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Timber interests, local leaders criticize Earth First! over tactics Sep. 28, 1998 By MIKE GENIELLA Press Democrat Staff Writer When Elizabeth Rieke and other nationally known experts on environmental issues are asked to peek behind the redwood curtain, they express amazement at how intensely longtime foes practice ritual combat. "Few places experience that level of conflict over environmental issues, and the absolute refusal of some of the parties to deal,'' said Rieke, former director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado School of Law. Rieke in the early 1990s led a federal team that successfully mediated a landmark three-year agreement on water quality standards for San Francisco Bay and the Delta. Rieke, and others like her who have played major roles in national environmental struggles, are deeply troubled by the Sept. 17 death of a 24-year-old Earth First! follower in the redwoods of Humboldt County. They feel the fallen redwood that crushed David "Gypsy'' Chain shattered an illusion that combatants in the state's longest running environmental controversy were merely engaged in a war of words. The young Texan's death was the first fatality in a decade of anti-logging protests. Not since "Redwood Summer'' of 1990 have tensions run as high in timber country and distrust sunk so deep. "It's a terrible time. I think we all thought the worst was behind us,'' said Claudia Lima, who runs a North Coast logging company with husband, John. Chain, an Earth First! recruit from Austin, was fatally crushed by a falling redwood after he and other activists trespassed onto Pacific Lumber Co. timberland and attempted to disrupt a logging operation in a remote area adjacent to Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park. Chain's family is to arrive today on the North Coast amid an angry chorus of recriminations about who's to blame for his death. Since the young man was killed, combatants have been relentless in their attempts to sway public opinion to their viewpoints. Despite activists' outcry that local law enforcement and Pacific Lumber can't be trusted to honestly investigate Chain's death, state Attorney General Dan Lungren has refused to step in and conduct an independent investigation. "We have full and complete faith in the Humboldt County Sheriff Department's ability to do its job,'' said Lungren spokesman Matt Ross. Earth First! organizers are under fire from the timber industry, and from local community and political leaders, for encouraging guerrilla-like antics in the woods that critics feel endanger the lives of young followers, of timber workers and of local law enforcement officers forced to cope with increasingly sophisticated protest tactics. But activists place blame for Chain's death on timber companies. Although they have provided no proof for their assertion, they contend hostile corporate bosses have encouraged logging crews to recklessly fall trees in the direction of intruders in hopes of scaring them away. Earth First! leaders justify disruptive tactics at dangerous logging sites by arguing the actions are needed to draw public attention to their claims that state and federal regulators aren't doing an adequate job of protecting the environment. Chain's death, and the controversy that has erupted since, has cast a shadow over Gov. Pete Wilson's signing of legislation to complete purchase of Headwaters Forest, the last significant grove of ancient redwoods left in private ownership, and impose the strictest environmental standards ever on a California timber company. Two days after Chain's death, Wilson and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., publicly acknowledged the tragedy. Both said they hoped acquisition of Headwaters and 6,000 acres of surrounding redwood timberlands would be a major step toward resolving an epic environmental battle that's achieved national notoriety. Despite the landmark Headwaters agreement, however, radical environmentalists persist in their protests. They claim the government deal is giving Pacific Lumber a "license to kill'' endangered wildlife species, and threatens North Coast fisheries. With Chain's death, the focus has shifted from disputed terms of the Headwaters purchase to Earth First!'s controversial tactics on the North Coast and across the West. It also has relit the media spotlight on Pacific Lumber's sharply accelerated logging during the past decade under the corporate ownership of Texas financier Charles Hurwitz. As if to underscore the turmoil around them, guests this past week on a Humboldt County radio talk show debated whether Chain is casuality of a "war'' that clearly has no victors. Earth First!'s tactics have been the subject of controversy on the North Coast since Redwood Summer, when an unsolved car bombing injured the late Judi Bari and organizer Darryl Cherney on the eve of massive anti-logging protests in Mendocino and Humboldt counties. Since then, Pacific Lumber logging crews have had to regularly cope with road blockades, people sitting in trees targeting for cutting, and activists using sophisticated devices to lock themselves to logging equipment on site. Costs to the company, and local taxpayers over the past decade have been staggering. Humboldt County authorities believe it costs the county treasury at least $200,000 a year to police the activists. Pacific Lumber says it's security budget now tops $800,000 annually. Similar protest tactics are used by radical environmentalists across the West. In Idaho, Earth First! activists have hung themselves from teepee-like devices to block roads and keep loggers out of a national forest. Most recently, a carload of activists traveled up and down 100 miles of dirt roads in Wyoming cutting barbed wire fences in an escalating battle with cattle ranchers over the fate of federal grazing lands. About the combat there, the New York Times on Sept. 20 proclaimed, "It's Cowboys vs. Radical Environmentalists in New Wild West.'' Seldom, however, have radicals anywhere waged a battle with such intensity and for so long as they have fighting North Coast timber companies. "Those kind of heated conflicts have pretty much subsided, although there are a few here and there,'' said Ed Marston, publisher of High Country News, a Colorado weekly that's earned national recognition for its environmental coverage. But on the North Coast, the story is different. Nearly 10 years after tactics during Redwood Summer first triggered controversy, Earth First! organizers Cherney and Karen Pickett defend the continuing practice of sending young recruits like Chain into the woods to conduct "cat-and-mouse'' games with loggers. In these games, intruders try to slow down the pace of logging by darting through the trees, locking themselves to logging equipment, or erecting platforms in towering redwoods and defying loggers to cut the occupied trees. Julia Hill, an Arkansas woman who saw her first redwood two years ago, has occupied one giant redwood near Stafford since last December. Pickett and Cherney say recruits like Chain and Hill are first trained in non-violent tactics before being sent out to the woods. Their goal is to slow logging, while attempting to engage timber workers in conservation. But more times than not, loggers react angrily to the intruders, and view their presence as a threat to their jobs and livelihoods. Pickett and others blame Pacific Lumber managers for promoting a campaign of violence and hostility against the youthful intruders. But critics contend Earth First! tactics stretch the definition of non-violence. Arun Ghandi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, said he's troubled by how American activists easily lay claim to non-violent principles made famous by his grandfather. Since 1991, Arun Ghandi has been director of the non-profit, non-sectarian M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tenn. "To be true to the teachings of Gandhi is to adhere to a practice of seeking solutions without creating confrontations or bitterness,'' Arun Gandhi said. He said his grandfather believed practitioners of nonviolence could expect to lose their lives resisting oppressors. But he said the deaths have generally arisen from passive resistance to armed authorities, rather than actively engaging them. "Deliberately sending people into a danger zone is troubling. I don't think that's right. There must be alternative ways of dealing with such a situation without losing a life,'' he said. Gandhi said he has only received sketchy information about Chain's death in the redwoods. "I'm hesitant to pass judgment without knowing more, but I fear his life may have been needlessly wasted,'' Gandhi said. Elizabeth Rieke, in her role as an adviser to government agencies and an instructor, has studied environmental conflicts across the country for nearly 30 years. She said for there to be hope for resolution on the North Coast, environmental activists and timber companies must be willing to step back from dangerous confrontations like the one that led to Chain's death. "There are no easy solutions when valuable natural resources are at stake, and vast differences in values and deep-seated animosities exist among combatants,'' Rieke said. Rieke said solutions arise only when participants are willing to come to the table and start fresh. "At that point, leadership is crucial. And the best leadership is usually homegrown. People have to be willing to take risks, to listen to the other person and find a common ground. It's not easy. It's not often successful. But it can be done. "For this dangerous period to end, people on the North Coast must come to the table. There is no other way,'' Rieke said.
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