PORT ANGELES, Wash.—Dozens of attendees participated in a rally just outside the gates of the “Parched” timber parcel on May 8. All of them demanded a halt to logging of this legacy forest near the Elwha River.
Nina Sarmiento, leader of the protest, explained why the rally was so urgent: A brave defender of legacy forests in Clallam County is sitting on a tiny platform, a one-person “sit-in” seventy feet up in the air, a couple of miles from where the rally was held. On the ground below were Clallam County sheriff deputies trying to convince the protester to give up and come down from the top of the tree and be arrested on fake “trespassing” charges.
Sarmiento told us the broad coalition of environmental groups, the tribes of Clallam County, and other nature lovers have been struggling for two years to save the legacy forests of the Olympic Peninsula. A high point was the uphill battle to elect Dave Upthegrove as the new Public Lands Commissioner. Upthegrove solemnly promised to halt logging of legacy forests on lands controlled by the Department of Natural Resources. The environmental movement rallied in his support and succeeded in electing him.
Yet, now the timber barons race ahead to clear-cut every acre they can lay their greedy hands on while Upthegrove ponders his options.
This drive for increased logging in Washington State coincides with President Donald Trump’s order for a sharp increase in logging of National Forests. The Denver-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration to halt this drive to clear-cut National Forests that includes millions of acres in Washington State.
“People deserve a full and transparent accounting,” said CBD Director Kristine Akland, denouncing Trump’s plan “to hand over our nation’s forests to logging interests.” On March 1, Trump ordered that all relevant agencies immediately “shall eliminate to the maximum extent possible by law, all undue delays… related to timber production.” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, in an April 3 memo, determined that 112.6 million acres, or 59% of National Forest lands, were subject to Trump’s order.
According to an article in the Salem, Oregon publication Capital Times, the CBD prepared an analysis that Trump’s decree puts at immediate risk substantial “designated wilderness, wilderness study areas, inventoried roadless areas, and research natural areas the Forest Service manages to protect from human activity.”
CBD warned that most of these areas are “important habitat for imperiled species like grizzly bears, northern spotted owls, Canada lynx, and many more.”
Sarmiento told the crowd that the people’s movement has tried everything to stop the logging of the “Parched” timber parcel, yet the logging interests are ready at any minute to begin clear-cutting. “This is what we have left,” she said, referring to the “sit-in” protester sitting on that branch high up in the Douglas fir, risking his life, freezing in frigid nights high in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains, and all of us standing below.
A woman called out, “Why don’t we phone Dave Upthegrove’s office in Olympia and give him a message from all of us here?”
We all crowded around, and the woman dialed the number. A recorded voice in Upthegrove’s office said, “Please leave a message.” Sarmiento spoke into the cellphone, explaining that we were 54 constituents in Clallam County standing at the gates of the “Parched” timber parcel, and we have a message. In unison, we all chanted: “Dave, don’t cut the Grove!”
The crowd then marched up to the gates guarded by a half dozen sheriffs’ deputies. We chanted, “Hey hey, ho, ho, cops in the woods have got to go!!!” About half the crowd climbed over or ducked under the steel gate and kept on walking up the hill to join the hero tree-hugger conducting the one-person sit-in on top of a Douglas fir. The name of this tree-hugger is unknown. But a friend has nicknamed the sit-in protester, “Rob Upthetree.”
Since then, we have attended two court hearings before Judge Elizabeth A. Stanley at the Courthouse in Port Angeles, both hearings crowded with environmental activists and loggers dressed in their chopped-off logging jeans held up by galluses.
The hearing was on the lawsuit filed by the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition (LFDC), supported by the Earth Law Center, requesting an injunction ordering the Washington State Department of Natural Resources to halt all logging in the Elwha watershed for at least 60 days. The lawsuit points out that the Elwha River provides the drinking water for the City of Port Angeles. The Port Angeles City Council has sent letters, signed unanimously by all Councilmembers and the Port Angeles Mayor, to the DNR pleading with this state agency to stop the logging in the Elwha watershed to avert pollution and the killing off of salmon.
The Federal government spent well over $300 million removing two dams from the Elwha. The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe has also petitioned the DNR with the same request.
Yet, DNR has brushed aside all these appeals.
DNR is mandated by law to protect the six million acres of timber in Washington State and to be fully transparent in its management of these publicly owned forests.
With two DNR attorneys sitting near her, Alicia LeDuc Montgomery, the attorney for the LFDC told the judge her clients have proof that logging these legacy forests will inflict permanent harm to the environment, that DNR, itself, has strong evidence of this damage to the forests, rivers, lakes, endangered species, and the global environment. “They buried it,” she said, a note of anger in her rising voice, “[they try] to cover it up.”
Unfortunately, Judge Stanley rejected the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition’s appeal for an injunction to halt logging of legacy forests in the Elwha River watershed. So, the nature lover—“Rob Upthetree”—continues his/her sit-in at the top of a Douglas fir in the Parched timber parcel—a month-long sit-in 70 feet above ground.
As with all news-analysis and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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