By Lisa Loving – Industrial Worker, December 1988; reprinted from the Portland Alliance
Washington activists, with support from Oregon ecologists and labor unionists, last month won a temporary reprieve from corporate logging of one stretch of virgin old growth along the White Salmon River, but have launched a series of protests to keep another tract from immediate clearcutting.
A 30-day restraining order was handed down in late October temporarily preventing Stevenson, Daubenspeck and Stevenson (SDS) corporation from clearcutting the timber from a 40-acre parcel of extremely sensitive old growth white oak trees it owns on land in the National Scenic River boundary.
Meanwhile, SDS has gone ahead with plans to cut mature timber from a parcel of land within hundreds of yards of the river’s banks. Protests by White Salmon residents in Hood River Oct. 24 resulted in one arrest, while an Earth First! support group in Portland staged simultaneous actions at the Heathman Hotel, an SDS subsidiary.
The White Salmon River was designated a National Scenic River by Congress under the 1986 Columbia Gorge Act. But federal lawmakers failed to provide interim protective language and acquisition funds, putting the operation under the control of U.S. Forest Service officials who consider the planned clearcuts the best use of taxpayers’ money.
Residents along the river have been working all year with the Columbia Gorge Coalition, Sierra Club Legal Defense and others to have the land included within the White Salmon National Scenic River designation put under the trust of the National Parks Service, rather than the Forest Service.
The environmental groups, along with White Salmon residents Dennis and Bonnie White and The Trust for Public Lands had also spent the past several months negotiating with SDS for the Trust to purchase the acreage, in an effort to put the old growth in friendly hands.
The corporation backed out of negotiations, after allegedly skyrocketing the price of the land to discourage conservationists’ efforts. SDS officials have announced plans to build a resort at Spring Creek, one of the most sensitive old growth areas remaining on the White Salmon. The corporation denies the timber qualifies as old growth, and White Salmon activists have fought the planned cut since last spring.
Finally, SDS officials announced in mid October they would go ahead immediately with plans to clearcut the timber, and began work at the site. Activists scrambled for a court order to delay the destruction.
“This outrage is the last straw,” said Dennis White. “SDS Lumber, whose owners have made millions of dollars profit selling lands for Gorge protection, is trying to rush logging of old growth oaks while we have appeals pending.”
“It’s especially sinister because this parcel was in public ownership and secretly transferred to SDS without the knowledge of neighboring landowners,” White Said.
Friends of the White Salmon joined with Earth First! and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizers Oct. 15 to picket the Heathman Hotel in downtown Portland, one of SDS’ many business holdings. The corporation also owns Mount Hood Meadows, the Greenwood Inn, a ski resort at Mount Bachelor, and another resort at Black Butte, among other lucrative businesses.
The protesters handed out hundreds of informational leaflets and plugged traffic on the busy street corner with signs decrying the corporation’s environmental policies and long history of workers exploitation. An agent emerged from the hotel and photographed the picketers, while the line of traffic honked continuously in support of the protesters’ action.
Billy Don Robinson, IWW activist and former employee of SDS, described the 1986 logging accident he suffered while working for the corporation on a site called Underwood Mountain, where he said the company also rushed to clearcut areas slated for government protection, before officials enacted cutting bans.
Robinson said that during his term in the mills, RARE 2[1] evaluations—instituted by the federal government to obtain input on corporate policies and practices—were passed out on site. “They told us how they wanted us to fill them out and to fill them out before the end of the shift,” Robinson said. The questionnaires were then sent back to the government officials and made to look as if they were from random addresses.
“The truth was everyone knew that if they wanted to keep their job they had to do what the boss said,” Robinson said. “It’s another clear example of SDS circumventing the law.”
The recent court order buys time for activists’ appeals for official protection of the White Salmon old growth in Spring Creek. The organizers said that if cutting proceeds, they may enact a full boycott of SDS business interests.
Footnotes:
[1] RARE = Roadless Area Review and Evaluation, a program of the United States Forest Service, described by many environmentalists (including Dave Foreman; see Bookchin and Foreman, Defending the Earth, page 37) as “a farce”.