Logging Protesters Head For Mt. Adams Area Groups Plan Challenges To Timber Sale In Gifford Pinchot National Forest

The Forest Service is bracing for a series of protests in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest this summer by environmentalists opposed to a timber sale.

The Jammin’ timber sale consists of 10 million board feet of mostly Douglas fir, split up into eight logging units over 368 acres in the forest’s Mount Adams-Wind River District. Subtracting the trees set aside for wildlife retention, the sale affects 268 acres.

Purchaser Vanport Manufacturing of Boring, Ore., has until 2000 to take the timber.

In the first two weekends in June, members of Earth First! and other anti-logging groups have gathered in forest campgrounds north of Willard in preparation for the first of several timber showdowns that could take place over the next three to four months in the Gifford Pinchot.

Environmentalists think the logging will happen soon, and they plan to be ready.

“I hope there will be hundreds,” said Brett Clubbe, a member of the Cheetwood Wilderness Alliance in Olympia. “I don’t see why not.”

Clubbe and other organizers plan to set up a permanent camp near the Jammin’ timber sale where they hope to be joined by other environmentalists.

Some protesters might be members of groups ranging from the Sierra Club and Pacific Crest Biodiversity Project in Seattle to Earth First! in Olympia, Clubbe said. Others who plan to attend are not members of any group.

Clubbe described the planned protests as “nonviolent active resistance to logging.” That could mean everything from waving signs at passers-by to blocking roads or sitting in trees.

Safety is the Forest Service’s primary concern in handling the protests, said Tom Knappenberger, Forest Service spokesman.

“We have discussed for the last couple of years how we would react if we had protests in woods on timber sales,” Knappenberger said.

“Our general philosophy with people’s First Amendment right to express opinions is as long as they observe the law and don’t interfere with the purchaser’s contractual right to fulfill the contract, we will let people express opinions.”

Knappenberger said the contractor has the legal right to go in and harvest. He couldn’t say what would happen if protesters block a road or tree.

“We’d be working with the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office in this case if a situation arose,” Knappenberger said. “And we’d also be working with the contractors. They might decide not right now and come back later. Or they might decide to go ahead.”

Vanport’s president, Adolf Hertrich, said his company has about 200 employees and local loggers on contract for the Jammin’ operation. But it has no strategy for dealing with demonstrators in the woods.

“We depend on the local Forest Service and local sheriff’s deputies to maintain order,” Hertrich said. “As long as they (protesters) don’t bother us, we don’t object to them demonstrating.”

And if someone is sitting in a tree?

“We just go around them, I guess,” Hertrich said.

Similar protests cost Jefferson County, Oregon, thousands of dollars for added law enforcement in 1996. That’s a concern for Skamania County officials.

“It’s tough enough with reductions in revenues and having to take care of the increased tourists and increased people in the forests,” said Al McKee, Skamania County commissioner. “We have reciprocal agreements with the Forest Service, but their law enforcement bodies are pared way down.

“But yeah, I think we’re committed and yes, it is a financial drain,” McKee said. “But it’s much more a financial drain if they can’t harvest a timber sale that’s been approved and has gone through scrutiny of who knows how many laws and rules.”