Arrests of Protesters Increase as Battle Over North Coast Forests Shows No Letup

It seems an unlikely spot for a war of attrition. But a dozen miles southwest of this lumber town, up in the serene stands of old-growth evergreens hugging the Mattole River, the fight rages on over the value of a tree.

For more than a decade, loggers and environmental activists have squared off in California’s North Coast woods, from the Redwood Summer of 1990 to Julia Butterfly Hill’s two-year tree-sit at decade’s end.

But this season there’s a new ferocity afoot. And both sides worry about casualties.

More than 50 anti-logging protesters have been arrested for trespassing since their forest crusade resumed last November in 18,000 acres owned by Pacific Lumber Co. in the Mattole River Valley, a rolling mosaic of meadows and towering Douglas fir.

Hidden behind ski masks and black bandannas, activists hunkered down last winter through wind and snow, staging a dogged occupation of private forest land slated for spring logging.

They blocked back-country roads with abandoned cars and an old RV, dug trenches and potholes to deter timber trucks. Protesters preaching nonviolence chained themselves at entryways. Huge fir-branch barricades were erected. The encampment grew to be called “Mattole Free State.”

Their adversaries have responded in kind.

Loggers, aghast that the war rages even after the landmark government purchase of the nearby Headwaters forest in 1999, filed a civil lawsuit seeking to hold trespassing protesters responsible for as much as $100,000 in losses. In early April, Pacific Lumber crews tore down barricades bottle-necking their operations, only to see new ones erected in subsequent weeks.

The Humboldt County sheriff has deployed half a dozen or more deputies at a time to enforce trespassing laws and prevent violence. The policing has drained county coffers and manpower.

Dist. Atty. Terry Farmer isn’t shying from a tough line, in one case filing felony child endangerment charges against a 19-year-old activist who ushered eight San Francisco high school students into the Mattole battle zone. Last week, another received a 120-day jail sentence for trespassing.

“It is war, war without guns,” said Jereme Steinspring, another in the parade of young activists who have made saving the trees almost a religion. “Lots of people don’t think of it that way, but it is.”

Even to the most neutral observers, the escalation in the woods is worrisome. Loggers, truckers and others who make their livelihood from the forest are growing increasingly irate.

These are not good times for the North Coast lumber industry. Many in the rank and file have been out of work for months. Rent and escalating utility bills need to be paid. Tempers are shredding.

Just ask Steve Will. His company runs 25 logging trucks, and he’s taken pains to meet with his drivers and urge them not to get into it with the protesters. But the stakes have been raised. Local people are irked by outsiders they see as know-nothings messing with their lives.

One truck driver told Will how a protester tried to lie down in front of his big rig. Another returned bewildered from a trip after police waved him through a gate while activists sat on his bumper.

“The workers are tired,” said Will, a plain-spoken man frustrated by a decade of warring. “We want to just get on with our lives, raise our families and have a chance in this world.”

Will calls the activists “terrorists against our country and way of life.” Although their tactics may be nonviolent, he said, they are aggressive.

Protesters have taken to scampering up huge trees targeted to fall, forcing loggers to shut down their chain saws below. Others have blocked roads for hours, locking themselves to elaborate anchors of steel and concrete buried along forest logging roads. It takes a backhoe and jackhammer to get them free.

“These are some of the most aggressive and intimidating protests I’ve seen,” said Mary Bullwinkel, who has seen plenty of demonstrations as Pacific Lumber’s spokeswoman for the last dozen years. “It’s time to get these people out of there.”

Scotia, Pacific Lumber’s headquarters, hasn’t been immune. Forty protesters, including several longtime residents of the Mattole region, gathered there for a peaceful vigil a few days ago.

Worried about escalating tensions, some sympathizers called on the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors last week to station neutral “human rights observers” in the woods. The board refused.

As activists tell it, some woodsmen haven’t been able to hold back the cresting anger. One activist said he was whacked by a logger wielding a stick. Another filed an assault report alleging a lumberjack punched him in the face. Some contend that they’ve had small trees cut right out from under them. Others allege that loggers have dropped big evergreens right beside them, a charge the lumberjacks deny.

