Oregon’s Struggle to Save Ancient Forests Continues

E arly on the morning of July 30, 2002 upwards of 150 activists drove from nearby Portland and elsewhere up the flank of Mount Hood to the U.S. Forest Service’s Headquarters in the town of Sandy, where a 157-acre tract of ancient Oregon forest was set to be auctioned for logging. Solo, the old growth area in question, contains 400-year-old trees and some of the Mount Hood National Forest’s largest yews, as well as an extremely rare lichen. The Oak Grove watershed of which it is a part provides drinking water to 185,000 people in several adjacent suburban municipalities and rural communities. This early morning protest was preceded by the Cascadia Forest Alliance’s announcement of the installation of a tree-sit at the Solo sale.

The festive activist crowd stationed itself in the large, lower parking area, giving speeches and updates, drumming, dancing, and adorning the pavement with colorful chalk art. Skits were performed and critical chants rang out. Soon a handful of prospective buyers made their way around us or through us to approach the door and a resounding chorus was taken up by all: “You buy Solo, you buy us.” Various law enforcement agencies had positioned a small detachment at the door, to let the bidders in and keep the crowd out. After much lobbying, two activist representatives were allowed inside.

It was not until the conclusion of the bidding that things got ugly. As he made to leave in his hefty SUV, the president of the Thomas Creek Lumber and Log Company, the successful bidder, was surrounded by an impromptu human blockade chanting: “You bought Solo, you bought us.” As it became apparent that his exit time would be extended indefinitely, the law officers became impatient. Several activists then laid down in front of the slowly advancing vehicle and were physically thrown out of the way by two officers. Other officers began pepper spraying the front of the crowd, hitting several people in the face. A short time later, when the crowd had thinned visibly, two activists were arrested.

The following day an article appeared in the Oregonian , the local Newhouse daily, that cited a Clackamas County Sheriff spokes- person on the protest. The events were turned around, claiming activists had initiated the trouble by throwing a bottle and pepper spraying the officers. Such an account gives one cause to wonder if the writer was even present.

Groundtruth vs. Status Quo

T he paradigm still adhered to by the logging industry, the mainstream media, and the bulk of government officials is perilously outdated. It speaks volumes that the industry refers to logging as “harvesting.” A century and a half of destruction has been so complete that the vast green seas of Douglas fir that dominate the rural landscape of most of Western Oregon and Washington are commonly considered forests, when in reality they are monoculture tree plantations. These differ so radically from our native forests that the common denominator is the tree, but little else.

Old growth forest areas are unique, complex ecosystems. Tree plantations lack countless elements of healthy native forest, such as trees in all stages of growth and decay, from saplings to snags and nurse logs and many of the critters that inhabit these. A short drive from Portland allows one to witness lunar-like clear-cut areas, bordering large maturing stands of monoculture Douglas fir of all one height and all one girth. With their few branches all concentrated on the top portion of the trunk, they resemble row after row of 100-foot tall toothbrushes.

In the native forests of the Oregon Cascades hemlocks, cedars, maples, many fir and pine species, and others are intermingled among the dominant Douglas fir. The diversity of tree life pales in comparison to that of the non-tree flora of the forest. Among the incredible diversity of plant life, are hundreds of species that only thrive underneath the canopy of the mature forest and do not survive in the replanted monoculture.

Once an area is clear-cut, the land is not only exposed to the sun’s rays and the elements, but is also subject to encroachment of invasive non-native groundcover species, as well as to the effects of erosion, which, until only recently when mandated buffer zones were implemented, was responsible for stream silting and the destruction of innumerable wild salmon spawning beds. Much of the area’s native fauna, such as the northern spotted owl and the red tree vole, a minuscule mammal that lives in the canopy of the largest trees, also disappears after clear-cutting.

