Logging of Burnt Trees Spurs Clash in Oregon

Stan Chronister and the young man calling himself Purusha were probably never going to see eye to eye anyway.

But they were certainly not doing so the other day, what with Purusha crouched 70 feet up in a Douglas fir tree, and Chronister pacing around on the ground below with a chain saw, cutting other trees here in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

Chronister is a 44-year-old logger with a dirt-caked face, a 25-year veteran of the woods, salvaging burned old-growth trees from the 2002 half-million-acre Biscuit fire, one of the largest fires in U.S. Forest Service history.

Purusha, who says he is in his 20s, is a wool-cap-wearing “tree sitter,” one of several hundred environmental protesters who have gathered here in opposition to the operation, which they describe as an ecological travesty in old-growth forests that should be left alone.

Forty-eight protesters have been arrested in the last 3 1/2 weeks. And while loggers go about their work with a federal court’s assent, the conflict over the Bush administration’s Healthy Forests initiative -- which includes the harvesting of burned old-growth trees -- is on vivid display here in the Siskiyou, not far from the border with California.

For contrasting views of what’s going on in these woods, there is surely no sharper difference than that of the two men here, both going about their business as Forest Service officers kept watch.

“I’m trying to expose this ‘salvage logging’ for the hoax that it is,” Purusha shouted into the wind, responding to a similarly shouted query about why he was up in the tree. “This is about letting life exist for the sake of life itself.”

But Chronister, dressed in jeans and a frayed red plaid shirt, just shook his head in a bit of disgusted wonder as he readied his chain saw.

“This is like a religion to these people,” the lumberman said. “They just can’t stand the thought of mankind coming in here and using any of these resources whatsoever -- even trees that have been burned to a crisp.”

Environmental advocates have gone to court to stop the logging. They argue that it interferes with the natural cycle of fire and forest regeneration and is a violation of the 1994 Northwest forest plan, which the Clinton administration brokered to settle disputes over protecting old-growth forests here as well as habitat for endangered species such as the spotted owl.

But courts have ruled in favor of the Forest Service and the timber industry, which maintain that old-growth trees lose that designation once killed by fire, and thus can be culled.

Under the $5-million logging contract here in the Rogue River-Siskiyou Forest, trees that show any signs of greenery, including the one in which Purusha staged his protest, are to be left alone. The fire that caused the damage started from several lightning strikes.

Under Forest Service policy, environmental protesters such as Purusha are generally not forcibly removed from the trees, as such operations could be risky for protesters and Forest Service personnel.

The young man managed to avoid the legal fate of several fellow protesters, most of them women, who were arrested after chaining themselves to a truck or lying down in a dirt road to try to block access to areas slated for logging. Most have been charged with interference with an agricultural operation, a state misdemeanor, and released.

Purusha climbed down the tree sometime after sundown on his fourth day of protest, taking the plastic jugs of food and water he’d kept with him, and presumably hiked back to town. He has not been apprehended.

On March 14, the area being cut was closed to the public by the Forest Service.

“Conflicts at this fire salvage timber sale have resulted in a public safety hazard for timber workers, visitors and protesters,” said Scott D. Conroy, the forest’s supervisor.

Twenty-two women were arrested that day as they protested the timber cutting.

Among them was Becky White, 27, a guitarist and songwriter, who at 4:30 a.m. had set up a rope system across a bridge over the Illinois River, and started dangling from it. The move halted logging trucks for several hours.

White was arrested, spent 31 hours in custody at the Josephine County Jail, and soon was back at the spot where protesters had gathered outside the now-closed entrance to the forest.

White called the title of the Healthy Forests plan a bit of “Orwellian doublespeak,” and said she was willing to risk another arrest in the battle to let the forest be.

“This is a war on the Earth they are carrying out,” White said, gesturing toward Forest Service and private logging trucks up the way.

“I feel like I feel the Earth around me, and it needs protection. Maybe some people don’t understand that, but that’s the way I feel.”

Laurel Sutherlin, 27, a representative of the southern Oregon activist group Oxygen Collective, said: “What we have now is a naturally regenerating native-forest ecosystem.

“What they’ll leave behind,” Sutherlin added, “is another government-managed tree plantation.”

Tom Lavagnino, the Forest Service’s incident information officer, is a liaison to the protest groups and to industry. He took a visitor from the protesters’ roadside encampment 10 miles or so to where the logging was taking place.

As he steered a government van along the road past bulldozers and other logging equipment, Lavagnino, a 28-year veteran of the Forest Service, made way for larger vehicles to pass by, observing what he called “the law of the lug nuts.”

“He who has the most lug nuts wins,” Lavagnino explained.

Near a road leading to the Babyfoot Lake trailhead, Chronister, the lumberjack, was cutting trees as a subcontractor to Silver Creek Timber Co.

Nearby was the owner and president of the Merlin, Ore., company, John West, 42, a man with a deep suntan from years of working outdoors who wore a bright orange pouch on his chest containing his walkie-talkie.

West said his contract would ultimately provide work to at least 40 and possibly 80 lumbermen, at wages of $12 to $60 an hour.

“These trees are not going to come back to life,” he said, gesturing at a massive burn area filled with blackened Douglas firs. The trees’ unsinged interiors can be used to make a range of wood and paper products.

West hailed court rulings and Forest Service policy that made his work possible, and he dismissed environmentalists such as Purusha, with whom he had a shouted conversation one day about their very different philosophies on the woods.

“I think he’s being ridiculous,” West said of Purusha protesting in the tree. “I mean, his buddies are back in town, having pizza and beer, and he’s stuck up in a tree.

“The environmentalists seem to be OK with the courts when they rule their way,” West said. “But when the court rules our way, all of a sudden it’s a dirty, rotten court that needs to be stopped.”

Added David Horax, a forester with Columbia Helicopters Inc., which contracts to lift cut trees out of the woods: “I think most rational people, if they came out here to see this for themselves, they’d be fine with it. We’re helping to produce a commodity.”

Purusha, protesting up in the tree, was having none of it -- as he and many protesters said in fervent tones, the burn-and-regeneration cycles of the forest were being dangerously altered.

Roy Stuart, a Forest Service administrator, said the protest might have led loggers not to cut a dozen or so trees otherwise slated for timber, but no more.

But, said Purusha, who said his name is derived from a Sanskrit term related to nature: “This isn’t about just trying to save a couple of trees. It’s about a larger human relationship with the Earth.”

Purusha said the loggers had been friendly enough toward him, and that he had liked his dialogue with West, the logging company owner.

“John West sees this as just another resource to take,” Purusha shouted down to the ground. “His point of view is driven by socioeconomic status. This timber sale means a lot to him economically. I want this ecosystem valued for the sake of itself -- not for the dollars someone can extract.”