There’s a deadly precedent. In 1998, a young activist named David Chain was killed by a falling tree in a forest on the other side of U.S. 101. Protesters said the logger aimed at Chain, but no charges were filed. A civil lawsuit awaits trial.

The death of Chain, along with the marathon tree-sit of Hill, remain powerful symbols for the inexhaustible pipeline of young protesters.

Most of them are in their early 20s. Many are college students. Some come from broken homes, have few obligations and little to lose. All seem committed.

At any one time, as many as a dozen may be in the Mattole. They spend weeks in the woods--or longer. Josh Brown, the group’s spokesman, said two ardent activists have managed to dodge loggers and security patrols for six months without leaving.

About 200 strong, the group calls itself the Mattole Forest Defenders, though many of the activists are also aligned with Earth First! Their slogan: “Come on vacation. Leave on probation.”

Joel Wier, 22, goes by the forest name of “Roots.” He’s been on his own since age 15, when as Joel Alexander Wier IV he left his family in South Carolina. On the North Coast, he’s found a cause and calling. He’s been arrested once, pulled out of a beat-up station wagon blocking a fire road Easter week.

“It’s against the law to trespass, but we feel there’s a higher law,” Wier said, strumming a guitar in the living room of an Arcata apartment shared by several activists.

Pacific Lumber officials shudder at such declarations. This is private property, they point out. This is land the company owns. And as company brass see it, they’ve cleaned up better than any other timber outfit in the West.

Under a deal made during the Headwaters purchase, Pacific Lumber operates under strict forestry rules that keep logging away from streams to ease the effects on endangered salmon and other threatened wildlife. The company, which was taken over by Texas financier Charles Hurwitz and his Maxxam Inc. in 1986 amid promises of tripling the cut, has adopted the practices of sustainable logging.

“I really question the agenda of some of these activists,” said Bullwinkel, the company spokeswoman. “I just wonder if anything we do as a lumber company would be good enough for them.”

But down the Mattole River, in the tiny coastal town of Petrolia, some people believe Pacific Lumber hasn’t gone far enough.

Decades of clear-cut logging in the Mattole watershed, beginning in the postwar boom years, have denuded fragile hillsides, adding to the cascade of silt and debris crashing down the river.

“We don’t like seeing loggers hung up,” said Michael Evenson, a coastal rancher who lost five acres in 1997 when the Mattole jumped its banks and began gobbling turf. “But if their work affects us, we have to act.”

Evenson has practiced what he preaches. In the late 1990s, he successfully sued to block a timber harvest plan in the Mattole watershed. But the logging company has since won approval to cut about 300 acres. And more is planned.

Even some of the most ardent activists say they don’t necessarily want to see all logging shut down. But they long to see clear-cutting replaced by selective logging, a more tedious practice that carefully thins the forest instead of treating it like a row crop.

Many hope that a compromise would allow several private land trusts to buy parts of the Mattole, including 3,000 acres of old-growth woods, and add them to the nearby Humboldt Redwood State Park. About $13 million is left over in state coffers for forest acquisitions in the North Coast woods, but the state’s electricity crisis may gobble up that money. Meanwhile, environmentalists are seeking private funding for a purchase.

“The Mattole has for years been a stepchild to the Headwaters fight,” said Paul Mason, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, which has challenged Pacific Lumber in court over its logging efforts. “But it’s one of the last blocks of old-growth Douglas fir. It’s magnificent.”

And it’s not for sale, or so say Pacific Lumber officials.

“We’re in the lumber business,” Bullwinkel said. “We like to keep our sawmills busy and our people employed.”

So for now the battle lines remain hard and fast in the latest fight in the North Coast woods. The lumber company vows not to bow. The activists refuse to buckle.

“I wonder why I’m doing it, sometimes, why we’re fighting what seems a losing battle,” admitted Steinspring, his clear blue eyes wavering a bit. “But if we stood by, they’d butcher the woods. I can’t stand by for that.”