A Line in the Ancient Forest 50 Arrested in Protest to Save the Siskiyous By MATT KOEHLER
"No, I am not afraid. I am 75 years old...I would rather go out in a blaze, defending the world I love. I am more afraid that my grandchildren will think I did not try hard enough to leave them a legacy of peace, and a world worth living in. I don't want them to know the beauty of trees by looking at a book. I want them to be able to walk among 800-year-old trees and know that is our destiny. That is where we have to get back to."
Joan Norman, arrested March 14 for the second time in a week protesting industrial logging of ancient, old-growth forest reserves in the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area of Oregon. On Monday, March 7 industrial logging of massive trees began in "protected" old-growth forest reserves in the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area of the Siskiyou National Forest in Southwestern Oregon. This is the first time that logging of this magnitude has occurred in old-growth forest reserves (called Late Successional Reserves) since the creation of the Northwest Forest Plan over ten years ago.
This industrial logging of old-growth forests is part of the Biscuit Logging Project, the largest Forest Service timber sale in modern history. Thirty square miles of ancient forests and inventoried roadless wildlands will be destroyed as the Forest Service intends to log 370 million board feet of trees, enough to fill 74,000 log trucks lined up for over 600 miles.
Nearly 50 citizens have been arrested in the past week in an attempt to delay the logging with peaceful, non-violent road blockades, and as 75 year-old Joan Norman said as she was being arrested, "We have no laws protecting our forests so we will be the law."
Joan Norman, 72, sits in front of the Green Bridge, leading into the Siskiyous. She was arrested shortly after this photo was taken.
During the latest action, which took place on March 14, a group of 30 local women including elders, church members and conservationists, sat down on the a bridge over the Wild and Scenic Illinois River to block logging trucks at dawn on Monday morning - offering themselves up for certain arrest - locking down in solidarity against the lawless logging of federally protected old-growth forest reserves within the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area of Oregon.
Those arrested include 4 women in their 70s and a woman 9-months pregnant who earlier was interviewed live by Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now!" while she was having contractions on the bridge.
Before she was arrested earlier today, community elder and artist Dot Fisher Smith, 76, said "We are united in a historic confrontation and we are wearing black today in solidarity with the blackened trees; to give voice to the voiceless. These grandmother trees must not be violently ripped from the Earth. Those trees want to fulfill their birthright by providing shade, shelter and retaining moisture for the newly regenerating forest, as has occurred naturally for countless thousands of years."
In the latest legal action, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Klamath Forest Alliance, Native Forest Network and National Forest Protection Alliance filed for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on March 1st in US District Court in Oregon. Unfortunately, Judge Michael Hogan (the same judge who ruled the infamous "Salvage Rider" to be legal and who presided over the controversial Bitterroot Logging Settlement in 2002) put off a hearing until March 9th and as of March 14 Hogan has yet to rule on the TRO.
Calls and emails are needed from around the country to show wide spread opposition to industrial logging in this incredible place. Don't let the Forest Service get away with this outrageous, unfair behavior. Please take action today to protect our old-growth forest reserves.
Call Forest Service officials and tell them to:
1. To immediately halt the logging of old-growth reserves in the Siskiyou and allow full judicial review.
2. To protect roadless Siskiyou forests by preventing the auction of logging sales in inventoried roadless wildlands like the Mike's Gulch logging project.
Scott Conroy - Rogue/Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor phone: (541) 858-2210 fax: (541) 858-2205 email: sconroy@fs.fed.us
In addition to calling the Forest Service officials above, you can call the Capitol Switchboard and ask for your members of Congress at (202) 224-3121. To find out who your members of Congress are, go to: http://www.congress.org
MORE BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Old-growth forest reserves (or LSRs) were set-aside in the Northwest Forest Plan in order to safeguard habitat for rare plants and animals that depend on older forests to survive. In the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area, fire is a natural part of these forests, and the reserves that burned in the 2002 have begun rejuvenating naturally. The big, old-growth legacy trees created by the fire are a key building-block of this recovery and critical to protect soils and provide wildlife habitat, but the Forest Service is targeting them for logging. Doing so destroys critical habitat for birds and other wildlife, increases the risk of erosion, and puts the region's fragile salmon and steelhead runs in danger.
The forests of the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area belong to all Americans. With five National Wild and Scenic Rivers, the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area is one of the best remaining refuges for wild native salmon and steelhead left on the Pacific coast. The Siskiyou Mountains in Oregon contain a wealth of other significant ecological values, including a distinctive and diverse geology, unparalleled botanical richness, numerous endemic and highly restricted plant species, unique flora and fauna habitat, unparalleled recreation opportunities, and clean water.
