‘Hypocritical’ Logging Draws Protests

Rancher Ken Brooks doesn’t object to logging.

He just thinks it’s hypocritical when it is done by a doctor who is an environmentalist and helped put an initiative on the ballot that would limit grazing along streams.

So Brooks and about 50 ranchers and loggers plan a protest today where trucks are hauling out logs cut on 960 acres owned by Patrick Shipsey.

They don’t plan to try to stop the trucks taking the logs to the Malheur Lumber Co. mill in John Day. They just want to make a point.

“A bunch of us ranchers and loggers here think it is highly hypocritical,” said Brooks. “He is not only trying to regulate grazing. He is anti-logging, too.”

They also find it questionable that Shipsey is building a log house.

Shipsey, who has practiced general medicine in this small Eastern Oregon town for six years, joined Bill Marlett of the Oregon Natural Desert Association as a chief petitioner to get Measure 38 on the November ballot. The initiative would require ranchers to fence their cattle out of streams that don’t meet federal clean water standards.