Showdown in The Treetops

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

The loggers who arrived for work one morning last week in Washington's Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest were greeted by a strange and unexpected sight. Sitting amid the branches of three of the trees they had planned to cut that day, some 60 ft. up in the air, was a form of wildlife they had not previously encountered there: three members of the radical environmental group Earth First. They were perched precariously on narrow plywood platforms with enough food and water to last for at least a week. Dangling from the trees were two banners reading SAVE AMERICA'S FORESTS and FORESTS, NOT FRAGMENTS.

It was not an isolated incident. In New Mexico's Jemez Mountains, four other Earth Firsters climbed trees and chained themselves to machinery, disrupting logging operations on a steep hillside. In Northern California, members of the group blocked a logging road, and a brief brawl broke out between loggers and protesters. Earth Firsters also took to the trees in Oregon, Montana and Colorado. Two protesters in Washington's Colville National Forest who had clambered up into adjoining Douglas fir trees were surprised when the loggers they planned to confront never showed up. Their "occupation" was cut short after 48 hours, but tree-sitter Tim Coleman vowed to "take to the trees again if necessary."

The well-orchestrated protests were more a publicity gesture than a serious attempt to impede lumbering operations. Forest rangers and police largely ignored the climbers. But they did manage to focus renewed public attention on an issue that has been simmering for years: logging of the nation's "old- growth" forests.

These forests are the last untouched remnants of the great woods that once blanketed enormous areas of North America. Only 15% of the country's old- growth forests are left, but some of their ancient trees have survived for 1,000 years. Millions of acres of these forests are protected from logging because they are inaccessible or set aside as national parks or wildlife areas. The issue is how to manage the rest. Even by the U.S. Forest Service's estimate, the current cutting rate of 170 acres a day could wipe out unprotected virgin woodlands within just a few decades. Conservation groups say the end may be no further away than 15 years.

The Forest Service defends the logging on the ground that the timber industry is vital to the Western economy. But conservationists counter that too much of the ancient forest is already gone and the destruction should stop. Thus the forests have become the hottest battleground in a broader war between the forces of economic development and the armies of conservation being waged from the wetlands of the East Coast to the oil-stained shores of Alaska's Prince William Sound.

The current plight of the old-growth forests had its origins in the late 1940s, when a postwar housing boom resulted in the voracious cutting of trees on private lands. The logging industry was forced to turn to public lands, including those with old-growth forests (prized because of the high quality and quantity of their timber). The National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have cooperated, selling rights to new tracts of forest every year. This policy, combined with modern logging machinery that makes cutting on mountain slopes easier, has put vast stands of old-growth trees in the chain saw's path.

That path is often blocked by the Earth Firsters, whose guerrilla tactics have in the past alienated other environmentalists. Some members of the group have lain down in front of bulldozers, and others have been accused of acts of sabotage, such as driving long metal spikes into trees. As those trees are cut and processed, the hidden spikes can damage the machinery of a sawmill.

The confrontations over old-growth forests are fiercest in the Pacific Northwest, where logging is both a major industry and a historical source of < identity and pride. Atop Oregon's state capitol in Salem is a gilded statue of an ax-wielding pioneer. But long before the lumberjacks came, the Northwest was home to some of the continent's most majestic trees, including cedar, Douglas fir, western hemlock and Sitka spruce, and 200 or more species of wildlife, from elk to pileated woodpeckers.

Just one of those animals, the northern spotted owl, has given the conservationists a way to slow down the logging. Citing the bird's increasing rarity and the fact that it lives primarily in old-growth forests, activists have obtained court injunctions against logging on federally controlled lands inhabited by the owl. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which estimates that only 4,500 spotted owls remain in Western old-growth woodlands, has agreed to decide by next summer whether the animal should be included on the list of threatened species. If that happens, provisions of the Endangered Species Act dictate that the owl's habitats must be protected.

Such a ruling could be a disaster for the logging industry. The temporary court injunctions have slashed the amount of timber available for harvesting in fiscal 1989 from 5.4 billion board feet to 2.4 billion, with most of the cutbacks affecting Oregon. That is a devastating blow to a state where the $7 billion-a-year wood-products industry provides a livelihood for 150,000 people. Directly or indirectly, logging accounts for nearly one-fifth of Oregon's gross product.

Understandably, the loggers feel persecuted by the environmentalists. Says Tom Hirons, owner of Mad Creek Timber: "The preservationists' campaign to lock up ((the forests)) is a brand of mental terrorism that has cast a great cloud of fear over our communities." At a rally this summer in Salem, loggers wore T shirts bearing the slogan SAVE A LOGGER. EAT AN OWL.

The Oregon loggers have some powerful allies, including most of the state's congressional delegation, led by Senator Mark Hatfield. Last month Hatfield and Governor Neil Goldschmidt convened a meeting of lumbermen, environmentalists and federal officials to try to forge a logging plan that would be fair to both sides. After acrimonious debate, Hatfield offered a compromise, to remain in force through fiscal year 1990. It would protect some forest areas but allow continued old-growth logging and forbid anyone to seek court injunctions to prohibit cutting.

The timber industry accepted the plan, but environmentalists rejected it, arguing that they would be giving up their legal rights to fight the logging companies. Nonetheless, Hatfield introduced the plan in Congress. It has already cleared the Senate and is awaiting consideration by a House-Senate conference committee. Notes Andy Kerr, conservation director of the Oregon Natural Resource Council: "The pressures on the politicians are tremendous. The Oregon delegation is having to deal with timber in l989 the way the Mississippi delegation had to deal with civil rights in 1959."

But many Oregonians stand squarely in the conservation camp. Says George Atiyeh, a former logger who became an ardent environmentalist: "The forest is my church. No one has the right to defile it, anymore than I would have the right to desecrate anyone else's church. When you get down to the last of anything -- whales, trees, whatever it is -- then you don't have the right to exploit them anymore."

Some sort of compromise is inevitable. It would be unthinkable to shut down overnight the Northwest's logging industry. But as the area of old-growth forest land dwindles, it is increasingly indefensible to cut down trees that were centuries in the making. Tight limits on logging are necessary so that the Northwest will move faster to diversify its economy.

More is at stake in the logging battle than some spotted owls and old trees. "In wildness is the preservation of the world," wrote Henry David Thoreau in the 19th century. To many people, his words now ring truer than ever.

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Salem and David Seideman/Portland