Timber Protesters Won’t Affect Harvest, Officials Says

The U.S. Forest Service is keeping an eye on three protesters camped in trees marked for logging, but rangers said Monday they had no plans to force the protesters to climb down.

“They are safe and well and probably cold and wet also,” said Siskiyou National Forest supervisor Mike Lunn. “They are not in a position that they are going to interfere with the operation any. So they probably will be sitting up there till they decide to come down.”

The protesters went into the Sugarloaf timber sale over the weekend, said Lou Gold, an anti-logging activist associated with the Siskiyou Regional Education Project.

More than 35 people have been arrested during the two weeks since the Siskiyou National Forest closed a 35-square-mile area around the sale, where Boise Cascade Corp. is logging 9.5 million board feet of timber.

Though Sugarloaf has no clearcuts and was designed to improve forest health and reduce the risk of fire, it has become a focus for environmentalists protesting logging because it is a virgin stand of old-growth timber made immune from legal challenge by Congress.

The trees occupied by protesters are a white fir and a pine marked for removal so that a grove of very large ponderosa pine can continue to grow without competition from smaller trees, Lunn said.

Gold hiked into the area to offer prayers for the protesters after telling Lunn his plans.