By Barry Sheppard
On Sunday, September 15, the largest protest action in recent years in defence of the environment in the US took place in the remote northern California town of Carlotta.
Organized by Earth First!, the action mobilised some 9000 people.
The target of the demonstrators was the Pacific Lumber Company offices. Pacific Lumber had planned to start cutting down the Headwaters Forest, one of the last stands of privately owned ancient redwoods in the world. These trees once covered northern California.
By nightfall, some 400 protesters had been arrested for trespassing on the lumber company's property, including popular country-rock singer Bonnie Raitt. Another 200 joined the line to be taken to a sheriff's department booking area. Among those arrested were families with children, although none of these were jailed.
The company agreed to postpone logging in the groves, some of whose trees are 2000 years old, while negotiating with the Clinton administration.
Pacific Lumber is a subsidiary of Maxxam, Inc., and was acquired by Houston financier Charles Hurwitz in a junk bond deal over a decade ago. He immediately doubled the rate of logging in the area.
Prior to July 27, 1995, however, environmental laws prevented logging of the remaining ancient forests. On that date, President Clinton signed a law that suspends all applicable laws such as the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Quality Act and the National Forest Management Act. It provides that previously protected ancient forests in the Pacific north-west be released for sale, and that 6.2 billion board feet (1.9 billion metres) of trees could be logged. These provisions gave the green light to Hurwitz.
The law allows the removal of "disease and insect infested trees, dead, damaged or down trees, or trees affected by fire or imminently susceptible to fire or insect attack". This includes removal of "associated trees".
At first sight, this may sound reasonable. But the removal of diseased, dead, damaged or down trees would destroy the ecosystem that is the forest and severely harm the remaining healthy trees. It would also affect many birds and animals that utilise diseased or dead trees and their related insects for food and shelter.
Redwoods are resistant to insects and decomposition after they die, because of certain chemicals they secrete. That's why they are still valuable as lumber. Some dead trees remain standing for 200 years, providing the environment needed for many animal species.
These beautiful trees are also fire resistant. This fact is part of their ability to survive. They gain by natural forest fires, which clean out undergrowth. Consequently, the largest and oldest trees have evidence on them of past fires that they survived, and would be included among "trees affected by fire".
Moreover, the law allows the logging companies to decide what trees are diseased, etc, or in danger of fire (what tree isn't?), with no say by ordinary citizens or even the government.
The deal the Clinton administration is trying to work out with Hurwitz concerns only 3000 acres (1200 hectares) of the 60,000 acre forest. It's in these 3000 acres that the oldest groves are located.
Environmentalists point out that even if the 3000 acres are preserved, the logging of the remaining 57,000 acres would destroy the ecosystem the oldest trees are part of. "It would be like saving the heart", one said, "while killing the body. But what is a heart without a body?"
The deal Clinton is seeking to "save" this heart, is to offer Hurwitz federal lands to log elsewhere, and to forgive him the hundreds of millions of dollars he owes the government because of two cases of failures of savings and loan companies Maxxam owned— failures that have already cost taxpayers $1.6 billion!
Such is the record of the "ecology" president. Vice President Gore, who wrote a good book on the environment, raises not a peep.
The development of capitalism in that part of the North American continent that became the United States has already meant the destruction of 96% of our pristine forests.
Ex-president Ronald Reagan, before his Alzheimers got really bad, said "If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all".
To preserve any of our environment from destruction is to preserve part of our own humanity, and is part of fighting for our own survival, for we are part of and dependent upon the world around us.