Radical Environmentalists in Trees Disrupt Logging Across West

SAN FRANCISCO — Vowing to force people to rethink their attitude toward the consumption of forest products, radical environmentalists from Earth First! on Monday interrupted logging across the West by lodging themselves in treetops.

The action coincided with the start of public hearings on plans by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the rare northern spotted owl from timber harvesting, but Earth First! member Darryl Cherney in California said that the two events are not directly related.

Earth First! members, who include an exclamation point in the group’s name, said demonstrators ascended trees at 15 sites in six states, including Oregon, California and Washington. Climbers perched on wooden platforms 75 to 100 feet above the ground and brought food and water for extended stays, Cherney said.

Blockades Planned

Three more climbers are scheduled to go up today in Montana, followed by scattered blockades of logging roads and saw mill gates and a demonstration at the U.S. Forest Service’s San Francisco regional headquarters Wednesday.

The Earth First! protesters urged a number of changes in national attitudes toward the forests, many of which are already advocated by biologists and mainstream environmentalists. They include sharp reduction in clear-cutting, or wholesale logging of entire hillsides; a stop to logging significant stands of old growth; banning all raw-log exports; research into alternative papermaking fibers, such as bamboo, and a sharp decrease in wood consumption combined with a vigorous increase in recycling.

‘Forest Is Endangered’

“Our temperate rain forest is endangered, as indicated by the disappearance of the grizzly bear and gray wolf, the dwindling of the cougar and the listing of the bald eagle and the northern spotted owl as endangered and threatened,” said Karen Wood, an Earth First! activist in Oregon.

Over-harvesting of private timberland in the 1940s and ‘50s--and even today because of remarkably high raw-log prices offered by the Japanese--has forced the industry to rely increasingly on the virgin, or old-growth, timber in national forests to meet domestic lumber and paper demands.

Scientists, however, warn that old-growth forests may in many cases be more valuable to society if left standing, to provide recreation, wildlife habitat, biological diversity, watershed protection and climate regulation.