In an effort to protect the redwood forests in California from encroaching lumbering interests, Congress in 1968 passed a bill establishing the Redwood National Park in Del Norte and Humboldt Counties. The purpose of the Act was "to preserve significant examples of the primeval coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests and the streams and seashores with which they are associated for purposes of public inspiration, enjoyment, and scientific study. . . ."¹ The bill establishing the park provided for the initial boundaries and also authorized the Secretary of the Interior to acquire additional lands to a maximum of 58,000 acres. The Secretary was given a number of other powers regarding the park, including authorization to acquire interests in land on the periphery of the park and along waterways leading into it as might be necessary to prevent timber harvesting and other activities that, although outside the park itself, could have deleterious effects on the publicly owned land. Such acquired interests were designed to include both management easements and outright ownership, but the latter was only to be used when the former proved to be excessively expensive.

On January 8, 1973, the Sierra Club, aware that logging in the hills adjacent to the park was having exactly the harmful effects which Congress had feared, filed a complaint against the Department of the Interior in an effort to force the agency to take whatever action might be necessary to end such activities. To meet the standing requirements, the Sierra Club asserted that timber harvesting of privately owned slopes overlooking Redwood Creek had seriously impaired visitors', including Club members', aesthetic enjoyment of the parkland. The complaint charged that the trees in the park were in serious danger as a result of the logger's actions. Owing to the steepness of the hillsides, the complaint stated, the usual practice of loggers in the area surrounding the park was first to fell all "whitewoods," e.g., Douglas fir, western hemlock, Sitka spruce, and white fir—and then, after cutting them into logs, to haul them in bulldozers to waiting trucks. Again due to the steepness of the slopes, the bulldozer driver must lower the bulldozer blade into the ground ahead of him to slow his descent and prevent his machine from hurtling down the slope. In the process, a swath is gouged out of the soil. Later, bulldozers prepare strips of broken ground, up to 20 feet wide and 300 feet long, to cushion the redwoods as they are felled. Again, the downed trees are cut into logs, the logs attached to bulldozers, and the blade lowered to serve as a brake. The Club contended that the result is damage to about 80 percent of the surface area being harvested, including cuts as much as 20 to 30 feet deep and equally wide. After the bulldozers leave, rain washes the loosened soil into the streams that feed the Redwood Creek, which dumps the debris in the Park downstream. As the soil is capable of retaining far less moisture after clearcutting, the danger of fire increases, heightened further by the presence of accumulated debris. Finally, the trees within the park, especially those near the boundaries, are threatened by windstorms that can blow unshielded trees to the ground.