PIELC
Chainsaw
Massacre
Forests become
election year
battleground.
Spend wisely,
seek balance,
live richly.
■ By Alan Pittman
Laurie McClain
Socially Responsive Investing
O
n Sept. 11, 2001, Greenpeace had
planned to announce its list of the 10
most endangered forests in the world.
The terrorist attacks changed all that. As the
nation’s attention focused on Osama, George
Bush was left to serve the timber industry as
the “worst environmental president” in the
nation’s history, says Andrew George of the
National Forest Protection Alliance at the
Public Interest Environmental Law
Conference at the UO last week.
The post 9/11 logging push by Bush left
environmentalists in despair, says Mike
Roselle of Greenpeace at a panel discussion on
endangered forests. “I’d never seen a more
dejected group of people,” he says. “Things
looked really bad.”
But as in the past, the movement is bounc-
ing back with the excitement of unseating
Bush in November. This year is “one of the
most important in my memory” to the environ-
mental cause, Roselle says. “We can lay old-
growth clearcuts on his doorstep.”
With both houses of Congress and the pres-
idency pro logging, “the triple Republican
government is completely siding with the tim-
ber industry,” George says. “We’re left with
getting down in the trenches and fighting tim-
ber sale by timber sale.”
But George says the heavy handed logging
will backfire. Bush has “united the entire envi-
ronmental movement” to fight the kind of
grassroots battle that is its strength.
Chosen high profile anti-logging cam-
paigns in places like Oregon, Alaska, Idaho
and even the east rim of the Grand Canyon will
help convince “the great greenwashed middle”
to vote against Bush, George says. “We’re
going to do a little political jujitsu.”
The forest battle has become a national
issue, reaching all the way to the hillbillies in
southwest Virginia, says JR Moore of the
Clinch Coalition in a southern drawl.
Heavy logging on national forests has
caused violent flooding in his area that has
wiped out communities, left one man dead in a
slide, and choked trout lakes and streams with
sediment, Moore says. The Clinch Coalition
boasts 5,000 members, has local Congressmen
on it’s side and recently helped unseat a pro-
timber industry county commission.
“We are super strong, and we are not going
to give up,” Moore says of the battle to save the
area’s forested highlands for the next genera-
tion. He quotes one 72-year-old woman active
in the rural group, “Leave the High Knob the
hell alone!”
Lesley Adams of the Klamath Siskiyou
Wildlands Center is fighting the largest timber
sale in modern U.S. history, the half billion-
board-foot Biscuit fire sale.
She says the Bush administration has tried
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— 75th SEASON —
The Very Little Theatre
presents
CABARET
The Award-Winning Musical !
Book by Joe Masteroff
Music & Lyrics by
John Kander & Fred Ebb
Michael P. Watkins, director
March 12-14*, 18-21*
Sunday
25-28*, April 1-3 * Matinees
Tickets: $15
Students $12 on Thursdays
Box office open 2:00-5:30
Wed.-Sat., 2350 Hilyard St.
www.TheVLT.com
to portray the sale as fire salvage, but in reality
the fire burned in a mosaic and much of the
sale is green old growth. Fire is an important
part of local ecology, clearing brush and allow-
ing trees to seed. Some pine cones need fire
heat to open, Adams notes.
More than 20,000 people wrote in to
oppose the Biscuit sale, but protesting the log-
ging on the ground is difficult because it’s far
away from major cities, Adams says. “It makes
it really hard to organize masses of people
when we don’t have masses of people living
there.”
But a June rendezvous camp is already
scheduled and environmentalists are trying to
get more people into the beautiful woods on
tours to see what’s at stake. “One of the best
things you can do for a forest is have people
fall in love with it,” Adams says.
Roselle says there is some “suspicion”
among environmentalists that the Bush admin-
istration may have laid a political ambush for
environmentalists over the fire salvage logging
issue. But even so, Roselle says environmen-
talists have to take the bait. “By God, we’ve
got to win on fire because we’re going to have
fires every damn year.”
Adams says forest activists have already
begun scouting tree sits for the Biscuit sale and
other logging sales that threaten pristine road-
less areas in the southern Oregon region.
“We’re going to dig in and fight like hell to
save it.”
Will the Bush administration use the Patriot
Act to fight back?
So far they haven’t, says Roselle. The gov-
ernment has targeted Greenpeace with an IRS
investigation and with an “unprecedented”
criminal case that threatens to forbid the group
from direct action, he says. But activists should
test and push the USA PATRIOT Act and not
be intimidated, he says. “We’ve found we can
have the same kind of direct actions we’ve
always had,” Roselle says, although that may
change this summer.
Roselle, wearing a “Forest Crimes Unit” T-
shirt, says Greenpeace isn’t doing civil disobe-
dience. It’s the loggers that are breaking the
law, he says. “We are insisting our laws be
upheld.”
Moore says the Forest Service does appear
tense post 9/11. At a recent picket at a Virginia
Forest Service office, one activist went inside
to use the bathroom, according to Moore. A
Forest Service ranger, suspecting a bomb plot,
kicked down the door with his pistol drawn,
catching the young man with his pants down,
but no bomb.
ew
344-7751
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MARCH 11, 2004 13