There was a time when Santa Cruz environmentalists encouraged logging.

“It is the policy of the Board of Supervisors to encourage the continued production of forest products,” reads the county code, written in 1976 by former Supervisor Gary Patton, long known for his strong environmental stances.

But while the code he wrote has not changed, the attitude of some county leaders has. And next month, they will further their attempt to curb one of the county’s first and most controversial industries: harvesting trees.

At their April 24 meeting, supervisors are scheduled to consider increasing the size that a piece of land must be before it can be rezoned for logging. The requirement sits at five acres, set by supervisors – including Patton – in the 1970s. Supervisors could raise it as high as 80 acres, which would prohibit logging on 22,600 acres and 1,600 forested parcels, according to documents from the county Planning Department.

That pleases environmentalists, who don’t like trees falling in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But it irks some property owners and logging companies already frustrated by the red tape they must cut through to qualify land for logging.

Especially frustrated is Big Creek Lumber Co. owner Bud McCrary, who owns about 15 acres of personal property that he has not rezoned. Now, he’s not sure if he will have enough time to do it before a new rule passes.

“Suppose I were in a situation where I really needed to harvest my 14.96 acres to put one of my kids through school,” McCrary said. “What would I do? I couldn’t do anything with it. I would stand there and watch [the trees] get bigger and bigger.”

Other landowners share his fear, said Bob Briggs, on the board of directors for the 150-member Central Coast Forest Association, which represents small timber landowners and forestry professionals in Santa Cruz County. “It’s essentially reducing the value of what they have considered a personal asset, reducing it to something approaching zero,” Briggs said.

County leaders, however, consider themselves equally stymied. Last year, the county won a lawsuit allowing supervisors to require land be zoned for timber production before owners could log it. But they lost what many considered a crucial point of the suit: rules that would have allowed the county to impose stricter limits on harvesting around streams and other areas than what the state requires.

As a result, while loggers must rezone their land, supervisors legally must approve all the applications to do so if state standards are met. In the past month, about 20 rezoning applications have breezed through. The proposed new rule increasing land-size requirements could change that.

“I think local people are frustrated with the fact that so much local say has been taken out of the community when it comes to timber harvesting,” said Supervisor Neal Coonerty, who has not decided how he will vote on the issue. The minimum parcel size remains one thing county leaders can control, he said.

But to McCrary, that’s not a good reason.

“Why would they exercise control just because they have it?” McCrary asked. In addition, McCrary said county leaders misled him and the courts into thinking they would not further limit logging once the case was settled.

To Supervisor Mark Stone, though, the issue is important as he hopes raising the minimum parcel size will discourage property owners from zoning their land for logging, cutting the trees and then rezoning the property and developing it. However, assistant planning director Mark Demming said he has never seen that happen in Santa Cruz County.

If supervisors require parcels to be larger than 80 acres – the maximum allowed by the state – before logging can occur, about 22,600 acres and 1,600 parcels of timber land could be affected, according to the county’s planning department. If supervisors place the restriction at 40 acres, about 1,560 parcels and almost 20,600 acres could be affected. Most of that property that would be affected rests in the mountains between the Forest of Nisene Marks and Castle Rock state parks.

Property owners could still cut trees to prevent wildfires, curb disease or to protect their homes under the proposed rules. The fight has been brewing since the mid-1970s, when the state took away local control over logging. Previously, the county kept a forester on staff to review timber harvest plans and make tweaks and recommendations the board deemed necessary 1/3 a process many loggers loathed but environmentalists were comfortable with, Patton said. But in those days, he added, environmentalists considered logging the better of two options often presented to owners of large swaths of land: cut trees, or build houses.

“A bad timber harvest can cause some real damages, but over a 100-year period, the land will revive and take care of itself,” Patton said. “Once you put a house there, it’s there forever.”

However, voters passed Measure J in 1978, which limited growth in the mountains and concentrating new development in Live Oak and other, more urbanized areas. That, combined with the loss of local logging control, turned many environmentalists against logging, Patton said. With the residential pressures all but gone, they could do away with the tree-cutting, too, he said.