Greenpeace stonewalls loggers
GLENDALE, Ore. — Greenpeace opened its summer campaign to protect old growth forests in southern Oregon on Tuesday by blocking a logging road with a solar-powered steel shipping container, from which protesters — locked inside with a laptop computer — posted weblogs.
After authorities removed three protesters locked inside and outside the shipping container, loggers hooked a chain to the back of a pickup truck and dragged the 20-foot container to the side of the road, getting to work seven hours late on the Soukow timber sale about five miles west of Glendale.
“It is more important to draw attention to the broader public issue that our ancient forests are being sold off to the highest bidder,” said Bill Richardson, Greenpeace campaign director, as loggers drove past the container. “This is a national campaign to end commercial logging on ancient forests on public lands.”
Two men, equipped with a video camera and a laptop computer with a satellite internet connection, were locked inside to a pole that passed through the bottom of the container into the road. A woman sat outside the container, her arm through the side and locked inside a concrete-armored box.
The container was equipped with solar panels to power the laptop, a speaker to communicate with the outside, and an air vent to keep the inside cool. Protesters inside transmitted videos and statements via satellite that were posted to the Greenpeace USA Web site.
Protests like this one have become part of doing business for timber companies, and are likely to continue, said Don Hardwick, south region timber manager for the Swanson Group, which bought the Soukow timber sale to supply its sawmill and plywood mill in nearby Glendale.
He added that Swanson was considering bidding on timber to be auctioned next month from the controversial Biscuit fire salvage. Another BLM timber sale Swanson Group bought, the Flaming Rock timber sale outside Shady Cove, has been temporarily halted due to a lawsuit filed by environmentalists.
Greenpeace, an international environmental group that has called for an end to commercial logging on public lands, established an encampment last month outside Glendale that it calls a Forest Rescue Station, and was in the process of getting a permit from BLM to remain for several weeks.
Richardson stated that they had not been aware that Swanson Group President Steve Swanson was chairman of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign’s Oregon Natural Resources Committee, but that his position pointed out the political influences involved in environmental policy for the Bush administration.