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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us January 31, 2005 Conference gives activists a chance to form alliances By Mary Beth Lee For the Tidings Forest activists gathered Saturday for a second day of workshops at Headwaters' 14th annual Forest Conference. They gained strength and new fire from breathing in each other's air. They mourned their losses, celebrated their successes, passed their petitions and took long, hard looks at what kind of alliances they need to form to successfully fight what forester and activist Roy Keene, founder of the Public Forestry Foundation, identified as "corporations that would poison every river, ... cut every tree." Fighting perceptions As director of Friends of Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, Diego Andres Garcia fights to protect 700,000 acres of dense, temperate rainforest known for its "extreme beauty and biodiversity." According to Garcia, his enemies are International Forest Products, which claims "no plans to log in tact valleys" even as trees fall, and euphemisms like "regenerative cuts," used by government agencies to describe clear cuts with one token "wildlife tree" left standing. Despite high profile acts of peaceful civil disobedience in the early '90s and symbolic designations as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and a First Nations Tribal Park, Clayoquot Sound never won legislative protection, and three-quarters of the forest is available for logging. The rate of tree cut has slowed for now - from 30,000 logging trucks a year to 3,000, "but in the global context of temperate rainforests, � we cannot afford to lose anything that is left," Garcia said. He added that people think the trees are safe, and that perception undermines activist efforts to seek real safety for 1,500-year-old trees and pristine river valleys. Unlikely partners Perception is a powerful tool, according to John Squires, who notes "rural areas and their economic distress are the poster children of Republicans." Squires hails from Packwood, Wash., a town at the base of Mt. Rainier, where he used to make his living as a logger. When the lumber mill closed in Packwood and 300 family incomes were lost, the community did not want to talk to people in the business of saving forests. But Emily Platt of the Gifford Pinchot Task Force found Squires, a man with deep roots in his community and the belief that "we need to get Washington, D.C., out of managing our forests." Platt's workshop on "Reaching Beyond the Choir" attracted Oregonians who seek liaisons with people like Squires. "In my community, 90 percent of people would believe the stereotype that conservationists care more about birds than human suffering ... that conservationists want to lock up ancient forests and exclude people forever," Squires said. "Is it in your interest that the only voice that we hear is that of a right wing conservative? "We will believe the people who come to us. ... George Bush Jr. got elected because people in rural areas couldn't see the link between conservation and their own well-being." Today, Squires stands up for sustainable logging and conservation projects that create jobs, like road decommissioning. He was stung in 1992 when "big business" labeled him and other fishermen "with a big E" for fighting to restore Coho salmon to their upper watershed. "I wish he could come to my classroom, said Jay Preskenis, who wants his students to meet a man who has suffered loss, but "realizes multi-use increases the capacity to live well." Preskenis, teacher for Ashland High School's Wilderness Charter School, leads 22 juniors and seniors through an intense course in environmental principles that includes hands-on restoration work and several backpacking trips. Boyd Peters of Wolf Creek knows about putting together unlikely coalitions, because he works to do just that in ongoing efforts to save 100,000 acres of old growth divided by the I-5 corridor. Today, 60 of the 1,500 residents of Wolf Creek, including several logging representatives, belong to the Legacy Land Project. "The most important thing we all agree on is sales need to be stronger," said Peters, who has been satisfied with a present policy of "taking the worst and leaving the best (trees)." The group invites visitors to "Walk in Our Woods" on the first Sunday of each month. Erin Barnes, public information officer for Save Our Wild Salmon, walked the streets of Astoria dressed as a sockeye salmon and faced the dead silence of Association of Northwest Steelheaders in efforts to build coalitions for the removal of four dams on the Snake River. "Coalition work is difficult, but coalitions of people that all agree don't do much," said Barnes. While the loss of the dams would be a gain for fishermen, the sporting, commercial and private fisherman not only distrust each other, but "think we are not trustworthy messengers, because SOS has not always given fishing groups the floor," Barnes said. "We have to break out of our comfort zones," agreed Michael Geoghegan, a paid organizer for the Oregon Fair Trade Commission and the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs. Effective listening "requires having faith in people you don't necessarily talk to on a regular basis." Geoghegan drops into areas where he is unknown and attempts to build coalitions to deal with international trade issues. Chris Barnes, a member of the Headwaters board and the Applegate Partnership, shared frustration over the desire of a few landowners to withdraw support for the removal of a dam on the Little Applegate River. With 43 signatures, plans for water piping and an electric fund in place, the end of the dam seemed imminent, until several landowners withdrew their support. "Do we take them to court? Do we blow up the dam in the night?" asked Barnes in rhetorical frustration. "We were afraid when we tell our story it will make people come to our town," said Sarah James, "but we have to make friends. ... This is too huge." James, a Gwich'in Indian from Arctic Village, Alaska, spoke earlier in the conference of her people's efforts to protect their way of life and the 1.5 million-head Porcupine Caribou Herd that sustains them. James spends long months away from her beloved village in company with Amy Gulick, a photographer and writer who picks strategic dates and states for delivering strong visual and verbal portrayals of life on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and its coastal plain. Her Porcupine tribe sought allies in churches, in the scattered tribes of two countries and in human rights groups. It appealed to women's groups, explaining the importance of the coastal plain as a birthing ground. And it sent emissaries, like James, to show off traditional clothing and explain village life to people whose way of life threatens her way of life. "Our traditional songs are not entertainment," James said. "They are prayer." 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