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 Today marks the seventh day three young forest defenders have spent in a Curry County, Oregon jail, picked up last week at a blockade of the road to the Indi timber sale in the Biscuit Burn. Meanwhile the Siskiyou National Forest contract to log at Indi remains unsigned by a high-bidding timber speculator with an out-of-county mill that cuts old-growth trees. Indi was bid on by East Fork Lumber in Norway, Oregon with President Bob Sproul of Myrtle Point at the helm. Sproul admits that he risked his entire company in a bidding war to profit at Indi. The auction price went to triple the advertised rate, one of only two sales at Biscuit so far that didn't go for the minimum asking price. Sproul plans to mill half the logs at his own plant and sell the other half to the highest bidder he can find. On the day last week that Sproul was sent the contract from the Forest Service, he traveled out to Indi, only to discover an elaborate blockade of the single road into most of the sale. Giant slash piles stopped his blue Ram 1500 pickup. But the real blockade came in the form of an elaborate series of rope loops strung across the road and holding up a 75-foot high, occupied platform suspended between two ancient trees.
SPEAD THE WORD:
Word from down south is that the road blockade erected monday (see  http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/07/293362.shtml) at the Indi sale in the Biscuit timber sale complex is being evicted at this very moment!
Call Forest Service Supervisor for the Siskiyou National Forest: Scott Conroy 541-858-2200 Let them know what you think about that! Stay tuned for more details as they emerge......
Using an intricate web of ropes and clips, a young woman is putting her body in the way of logging ancient forests in the Biscuit burn. She is suspended on a platform 75 feet above US Forest Service road 2308-150 to stop the logging of the Indi timber sale.
East Fork Lumber Company paid nearly $2 million to log this ancient forest above Indigo Creek. East Fork intends to sell half the logs to the highest bidder and mill the rest for import to Asian markets like Japan and Taiwan. "Logging is not restoration," said Kay Pittwald from her hanging platform. "The future of this remote area is healthy salmon, clean water and a thriving tourist economy. It is not a place for an out-of-country timber grab to ship wood products to Asia."
Ancient forest in the Biscuit Burn went on sale today (friday 7/16/04) in the Medford, OR offices of the Siskiyou National Forest. The Forest Service had placed 1900 acres on the auction block, promising 42 million board-feet (mmbf) of timber. In the end, three of five proposed sales were purchased, totaling 34 mmbf from about 1160 acres. With companies now coming forward to profit from Biscuit ancient forest destruction, the action starts today.
This an audio interview with a some loggers at the Peanuts timber sale in the Umpqua national forest on June 24th during the blockade actions that Greenpeace and other local groups did. This interview was conducted as forrest conservatives were being arrested. This a dialogue between a forest conservative and a professional logger that was affected by the actions. Listen to the Interview
Attention all Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area lovers: The Forest Service will be issuing a Decision to log thousands of acres of roadless forest around the world famous Kalmiopsis Wilderness on Tuesday July 6 at the Supervisor's Headquarters in Medford, Oregon. Guess what? We are gunna be there too, with hundreds of other community members, in opposition to this extreme proposal. We plan to converge at Alba Park, 6th and Grape Streets (across the street from the Siskiyou National Forest office) at noon. This is going to be a family friendly event with lots of skits, biscuit eating and theatre planned. Play hookey from work. Take the day off. We need a massive show of opposition. Grab your kids, friends and neighbors... A 50-person bus will be departing the Growers Market (454 Willamette St.) in Eugene at 9:00 am sharp on Tuesday, July 6. We plan to stop off in Cottage Grove at the Vintage Inn at 9:30 for another pickup. For more information on the Medford rally, contact Josh Laughlin at the Cascadia Wildlands Project, 541.434.1463; cascwild@efn.org. For those that live in the Portland area, a massive rally will be happening at noon as well at Battleship Memorial at Waterfront Park (SW Oak and Naito Pkwy). For more information on the Portland rally, contact Rolf Skar at the Siskiyou Project: (503) 222-6101 or rolf@siskiyou.org
As many who love Oregon's wild forests know, the Bush Administration has proposed the largest timber sale in modern history in the midst of the most diverse National Forest in the country. The Biscuit logging project and the citizen effort to protect the Siskiyou Wild Rivers are now entering a crucial phase. Numerous activities to protect the Biscuit are planned and on-going. Please take action now. The forest needs help as simple as a letter or phone call, as extensive as a new organizer joining the campaign. The momentum continues to move in our direction. In many ways the Bush Administration is backing down and delaying the project because of citizen pressure. Our legal case is strong and the politics of a presidential election summer are in our favor. Still thousands of acres of primary forest hang in the balance of citizen action and corporate greed. Please take action now.
