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CLEAR Temp: 77 °F Wind: SW at 4 mph Thursday, June 26, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend April 27, 2003 Protest understandably angered loggers Try as he might, Doug Plumley hasn’t forgotten the Bald Mountain protesters. "They were a pain in the butt," said Plumley, 77, owner of Plumley Inc., the logging firm that had been awarded the federal contract to punch in the Bald Mountain Road. A veteran logger with a reputation of leaving the bark on when he speaks, Plumley was being diplomatic. In spring 1983, loggers regularly cursed the protesters, often referring to them with epithets that questioned their parentage. The direct action was a whole new political animal born in the Oregon logging woods that year. Advertisement "Yeah, we were the first ones to face it," Plumley said. "But I didn’t have any choice. I didn’t know we were going to be protested when I took that contract." The protests cost his firm thousands of dollars, increased the stress on a job already fraught with dangers and damaged an industry he has taken pride in for more than half a century, he said. "The main trouble I had every day was keeping the crew from doing something, keeping them calm," he said. "We had some very angry people. "You just had to learn to keep your cool and stick your fists in your pockets." Plumley recalled the incident when protester Dave Foreman stepped in front of a "crummy," a rig used to carry the crew to and from the job. The vehicle kept moving, lifting him onto the hood. "He was going to stop the crew from going to work; well, they took him from here out to about that road," Plumley said, indicating Highway 62 some 200 feet east of his office. "Finally, he fell down off the front of the crummy," he said. "The deputy we had out on the job arrested him and took him to town. The deputy asked him if he knew how close he came to getting mauled out there." From the loggers’ point of view, they were doing honest, hard work that was dangerous enough without the added worry of watching out for the activists, he reiterated. Plumley, who has a 1945 photograph of himself as a young driver standing beside a logging truck filled with logs, doesn’t hide the fact he has little love for the media or its coverage of such events. The industry was often unfairly painted as the "bad guys" during the Bald Mountain protests, he said. "People said, ‘Gee, we sure feel sorry for you, Plum,’ " he recalled. "But that was as far as it went. All I got was sympathy." And plenty of grief in the form of protesters blocking access to the job, he said. "They always tried to stop the lead cat, the pioneer cat," he said. "You see, that was a road you had to haul all the material and put it in waste areas. I had great big dump trucks that we’d load up. "Every time they would protest, why we’d have to ramp up and move everything, get everybody out of the way, go back to where the lead cat was and wait for the demonstration to get over," he added. "They’d arrest them and haul them off to town." When the arrests became more routine, reducing the crew’s downtime, the protesters became more creative in delaying the road’s progress by chaining themselves to gates or heavy equipment, he said. "They (deputies) wouldn’t let me cut them loose with a cutting torch," he said. "They were afraid I might burn one of them. So I had to use bolt cutters." As with activists who periodically protest logging today, those first direct-action protesters in 1983 didn’t realize or didn’t care that they were infringing on the workers’ right to earn a livelihood, he said. "But they never did molest any equipment. I had heard a lot of stories about them burning up equipment or ‘sugaring’ equipment. I never did have any of that," Plumley said, referring to putting sugar in a fuel tank to ruin an engine. "But they’d sneak past the watchman on the job so they could be down there at the road in the morning ready to protest," he said. The protesters who were arrested generally spent one night in the county jail and were ordered to pay a fine and restitution, he said. Had the judge sentenced them to a longer period, that likely would have stopped the protests, he said. "They didn’t stop the protests, and later they started parking themselves in trees," he said. "Now, if that isn’t asinine." In response to a question about the impact of the protests, Plumley answers with angry questions. "How many sawmills are left in this valley?" he asks. "How many are left in Oregon? How many have gone out of business? How much timber does the government put up for sale?" The answer, he said, is that the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest has all but closed down in the past 20 years. According to the Forest Service, the national timber cut has dropped from 12 billion board feet annually two decades ago to 2 billion board feet a year now. It takes about 10,000 board feet to build an average three-bedroom, two-bath house. "Now, even if the government puts up a timber sale, someone with a postage stamp can get a liberal judge to write an injunction and stop it," he said. After all the arrests and court orders to pay restitution, Plumley said he received only about $150 from the protesters for his increased costs because of their actions. "I can’t remember how much I lost — it was thousands of dollars," he said, noting the firm also had to pay for the cost of two deputies that accompanied the crew to and from work each day. "We had a legal contract with the government to build that road," he said. "But we never did get to complete it. I wish we had." Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. 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