Activists Again Try to Slow Logging of Fire-Killed Timber
The Associated Press
March 14, 2005

KERBY, Ore. (AP) - About 20 women - including one nine months pregnant and five over 70 years old - tried to block loggers Monday morning from crossing a bridge to reach old growth forest burned in the 2002 Biscuit fire.

The protest at the Green Bridge over the Illinois River was the third in the past week by environmentalists trying to prevent loggers from harvesting the Fiddler timber sale in an old growth forest reserve bordering the Kalmiopsis Wilderness on the Siskiyou National Forest until challenges before federal courts can be heard.

By midmorning, law enforcement personnel took into custody 18 people, apparently all women, and were working to remove a woman suspended over the river by a network of ropes blocking the bridge, said Siskiyou National Forest spokeswoman Erin Connelly. Two women, one due to give birth this week, and her birth assistant were released at the scene. The others were taken to the Josephine County Jail in Grants Pass.

Siskiyou National Forest spokesman Tom Lavagnino said a total of about 75 people were at the bridge protesting logging on the Fiddler timber sale.

Prior to the arrests, Stacey Williams, who said she was due to give birth on Thursday, said she was furious that the Forest Service sold timber in an area set aside primarily for fish and wildlife habitat, rather than letting the forest regenerate on its own.

"This is my back yard where we come and watch the salmon jump," she said. "It is in our whole country's back yard."

John West, president of Silver Creek Logging Co., said since a federal injunction has been lifted preventing logging in the old growth reserves, it was time for people to let him get to work.

"We have the right to be here working," said West. "They might slow us down, but we're still winning the war."

Following two protests last week, a crew of timber fallers were able to get to work cutting dead trees after Forest Service law enforcement agents and Josephine County deputies arrested a total of 22 protesters and cleared obstacles.

The Siskiyou National Forest drew up plans to sell a total of 370 million board feet of timber on about 20,000 acres of the Biscuit fire, which burned across a total of 500,000 acres, but is unlikely to come anywhere close to that goal, Lavagnino said.

So far, 65 million board feet of timber has been sold on so-called matrix lands designated primarily for logging and old growth forest reserves designated primarily for fish and wildlife habitat under the Northwest Forest Plan, created in 1994 to protect habitat for northern spotted owls and salmon.

The Forest Service plans to start selling dead timber later this month in inventoried roadless areas, which were set aside from roadbuilding and logging under the Clinton administration, but which the Bush administration wants to open to logging.

Two cases are challenging the idea of commercial logging inside old growth reserve intended primarily for fish and wildlife habitat. Northwest Forest Plan rules allow some logging to promote old growth characteristics. One case is before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with a hearing scheduled for March 22. Another case has been brought in U.S. District Court.

Forest Service officials say logging will speed the restoration of old growth forest by removing dead trees that will fall to the ground and burn in the future and generating revenue to pay for planting young trees and controlling brush.

Environmentalists counter that the logging will choke salmon streams with erosion and the dead timber has rotted so much over three years it will fall far short of producing enough money to pay for restoration work. They argue that the big trees that will be taken out are the building blocks of a new forest.

Silver Creek bid $1.1 million for 14.5 million board feet of timber in the Fiddler sale, but the actual amount removed is likely to be less due to high levels of rot and extra buffer zones, the Forest Service has said.

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Women Draw the Line Against Lawless Old-Growth Logging
Umpqua Watersheds Press Release
March 14, 2005

Cave Junction, Oregon - In this latest action driven by determined elders, church members and conservationists, a large group of local women sat down on the "Green Bridge", to block logging trucks at dawn on Monday morning - offering themselves up for certain arrest - locking down in solidarity against the lawless logging of federally protected Old Growth reserves within the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area of SW Oregon.

Already arrested last week, 72-year-old Joan Norman said, "I don't know what else to do to stop this destruction to our forests, so I'm going to sit down in front of the trucks again." Citizens are determined to halt the nation's largest logging project in modern Forest Service history. The agency is rushing to log these sensitive forests before a court case scheduled for later this month can be heard.