Donations for Legal Defense for the 50 Citizens Arrested can be sent to: Kalmiopsis EF! PO Box 1669 Cave Junction, OR 97523 Checks should be made out to Kalmiopsis EF! I expect this kind of logging to increase tremendously as the economy implodes. In the next ten years logging old growth may be a non issue. None will be left.
We already know China is aggressively advancing into Canada but in addition to Mexico China is also coming on strong in the Caribbean. We are surrounded. When Castro goes things will get real interesting.
China is waging an aggressive campaign of seduction in the Caribbean, wooing countries away from relationships with rival Taiwan, opening markets for its expanding economy, promising to send tourists, and shipping police to Haiti in the first communist deployment in the Western Hemisphere.
And the United States, China's Cold War enemy, is benignly watching the Asian economic superpower move into its backyard.
For decades China and Taiwan used dollar diplomacy to win over small Caribbean nations where small projects building roads, bridges, wells and fisheries go a long way.
But Beijing's growing economic clout is tipping the scales in the region. Caribbean trade with China reached $2 billion last year, a 42.5 percent increase from 2003, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
The United States has applauded China's economic offensive, seeing it as a herald of political reform.
"China's intensified interest in the Western Hemisphere does not imply a lack of focus by the United States," Roger Noriega, the U.S. assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, said in a recent letter to the editor of New Jersey's Newark Star Ledger. "The United States has long stood for expansion of global trade and consolidating democracy."
This year, two Caribbean countries Dominica and Grenada switched allegiance to China, abandoning Taiwan, which China calls "a renegade province."
Though democratic Taiwan is self-governing, communist Beijing insists the island is part of China. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949 and Beijing has since refused to have ties with any government that recognizes Taiwan.
"Democratic, market-oriented Taiwan is a thorn in its side," said Steve Johnson, senior policy analyst at the conservative Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation.
Two weeks before Dominica changed sides, Taiwan gave it $9 million. China promised Dominica $112 million over the next six years.
"China is not only increasing its influence in the Caribbean, the region is opening up to China, realizing that Taiwan's money diplomacy is not working anymore," said Guyana's Foreign Minister Clement Rohee.
The Bahamas was one of the first in the region to abandon Taiwan, in 1997. The move came as Hutchisom Whampoa, a Beijing-allied Hong Kong company, opened a $114 million container port in Freeport and bought three hotel resorts in Nassau. Since then, China has earmarked more than $1 billion for projects ranging from maritime transport to a sports complex.
Grenada's Prime Minister Keith Mitchell said he expects future Chinese aid will be significant.
Early this month, Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong visited Jamaica for a three-day China-Caribbean economic and trade forum attended by hundreds of Chinese and Caribbean government officials and business executives.
Robert Stephens, chairman of Jamaica's Fair Trade Commission and senior vice president of the Jamaican Port Authority, looks forward to future deals.
"The Chinese would distribute goods throughout the Caribbean. Any increase in business would benefit Jamaica as a logistic distribution hub," he said.
By the end of the forum, China added Antigua, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, and St. Lucia to its approved travel destinations, promising the region a bigger piece of the fast-growing Chinese tourist market.
Caribbean governments had sought the approved status to boost a tourism industry hard hit by the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.
"Basically, it's the tourist trade that interests China," Johnson said. "I think they will try to invest in their own hotels and in maritime activities" while "consolidating their access to energy" in oil-producing Trinidad.
Qinghong this month led a delegation of 120 to Trinidad and visited its Pitch Lake, which produces asphalt used to pave many Chinese highways and the runways at Beijing International Airport. China, already the leading importer of Trinidadian asphalt, is a good prospect for even more business as Beijing develops infrastructure for the 2008 Olympic Games and World Expo 2010, a Chinese government statement said.
In the Caribbean, only four countries still maintain relations with Taiwan the Dominican Republic, Haiti, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
But China has commercial missions in the Dominican Republic and in Haiti, where in October China dispatched 95 police officers to join a U.N. peacekeeping force. It is Beijing's first contribution to a U.N. mission in the Western Hemisphere.
The United States and China once were mortal enemies.
When China became communist in 1949, the United States supported Taiwan, the island where the former Chinese government had taken refuge. U.S. troops fought Chinese soldiers during the 1950-53 Korean War.
But in 1971 the United Nations gave Beijing the China seat and Taiwan was expelled. In 1979, the United States recognized China's legitimacy. In 2001, China entered the World Trade Organization and foreign investment in China shot to $153.5 billion last year, up 33 percent from 2003.
Last year, China's share of global output was 13 percent more than that of Canada and almost twice that of Japan.
U.S. exports to China have grown more rapidly than to any other country with cumulative investment there reaching $35 billion, according to the State Department. Among leading U.S. businesses there, Wal-Mart sales in China totaled $707 million in 2003.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
