Direct Action Halts Eagle Creek Cut
author: Bakunin
Companies fearful of sabotage back out of contracts or refuse to purchase timber from the controversial sales site at Eagle Creek, Oregon.
Industry groups said actions such as the firebombing may be unusually effective on the Eagle sales.
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Oregon sawmills are declining to buy and process wood from the hotly contested Eagle timber sales in the Mount Hood National Forest, fearing they will become targets of violence like the firebombing of three logging trucks working the Eagle sales in June.
It is apparently the first time sawmills have turned down much-needed wood specifically because of the risk of violence and reflects the rising challenge posed by saboteurs to the usually strong-willed logging industry.
"It's sad. They're winning the battle, and I don't like that," said Jeff Lampa, a log buyer at RSG Forest Products of Molalla. RSG on June 21 canceled two purchase orders for wood from the Eagle sales.
"But we have to go on and try to purchase logs that we can handle safely," Lampa said Tuesday.
About 40 percent of the 28 million board feet included in the 1996 timber sales has been cut and sold so far. But the lack of buyers for much of the remaining timber raises new questions about the future of the logging project, already the subject of ongoing protests in the national forest east of Portland.
While federal foresters maintain the logging will boost forest health and aid wildlife by thinning crowded trees, foes say it would cause irreparable damage to the water supply of more than 200,000 people and leave remaining trees to topple in the wind.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have said in the past month that Vanport Manufacturing Inc. of Boring, which bought the federal timber in 1996, would not begin cutting trees this year until after a scientific review due out this week.
But Vanport officials said Tuesday the delay in logging had nothing to do with the review. Rather, the company delayed cutting in part because some sawmills that were expected to buy the timber from Vanport pulled out of the deal following the June 1 firebombing of three trucks belonging to a Vanport subcontractor, Ray A. Schoppert Logging Inc.
Vanport and the Forest Service did not disclose the withdrawal of buyers so as not to embolden whoever is responsible for the arson, which caused $50,000 in damage to the logging trucks.
"People are determined to stop this, and if they see what effect they had, they'll do it again," said Vanport President Adolf Hertrich.
Activists leading high-profile blockades and occupying tree platforms at the Eagle logging site denounced the firebombing, the subject of a continuing FBI investigation.
A backup buyer Vanport has since found a backup buyer for wood from a 25-acre section of the timber sale known as Unit 28 but cannot log there because of activists in "pods" hanging from trees, Hertrich said. The company has asked the Forest Service to clear the activists and the rocks they'd hauled onto access roads so its crews can remove trees safely.
"What we are waiting for is the Forest Service to give us notice that everything is clear and ready to go," Hertrich said.
But Glen Sachet, a Forest Service spokesman, said forest managers are themselves waiting for a required 48-hour notice from Vanport that it is ready to work in Unit 28, which was partially logged three years ago.
"Once they give us a good-faith notice they plan to go to work, we'll do what we need to make it safe," he said.
Meanwhile, Vanport has indefinitely delayed logging other remaining timber in the Eagle sales because log buyers have backed off due to the risk of terrorist violence against them, said Ed Harris, a company forester.
"Most of these mills are not protected against that sort of thing, and they're worried," he said.
Vanport closed its sawmill due to a depressed market after it already had purchased the 28 million board feet of federal timber for $10.3 million, more than double the minimum advertised bid. The company has logged and sold about 40 percent of the wood and has offered the rest to about 10 other sawmills, Harris said.
But even amid rising lumber prices, none has bought the wood. RSG cancels two orders
RSG Forest Products submitted two orders for timber from the Eagle sales but canceled them after the June arson, which exposed its mills in Estacada and Molalla to risks "that we are not willing to take," RSG wrote to Vanport on June 21. Freres Lumber Co. of Lyons and Alder Creek Lumber of Portland also pointedly turned down wood from the sales because of the risk of violence.
"The recent arson attack on your subcontractor has raised our concern that our facilities would become a target if we accepted logs from your sales," Freres Lumber Vice President Robert Freres Jr. wrote in a letter to Vanport on June 11.
"We just thought, after they burned those trucks, our name is on the side of our trucks, too, and they could follow us and go after us," Freres told The Oregonian on Tuesday. "This is the first time we've decided not to buy logs because of something like that."
Industry groups said actions such as the firebombing may be unusually effective on the Eagle sales. Vanport bid so much for the timber the company cannot now sell it at a lower price that allows buyers to pay for extra security for their equipment and sawmills, they said.
"If the price Vanport wants doesn't reflect the cost associated with outside agitators, then companies are not going to go for the wood," said Chris West of the American Forest Resource Council in Portland. "The bottom line is, what are they willing to lose to get this timber sale done?"
Vanport is obligated by its 1996 purchase contract to log the Eagle sales regardless of whether it can sell the wood, Sachet said.
"They signed a contract, they submitted a competitive bid, now it's up to them to remove the timber," he said.
By Michael Milstein of The Oregonian staff
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