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On March 25, over 50 people protested the closure of a large part of the national forest to the public, and crossed over the official Forest Service road blockade.
Forest Service road 2719 was blocked and officially closed. The entire rally joined hands, crossed the closure, and continued walking up the road, singing. We walked a half mile to the Black Creek bridge. At that point a government vehicle was parked in the bridge in such a way that only one person at a time could pass through. The first five people that crossed through that point were arrested. I was among them. As I sat handcuffed and chained, I was very surprised to see my comrades start to gather around me. Eventually, most of the protesters crossed the bridge after the Forest Service told them no further arrests would be made. One person even asked to be arrested, but the Forest Service refused. There were elderly and handicapped people involved, as well as small children.
I choose to cross that bridge and be arrested because I objected to the large closure of the Umpqua National Forest to facilitate the operations of Roseburg Forest Products. I objected to sales that have been designated illegal but are being clearcut anyway - in the last intact ecosystem in the Tiller Ranger District. Whether the trees are 830 years old or 1030 years old, we have no right to take them, especially when we have already taken most of the oldest trees in the Umpqua watershed.
Over fifty people of all ages crossed the line that day to protest these sales. Only five were arrested, in spite of other requests to be arrested. We wanted to stand up and be counted as ones who care about what happens to one of the last intact cutthroat and coho salmon habitat. We want the logging rider to be repealed.
The previous week, on March 20, before logging started, I walked through these stands taking pictures and increment cores to age trees. I found the trees to be very very old. That night I camped in the area, and was dismayed to face the loggers the next morning. I did not know logging was to start on March 21. There was no closure in effect. I told one of the loggers what I had found the day before. He started up his chainsaw and ran toward me, pointing the tip of the bar right at me, revved up at full RPM. He took four or five steps toward me, and I turned and ran. Other people in the area who were videotaping the stand, caught this incident on tape. Eugene area TV stations played the footage in two different newscasts.
Later that day, the Forest Service closed the area to the public, and I was asked to leave. Outside the barricades I talked with a local newspaper reporter. He repeatedly asked me about the chainsaw incident. I explained it to him in detail, but said that I did not think the logger had a malicious intent - he was just surprised to find me there, confused and angry. I wanted the real issues to be reported, so I did not highlight this incident or press charges against the logger for menacing me with a chainsaw. The chainsaw attack story never hit the local papers. I felt that was appropriate because the real story is the ancient forests being logged, and the ecologically damaging, 1980's style clearcuts on steep slops in a previously uncut drainage.
I don't think that Roseburg Forest Products condones the actions of this worker, or the loggers who knowingly cut trees in the direction of other citizens legally present in the area. There were workers there that day who treated us respectfully. Everyone will react in their individual ways. As such, at public protests against these sales, every outraged citizen will react in their individual ways. I feel the media has a responsibility to give the headlines to the real story, not isolated incidents.
The salvage rider has not only caused damage to our ecosystems, but is tearing apart our community. We expect everybody to express their outrage through nonviolent means. That is where our community strength lies.
Francis Eatherington
"It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made the agents of injustice" H. D. Thoreau
There was something new in the woods of the Umpqua last week, and it continues to grow louder and louder. In the Black and Boulder Creek drainages approximately 30 miles east of Roseburg, the sounds of direct action are ringing against the roar of the saws through the great stands of ancient forest, which were attacked last Thursday by Roseburg Forest Products. The South Cascadian and Siskiyou Forest Defenders and Earth First! groups from three states have joined in with local mainstream citizens fighting "to keep the trees on their stumps." As fallers entered the First and Last timber sales to begin destroying these last roadless areas in the Tiller District of the Umpqua National Forest, they were met by fifteen forest defenders who blocked the road until a federal closure was put on a 16 square mile area. A dozen then took to the sale unit to disrupt the work of the fallers, who chased one with a chainsaw and intentionally cut a tree other activists were sitting under.
Activity hit a high Monday, March 25. In anticipation of the increased resistance, federal law enforcement expanded the closure in the middle of the night to cover the main road into the sales from Little River Rd. to Boulder Creek in the south. 15 Cascadians and E.F!ers mashed two derelict Fords, named Alan and Cappy, together to block the northern access to the timber sales. Shannon, Lisa, and Zonker locked to the undercarriages of the obsolete hulks and for the first five hours after dawn, traffic on Little River Rd. stopped. Inside the area of public lands closed to the public, another group erected huge tripods to further delay intrusion, and at the southern access, more activists put themselves between the saw and the tree. Heavy federal activity in the southern region stymied efforts there, and ultimately R.F.P. made it in and ancient forest died. The three locked to the car blockade in the north were cut away, then hauled away. Over fifty people from a public rally at the Umpqua Forest Supervisor's Office rolled in immediately after the blockade had been cleared, to march past the Forest Service barriers at the top of F.S. road 2719. Public lands or not, five were arrested for violating the government's closure and joined the blockaders in the Douglas County Jail.
Direct action continues in the forests, and the public is asked to come out to support or take part in the struggle for the future of these lands. Prospects for preservation are good and hopefully close. A lawsuit brought by Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund seeks to bring these sales the same protection now sheltering three other similar sales in the immediate area. Judge Dwyer's court could rule on the case within a week. Less desirable, a timber swap is being approached by the Forest Service and the administration which would give R.F.P. equal volume from already damaged matrix land outside the Tiller district. Every hour Roseburg Forest Products is held outside First and Last means that many more trees saved, that much more road left unmade, that much precious water running clear.
For more information on the Cascadia Forest Defenders and other Cascadian campaigns, including Warner Creek, visit the Cascadian Rising! website at url http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~cnoblitt
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