Bohemian Grove: Weazl wasn't invited

Bohemian Club's logging plan raises plenty of sawdust

By JANE KAY

As about 2,000 members of the Bohemian Club start arriving this week for the famously secret annual encampment of relaxation, high jinks and male bonding, the club's board is fighting for an ambitious logging plan for its Bohemian Grove on the Russian River.

The high-powered club is seeking a special logging permit that would allow it to cut more than 1 million board feet each year in perpetuity without strict environmental review. That's enough to build 70 houses a year from the mature redwood forest-- the closest unprotected one to San Francisco.

The idyllic grove in the little town of Monte Rio is always off limits to Sonoma County neighbors, but that's particularly so from now until the last Sunday in July. Corporate heads, political bosses, legal and financial figures, and artists -- members of the club -- are leaving behind their workaday world to bask in the beauty of giant redwoods, some of them 300 feet high and 1,000 years old.

In recent years, Charles Schwab, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and Walter Cronkite -- some winging in on private jets -- have mingled with the less-famous elite. Every Republican president, and a few Democrats, have been members of the 135-year-old, men-only club.

Article edited down from here.