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North to South: A Pacific Northwest Travel Guide
for Forest Activists
Washington:
The forests of the Pacific Northwest in Washington state are defined in the same way as Oregon. But the leap across the Columbia River changes things. The Red Tree Vole doesn't live on the other side of the river. The effects of more snow and more overcast skies limit the length of branches. The overall crown of the trees is smaller. Also the availability of ports for exporting raw logs is far more vast. Washington State is is a seaport paradise. There is so much shoreline in Washington that cutting down a tree and dropping it into the water was cheap and easy. Seventy years ago when forests were plentiful all the inlets and harbors of Washington were loaded with huge rafts of cut forest. Once those logs hit the water it could be sold to anyone in the world. Washingtonians cut fast, far faster than in Oregon, faster than most anywhere else in the PNW. This stripped landscape has somehow regenerated its 3rd generations of forest, which is currently being harvested up here.
As word spread about the
forest and the deep-water ports in Puget Sound many of the most successful
lumber barons from the San Francisco Bay Area moved up to Puget Sound in the
19th century. The tide flats and estuaries, the gentle slopes, abundant flat
land, it was a loggers Paradise just one better than the stump town of
Portland. It was also close to the big cities of Seattle and Portland, which
made selling timber on the world market much more efficient. Before the loggers
and trappers landed in this bioregion, which stretches up past Vancouver
Island, there was a population density on par with the Original peoples of San
Francisco Bay Area. Chief Seattle was the most well known of them all.
When the first sailing
ships of the white man moved into Puget Sound, the abundant driftwood was so
thick that there was a vortex of debris in the Strait of Juan De Fuca that made
safe passage all but impossible. As in all of the Pacific Northwest the
original ecology never hauled off and manufactured all its wood. That meant the
giant tree forests of the PNW had filled all the rivers and land with fallen
giants. It was a natural process, a landscape of mountains, estuaries and
inlets that fed the world's ocean ecosystems with huge rafts of driftwood. The
white man's logging mimicked these rafts of driftwood for a time, but now the
boom times have ended and all the inlets and sounds are ocean blue, totally
removed from their natural ecologic
functions.
The Olympics:
The forests on the low
lying coast of the Olympic peninsula once contained amazing Sitka Spruce
forests that can still be experienced in places up in Coastal Canada. But in
the Olympic forest in the US, these Spruce trees were cut to build warplanes
for the United State’s early 20th century war machine.
The rainforests on
coast of the Olympic Peninsula are true rainforest in that they receive over
two hundred inches of rain a year. The tallest trees in the world use to grow
on this peninsula They also grew a little further north on the tip of Vancouver
island on the other side of the strait. These tallest in the world trees have
all since been cut down. Our knowledge of their existence is from loggers who
measured fallen tree trunks at 400 feet in length. Today as the forests of the
Olympics regrow and much of the land has been locked up with federal
protection, there is simply not much left to cut. Of all the PNW National
forests the Olympics are the least likely to see a renewal of old growth
logging. Because of this the focus of forest defenders is on making wilderness
designations out of the last chunks of unprotected roadless forests. A coalition of groups was
started last summer to begin this lengthy process of lobbying the US congress
for these protections.
The Washington
Cascades:
Up in the mountains of
Washington, up above Puget Sound in the Cascades there was a land giveaway that
re-shaped Washington. It began at the end of the 19th century with a
$50,000 pay off to members of congress in Washington D.C. It allowed for a
grant to the North Pacific Railroad. It was 40 million acres in a
100-mile wide band running 2,000 miles from the great lakes to Puget Sound. It
unlawfully gave away every other
square mile of forest in order to get a railroad built to move commerce out
west. John Muir explains what these railroad lines were like in his day:
“The half dozen transcontinental railroad companies advertise the
beauties of their lines in gorgeous many-colored folders, each claiming its as
the "scenic route." "The route of superior desolation"--the
smoke, dust, and ashes route--would be a more truthful description. Every train
rolls on through dismal smoke and barbarous melancholy ruins; and the companies
might well cry in their advertisements: "Come! travel our way. Ours is the
blackest. It is the only genuine Erebus route. The sky is black and the ground
is black, and on either side there is a continuous border of black stumps and
logs and blasted trees appealing to heaven for help as if still half alive, and
their mute eloquence is most interestingly touching. The blackness is perfect.
On account of the superior skill of our workmen, advantages of climate, and the
kind of trees, the charring is generally deeper along our line, and the ashes
are deeper, and the confusion and desolation displayed can never be rivaled. No
other route on this continent so fully illustrates the abomination of
desolation." Such a claim would be reasonable, as each seems the worst,
whatever route you chance to take.”
