China Left, Boise Cascade Lies

Assault on China Left: As you read this, forests activists are trying to save 274 acres of prime forest in southern Oregon. And--as has been the norm for the dozens of salvage logging conflicts over the last three years in the Pacific Northwest--efforts to stop the cut have been utterly ignored by mainstream Seattle media.

Last week three days of successful actions delayed the Rough & Ready Lumber Company from destroying another one of our few remaining old growth forests. The area has been closed by the Forest Service and law enforcement personnel have been stationed at the site 24 hours a day; anyone found in the closed area of what's left of our "public" forests is subject to arrest for trespassing. In the last couple of weeks at least 16 people have been arrested for violating the closure.

The China Left timber sale is located in the Sucker Creek drainage at the headwaters of a tributary to the wild and scenic Illinois River. The logging roads in the forest sale area failed in a number of places this winter, sending tons of sediment and debris downstream as whole sections of road blew out. Streams were devastated for miles down from the blow outs, with stream beds scoured to bed rock and riparian vegetation, including trees three feet across wiped away.

China Left is an old 318 sale resurrected by the "salvage rider." The area was identified three years ago as a key watershed by Clinton's Forest Plan, critical for the recovery of salmon and steelhead, and is therefore supposed to be protected as a "late successional reserve." Despite this, the Rough & Ready Lumber company has been logging since last year without any legal challenge allowed.

On April 25th, the government announced the listing of the silver salmon in the region as threatened with extinction. Even though the Forest Service has not studied the effects of the road failures on the watershed or the silver salmon, they sent heavy equipment into the streams to repair the roads, sending more clouds of mud downstream. The intent was to make sure logging could proceed as rapidly as possible pending the June 5th date, when Endangered Species Act regulations go into effect on public forest land.

Early on the morning of Wednesday, May 28, attempts by about 15 activists to stop logging at the China Left timber sale turned ugly. Three loggers tackled a videographer who was documenting active clearcutting of this native forest. Tim Ream of Eugene, OR, filming for the television program Cascadia Alive!, suffered bruises, scratches and strains. The video camera was destroyed. Six activists were arrested on various charges, yet no charges have yet been filed against the logger-assailants. Ream is pressing charges and is planning to file a lawsuit.

The following day, more than 20 activists returned to the China Left cut, interrupting Rough & Ready's misguided logging operations and forcing the loggers to leave the area. As word got out, more activists arrived over the weekend. It's not clear whether the June 5th deadline, after which post- salvage-logging-rider ESA constraints kick in, will be any deterrent to the Forest Service's seemingly desperate insistence on logging public land at any cost. Before and after that date, support for these nonviolent direct actions will be needed. Contact: Siskiyou Forest Defenders, P.O. Box 3266, Ashland, OR; 541-732-3101.

Forest Service = Secret Service? The National Forest Service has apparently been hiding 840 acres of old growth in the Payette National Forest in Idaho for Boise Cascade--or at least hiding from the public the fact that Boise Cascade has logged 1/3 of these trees, some three centuries old.

Caught in this deal, the Forest Service said it was just a mix-up--in spite of a published letter to the NFS from Boise Cascade's regional logging manager, Robert Crawford, "...respectfully request[ing] that documents and information concerning this timber sale not be released to anybody under the Freedom of Information Act or any other laws that appear to require release."

When environmentalists sought information about the old growth stand, located on the east side of the Snake River/Hells Canyon area, through Freedom of Information Act requests, the agency twice denied it had any such info. None of the old-growth data was included in the Forest Service's formal environmental impact statement for the proposed logging. The remaining portion of the sale is still pending the outcome of the environmentalists' challenge.