Roots of Discontent

One of the most active places for responsible environmental militancy this summer and fall is in a remote corner of Northern California. Dozens of people have risked their lives and their economic future security and given up huge chunks of their daily existence to stop environmental damage from intense logging, including significant amounts of ancient forests.

"Common sense and reason are insufficient to effect social change," says Randy Hayes, director of Rainforest Action Network.

And the activists are indeed causing a ruckus in their attempts to effect change. They are in the corporations' faces and the government's crosshairs. They get arrested, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed. They're loose cannons, non-strategic thinkers. They have been branded "eco-terrorists." Far from being Sierra Clubbers, they consider themselves the brutal soul of the environmental movement.

Hayes and a handful of other graying environmental leaders hold up militancy as a good thing -- unless it's really stupid and then Hayes admits he tries to distance the organization from any embarrassment. He makes the distinction, however, between "responsible militancy" and anarchy. "I don't hide my face."

The corporate adversary is Maxxam, which owns land on which some of the last vestiges of ancient redwoods and Douglas fir still reign. Activists haven't yet stopped Maxxam from logging a potential 32,522 acres this year, but living in treetops and flailing their bodies in front of logging machinery, they aspire to bloody well do something about the devastation the lumber company has wreaked upon California's North Coast.

Julia Butterfly Hill, who spent two years perched in a redwood tree named Luna, is the most famous of the protesters. Now, after her, there are many more treesitters. Some take their cue from Hill and remain aloft for months; others put up strategic short-term tree occupations just in front of current logging operations. Both types know that one false move and they end up a pile of broken bones 100 or so feet down. Indeed, one tree sitter fell to his death in October.

Add to that anti-logging tactic now is a hunger strike. "I had my backpack packed about three weeks ago to go sit in a tree," explains Susan Moloney, executive director of the Garberville-based Campaign for Old Growth. "I can take to a tree and stay for two years and maybe I'll protect that tree, but there are not enough people to protect all the trees." She estimates there are only seven million ancient trees left.

Her hunger strike, taking place from a lawn chair at the steps of the California State Capitol, is intended to get California Governor Gray Davis' attention. Moloney insists that Davis own up to a promise he made in 1998 to ensure that "all old-growth trees are spared from the lumberjack's ax."

While Moloney starves herself and the treesitters face a chilling winter season of wind and rain, Maxxam continues to fell trees at an alarming rate -- despite two court orders to stop operations and with the support of two California regulatory agencies managed by the governor's appointees.

Louis Blumberg, spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection, defends Davis: "The governor has followed through with the promise," he says. "It was made at a time when he was trying to consummate the Headwaters Forest deal which brought the largest grove of virgin redwoods under state control." The Headwaters deal had state and federal taxpayers pony up $380 million to save 7,500 acres of ancient redwoods from Maxxam's logging operations.

State regulators have a curious relationship with Maxxam. The Department of Fish and Game has sent wardens to help Humboldt County sheriffs and Maxxam security forces. Earth First! reported that while temperatures were in the 40s, law enforcement, including DFG wardens, poured cold water 10 times over four hours on protesters. DFG again helped the county sheriff, chasing protesters with dogs, helicopters and all-terrain vehicles, according to Jack Nounnan, a 71-year-old activist. Maxxam's Pacific Lumber spokesperson Mary Bullwinkle would not confirm or deny the reports. "We did chase people around on foot," admits James Barton, assistant DFG chief, Region 1, who adds, "I'm 99 percent sure" marshals weren't in the helicopters or pouring water on protestors.