The California Forest Fight -- Loggers Activists Look For Middle Road

CUTLINE: MICKEY DULAS: REDWOOD SUMMER ORGANIZER.

CUTLINE: KEITH ERVIN / SEATTLE TIMES: JOHN AND CANDY BOAK, WITH THEIR SON BEN, SAY THEY WANT TO SELL THEIR HOME BEFORE THE TIMBER ECONOMY COLLAPSES AND THE HOUSE LOSES ITS VALUE.

CUTLINE: ED WALKER / SEATTLE TIMES: MAP OF CALIFORNIA SHOWING THE CALIFORNIA REDWOOD AREAS.

EUREKA, Calif. - ``My dad is afraid to go to work. He has to change them saws. When they break, you can be killed.''

Kevin Newman, a Pacific Lumber Co. worker who barely looks old enough to attend a high-school senior prom, suspiciously eyes the environmentalists across the room as he describes the deadly threat posed by spikes driven into trees.

``I'm afraid to start my car,'' responds Bob Martel, the gray-haired publisher of a newspaper that is sympathetic to the environmental cause.

Martel and Newman have sat down across from each other, to talk, in a series of meetings called Middle Ground, in which concerned citizens are trying to soothe the fears and tensions that have gripped parts of coastal northern California.

The fears are part of ``Redwood Summer,'' an environmental campaign to halt redwood logging. It has caused a backlash in small, timber-dependent communities.

Millworkers' lives have been endangered by spikes driven into the ancient redwood trees by environmental extremists.

The two most prominent organizers of Earth First!'s save-the-redwoods campaign were nearly killed when a pipe bomb exploded in their car. Two other activists reportedly were beaten and left unconscious in separate incidents this month.

Tensions have run high since activists from around the country began arriving here by the hundreds in June, the start of Redwood Summer. Intended to save the last remaining old-growth redwoods on private land, the Redwood Summer campaign has turned life topsy-turvy in usually quiet timber country.

It has been the biggest, boldest and best-publicized series of anti-logging protests ever held on the West Coast, and probably the most divisive. ``You can't just come in and tear this community apart,'' a millworker's wife recently told protest organizers.

Redwood Summer has raised hackles in large part because it was conceived by Earth First!, a loose-knit movement whose founders popularized tree spiking and ``monkeywrenching'' of logging equipment.

Protest organizers have disavowed violence and sabotage, but haven't been able to shake the image of participants as ``ecoterrorists.''

Protesters have chained themselves to trees and logging equipment, and have sat in front of logging trucks to make their point.

The bitterness of many locals is suggested by a popular bumper sticker: ``Earth First!ers - America's favorite speed bumps.''

The sound and fury over Redwood Summer is only part of a season of ferment over California forests.

Some of the outcry arose when the Pacific Lumber Co. speeded up logging of its last ancient redwood stands following a leveraged buyout of the 120-year-old company.

State voters will be asked in November to vote on a citizen initiative, called ``Forests Forever,'' that would ban clear-cutting and raise $710 million to buy endangered groves of old-growth redwoods.

Although Forests Forever and two other initiatives would affect forest practices throughout California, public attention has centered on a small part of the state's forests: the narrow, fog-enshrouded coastal strip where the world's tallest trees, the coast redwoods, grow.

The summer of protest began on a terrifying note in May, when organizers Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari were seriously injured by the explosion of a pipe bomb in their car.

Police initially accused Cherney and Bari of transporting the pipe bomb when it exploded accidentally. But prosecutors have declined to file charges against the environmentalists, who claim they were victims of a murder attempt.

Bari, who has gone into hiding with her two children, complains that authorities refused to investigate death threats that preceded the explosion and charges there is a ``clear and frightening'' pattern of vigilante-style violence and official neglect.

Timber workers say they are fearful and angry about tree spiking, anonymous threats against them and their employers, and protests that have interfered with forest firefighters.

The conflict reflects a clash of cultures as well as deep differences over forest management.

If it weren't for its forest-related posters, the little red house in Arcata that serves as Redwood Summer headquarters for Humboldt County could be mistaken for an anti-war protest center in the 1960s.

The sidewalk and lobby of the house are strewn with the sleeping bags and backpacks of new arrivals and those soon to leave redwood country.

Fashions tend toward long hair, bare feet or sandals, jeans or long cotton skirts. A graffito around the corner takes issue both with the loggers' creed and with a controversial marijuana eradication campaign: ``Hemp is America's renewable resource.''

Yet a nonviolence code posted beside the door of the little red house exhorts protesters neither to possess nor use illegal drugs or alcohol.

With the ever-present threat of violence these days, Redwood Summer organizer Mickey Dulas has become more cautious, no longer traveling alone, no longer sleeping alone in the one-room cottage she shares with her son.

Yet she carries on.

``I can't cower behind my fear,'' she says. ``I feel like my life is very little compared to the Earth. I'm just one minuscule organism on this planet. I would much rather lose my life in defense of the planet than in a car crash or to cancer.''

With an estimated 95 percent of California's old-growth redwoods already cut and the last unprotected groves being logged at an accelerated rate, Redwood Summer activists feel their campaign is urgent. They have focused on the 10,000 acres of ancient forest remaining on private land.

``It's really frustrating when the trees go down every day and we're down the road, hands behind our back, saying, `Please stop.' There are a lot of people who say they don't want the nonviolent code,'' Dulas says.

Industry supporters have launched their own campaign, meanwhile, holding demonstrations, marching on Redwood Summer headquarters, and boycotting businesses that advertise in environmental publications.

One organizer of the pro-industry group, Mothers' Watch, is Candy Boak. She and her husband, John, a fourth-generation north-coast logger, have put their home up for sale because, they say, the local economy will collapse and the house will lose its value if environmentalists get their way.

``We're just tired of the lies and misinformation being spread by the obstructionists in our community,'' she says.

When Candy Boak hears about the impending loss of ``the last'' redwoods, she shudders. Nearly 90,000 acres of old-growth redwoods are preserved in parks and other reserves in the 2-million-acre redwood region.

They're not here to save the redwoods,'' says John Boak. ``Earth First! is here to overthrow the country. They're not here to make us do proper forestry. They're here to have the state own the forests, to put everything into parks, in state ownership. That's socialism.''

It is particularly galling to the Boaks that so many of the Earth First! members arrived in their community with out-of-state license plates.

``They want dialogue. We don't want dialogue because they want to tell us about our forests - which they know nothing about,'' says Candy Boak.

Nevertheless, she attends the Middle Ground meetings aimed at heading off more violence. At one meeting of the group in a church social hall, timber workers and their wives asked protesters to cancel a planned demonstration in the Pacific Lumber company town of Scotia, and to relocate their Labor Day weekend ``Redwoodstock'' concert outside the Scotia area.

The environmentalists were listening.

They explained that Redwoodstock already had been moved several miles from Scotia. And after considering the advice of timber folks, they canceled the Scotia protest and called a press conference instead.

For one day, at least, trust was built and the potential for violence reduced.

But maintaining peace will be no easy feat. Earth First! members, like loggers, are an independent lot. Many Redwood Summer actions are planned by informal groups of activists who came to the coast for the very purpose of confronting loggers.

Several days after the Scotia protest was put off, three activists attempted unsuccessfully to stop Pacific Lumber President John Campbell's car and make a ``citizen's arrest.''

Feelings on both sides are running as high as ever.

Debbie Kinsinger, a former U.S. Forest Service forester, helped found Middle Ground because she was afraid ``somebody was going to be killed.''

She worries about those who don't participate in the process. ``What I would like is for people to let it spill out in words. Because if you never get a chance to say what you feel, you'll strike out blindly.''

Tomorrow: Spotted owls have been found in California's second-growth as well as old-growth redwood forests. The finding is cited as an argument against restricting old-growth logging, but also has meant more - not fewer - restrictions on private timberland.