By Greg King and Berberis Nervose – Earth First! Journal, Eostar (March 21), 1988
Despite a lawsuit over violations of many state and federal laws, Maxxam has accelerated their logging of California’s remnant old growth Coast Redwood forests. Earth First! and other activists have responded with another wave of mass protests, slowing the destruction and leading to 20 arrests. In mid-April.
MAXXAM’s Pacific Lumber got approval from the California Department of Forestry (CDF) to log two sites within the All Species Grove, near Fortuna in Humboldt County. In response, the Environmental Protection Information Center sued CDF and the company, but the judge delayed issuing a temporary restraining order for nearly a month, during which Pacific Lumber rushed in and dropped as many trees as they could.
EF! organizers took to the streets, drawing 60 people, 40 willing to face arrest, to stop the clearcutting. On April 13, we gathered to occupy the grove.
All Species Grove may be the most heavily guarded forest in the US, the result of being deflagged, secretly replanted, and twice occupied by treesitters. It is also among the world’s most valuable forest stands, in dollars per acre. Maxxam takes our presence there seriously.
We split into four groups and entered from four directions, the first group starting at daybreak. Some were stopped before reaching the logging site. Others, including Congressional candidate Darryl Cherney (see Part VII), were ejected soon after arriving (though not before Darryl treated loggers and police to his hit, Where Are We Gonna Work When the Trees Are Gone?). Enough people reached the site, however, to stop all operations for the day. Some blocked the stacking of cut logs while others stood in front of bulldozers, chainsaws, or trees to be felled.
The judge finally gave a temporary restraining order on April 25, after enormous damage had been done. In a later visit to the site, we found huge pieces of broken logs scattered down a near-vertical slope of oozing mud. Even more startling was a new road cut into the north bank of All Species Creek. A 263-acre clearcut, adjacent to the one just stopped, is tearing the grove in half. Until the judge’s decision, Maxxam was proceeding slowly along All Species Creek; now the large crew from the contested cut has been moved to the 263-acre cut, speeding its destruction.
Adding insult to injury, on May 5 Pacific Lumber requested permission from the court to remove all the trees they’ve already cut, and to cut more trees in order to remove all that are down.
Also on May 5, the 11 activists facing charges from four direct actions in 1987 received plea-bargain sentences of required community service time and injunctions against entering Pacific Lumber property. PL dropped its civil suit against the defendants.
The District Attorney never filed charges against the 20 arrested this April, leaving them free to carry on the fight. [GK]
EF! Offers $1000 for Hurwitz’s Arrest
On April 28, North Coast California Earth First! and the EF! Nomadic Action Group offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Maxxam Corp. Chair Charles Hurwitz. MAXXAM, a subsidiary of Houston-based MCO Holdings, took over Pacific Lumber in late 1985 to liquidate for fast profit the world’s largest private holdings of primeval redwood forest. MAXXAM’s deforestation violates the California Environmental Quality Act, the State Forest Practice Act, the State Fish and Game Code, and numerous other state and federal laws. The takeover itself likely violated federal business and antitrust laws.
Loggers Protest EF! Proposal
On May 17, loggers and logging supporters rallied in Eureka, CA, to oppose the Earth First! Headwaters Forest Wilderness proposal, which includes a large chunk of Maxxam land. 200 semis and pickups circled the county courthouse while about 500 protesters sported hardhats, chainsaws, and signs (including one with the negation circle—and-slash over “EARTH FIRST”). When a few brave EF!ers tried to counter the protest, they were drowned in chants of “Earth First! Go Home!”
All Species Grove Reoccupied
All Species Grove, 15 miles southeast of Eureka, is the world’s second-largest unprotected virgin redwood grove, survivor of industrial clearcutting that in 130 years has eliminated 95% of the Coast Redwood biome. On May 18, Humboldt County Earth First! began another tree-sitting occupation there to stop MAXXAM’s destruction.
Three sitters—Raven, Pat, and Rufus—and eight support crew carried half a ton of material three miles through rugged terrain to the logging site, on the north side of All Species Creek. We would place the sitters directly in front of a proposed road into the heart of All Species Grove.
Ascent began near dusk. Using spurs and lanyards, our climbers ascended 120 feet before attaching 3’ x 6’ plywood platforms and hauling up about 200 pounds of water, food, and gear. It was our fourth, and fastest, rigging of an aerial occupation.
At dawn, we heard approaching machinery. Concurrently, a click from the last carabiner—connecting ropes for traverse lines between trees—sent the finished crew groping for gear and the trail out of the woods.
Four days later we checked our sitters and found no security forces guarding them, a marked change from the eight loggers who attended Greg King and Jane Cope last October. Although the logging crew, in a fit of territoriality, ripped skid roads all around the sitters’ trees, the road building was stopped and the crew moved elsewhere.
