Author's note: This story updates "Guacamole saves trees," which appeared in the Fall '97 issue of The MEC Newsletter. As noted then, all members of the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders are identified by their "forest names," at their request.
'Meanwhile, Back at Base Camp'
In the firelight after the postaction circle, Freedom took a deep drag and looked at me. I had remarked that the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders' base camp, located inside the boundaries of the Klamath National Forest, was on private property.
Freedom nodded.
The owner, "Lefty," had told me he'd invited "the kids" to set up their base camp on his homestead "partly out of spite" toward the feds. He and his neighbor, Henry, who regularly invites the base campers to use the pond on his place for swimming, are both unabashed supporters of the "Patriot Movement." The two share the belief of members of that movement that the present federal government is illegitimate - though they are not involved in any militias that I know of!
Independent videographer Crazy Owl and I had witnessed a nonviolent direct action near Dillon Creek that day. Two men, Guacamole and Whippoorwill, locked themselves to the axle of a Volkswagen van's shell - it had neither engine nor brakes! The van barricaded Sidewinder Road, which loggers were, and are, using to get access to the site of a "timber salvage sale" inside Klamath National Forest.
"We don't have a democracy - it's a corporate state," Blackberry, one of the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders, told Forest Service Law Enforcement officers at the action.
"The Constitution [actually, it's the Declaration of Independence] says if the government stops serving us, it's our right - it's our duty - to get rid of it and replace it with one that does," Blackberry also said.
"That's revolution you're talking," one of the cops said.
Blackberry shrugged.
She was right to shrug. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he and all those who signed it were criminals to the British power structure. They all could have been hanged.
That night, I remarked to Freedom that the support, however ambivalent, of the likes of Lefty and Henry for the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders could be a sign of a larger convergence of "right" and "left" in opposition to the corporate state.
"There's an uprising all over," Freedom agreed, "and it's growing."
The action that Friday in August shut down logging for a whole weekend. Ongoing actions at the same site have also stopped logging for days and even weeks at a time, Blackberry told KZYX, the Mendocino County community radio station, in a recent interview.
There's a big difference between an overgrown Christmas tree farm and a real forest," said Sierra, one of the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders at the action.
Meanwhile, a group of loggers were hanging out behind police lines, muttering. Frankly, they did not seem angry, but resigned, maybe even a little glad to get an early start on their weekend. One logger, Tom Wesphal, attacked the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders as "hypocrites" saying they were all driving cars and "using paper, living in wood houses - screw us working people." Wesphal added that everybody there used toilet paper, concluding: "It's a bunch of bullshit."
Another logger, who identified himself only as "Oregon Logger," asked, referring to the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders, "They gonna pay my way? They gonna feed my kids?"
Later, "Oregon Logger," admitted to Crazy Owl on camera that he and other loggers were actually paid for showing up for work, so that their livelihood was not threatened at all, in the short run, anyway. He even grudgingly conceded that clearcutting would eventually leave him and his fellow loggers jobless.
"I'm not against sustainable logging - I come from a logging family," said Blackberry. "I'm against clearcutting, and cutting on sacred land, and cutting old growth."
The land around Dillon Creek, the land on Bear Peak, within the boundaries of Klamath National Forest, where the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders' base camp is located, is indeed sacred to the Yurok people.
"I'm in here," