Greenpeace Lands in Oregon

[nosmokes]

truthouteditor's note: Southern Oregon still has vast ancient forests, yet under Bush administration policies, many timber sales of green old growth trees will move forward this summer. In addition, the largest timber sale in history is scheduled to take place in early June. The Forest Service will offer up somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 million board feet of timber to be salvaged from the Biscuit Fire of 2002, enough to fill a line of log trucks stretching from Canada to Mexico. Much of this burned forest is in roadless areas and other critical habitat areas. Fire ecologists say that salvage logging can severely disrupt the natural recovery process. 

The Forest Service is moving ahead despite the fact that 90% of the 23,000 public comments received opposed salvage logging this wild area. Nevertheless, people are rising up to save Southern Oregon's forests, as you will see from the two stories below. In the first, we find that the international group Greenpeace is focusing on this area. The second story is an opinion from former Oregon Congressman Les AuCoin. Back in the 1980's, AuCoin was an opponent of additional forest protection. Today he spends a lot of his time arguing for sensible policies that will save forests.- K.W.
~snip~

###
Go to Original

Region Will Get Nation's First Forest Rescue Site
    By Paul Fattig
    Mail Tribune

    Thursday 27 May 2004

Greenpeace chose Southern Oregon to launch an education center and campaign hub to protect public old-growth forests.

    Grants Pass - In a move that promises to focus the national environmental spotlight on the region, Greenpeace will open its first "forest rescue station" in the United States on public land in Josephine County on Tuesday.

    The mobile station, whose location the group is keeping mum until Tuesday morning, will serve as an education center and campaign hub for the global group, which is calling for a moratorium on logging federal forestlands.

    In addition to working with local environmental groups to protect and restore what they describe as endangered forests of international significance, organizers plan a summer of peaceful protests.

    "They have taken the public out of the public process," said Ginger Cassady, a forest campaign organizer for Greenpeace. "We're getting to the point where going to the front lines is really the only thing we have left to do.

    "People have gone through the public comment process. People have gone through the legal process. People have done every single thing they have been told to do on how to have a voice on managing public land."

    But their concerns are being ignored, Cassady said.
~snip~

###

Go to Original

    Conservationists Steal Biscuit Fire Job Issue
    By Les AuCoin
    The Daily Astorian

    Wednesday 26 May 2004

    So you think that opponents of massive salvage logging in the Biscuit Fire area are content to simply protest and naysay harvests? That they are indifferent to the local economy and jobs?

    Think again.

    In an unprecedented move, a coalition of 28 conservation organizations has developed a plan that takes on the rapacious Forest Service proposal to log 518 million board feet of timber in the Biscuit complex – an area known around the world for its wild and scenic rivers and biological diversity.

    The groups’ proposal would allow thoughtfully prescribed logging and create forest restoration work to provide 437 jobs this summer – with no more delays.

    Compared to the Forest Service plan (which even the Bush administration admits is doomed to be hung up in the courts for months, leaving merchantable trees to decay for a second year) the conservation coalition’s program represents the only viable jobs program for the Biscuit area.
~snip~

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/052904H.shtml

[burrowowl]

1. KICK!

Yes KICK!