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Received: from smtp.wenet.net (meat.hooked.net [206.80.6.50]) by home.humboldt1.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA23081; Sat, 6 Feb 1999 09:34:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from hooked.net (spain-21.ppp.hooked.net [206.169.228.21]) by smtp.wenet.net (8.9.0/8.8.4) with ESMTP id JAA27941; Sat, 6 Feb 1999 09:36:06 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <36BC7D78.B0541F25@hooked.net> Date: Sat, 06 Feb 1999 09:35:53 -0800 From: autoharp Reply-To: autoharp@hooked.net X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.06 (Macintosh; I; PPC) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "autoharp@hooked.net" Subject: TREE-SITTERS RECEIVE EVICTION NOTICES Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 *****Also sent as Word 5.0 attachment***** (PLEASE CIRCULATE AND PUBLISH) From: Adam Miller MacGiffin Communications autoharp@hooked.net pager 707-324-8189 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, February 6, 1999 TREE-SITTERS RECEIVE EVICTION NOTICES Pacific Lumber To Have Sheriff Remove Activists By Force By Adam Miller On March 1, 1999, the sacred Headwaters Deal will be complete, and Charles Hurwitz, the CEO of Maxxam Corporation, and owner of the Pacific Lumber Company (PL), will receive his long awaited check for half a billion dollars. Even more coveted than the gold, is Incidental Take Permit that Hurwitz receives as part of the deal: a license to kill endangered species that make their homes in the forest ecosystems. Most residents agree that the Headwaters Deal is the most disastrous piece of environmental legislation of the century. As the pre-deal days pass, the situation in Humboldt County becomes, as Lewis Carroll so aptly put it, "curiouser and curiouser." Earlier this week a representative of PL, accompanied by two uniformed Humboldt County Sheriffâs Deputies officially notified the tree-sitters who are protesting illegal and irresponsible logging practices that they are being evicted from their treetop platforms. Printed eviction notices were nailed to the trunks of the occupied trees in Freshwater and Stafford. The notice was handed to members of the tree-sitterâs ground support crew on Gypsy Mountain near Grizzly Creek State Park. No arrests were made. "They served Luna; they didnât serve me." said Julia Butterfly Hill, who has remained in a thousand-year old redwood she calls Luna, for nearly 14 months. She is perched on a platform 175 feet above the posted eviction notice. She said that if PL will protect the forests, she will come down. The eviction notices came only a week after Steve Bowling, a tree-sitter near Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park accidentally fell 100 feet, breaking his pelvis. This occurred just a few yards away from where activist David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain, was killed on Sept. 17 of last year. Bowlingâs unfortunate accident apparently awakened the Maxxam legal department back in Houston, Texas, to the possibility of being held liable for injuries sustained by trespassing tree-sitters. PL also printed the text of the eviction notice in the Eureka Times Standard and the Humboldt Beacon. "Weâre making it official·." PL spokesperson Mary Bullwinkel said, "Weâve never posted a notice prior to this." A neighbor in nearby Freshwater points out, "PL served the eviction notices to cover their butts regarding legal liability. Theyâre just positioning themselves to force the Sheriff to go in and do their dirty work. PL doesnât want the blood on their hand when they rip those brave souls out of the tree-sits. Theyâre going to let the Sheriff do it for them, just like with the pepperspray." The eviction notice ends with this paragraph: "Tree sitting becomes even more dangerous during the high winds, snow, rain and storms of winter. We request that you leave immediately for your own safety and that of others. Neither law enforcement personnel nor company personnel should be subjected to the risk of harm you are creating for yourself and others." "Iâm taking responsibility for my own endangerment" says Nate Madsen, a neighbor who got so fed up with PLâs liquidation logging of Freshwater Valley, that he has been sitting 160 feet up a tree above Freshwater Road since October, 1998. "I want the Pacific Lumber Company to take responsibility for their endangerment. Endangerment to: human life, private property, soil integrity, water quality; endangerment to watersheds, to fish and wildlife and, their habitat." Madsen responded to the eviction notice by writing a letter to PL stating, "I would like to point out that this activity [tree-sitting] I am participating in of my own free will does not endanger you, your staff, or any of your representatives. Your choice in response to my action, on the other hand, could possibly affect such an endangerment. Please do not wrongfully endanger your workers. Their work safety is first in my book, as it should and Iâm sure is in yours. I have been driven to this dangerous act by PLâs lawbreaking habits and disrespect for good land stewardship." "When I climbed up here, I assumed the risk." Madsen explained via cellular phone. "When they come up to remove me, they are certainly assuming the risk." On January 19, the California Department of Forestry approved helicopter logging at in the timber harvest plan on Gypsy Mountain, where David Chain was killed. This was evidently done as an amendment to the approved plan. The resumption of logging increases the likelihood of a confrontation between PL loggers and the activists who are still maintaining the tree-sit there. Many residents fear that there will be further acts of violence in the woods. On December 9 PL climbers and Humboldt County Sheriffâs Deputies violently attacked tree-sitters on Gypsy Mountain. The tree-sitters, who were a hundred feet up, "locked down." One young woman locked herself by the arms to the platform, and a man locked himself by the neck to the tree with a bicycle lock. Unable to remove the activists, the PL climbers removed their survival supplies, cut all their ropes, and cut off all the branches below them, leaving them no safe avenue of descent, and departed shortly before dark. Many residents consider this an act of unwarranted terrorism. "PL certainly seems eager to helicopter log the remaining trees surrounding the Grizzly Creek tree-sit," said one longtime forest activist. "Once theyâve completed logging this extremely steep slope, next winterâs storms are sure to unravel the stripped mountainside, causing a massive landslide. The physical evidence of the David Chain homicide will be buried under acres of mud." "This situation here in Humboldt is a big headache for Charles Hurwitz." said Julia Butterfly Hill. "He wants to get the cut out fast. He knows that with the new Governor, the climate within the agencies that regulate the timber industry are changing. Hurwitz knows heâs got to log all the old growth he can now. There certainly wonât be much left to cut after heâs done. But, heâs got to move fast before a judge or one of the agencies slaps a temporary restraining order on him." "We donât have the millions of dollars that Charles Hurwitz has to buy big PR firms to spin the story in the media." Julia Butterfly Hill explained, her voice on the phone barely audible over the roar of the engines from nearby helicopter logging. "We have to be sitting in trees to get the attention of the media. Weâd love to be safe and warm on the ground." "Today, theyâre using the ÎJaws of Deathâ to pull off the last of the logs. This morning the guys from Columbia Helicopter shouted up to me, ÎMiss Butterfly, the big oneâs coming in today.