Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

More protesters arrested at logging site


Protester Becky White is suspended under the Green Bridge over the Illinois River, near Cave Junction, Ore., Monday. The line supporting her platform also blocks logging crews from crossing the bridge. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Jeff Barnard Associated Press

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – Twenty-two women were arrested Monday trying to block loggers from cutting down dead trees burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire, and the U.S. Forest Service closed the area to the public to prevent further disturbances.

The arrests marked the third time protesters have tried and failed to prevent a crew of timber fallers from reaching an old growth forest reserve managed primarily for fish and wildlife habitat in the Siskiyou National Forest since a federal injunction was lifted March 7.

Forest Supervisor Scott Conroy ordered the 700-acre Fiddler timber sale and Forest Service roads leading to it closed to the public in the name of safety until July 1, by which time the logging is expected to be completed.

“Conflicts at this fire salvage timber sale have resulted in a public safety hazard for timber workers, visitors and protesters and this road needs to be closed to protect the health and safety of people near the area,” Conroy said in a statement.

The closure order shut down a camp at the Green Bridge on the Illinois River where environmentalists have been staying and holding rallies and protests for the past two weeks.

Forest Service spokesman Tom Lavagnino said environmentalists would be granted permits to monitor past and future logging, but would not be allowed into units where work is going on.

Protesters said they want to stop any more trees from falling until rulings are made in two federal lawsuits challenging the logging, Laurel Sutherlin, a spokesman for the Oxygen Collective, said from the protest site.

“We have seen so many egregious violations of the public trust surrounding this project and have every reason to believe that will continue,” he said of the closure order. “The citizens have every need and right to be actively monitoring this project.”

A hearing is scheduled for March 22 in U.S District Court in Medford on the merits of a lawsuit challenging the Forest Service decision to log inside an old growth forest reserve burned by the Biscuit fire, the biggest in the nation in 2002 at 500,000 acres.

A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals injunction linked to that case had stopped the logging, but was lifted March 7.

A federal judge in Eugene has yet to rule on a request for a temporary restraining order from a separate case.

John West, president of Silver Creek Logging Co., said the federal injunction has been lifted and it is time for people to let him get to work.

“They might slow us down, but we’re still winning the war,” West told the Grants Pass Daily Courier.

About 75 people protesting the logging were at the Green Bridge before dawn, including a group of women who sat in the roadway, witnesses said.

By midmorning, law enforcement officers took into custody 18 people, all women. Two women, one due to give birth this week, and her birth assistant, were released at the scene. Sixteen others were taken to the Josephine County Jail in Grants Pass.

By about 12:30 p.m., a network of ropes blocking the bridge and connected to a woman suspended over the water were cleared so loggers could drive by, but they were stopped again up the road by a barricade of rocks and logs and three women locked together in the road, Sutherlin said.

Those four women were also arrested, Lavagnino said.

Among those arrested was Joan Norman, 72, of Cave Junction, who was arrested March 7 while blocking the bridge in a metal lawn chair, said Sutherlin.

“I don’t know what else to do to stop this destruction to our forests, so I’m going to sit down in front of the trucks again,” Norman said in a statement.

The Siskiyou National Forest drew up plans to sell a total of 370 million board feet of timber on about 20,000 acres of the Biscuit fire, 4 percent of the overall burn area, but is unlikely to come anywhere close to that goal, Forest Service spokesman Tom Lavagnino said.

Forest Service officials say logging will speed the restoration of old growth forest by removing dead trees that will fall to the ground and burn in the future and generating revenue to pay for planting young trees and controlling brush.