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North to South: A Pacific Northwest Travel Guide
for Forest Activists
Western Oregon:
Heading further North
the landscape becomes more mountainous, volcanic, and Glacial. Crossing over
the border of California into Oregon you enter a landscape that was once loaded
with so much Fir, Cedar, Hemlock and Pine that a 1970 Encyclopedia Britannica
entry about Oregon is almost entirely about forests and logging. The further
north you go the bigger and taller the mountains get, the more wild and
meandering the streams get, the watersheds get larger and rivers get much
wider. The snow pack and glaciers allow the rivers to flow hard all year round.
It’s no wonder a third of all Wild and Scenic Rivers in the lower 48 are in the
State of Oregon.
When the I-5 corridor
was built in the 1960's and 70's all the big towns, Medford, Grants Pass,
Roseburg, Eugene, welcomed visitors with giant signs proclaiming their town to
be the "Logging Capitol of the World." Today the signs have been
replaced with new signs that welcome tourists and shoppers. The boom times of
big tree logging era has ended, the forest has been cut of 90% of what was
first here and now the money maker for the industry is in the southeastern US.
The end of the era was in the late 1980’s. Fifteen years later Oregon is still
in the grip of poverty and economic infeasibility.
Thunderstorms,
lightning and wildfire: western Oregon is a land that grows big trees because
big trees are the ones with bark thick enough to survive the fires. Of course
now that 90% of the land has been cleared of these fireproof big trees. The
forest of today are far more flammable. What makes this land crucial to the
future of the Pacific Northwest is that the land claims, the conversion of
public space to private property, it didn't take hold here. The nature of these
forests, the lack of navigable waterways to provide access, it made for a boom
bust cycle that led to more registered ghost towns in Oregon than in all other
US states combined. The boom bust cycle of old growth logging, the vast
landscape that took a long time to travel, it all worked to limit the amount of
civilization that cropped up here. As a result much of the land is still owned
as a public trust. Today 45% of all land in Oregon is federal and state land.
Because of this forest defenders have more backing when they speak out for protection
of the public’s forest. Current plans for the Bush’s “Healthy Forest
Initiative” is essentially to make as much profit for their campaign
contributors as they can, which means trying to cut as many big trees as then
can get away with. It’s essentially been reduced to Bush and Congress
attempting to dismantle laws versus the courts who are charged with
interpreting and enforcing environmental laws that have not yet been
dismantled.
Kalmiopsis:
Ever since the glaciers
receded the climate in Western Oregon has been blessed with abundant rainfall
until late June of each year. In just 10,000 years the forests have come back
to cover the landscape, to reclaim the ice fields, quickly propagating
northwards up to Alaska. These conifers originated from areas along the coast,
as well as from the Kalmiopsis
Wilderness. The Kalmiopsis is
central core of mountains in southern Oregon which been undisturbed by
glaciations for 26 million years. All 18 species of conifer in the Pacific
Northwest exist in this area. After the last ice age these trees began their
journey to reclaim the Pacific Northwest landscape. Some of the most inspiring
and competent forest defense groups in the PNW live close to this original
landscape. Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center,
Mazama Forest Defenders,
Headwaters, are all actively working to
stop timber sales on public land.
Last summer there was
forest fire even bigger than the Tillamook Burn of the
early 20th century. It was a fire encompassing all of the Kalmiopsis
and more. The half-million-acre Biscuit
fire left a third of the forest untouched, a third of the forest lightly
burned, and a third of the forest with a moderate to total burn. The southern
reaches of the biscuit fire reach hwy 199 and along this road you can look u
into the hills and can see how the fire create natural mosaics of individual
trees or whole stands of trees burned, while other trees are left green and
healthy. As Always right wing politics likes to suggest that fire needs to be
managed by selling off all the forest fuels to the timber industry. As always
the big fireproof trees are seen as he cash cow that will pay the bill for
thinning out the hazardous non-merchantable trees. This is the way the industry
operates. They do public relations about how they are going to save us from
forest fires, then they cut the big trees, leaving the brushy fire-prone
vegetation behind. What's worse all the roads and bare ground created by the
logging grows back as thick dense shrub and forest, which is even more
flammable then the previous forest stands that were cut. Year after year the
same old tired rhetoric comes out about how we need to thin our forests and
make them more fire-proof. Yet on the ground this almost always translates to
even greater fire and erosion hazards.