â Theyâre using this gigantic helicopter. Itâs not as close to me as it was last January." "Last year, the guys from Columbia told me, ÎYouâd better lock down or something, cause the downdraft from the helicopter is 300 miles an hour.â This literally blows trees over. Iâve seen some trees airborne with the root balls still attached. The downdraft twists the trees up, and they unwind like a rubber band. A lot of the trees down there look like theyâve had a bad haircut. And itâs pretty dangerous for tree-sitters." In January 1998, Hill videotaped helicopter logging so close to her tree-sit that it endangered her safety. When Hill sent a copy of the videotape to the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA wrote a letter to Columbia Helicopters reprimanding them for their violations of buffer zone proscriptions. Hill explained, "The guy from the FAA told me, ÎLook, Iâm not taking sides, but if they come back that close, again: Iâll pull their license.â You see, theyâre required to leave a 150-foot buffer zone around Luna. The first time they were up here, I saw about eight guys on the ground and I thought they were coming to get me out of the tree. Then I saw them lay down this bright ribbon of plastic tape around the base of the tree, like a police line, marking off the 150-foot circle they werenât supposed to enter." "But on the very first morning of helicopter logging, they came right for me, really close, and the downdraft from the helicopter blades blew the plastic tape away." Hill said. * * * On the morning of Thursday, February 4, two Fortuna residents were having breakfast at the local Dennyâs Restaurant. They overheard a waitress say her husband worked as a supervisor for PL, and he was in an important meeting across the street at the Riverlodge Convention Center. She said the meeting was about, "·the legal aspects of how to get those tree-sitters out of the trees for good." After breakfast, the residents walked to the convention center and observed about 40 cars and trucks in the parking lot. Two dozen of the vehicles had PL logos. The residents entered the building and were confronted by an agitated woman who identified herself as the manager of the facility. She physically blocked the residents from entering the meeting. However, the residents could see through the door into the meeting room. Inside, they saw about 100 men from the local timber industry. "There werenât any men in business suits. They were dressed in work clothes," said one of the residents, "and we didnât see John Campbellâs [President of Pacific Lumber] car in the parking lot, or any vehicles with government license plates." The residents asked the facility manager who was holding the meeting and she threatened to call the police. When they repeated their questions, and the manager did call the police, the residents departed. Police did arrive, however there were no arrests. The Riverlodge convention center is owned by the City of Fortuna. Sharon Bonino, the manager of the facility, was out of town and unavailable for comment. The February 4 meeting was convened by the California Lumbermanâs Accident Prevention Association (CLAPA). Ruth Wells of Sacramento, identified herself as a spokesperson for the obscure CLAPA and said that the meeting was a "logging safety training." She stated that she did not attend. When questioned about the secretive nature of the associationâs meeting, Wells insisted that the media was notified about the Fortuna meeting. However, when this reporter contacted local television stations and newspapers, they had never heard of CLAPA, and were quite unaware of the February 4th meeting in Fortuna. Additionally, representatives of the Humboldt County Sheriffâs Department, the Redwood Region Logging Conference, the state Board of Forestry, the Associated California Loggers, the Forest Landowners of California, as well as Chief Bradshaw of the Fortuna Police Department, all said that they had never heard of CLAPA. According to Wells, "The seminar leader was Gary Kessler of the Potlatch Corporation in Idaho. Heâs a resource coordinator with a background in logging. He used to work for OSHA." Wells explained that CLAPA is funded by memberâs dues. She denied having any knowledge of timber industry employees engaging in unsafe or violent conduct directed at forest activists. When questioned about the coincidental nature of this meeting occurring the very day after the tree-sitters received their eviction notices, Wells said, "The meeting has been planned since last summer. Weâre not participating in a political process. Weâre participating in a safety process." Curiously, Wells refused to give her illusive agencyâs mailing address and ended the conversation abruptly. * * * Predictably, Mary Bullwinkel, spokeswoman for PL has heard of CLAPA. "This organization has been around since the 1920s" she said. Oddly, she also refused to provide this reporter with the associationâs address or phone number. Few county residents are aware that Ms. Bullwinkel, the seemingly small town, small time spokesperson is in fact the local front person for the international public relations titan Burson-Marsteller Public Relations. A visit to the Burson-Marsteller website is truly an Orwellian experience. One is confronted with the statements "Managing perceptions that drive performance" and "Perceptions are real. They color what we see· What we believe..." Pat Riley, Director of Public Affairs Practice at Burson-Marsteller acknowledged that Mary Bullwinkel "·is not authorized to handle certain media situations regarding our client, the Pacific Lumber Company." Industry analysts speculate that the PL account is worth several million dollars a year to Burson-Marsteller.
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