Community elder and artist Dot Fisher Smith, 76, said "We are united in a historic confrontation and we are wearing black today in solidarity with the blackened trees; to give voice to the voiceless. These grandmother trees must not be violently ripped from the Earth. Those trees want to fulfill their birthright by providing shade, shelter and retaining moisture for the newly regenerating forest, as has occurred naturally for countless thousands of years."

According to Annette Rasch, "This wasteful project will increase fire hazard, harm the local nature-based economy, hurt the regeneration of the forest, and cost the taxpayers millions of dollars."

The powerful movement gathering at the "Green Bridge" on the Illinois River reflects the voice of tens of thousands of citizens who have written letters and made phone calls; crying 'foul play' on the Bush Forest Service. The broad grass roots coalition: the "Biscuit Alliance", features citizens ranging from local woodsmen, teachers, conservationists, artists, business owners, scientists, retirees, sportsmen and students to Earth Firsters!

This rugged and wild corner of Oregon received national attention with the nation's largest forest fire in 2002 - the Biscuit fire. Critics complain that instead of helping to reduce fire risk to our homes, the Forest Service is busy arresting citizens and enforcing a 'log at any cost' agenda - facilitating an illegal logging project in old-growth forest reserves located deep in the backcountry, while the greatest threat to our communities, the overgrown forests surrounding them is virtually ignored.

Background: The "Green Bridge" encampment on the Illinois River in remote SW Oregon continues to sustain a unique and elegant brand of non-violent civil disobedience against the Bush Forest Service's so-called "Biscuit Fire Recovery Project", an extreme logging scheme that intends to remove tens of thousands of trucks loads from remote regions of unmanaged native forest.

This serpentine wonderland surrounding the Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area has become ground zero - the poster child for the Bush Administration's aggressive attempts to gut hard won legal protections for old growth reserves, Inventoried Road less Areas, salmon-bearing streams and nationally designated Wild and Scenic Rivers.

The forests of the Siskiyou represent a 40 million year old community of life extending further back in time than any other forests west of the Mississippi. This place has always been a refuge for species during the extremes of ice ages, floods, and volcanism; evolving with fire over the millennia. They have NOT evolved with logging. Where logging has occurred in the forests above us, soils have been impoverished and planted trees struggle in the harsh post-logging environment.

Almost 13,000 acres under threat in the Biscuit Timber Sales are designated Late Successional Reserve (or Old-Growth Reserve). These nature reserves are areas that until now, were off-limits to large-scale commercial logging. Over 6,200 of the 13,000 acres of old growth reserves are also Inventoried Roadless Areas. The Biscuit logging project will log over 8,000 acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas in total. The logging is also highly concentrated in the watershed draining into the first 17 miles of the National Wild & Scenic Illinois River. The Biscuit logging project will log approximately 8,500 acres in this 66,000 acre area or about 13 percent. It will log 53 percent of the beautiful little Fall Creek's roadless area watershed which flows directly into the National Wild & Scenic Illinois River.

Already 46 million board feet has been logged in the Biscuit fire recovery area. Yet the proscribed annual cut for the entire Klamath-Siskiyous is far less; about 28 million board feet. The Bush Administration has used the Biscuit Wildfire as an excuse to designate the largest single logging project in modern Forest Service history; featuring huge logging units - some over 300 contiguous acres.

Old-growth reserves were set-aside in the Northwest Forest Plan in order to safeguard habitat for rare plants and animals that depend on older forests to survive. In the Siskiyou Wild Rivers area, fire is a natural part of these forests, and the reserves that burned in the 2002 Biscuit Wildfire have begun rejuvenating naturally. Old-growth legacy trees created by fire, and now targeted for logging, provide are a key building-block of this recovery critical to protect soils and provide wildlife habitat, but the Forest Service is targeting them for logging. Doing so destroys critical habitat for birds and other wildlife, increases the risk of erosion, and puts the region's fragile salmon and steelhead runs in danger.

Finally, the women are also outraged that of the 23 people arrested in peaceful protests that began last week, some are still incarcerated, some with untreated medical conditions and in several cases, are experiencing cruel and unusual punishment before receiving any sort of trial. Numerous protesters have been injured by Law Enforcement personnel and witnesses have taped loggers "bumping" people out of the way with their trucks, while the police look the other way. Several lawsuits are being filed.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.