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Renewed conflict troubles residents Many hoped worst was over in logging dispute Oct. 9, 1998 By MIKE GENIELLA Press Democrat Staff Writer Humboldt County is watching with apprehension as radical activists and a tough-minded sheriff raise the ante in a high-stakes environmental confrontation without parallel in the West. Escalating tactics of Earth First! followers and the controversial reaction of local law enforcement are rekindling old fears in a region wracked by 10 years of turmoil surrounding corporate logging practices. "I think most people were hopeful when the Headwaters Forest deal was finally reached several weeks ago. We thought it was the beginning of the end,'' said Judy Hodgson, publisher of the weekly North Coast Journal newspaper. But Hodgson, who describes herself as a "raging moderate,'' echoed sentiments of other Humboldt residents who said they're troubled by this week's renewed confrontation between activists and local law enforcement. "I guess we were naive to think the activists would back off. And a lot of us were surprised that the sheriff would decide to use pepper spray again after last year's controversy,'' Hodgson said. National uproar Humboldt authorities last fall found themselves at the center of a national uproar after they became the first to authorize use of pepper spray against peaceful protesters who refused officers' orders to vacate private property and could not be easily removed because of various devices they were using to secure themselves at the scene. Said Hodgson: "It just seems like none of this will ever end.'' When it comes to environmental confrontations, the North Coast is known throughout the West as the hotbed of dissent. Few places have experienced such an intense level of ritual combat, according to a wide range of national experts on environmental issues. "What is occurring there is unique,'' said Ed Marston of the High Country Times, a Colorado weekly that's earned a national reputation for coverage of environmental issues. Lacey Phillabaum of the Earth First! Journal, a Eugene, Ore.-based publication, said, "Many of our new subscribers first learned of Earth First! because of the Headwaters Forest issue.'' Interest high Phillabaum said interest in North Coast issues is so high among its 8,000 readers that the Journal next month plans a special four-page insert on the controversy that's erupted since the Sept. 17 death of Earth First! follower David Chain at a disputed Pacific Lumber Co. logging operation. Chain's death, the first fatality in a decade of anti-logging protests, occurred just two days before Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation funding the purchase of Headwaters Forest, the largest tract of ancient redwoods left in private ownership. Chain was killed by a falling redwood after he and other activists tried to disrupt a logging operation on a steep mountainside. Ever since, both sides in the controversy have worked overtime to place blame on one another. When local law enforcement Wednesday made a surprise raid on an Earth First! blockade at the disputed logging site, their use of pepper spray on two women protesters rekindled a public debate about its use. But the contraptions officers encountered as they reclaimed the private property underscored their concerns about the tactics embraced by activists. Among the discoveries was a "bipod,'' a device consisting of two towering poles lashed together and placed across a logging road with an activist suspended on a platform from its center. Had authorities tried to disassemble the device, it was designed to put the activist at serious risk of injury. Defense of spray "No one has the right to endanger people's lives like that. It's wrong,'' Sheriff Dennis Lewis said in defense of the use of pepper spray on protesters who resisted arrest. Such practices have been used by Earth First! followers elsewhere, but none to the level or intensity as on the North Coast. Veterans of environmental struggles around the West agree Humboldt County is unique. Joe Keating, a coordinator with the Portland, Ore.-based Witnesses Against Lawless Logging, has organized logging protests throughout the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. "Humboldt is in a continual boil,'' Keating said. He said a lot of the rationale of why such protests take place is to have people ask the question, "Why are they doing that?'' It's how activists scheme to bring their issues to public attention, he said. Expanding tactics Since the 1980s, when Earth First! emerged as a renegade force to be reckoned with in North Coast timber politics, the organization's array of protest tactics have steadily expanded. In 1990, unfurling banners from the Golden Gate Bridge and sitting in trees targeted for harvest were considered daring. But nearly a decade later those tactics seem tame. Besides employing "bipods,'' activists have developed devices called "Black Bears,'' which are V-shaped metal sleeves within which activists chain themselves to each other. The sleeves prevent authorities from easily cutting through the chains. Activists have used the Black Bears to chain themselves to logging equipment, guard rails, tree stumps and other stationary objects. At times, they have even encased the sleeves in barrels of concrete. Authorities continue to rely on metal grinders to cut through the Black Bears, but they say they fear serious injuries as the practice proliferates. Other tactics used by protesters include digging holes in dirt roads so they can lock themselves with chains into underground drainage culverts. Regulators "too lax' Earth First! organizers say too much attention is being placed on their tactics and not enough on the "greater environmental crimes'' committed by timber companies, and state and federal regulators they contend are too lax in enforcing environmental safeguards. Naomi Wagner, a spokeswoman for Earth First!, said activists will continue staging similar protests until an investigation into Chain's death is complete and Pacific Lumber ceases "illegal logging.'' Wagner contends Pacific Lumber is violating state and federal guidelines designed to protect the endangered marbled murrelet seabird, coho salmon and other wildlife habitat. Activists insist they need to occupy the site of Chain's death until an independent investigation is conducted. "Basically, this young man died doing the regulators' work,'' Wagner said. "We really want to say: Jail Hurwitz, not us.'' Texas financier Charles Hurwitz' Maxxam Inc. owns Pacific Lumber Co. National experts in environmental conflicts suggest answers to the North Coast conflict will remain elusive unless combatants scale back their actions. Continuing conflict Bert Krages, a Portland-based expert in environmental dispute resolutions, said to remain locked in such intense combat is to doom the region to continuing conflict. "People have to be willing to submit the issues to mediation, or even binding arbitration. It takes a communitywide effort,'' he said. To persist in current practices is to guarantee a prolonged environmental war that can't be won, he said. "All we have to do is look to the political and ethnic turmoil in the Middle East or Bosnia to understand the forces that are at play,'' he said.
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