Regardless of the fate of much old growth in the Olympic National Forest, activists from Olympia, Seattle, Port Townsend, and other locations have for weeks coordinated the most impressive civil disobedience movement in recent state history. The movement is opposing the salvage logging rider, part of a federal bill passed last year that allows logging in sections of public old growth forest. These "sales" of old growth timber are exempt from many current environmental laws. Northwest forests are particularly affected by the law.
Cutting is in progress in the Dungeness River drainage, and on Rocky Brook grove. These are two of the nine ancient forest sales in the Olympic National Forest to be released for clearcutting under the rider. Opponents term the rider as "logging without laws."
Rocky Brook, near the town of Brinnon on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula, became a focal point of activism for several reasons. The 55-acre sale is made up of trees as old as the United States that grow on slopes as steep as 70 percent. Cutting the trees destroys habitat for endangered species and will lead to erosion, which harms water quality and fish. The trees had been protected under Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan, but the logging rider erased that protection. The vast majority of old growth in the state has already been destroyed. Suzanne Pardee, director of the Seattle-based Pacific Crest Biodiversity Project (PCBP), states that "we're talking about crumbs that are left."
Negotiations to spare Rocky Brook from the chainsaw failed. The Forest Service offered Buse Timber, the logging company holding the cutting contract, an equivalent timber volume of second-growth trees, but Buse rejected the offer. An attempted buy-out deal with the Nature Conservancy also fell through. As a logging subcontractor from Quilcene readied his crew to begin the cut, Mother Nature provided a stay by dumping two feet of snow on the sale area.
When the snow had melted off the road and cutting was imminent, activists from Olympia moved in. In the wee hours of Thursday, February 8, they blocked the timber road, using an old car, furniture, and cement. Forest Service law enforcement isolated three activists, who had locked themselves to the blockade, by issuing a closure order making it illegal to be anywhere near the blockade. On Friday night as temperatures dropped, Forest Service law enforcement removed the activists' sleeping bags, hats, and gloves, exposing them to cold and forcing them to end the blockade. The three were cited and released.
As logging operations began, activists from PCBP helped maintain a presence throughout the following week and helped organize a mass rally at the Rocky Brook closure on February 17. In the days prior to the rally, Ben White, of Friends of Animals, secured himself over 100 feet up a tree in the sale area and performed media interviews by cellular phone. More than 300 people turned out in the pouring rain to attend the rally. When the speakers finished, 101 people streamed across the closure boundary and were arrested in a powerful display of civil disobedience.
Most of the arrestees were released from the Port Hadlock jail that same evening. Another rally at the Rocky Brook road closure on Saturday, March 9 was attended by 250 people, 88 of whom were arrested for crossing into the closed area. There were several arrests in Ashland, and 150 arrests in Sugarloaf in Oregon as well.
Voicing the needlessness of accelerated logging in the Northwest, PCBP director Suzanne Pardee calls for measures such as a ban of minimally-processed wood exports, and an end to the use of trees for paper products: "There's no reason we couldn't use agricultural waste like straw for making paper." Roughly half the tree mass used in the US goes to paper, and much of that is used for junkmail.
Sen. Patty Murray led an attempt in the U.S. Senate to repeal the current logging rider, but failed by a substantial margin. Activists promise more direct action, and recently filed a lawsuit charging that the Rocky Brook area is home to spotted owls, making it off-limits to logging.
The primary author, David Atcheson, works with the Pacific Crest Biodiversity Project.
Future logging protests are planned. For more information, call the PCBP at (206) 545-373.
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