Non-Violent Civil
Disobedience in defense of the forests of the PNW began in Southern Oregon in
1983 on the Bald Mountain road in Siskiyou National Forest. A dozen protesters sat in front of a
Bulldozer that was building a road into a roadless area. A few years later an
Oregon activists got the notion that sitting in a tree would make it harder to
be removed from the woods, as well as get attention. Though treesitting is a
form of opposition that is only a small aspect of who we are, it has become the
essence or point of the arrow of our movement. Behind the point of this arrow
are years and years of research, documentation, ground checking, scrutiny of the
laws and litigation. It's fueled by outrage over the destruction that has
happened, as well as the desire to save what’s left. Mainstream environmental
groups represent the public concerns in the courts and treesitters capture the
media spotlight in an appealing way.
Further East of the
Kalmiopsis is the exploded Volcano of Mazama, now know as Crater Lake National
park. This past summer the Peak
timber sale on Rogue River National Forest cut old growth trees causing
treesitters, road blockaders, and litigants to respond. In some of the arrests
during this campaign the charges were dropped because the judge found the
arrests for trespass on public lands to be unconstitutional, which he says was well
defined by case law.
In Oregon sometimes
even the dry hot summers are blessed several rain showers. Of course once
you’re far enough east away from the coast the rainfall is far less. In the
furthest eastern reaches of southwest Oregon is an arid dry landscape called
Klamath Falls. It’s main feature is the Klamath
Basin Wildlife Refuge. This land is so dry its almost desert and local
agriculture operations have siphoned off so much Klamath river water, as well
as polluted Klamath river water, that the survival of Native Salmon, Sucker
fish and Green Sturgeon has been jeopardized. Environmentalists used the power
of the courts to enforce the Endangered Species Act, which limited the removal
of the Klamath water by farmers. The Klamath River is affected by this battle
mostly downstream in California. Leading up to 9-11 the water gates that divert
water out of the river and to farmers in Klamath Falls became a rallying spot.
Anyone who favored personal greed over the equitable distribution of resources
among all people and species, they were the ones to show up to protest. They
were the poster children of unfair environmental laws. After 9-11 the protest
ended and Bush gave the farmers every last drop of water they demanded. As a
result this past Summer 33,000 Klamath Salmon returning home to spawn were
killed by low water levels. This outrage will surely lead to more litigation as
well as potential attempts by congress to override the ESA.
The good new in Klamath
Falls is that in the hills above the water wars is federal old growth forest
that was threatened with plans to build a ski resort. But after decades of
lobbying congress and twisting forest service rules, the added cost of the Northwest
Forest Plan made the project economically infeasible to the investors. The ski
resort has been withdrawn and the project appears to have been shut down for
good.
Moving further North
into central western Oregon is the town of Roseburg. This family owned company
of Roseburg forest (RFP) Products and its subsidiaries have bought up all the
local sawmill contracts that languished due to litigation in the late 1980's
and early 1990's. When exemption from environmental laws passed through
congress and was signed into Law in 1995 RFP cashed in on 200 million bd. ft.,
equivalent to 40,000 log trucks worth of old growth timber. This cash cow
earning was so fat that it allowed the rapid growth of a RFP. Not only was RFP
able to finance the purchase of forestland from the International Paper, the
states largest forest landowner, but RFP also got into a venture called South
Umpqua Bank. In recent years this bank has bought up Pacific Continental Bank.
Built on campaign donations to politicians who in turn give away public lands
for a song, the RFP Empire continues to grow.
The group Umpqua Watersheds has
held solid opposition in response to the RFP Empire. What's more a women by the
name of Francis Etherington, forest technician, has been relentless in her work
to bring truth and justice to bad timber sales in her region. Her victories
during the Clinton were unprecedented. We hope her work under the Bush
administration finds a way to success as well. One of the major protections
Francis fought for and validated was the Aquatic
Conservation Strategy (ACS,) which is under the Northwest forest plan. This
nine-part guideline was the highest science to ever infiltrate a timber
industry agenda.The language of the ACS requires the forest service to
"improve or maintain" the aquatic habitat within every proposed
timber sale. This requirement, combined with recent listings of the Salmon, as
well as the Umpqua cutthroat trout, has effectively shut down most logging
plans linked to these specific fish habitats in the Umpqua and beyond. But now
under the Bush administration one of the first orders of business in the PNW
was to vacate the ACS. It remains to be seen how the courts, under Judge
Rothstein, or congress, under Bush, will uphold or deny the highest level of
aquatic science ever instituted in a federal bureaucracy.