A partial victory secured, we are now preparing additional salvos to save this apparently doomed rainforest grove. This action cost over $2000, so all donations are gratefully accepted… [BN]
Tree-Climbers Meet Jesse Jackson (sort of)
Earth First!’s Day of Protest against Maxxam included actions in Humboldt, Houston, L.A., and New York City, but the greatest excitement came in a banner-hanging attempt in Sacramento, CA. Greenpeace veteran Dan Zbozien, redwood climbing guru Kurt Newman, and this writer gathered there to ascend 100-foot non-native redwoods on either side of the path leading to the state capitol’s south entrance.
Kurt and Dan dashed up the trees. A suited man standing on the capitol steps appeared startled, and seized a large walkie-talkie hidden under his coat. From 75 feet up, Dan threw down a cord for me to attach the banner: “Stop MAXXAM.” While tying on the banner I was met by a different suited man, a slender anglo with narrow eyes and a nasty disposition not unlike George Bush.
“What’s he doing up there?” he demanded. I continued tying on the banner.
“Oh, just hanging out.”
Two more suited security goons moved in. The Head Suit sounded more and more like Bush. “Tell him to come down.” “You tell him to come down.”
Head Suit yelled at Dan to get down. “I can’t,” Dan apologized, holding up hands chained together and to the tree. “I’m locked in.”
I finished tying the banner. Head Suit’s voice bordered on desperation. I thought he was overreacting and did my best to ignore him.
“That banner’s not going up there.”.
“Yes, it is. That’s why I tied it on.”
He whispered into the small microphone hidden in his hand, heard; no doubt, through slender plastic tubes in the ears of the six state police and three additional Suits who immediately converged on the scene.
He whipped out a billfold and held two official looking cards in my face, only long enough to project a feeling of superior authority. “Secret Service. Stand over there and don’t move.”
“I understand,” I replied, and craning my neck skyward, yelled “Pull it up, Dan.”
Head Suit stomped on the banner; more cops surrounded us. State cops took authority over the “crime” while SS agents moped around making crude remarks.
“Maybe we should just shoot them down,” Head Suit commented, followed later by, “If that guy (Dan) puts his hand in his pocket while Jackson walks by, his mother will be sad tomorrow morning.”
Then I learned the reason for the federal agents: Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson was to address the Senate chambers at 9, and was scheduled to walk under the occupied trees at 8:30. Guarding us was the Secret Service, who often carry machine guns and the will to use them.
Jackson, two hours late, did walk under the trees and no doubt got the message. At the time, a fire truck with a large crane was hauling Zbozien down, while Kurt rappelled. The police dumped them at the county jail, where they got six charges ranging from destruction of state property to parading without a permit.
Dan and Kurt were scheduled to be arraigned June 20. As I write, we are working to hire a lawyer for their case. This will be expensive…[GK]
EF!’s Maxxam Campaign Has Made the Difference
Without the Earth First! presence in Humboldt County, there would be little struggle over the redwoods these days. The current Congressional investigation of Maxxam was, according to a top Washington official, instigated by publicity from EF! direct action and information campaigns. Lawsuits filed by the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) in Garberville, representing incalculable amounts of time and money, could not have occurred had not Earth First!ers hiked the land to discover and publicize areas needing protection.
Major stories in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsweek, nearly all San Francisco Bay Area publications, countless television news programs, and hundreds of other radio and print accounts, would likely never have been written if not for the Earth First! campaign.
And yet, despite all this publicity over a two-year period, major conservation groups still sit on spineless duffs, watching the last unprotected primeval redwoods fall. Humboldt EF!ers have collectively spent weeks educating these folks, and even produced a wilderness proposal for which any thinking environ-mentalist could lobby. Congress could stop the illegal old growth slaughter in an instant, and is reportedly ready to do so with an OK from development-loving North Coast Congressman Doug Bosco. But our mainstream “allies” remain idle.
By late May of this year, it appeared the State Legislature was ready to rally behind Assemblyman Byron Sher’s bill that would limit logging in virgin groves to a 50% cut. While still ecologically unsound, the bill would have curtailed MAXXAM’s tree liquidation enough to prevent them from fulfilling annual debt payments that double to $83 million next year.
But on May 26, Sher dropped his bill in favor of a “compromise” solution worked out between himself, protimber Assemblyman Dan Hauser, and MAXXAM’s Pacific Lumber. PL said it will voluntarily return to “selective” cutting—“no more clear-cutting”—of its untouched stands, a misleading announcement that news media nationwide naively reported as a major change. In reality, none of MAXXAM’s currently active logging plans in virgin groves—save the 54-acre cut shut down by an EPIC lawsuit last month—are called “clear-cuts.” Plans now shredding irreplaceable redwood habitat are called “modified select cuts,” but are de facto clearcuts because they require preservation of only one tree per acre.
Thus, with mainstream environmental groups, elected officials, and the news media backing down from this crucial environmental struggle, the fate of these remaining old growth groves still lies in our hands. [GK][1]
Footnote:
[1] While these actions were taking place, Earth First! conducted a nationally coordinated day of action against the United States Forest Service in general (for lax enforcement and pro-corporate logging practices); this is detailed in “Day of Outrage Shakes Forest Service Nationwide!”, by Karen Pickett, Earth First! Journal, Eostar (March 21), 1988.