestation. Activists requested the company place itself under the advice of the
Forest Stewardship Council. This body—an international
non-profit promoting responsible management of forestry—advocates a system of
logging certification. In May 2008, SPI's plans for clear-cutting in the Sierra foothills were cleared by the
California Supreme Court.
Pollution In 2007 the State of California announced that SPI had paid fines equalling $13million (equivalent to $ in ) in a
civil settlement brought by the
California Air Resources Board. The allegations related to complaints that several of SPI's mills were operating in breach of their
air pollution certification, falsifying reports and monitoring equipment, and discharging waste material to the detriment of their neighbours.
Fires Climate change is intensifying the incidence of
drought and the threat of
wildfires in California. Sparks from heavy equipment on an SPI site were blamed for the 2007
Moonlight Fire. In 2012, the company agreed to pay a $47 million fine and give up 22,500 acres of land to settle a federal liability lawsuit. The government has been accused of oversimplifying the cause of the fire to make a stronger case against SPI; in 2014 a
California Superior Court judge vacated the state's case against SPI over the Moonlight Fire and ordered
Cal Fire to pay over $32 million to the company. SPI has participated in forest thinning intended to mitigate fire risk and in planning for environmental recovery after the 2018
Camp Fire, which destroyed everything SPI had replanted after an earlier fire. The company has been praised by the Deputy Fire Chief of Cal Fire for being "on the forefront of progressive fire prevention practices", particularly through investment in
weather prediction technology and meteorological stations, whose data is fed into the
National Fire Danger Rating System to provide a more advanced indication of imminent problems. Economically, SPI's
fire salvage logging drew controversy. After the
Fountain Fire of 1992, which touched the SPI sawmill at
Burney, Red Emmerson commented that the company "had trucks coming down the road that had flames on the back".
Forbes reported that following the
Rim Fire in Yosemite in 2013, in which was burned, "not long after firefighters doused the flames, a fleet of bulldozers and trucks arrived" from SPI. Due to the company's economic weight, SPI can buy large contracts in salvage logging at a heavy discount when they are announced by the government. SPI pays between a half and a quarter of the usual price for wood that it calculates is often still 90% useful. ==Conservation work==