In a peaceful protest to challenge the assault on U.S. public lands by the Bush administration, Greenpeace activists put their bodies on the line today in the ancient forests of Southern Oregon.
A three-ton cargo container with two people locked to the inside and one attached to the outside, was placed between chainsaws and some 236 acres of old-growth forest at the SouKow timber sale outside of Glendale, Oregon. BREAKING NEWS FROM TODAY'S LOCKDOWN can be found at http://weblog.greenpeace.org/stopthesales/
Because the Regional Forester in Portland, Linda Goodman, authorized the Monument timber sale as an 'emergency' under 'Healthy Forests Initiative,' it was being cut despite ongoing efforts to stop this illegal logging in court. Looks like vandals had to step in to put a 'people's injunction' on the logging for a couple of weeks. These are not 'terrorists' as the ignorant 'Undersheriff' claims below, they are at worst vandals, at best - heroes. DR Johnson would have likely kept cutting through the Memorial Day weekend in their malicious race to get the old growth trees on the ground before the courts stop them.
Ashland Tree-Sitters Oppose Big Timber: Early this morning, students and community members set two tree-sits high in the branches of a tree near the Stevenson Union at Southern Oregon University. The action serves as a symbol of opposition to the rhetoric of old-growth logging put forth at the Society of American Foresters Annual Meeting underway on campus. With a banner proclaiming "Save the Wild Siskiyou!" strung between the tree-tops, the action sends a strong message to the timber puppets arriving in Ashland this week. In particular the tree-sitters oppose the presence of the Bush administration's chief of de-forestation Mark Rey, Oregon State University (OSU) professor John Sessions, author of a "study" advocating extreme salvage logging of the Biscuit fire, and Hal Salwasser, dean of the OSU School of Forestry. Students did not invite these apologists for extreme logging to SOU, and the tree-sit is a reminder that they are not welcome.
The 9th annual Environmental Justice Conference, organized by the Coalition Against Environmental Racism, was held in Eugene Oregon over the week end of January 23-25, 2003.
Saturday afternoon I attended a panel entitled Klamath Basin Water and Tribal Rights. This is an audio report of the two speakers from that panel. The first speaker was Don Gentry, of the Klamath Tribe. After playing a song on his flute and saying a prayer in his language, he spoke of the history of his people and the area which they share with two other tribes, those to the south and those to the east. He laid a little foundation for what the next speaker had to say, focusing on "the living and thriving community of Native Americans where we are at. And, despite everything that has happened to us with the loss of our reservation over time, parts of our lifestyle and culture are still there, the hunting, fishing, gathering lifestyle that allowed us to survive, even Mt. Mazama blowing and creating Crater Lake. Those parts of our culture are still alive are valued today. We are still linked to our natural resources." [ More Audio Files from Jim Lockhart ]
The Klamath National Forest Service is proposing to log 744 acres in the spectacular Salmon River watershed, threatening ancient forests, Riparian Reserves, and Wild and Scenic River corridors.
Sample Comment: (please feel free to cut and paste and get this in the mail TODAY!!) EPIC, the Klamath Forest Alliance, and Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center are challenging the Knob Timber Sale in federal court, and need your help to block the disastrous Meteor. The majestic Salmon River is much too precious to lose, and the Forest Service must know that citizens from across the state and nation demand its protection. Please write the Klamath National Forest today and urge them to deny the Meteor Timber Sale and to protect the Salmon River and these ancient forests. Key issues on the logging sale are [ below ]. related: [ Meteor Timber sale elicits protests ]
Help save the Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon from the LARGEST FOREST SERVICE LOGGING PROJECT IN MODERN HISTORY. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) "preferred alternative" proposes logging 518 million board feet of trees on 30,000 acres, or 46 square miles! That's enough trees to fill log trucks lined up end to end for nearly 900 miles!! In response to the massive logging proposal from the Forest Service, conservation groups have developed a common-sense restoration proposal called the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Conservation Alternative: Post-fire logging will retard the recovery of the Biscuit area and could severely damage the environment. Any logging should be confined to Matrix forestlands where it is allowed under the Northwest Forest Plan. The Siskiyou Wild Rivers Conservation Alternative relies on guidelines from the /a>. It recommends there be no post-fire logging on unstable areas and trees over 20 inches in diameter be left standing. Full Story & Sample Letter>>> SEE ALSO: http://www.biscuitfire.com/proj_plan_index.htm | Siskyiyou Project | Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center
Save Bear Pen's Ancient Forests! Saturday, October 1. Carpools will leave at 8:00 am from the parking lot of the Sierra Club at 29th and SE Stark St. Bear Pen: A Place at Risk: Join dozens of people from across the state for a convergence in southwest Oregon to witness the logging of old-growth forests in the Cow Creek watershed west of Glendale. Join your neighbors, visit the forests, and stand up against senseless destruction! Bear Pen would log over 200 acres of ancient forests that currently provide critical habitat for the threatened Northern Spotted Owl. The BLM has issued an emergency closure of this area in order to log ancient trees out of view of the public. Come bear witness to the destruction and tell the BLM to back off! As Bush's misguided and unhealthy forest policy is debated on the floor of Congress, people across Oregon are reviving Witness Against Lawless Logging (WALL), whose mission is to bring the continued destruction of the public forests to the attention of communities across the country. For more info and carpools leaving from throughout the state, contact Joe Keating @ 503-234-2613, keats@teleport.com History of W.A.L.L....Read More>>>
Mount Ashland, the highest peak in southern Oregon's Siskiyou Mountains is threatened by a proposed ski area expansion that would log 450 truck fulls of pristine old-growth forest, intrude into a roadless area, threaten rare plant & animal habitat, and threaten the purity of Ashland's only water supply. Please visit this website and send an email in opposition to the expansion: www.mountashland.comRogue IMC Coverage with Video .
