Feature Archives

4/15/04: At this moment in Southern Oregon, the largest timber sale in history -- over 40 square miles of logging -- is taking shape, innocuously named the "Biscuit Recovery Project". In response, the Oxygen Collective is currently on a month long road show highlighting Bush's plans for the area, and Earth First! will hold its regional rendezvous there, June 10-14. Nearby, just across the state line in California, multinational energy giant Calpine (a co-conspirators with ENRON in the California energy crisis) and war profiteer Halliburton are planning to decimate tens of thousands of acres of sacred tribal land around Medicine Lake for geothermal energy exploration.

East of the Cascade crest in Oregon, massive old growth logging -- masquerading as "forest-fire fuels reduction" -- is being fought by groups like Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project and PROWL. New direct action groups like the Klamath-Salmon Action Network are activating in Northern California. A long-standing group, the Cascadia Forest Defenders, has just initiated a renewed womyn and trans gendered occupation in the forests near Eugene, OR.

Citizen surveyors like Bark, the Cascadia Wildlands Project, and the tree-climbing Northwest Ecological Survey Team are all expanding their efforts. Back to the WALL promises to bring folks from all walks of life and across generational and geographical divides to the forests this summer to see it all go down.

As one Cascadian put it - "Bush is using Cascadia as his playground for a new forest policy, we will use it as our palette of resistance."

4/13/04: Today marks the 10 year anniversary of the Northwest Forest Plan, a Clinton-era rule enacted to address the decline of the Northern Spotted Owl and (supposedly) to create a truce in the "Timber Wars" of the 1980s and early 1990s. Although lambasted by radicals and criticized by some mainstream environmentalists, loss of support from big green groups on fighting the plan eventually led to its enactment.

While creating some protections, the Plan mandated that logging continue on millions of acres of publicly owned National Forests. The Plan allowed for major loopholes, such as the infamous Salvage Logging Rider. Old-growth logging -- with taxpayer funded corporate welfare subsidizing the destruction -- continued, as did grassroots resistance. The rule of profit over life remained unchanged.

Enter Bush II. Of W's innumerable, well-documented environmental rollbacks, his changes to forest policy are amongst the most severe. Bush has made Cascadia (the southern half of which happens to be in the United States) a special focus, visiting us (1, 2) under the strangest circumstances when he announces new forest-death laws. What little protection the Northwest Forest Plan offered is now in shambles, with the elimination of rare species and aquatic protections under the plan.

BACKGROUND AND NEWS: Cascadia RiSiNG! Eco-Defense Infosite | Portland Indymedia Forest Page | Native Forest Council

RELATED GROUPS: Back to the WALL | Bark | Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project | Cascadia Forest Defenders | Cascadia Wildlands Project | EPIC | Klamath-Salmon Action Network | KS Wild | Medicine Lake Infopage | Northwest Ecosystem Survey Team | Oxygen Collective | PROWL

Construction of an 800 car parking garage in the heart of Golden Gate Park is about to go forward, despite a high stakes legal battle still in progress. Opponents of the development say the garage violates the city charter and Proposition J, which authorized its construction, and would destroy three historic pedestrian tunnels. It would bring urban chaos and traffic into the park, and degrade pedestrian and cyclist safety. Wealthy financier Warren Hellman is behind this ill-conceived plan.
An emergency protest and rally has been called for Sunday, April 4th at 1pm at the skating area in GG Park, JFK and 6th Ave. More info

Eureka - Calpine Corporation of San Jose had planned to build a Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) facility on the shores of Humboldt Bay. Public opposition quickly mounted against a proposal that would've brought 1000 ft. tankers with the explosive power of fifty-five Hiroshimas to the most populated area of Humboldt County. In-coming tankers would've shut down access of Humboldt Bay to fisherman, boaters and recreation users as often as twice a week. The gas would've been stored in 15-story holding tanks, then piped underneath Humboldt Bay 155-miles to California’s Central Valley.

On Tuesday, March 16, the Eureka City Council was scheduled to vote on whether or not to enter into an Exclusive Right to Negotiate (ERTN) with Calpine regarding the proposal. Due to expectations of high public attendance, the meeting was moved to a larger forum, the Eureka Municipal Auditorium.

Nearly 1,000 people showed up at the Tuesday meeting, with sentiment running overwhelmingly against the LNG proposal. When the meeting was closed at 10pm, over 100 persons were still scheduled to speak. The following day, Calpine informed the city that it was pulling out.

3/3/04: Mendocino County in Northern California voted yesterday to ban genetically-altered crops and animals within the county. In spite of the enormous local support for the Measure, CropLife America spent a total of 500,000 dollars on attempting to defeat the measure, in this county of about 88 thousand people. Washington DC based CropLife America represents biotech giants such as Monsanto, Bayer, Dupont, Dow Chemical and others. They spent 55 dollars per NO vote, outspent the local anti-GMO campaign at a ratio of 5 to 1, and broke all time campaign spending records in Mendocino County.This vote comes as a significant boost to efforts around the country, such as GE Free Vermont Campaign on Genetic Engineering.
Free Speech Radio News Audio Report | Santa Cruz IMC Coverage | National Family Farm Coalition

In June, a convergence of permaculture, guerrilla gardening, and resistance to biotechnology, Reclaim the Commons, will face off against a $1,500-per-head international Biotech industry convention in San Francisco. Also, March 12-14 are the dates of the Genetic Engineering Action Network conference in Berkeley.
Read more about Permaculture. Permaculture Activist Magazine. Biotech IMC

March 3, 2004: Humboldt County voted yesterday to keep District Attorney Paul Gallegos in office. 61.21% of voters said no to Measure F, which would have recalled Gallegos. At a victory celebration, an Assistant DA vowed to continue and win the lawsuit against PALCO.
Feb. 25, 2004: Eureka, CA -- The District Attorney's richest defendant poured more money into the DA recall this week. A statement filed with the Humboldt County Elections Office reported that Houston based Maxxam dumped another $75,000.00 into the campaign to recall Paul Gallegos.

In recent weeks, assistant DA Tim Stoen, who will lead prosecution of the Fraud lawsuit against PL, had confidential documents related to the Fraud suit stolen from his computer in the DA’s office.

As PALCOgate continues, District Attorney Paul Gallegos' house was broken into a second time. As the March 2, 2004 election draws near, the community is further subjected to Maxxam's expensive and misleading media campaign that aims to demonize Gallegos and steer attention away from the Fraud.

Ralph Nader weighed in on the recall campaign prior to announcing his bid for president. Former California Dept. of Forestry director Richard Wilson recently submitted a declaration stating he would not have agreed to the Headwaters Deal had he known the true probability of landslides connected with the high rate of timber harvest.

Feb. 23, 2004 - Bush and Mark Rey (former timber industry lobbyist / Undersecretary of Agriculture in charge of the federal, public lands timber sale program) just released a final draft of a plan to eliminate "Survey and Manage" species protections. Survey and Manage was created as a result of the Spotted Owl controversy of the 80's and 90's mandates that surveys be made for rare and little known species before any timber sale in western California, Oregon, or Washington takes place - a basic "look before you log" requirement.
Survey and Manage has been a lynchpin of combating timber sales under the legal system for years - and was the basis of the Straw Devil / Solo / Clark timber sale victories last summer.