Upcoming issues in this
area are the Umpqua
land exchange, which has been in the works for more then a half-decade. As
always with federal land trades, the public, as represented by the feds agree
to give up rare old growth parcels in exchange for clearcut private lands and
some native "old growth" forests on rough ground that is not
cost-effective to log.
Oregon Cascades:
North of the Umpqua is
the Willamette Valley, the fifth largest watershed in the lower 48. The Willamette
National Forest (WNF) spans the majority of the Cascade Range in Oregon. Mt.
Hood National Forest in the North is east of Portland and The Rogue and the
Umpqua are south of this area. This the main powerhouse of timber production
has always been the WNF. A bit under 100 miles long and 30 miles wide this
forest was first known as the Cascade Forest Reserve. Because of this it wasn’t
gone after intensively until the later half of the 20th century In its day the
WNF was the biggest timber producer in the PNW. Originally the WNF was set
aside by the feds to save society from a supposed timber famine that the timber
industry seemed hell bent on creating. After a time all that was forgotten and
the WNF began clearcutting their watersheds. The justice is that the WNF has
since been the site of some of the most significant moments in forest defense
history.
Enforcing
Federal Law on Federal Lands:
In 1976 The very first
appeal of an old growth timber sale was filed by Dinah 'Mo' Ross in
Breitenbush, Oregon. She was an avid hiker and lived in the Detroit Ranger
District on the Willamette National forest. From a retreat know as Breitenbush Hot springs Dinah-mo walked
the proposed timber sales in the ancient forests that surrounded the retreat.
At night she learned forest policy and case law. To this day when people enter
the Breitenbush retreat they pass under old growth trees that were the first
timber sale to be shut down by the first ever timber sale appeal. Some of the
acreage did get cut in that original sale, but the path of forest defense had
been defined. Within months every old growth timber sale in the Willamette
National Forest was being monitored and appealed. Within year National forests
all over the Pacific Northwest were finally being successfully
challenged in court. The amount of logging seemed at first to escalate in
the face of the challenges. The laws seemed to be completely ignored and for
more then a decade Dinah Ross, and those who came after did not relent. Dinah
was able to fight off at least the loggers around most of Breitenbush. But
others region were beaten sale after sale, clearcut watershed after clearcut
watershed. Dinah herself was killed when a lumber truck hauling wood from a
sale she appealed crashed into her car. Finally in the late eighties the
environmental challenges to save the ancient trees of the PNW began to stick in
the courts. In response congress, on three different occasions, passed a law to
exempt all timber sales held up in court. Despite their disregard for existing
law ultimately the end result was that the Endangered Species Act prevailed and
logging was thrown into an information gathering process about the ecosystem it
was destroying
In 1990 the Willamette
National Forest Plan was written under the requirement of National Forest
Management Act. Bush has recently made moves to vacate this requirement
through forest zoning. But perhaps it’s too little too late for the current
administration? In 1990 WNF completed it forest plan, which proposed
"ecosystem management" as a way to get out of the courtroom. The idea
was to give protection to some land in order to justify being able to log off
other "less significant" pieces of land. Of course this still wasn't
enough top stop the lawsuits so congress and the courts and the activists kept
battling. When the activists used the courts to shut down all major PNW timber
sales on Public lands in the early nineties the Clinton administration began a
process to break the gridlock and get the loggers back to work. Led by Jerry Franklin the
result was something similar to the WNF's ecosystem management. It's called the
Northwest Forest Plan and it incorporated the need to protect forests, as well
as to study for rare species on threatened forest.