The BLM is proposing to clearcut 900 acres of old growth trees, some over 400 years old in the Coquille river watershed, in Southwest Oregon. Comments are due 8/8/03.
East Fork Coquille Timber Sale: The oldest forest to be clearcut has trees over 425 years old. Comments should be sent before August 8th to: coos_bay@or.blm.gov Maps and scoping announcement are on Coos Bay BLM's web site. For more info go to: http://www.umpqua-watersheds.org/blm/CoosBay_BLM/east_fork_coquille_ts.html
Logging interests released a report today advocating for massive "salvage" logging, widespread pesticide use, and the creation of expensive, flammable tree plantations across Siskiyou wildlands affected by the 2002 Biscuit fire. This proposal would come at tremendous tax-payer expense without providing an ounce of needed fire protection to at-risk communities in southwestern Oregon.
On Saturday, July 12, SEIU 503, the Oregon Public Employees Union took an important step in passing (unanimously) the following resolution. It should be noted that this text was fashioned from an earlier resolution that was passed by the Student Government of Southern Oregon University. Students and Oregon State Workers workin' together in the protection of our civil rights. Now, that's a pretty damn good thing!!!
Title of resolution: A resolution of non-compliance with the USA PATRIOT Act, The Domestic Security Enhancement Act Of 2003, Justice Department directives, and Executive Orders that undermine our civil liberties and inalienable rights granted by the constitution of the united states of america. [ Read More ] [ Rogue IMC Article ]
Six conservation groups today filed a federal court challenge to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) approval of timber sales in southwest Oregon - old-growth timber sales that by the agency's own admission destroy critical habitat for threatened northern spotted owls.
 On Tuesday, May 27, nine forest activists with the help of one frustrated tree feller entered a current logging site at the MR. Wilson timber sale on land held by the Medford Bureau of Land Management. With no BLM or company security in the vicinity, the group removed a cross section from the stump of a 440-year old Douglas Fir tree cut down earlier this month by the Herbert Lumber Company. The enormous round, which weighs over 500 pounds will be on display at the Ashland Food Co-op on Thursday, May 29. The tree-feller, who resides in Southern Oregon wishes to remain nameless out of concern for his own job security. However, he allowed the Rogue Independent Media Center to film him from behind as he worked the 36-inch chainsaw for well over an hour in order to remove an even round cross section. When asked why he participated in the action, he said, "I am frustrated with the federal agencies working hand in hand with the big bosses to profit off the hard labor of industrial forest workers. They are pushing through plans that are not sustainable for any kind of jobs nor for the rural way of life that demands such work." [ Rogue Valley IMC | Mazama Forest Defenders | Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center ]
 From the open publishing newswire: A small but lively Critical Mass hit the streets of Ashland Friday and ran into the juggernaut of the Ashland Police Department. A female cyclist was arrested and lodged at Jackson County Jail on the charges of Disorderly Conduct, Obstructing Governmental Administration, and Interfering with a Police Officer. She is being held on $11,000 bail. The monthly celebration of bike culture and free expression that is Critical Mass took an ugly turn Friday. Angry motorists endangered the safety of the Mass on multiple occasions. At one point, an SUV driver sped into the Mass and then swerved dangerously into the center turn lane to pass the group, violating multiple traffic laws. APD officer Terry DeSilva pursued the Mass for nearly one mile, with lights and sirens blaring, completely ignoring the motorists who endangered the bicyclists. Heading north on Walker Street, the Mass began to disperse as more police cruisers arrived on the scene. One female rider was singled out and pulled over in front of Ashland Middle School. [ Full Story... ]
 From the open publishing newswire: As previously reported on indymedia, two comrades were arrested in Ashland on April 12 after burning a U.S. flag and were charged with reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct. Both have been released from the Jackson County Jail, the first last Thursday, after six days in, and the second this past Monday, after 10 days in. Though they became ill in jail, both are happy to be released and are in good spirits. The community here in Ashland is very happy to see them again, and they have been warmly welcomed by old and new friends alike. I asked our comrades how the other inmates felt about why they were in there. Most "didn't give a shit", others felt negatively, but were quite willing to discuss it in-depth, some were approving ("shit man, this country is fucked up!") and enjoyed talking about radical politics with them, and a small minority were violently against their crime and made threats. Comrade A asked (successfully) to be moved from one "8-man" cell (which in these days of budget cuts hold 10-13 inmates) to another after being explicitly threatened. Court dates for our comrades are coming up. Stay tuned to indymedia for [ updates ].
