EUREKA -- Supervisors on Tuesday endorsed a land stewardship group's efforts to ease regulatory burdens on landowners who cut timber as part of their ranching operations.

After hearing from a slate of people involved in the Buckeye Conservancy Forest Project, supervisors decided to add the cause to their legislative platform, and raise the issue to regional and state county groups.

Ranchers, environmentalists and government agencies all attested to a looming threat in the state and Humboldt County: The likelihood that subdividing open land would be the only means for ranchers to profit from their family-owned land.

"The trend toward subdivision will continue," said Mattole River Valley rancher Sally French.

French said she has seen much of the land around her family's ranch subdivided and often used for marijuana growing. The Mattole River, a water source for many ranchettes, has dried up the past two summers from over use, she said.

"We have muzzled the ox that treads the corn," said 2nd District Supervisor and rancher Roger Rodoni.

The Buckeye Conservancy is a group of 200 ranchers, agency representatives, environmentalists and forest professionals whose aim is to protect open space through family ownership. The group speaks for about half the privately owned timberland in the county.

The project has been touted as a model of communication and cooperation between historically disparate groups.

Tracy Katelman, a forester and environmentalist who worked on the project, said subdivision of land is a critical threat, and that she believes most in the environmental community supports responsible logging.

"Subdivision is the enemy out there," said Jim Falls, a geologist for the California Geological Survey, and numerous, largely unregulated roads are the single biggest problem.

Specifically, the conservancy has recommended that the current 2,500 acre limit to acquire a so-called Non-industrial Timber Management Plan is too low. Many larger ranches in Humboldt County are left out of that category. Also, the group wants to extend the current two- to three-year term limit for a timber harvest plan to allow landowners more flexibility in logging their properties.

The conservancy's request comes after the project found that light-touch logging on a Bridgeville ranch was not profitable. Meeting the costs of filing harvest plans was shown to be nearly impossible, while clearcutting and subdividing the land was shown to be the only profitable options.