Bush’s New Robber Barons

T his region was blanketed from the Cascades to the Coast with cathedral forests in pre-Euro- American times. Today 90 percent of this ecosystem has been destroyed and almost all of what remains is located on public land. Bad science and misinformation are still being foisted on the public. The logging industry, along with the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, has begun to play the forest fire card in an effort to legitimize more logging on public lands. President Bush’s “forest initiative,” with its emphasis on thinning, prompted by his recent Oregon visit during fire season, was just what the industry needed.

Members of the Pacific Northwest’s Congressional delegation jumped on Bush’s stampeding bandwagon as the session closed, having offered several competing forest fire risk-abatement amendments to the 2003 Interior Appropriations Bill. These amendments at worst attack and at “best” show a lack of commitment to protecting the integrity of native forest ecology, where cyclical fire plays a natural role. The safeguards of the public participation provisions of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act are at risk. If any of these pass, it would open the door to the loss of thousands of acres of the shrinking remnant of public old growth, as remuneration for logging companies carrying out fuel reduction projects. Ironically, fuel reduction is never necessary in native forests unless they have been subject to fire suppression in the past.

Another irony is that monoculture tree plantations are susceptible to catastrophic fire while native old growth is highly fire resistant. “Thinning” is a misnomer. Large expanses of Oregon native forests have been effectively leveled under this guise. A handful of big trees is a handful of big trees, not a “thinned forest.” The practice is one of capitalist extractive economics, with no role whatsoever in protecting or aiding native forest areas.

The sane and ecologically sound McKinney-Leach National Forest Protection and Restoration Act (HR 1494) is at risk of floundering under waves of fire-hysteria generated, logging industry-friendly legislation.

“Eco-terrorism” Accusations

S ince the above-recounted July 30 timber sale protest, a number of forest activists have been targeted and arrested, some charged with felonies supposedly committed at that protest. As well, forest activists are being arrested for acts of sabotage. Last year, a group going by the name of the Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the burning of cement trucks at a Portland firm and someone burned three log trucks of an Estacada timber company. No humans were targeted nor injured in either of these acts. The logging and other extractive industries have scored a major public relations victory in redefining sabotage as “Eco-terrorism.” The ominous tag is now being applied by the media and government officials.

All of these arrests are doubted by many, especially by those familiar with the activists involved. Such destructive tactics are counter-productive to the cause of and foreign to the methodology of the forest activist community. That the July 30 protest incident charges have been quietly dropped for lack of evidence heightens questions about the validity of the truck burning case. Of note is the fact that one of those accused is Tre Arrow, who maintained an 11-day ledge-sit above the entrance to the Forest Service’s downtown Portland headquarters in an effort to draw attention to the Eagle Creek struggle and ran for Congress on the Pacific Green ticket.

These moves, and the media coverage of them, appear to be calculated to intimidate the activist community and diminish the effectiveness of the movement as a whole. History has shown how legal battles are victories—to one degree or another—for the powers that be, diverting energy and resources away from the work of the group targeted. There are growing signs that such tactics may come around to backfire in this instance.

Not Backing Down

T he Cascadia Forest Alliance has led a three-year courageous, creative, persistent, even outrageous, but always non-violent effort that resulted by the spring of 2002 in a groundswell of public support and got the sale of the critically important Mount Hood native forest known as Eagle Creek canceled. This victory was not without grave cost; tree defender Beth O’Brien lost her life in a fall just before the final cancellation papers were signed.

All over the Pacific Northwest there are people in the forest doing good work. At the end of the logging season Cascadia Forest Alliance activists maintain their perches high in the canopy of the Oak Grove watershed of the Mount Hood National Forest, amid logging in the Borg tract near Solo.

Ancient forests reveal the intricate, specific habitat of countless critters. Also observable in certain areas are giant peeled and plank cedars: living, thriving evidence of a way of using the forest’s bounty without destroying it, that is the way of the Native American peoples of this region. As with the traditional Native American staple, the wild salmon, the fragmented remnant of majestic cathedral forest and the unspoiled public lands reaching naturally towards that state are irreplaceable national treasures and deserve no less careful treatment.