 From the open publishing newswire: The US Forest Service is proposing to log 90 million board feet of trees from sensitive, Biscuit Fire affected forests in the Siskiyou Wild Rivers area. In plans released March 18th 2003, the Forest Service also proposed an unspecified amount of logging, non-native tree planting and road building across tens of thousands of miles - all at a loss to tax-payers. DEADLINE FOR PUBLIC COMMENTS IS TODAY - MONDAY, APRIL 21ST, 2003 GO TO WWW.SISKIYOU.ORG TO TAKE INSTANT ACTION! "Nothing about this plan makes sense" said Rolf Skar of the Siskiyou Project. "We didn't need to log Yellowstone after it burned. The Siskiyou Wild Rivers area depends on fire, and is rejuvenating naturally. Why should we trash it at tax-payer expense?" "There is no scientific basis for this proposal" said Dominick DellaSalla, Ph.D., director of the World Wildlife Fund's Klamath-Siskiyou office in Ashland. "Quadrupling logging levels on the Siskiyou National Forest will doing nothing to help communities become firewise. Salvage logging is one of the most destructive types of logging activities - it removes both live and dead big trees, leaving behind flammable logging slash and delaying post-fire recovery. This is yet another move by the Bush administration to gut environmental protections for the globally-significant Siskiyou Wild Rivers area."[ Read More... | Siskiyou.org ] World Tree-sit Day kicks off early in Eugene,Oregon Activist Mike McCarthy is right now occupying a tree in front of the Shelton McMurphy house on Skinners Butte as of 11:00 pm sunday night(4-20-2003) in protest of proposed cutting of several trees.He will be available for interviews on site monday. Celebrate Earth Day by Canceling the Clark Timber Sale Twenty-nine acres of old-growth forest are still slated to be logged any day at the Clark timber sale in the treasured Fall Creek watershed. There are three upcoming events that have been put together to get the last of the sale canceled.
 From the open publishing newswire: Please Contact us [ Cascadia Forest Alliance. at 503.241.4879] if you are driving or need a ride to the women's action camp. Leave a message with this info if there is no one there. Your Name Need a ride or Offering? Number needing ride or how much room. Your Phone number (Very Important!) Date your leaving or when you are free to leave. [ Details ] About the Womyn's Action Camp
 From the open publishing newswire: A peaceful feeder march ending on the plaza was marred by arrests of two flag burners. The protesters were exercising their freedom of expression, burning the flag in denouncement of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Police swooped in, stomped on the flames, and arrested the protesters on trumped-up charges of Reckless Burning and Disorderly Conduct. Other protesters, acting in solidarity with the arrestees, followed the arresting officers onto Main Street shouting, "This is what democracy looks like!" and "Police State!" as the flag burners were hauled into squad cars. Many of those remaining were shaken and angered by the unreasonable arrest. A group of protesters continued the action, placing simulated tombstones of Iraqi civilians, flower petals and a sign bearing the Howard Zinn quote, "THERE IS NO FLAG LARGE ENOUGH TO COVER THE SHAME OF KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE" onto the ashes of the burned flag. Later, APD officer Bon Stewart began dismantling the makeshift memorial. A few women asked him what he was doing and stated that they wished to keep the tombstone signs. Stewart stated that he needed to photograph evidence and shoved one of the women as she stooped to pick up her sign. Peace activist Paul Copeland stated that the Ashland police made a serious misstep and that "This is an excellent opportunity for public education." The two individuals arrested in Ashland are being detained in Jackson County jail. Charged with Disorderly Conduct and Reckless Burning, they are being held on $7000 bail.[ Read More... | Rogue IMC ]
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The Indi timber sale area in Curry County, is a healthy ancient forest inside the Biscuit fire perimeter. The sale include 5' diameter green trees and 7' diameter snags. Many units include more green than burned trees, despite a promise by the US Forest Service that only dead trees would be salvaged. Where burned, conifer seedlings are now in their third year of natural recovery.