Over the years, Potlatch has been one of the most sportsman friendly large forest operators in the west. Most of the big timber operators have completely locked out the public. With the legal liability situation what it is now, I suppose this was inevitable. Down here, everyone remembers the federal govt civil suit against Sierra Pacific Ind. An independent logging contractor working on SPI lands allegedly caused the fire when a cat 'struck a spark', but the contractor had no deep pockets and the Feds went after SPI for 122 million. Supreme court rejected hearing the case and SPI had to pay 32 million and give 22,000 acres to the govt. But wait, there's more, CalFire got caught witholding exculpatory evidence on the cause of the fire, and the Calif Supreme Court overturned CalFires separate lawsuit and fined CalFire 22 million. So it's hard to blame any company for reducing wildfire risk.