These square mile
patchworks of clearcut are still owned by big timber companies like
Weyerhaeuser and Plum Creek. These timber companies failed to abide by the
terms of the grant so the federal government has been able to reclaimed a third
of the land as it exist today in various checkerboards of clearcut, young trees
and original forest. Activists are
still working to get more of this land back. BLM lands, Mt. Baker Snoqualmie
and Wenatchee National forest took over the management of these reacquired
lands.
To the North of this
100-mile swath is the North Cascades, an area where great opportunities for
federal wilderness protection abound. In this region near the Canadian border
the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades begin to merge together forming another
land bridge for Flora an Fauna. Currently activists in the North Cascades are
working with Olympic Peninsula activists in order to acquire more wilderness
protections. The most current concern is for a place called Wild Sky, which made it
into a bill proposed by Washington Senators Cantwell and Murray last session.
It almost made it into law, but came up short.
South of the 100 mile
swath of railroad land is Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Under the Northwest
Forest Plan two-dozen timber sales in roadless areas have been proposed for
cutting. Fortunately the survey and manage provisions of the Northwest Forest
Plan have delayed this logging for two consecutive years. Currently Bush is
rolling back Survey and Manage protections to a time before the court ordered
that Survey and Manage be implemented. The
Gifford Pinchot Task Force is the best groups top stay in touch with to see
what happens in this part of the PNW.
Private Lands:
The Washington Environmental Council (WEC)
has led the charge in defending forests on Public and Private lands in
Washington State. A couple years back the timber industry teamed up with the
state to write new forest practice rules that would shield it from any ESA
listed Salmon litigation. Challenging the timber industries' version of fish
protections has been a daunting task. Weyerhaeuser has its world headquarters
in Washington and there global control of forests is so powerful that in their
home state “they write their own rules,” according to an Washington State
ecologists. So WEC continues to convene scientific panels to review the state's
new logging rules, as well as litigate when appropriate. Though these new rules
far surpass the regulations of the Oregon Department of forestry they fall far short
of what credible science requires for stream protection for salmon-forest
ecosystems.
State Lands:
The state of Washington
own millions of acres of forestland, even more then the states of Oregon and
California. Under the new regime of States Lands Commissioner Sutherland, a
Republican who replaced a Democrat in the 2000 election, state lands logging
has increased. Just as in Oregon, funding for public education comes from
clearcutting second and third growth forests on state owned land. Because these
forests are far more heavily logged than federal lands, they make a poor poster
child for the forest protection movement. But as time goes by students at
Evergreen State, as well as other Universities are beginning to question the
ethicacy of logging as a means of funding their education. It will take time
but, as always, there are far more opportunities to save forests on public
lands then there are to save forest on private lands.
Currently on state
lands the primary battle has been in the southwest portion of the state. This
region has been severely depleted of Spotted Owl habitat and the species is
declining rapidly. Because of this the previous public lands commissioner set
aside additional spotted owl forest above and beyond what was required under the
state's Habitat Conservation Plan. This has been fought by WEC so voraciously
that it was just announced the Department of Natural Resources will not log any
of this habitat for at least four years.
As far as modern forest
activism goes in Washington State, it is by far the dullest of the three US
states. The few highlights are the Rocky Brook Timber sale,
quite possibly the last old growth timber sale on the Olympic Peninsula. It was
cut during the salvage rider and caused a total of 300 arrests and prompted
thousands to rally in the streets of Seattle.
Another major forest
defense campaign was the protection of the Cedar
River Watershed, the water source for the city of Seattle. It was once a
major issue in the timber wars of the Pacific Northwest. But because more
liberal minded views tend to originate from larger cities rather then rural
areas the city of Seattle ended logging operations in the forests that fed
their water supply. The watershed has recently returned to the news because
there is a proposal to put some power lines through the area.
Lastly in the late
1990's there was a land exchange that traded private Plum Creek clearcuts and
some ancient trees for federal uncut ancient forest in Gifford Pinchot National
Forest. A misguided Charlie Raines of the Sierra Club created the deal. In
response a new group called Cascadia Defense Network
put up treesits in the Old growth forests above the town of Randle, Washington.
After a time a whole rural town of pro-logging, citizens in Randle took sides
with the tree sitters and the Washington DC politicos were pressured by their
own Republican constituents to change the deal so it didn’t rip off the public
trust in such an extreme way. While some federal ancient forests in Fossil
Creek were cut down and lost, the bulk of the Ancient forest was removed from
the land exchange and the Treesitters saved the trees they were sitting in.