Once these new rules
were settled the1995 congress again gave a massive exemption to all PNW old
growth sales that were stopped by the courts. This exemption lasted for
Eighteen months and also exempted any new timber sales that were written. Known
as the Salvage Rider it ed to nearly 800 arrests of protesters who were
opposing the logging. In every region of the Pacific Northwest activist
organized and defended the forest. Warner
Creek was the flagship of opposition to congress’ passing of this “Lawless logging
Rider.” Then by 1997 the ecosystem
management rules of 1993 finally came on to the federal rulebooks. Almost
immediately the Forest Service’s regional office advised federal timber sale
planners to not survey for rare species like the Red Tree Vole. The
environmentalists filed suit and judge William Dwyer, the one who shut the
Forest Service down in the early nineties, ordered PNW timber sales shut down.
Dwyer said the sales couldn’t move forward until the surveys are done.
These surveys, for a
long list of rare species, are still being completed. This survey requirement
was a victory for activists, many of who were hired by the Forest Service to
conduct the surveys. With each survey completed the timber sale cutting areas
had to be made smaller and smaller. Treesitters who had slowed the progress of
logging long enough for the court ruling to take effect shifted gears and began
teaching people how to climb trees and
survey for Red Tree Voles and Rare Lichens. The result was that treesitters
found many known sites of rare species and it enabled them to submit their
evidence and, for the time being, save much of their threatened forests.
Meanwhile the Bush administration has put Timber Lobbyist Mark Rey
in charge of writing up a game plan to get past all the environmental
protections that PNW forest defenders have been successfully using. Specific to
the required surveys the feds plan is to ignore the surveys and not end up back
in court because they ignored them. How that plan will ultimately work is not
clear yet but this current session of congress is sure to bring some answers.
Eugene:
This city is the
southern most city in the Willamette Valley. It is headquarters for the WNF, as
well as a major number of forest defense groups.
The alternative culture of Eugene was charged up by the battle to save Warner
Creek, which was a forest intentionally burned by an arsonists. The fire was
intended to get around environmental protections and allow Salvage Logging.
Saving Warner Creek brought forest activists from all over the world and
focused them in Eugene. Treesit campaigns that followed Warner Creek have
continue to draw activist to this area for an additional half-dozen years. Many
of these activists still live in this town, their ability to develop alternative
more sustainable ways to live continues to grow and become integrated into
Eugene’s culture.
To the west of Eugene
out on the coast is the Siuslaw National Forest; a forest that has shifted from
old growth harvest to second growth thinning. Not only is their operational
cost drastically lower than the WNF old growth logging program, but the Siuslaw
is not hampered by litigation. Also along the central Oregon coast is some of
the fastest growing Douglass Fir plantations in the world. Eugene is in Lane
County, which stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Cascades. It is the
biggest timber-producing county in the nation. The Coast Range Association is doing there
best to bring some common sense to the clear-cut madness of these Industry
lands.
Portland:
This big city got the
name stump town for good reason. The logging was easy around these parts in early
settler times. The deep river of the Columbia allowed the export of lots of log
rafts and the city grew rich. The city was built from the ground up with money
earned from logging. To the west is the Tillamook State forest, the largest
state owned forest. This forest was acquired after a huge early 20th century forest fire destroyed
the timber value and the landowners were foreclosed on because they couldn’t
pay the property taxes. At the State Capitol in Salem, which is in between
Portland and Eugene, a governor by the name of Charles Sprague led his state on
a community-based effort to reforest the Tillamook Burn. Sprague not only sold
reforestation bonds, he also got the public schools to bring students out to
help plant the forest. Now sixty years later the elderly refer to Sprague's
initiative of tree planting as one of the most significant experiences of their
childhood. Today these trees have grown and local
residents and activists are fighting the Oregon Department of Forestry who
are over-cutting these forests. Last Spring treesitters and activists defended
forest like God’s
Valley and Acey Line
thin.
Based in Portland is
the Cascadia Forest Alliance,
a forest activist movement that spent 6 years stopping 2/3 of the Eagle creek
timber sales in Mount Hood National Forest. Treesits, Road blockades a whole
culture of forest activism arose out of this campaign. Sadly a treesitter fell to
her death on the Eve of the deal that saved Eagle creek. More recently Cascadia
Forest Alliance has organized strong opposition to the Borg timber sale, the
Solo timber sale, and also state lands timber sales. Other forest groups like Bark and NEEP have done much
to monitor timber sales, educate the public, and help provide information to
litigants who defend these forests in court.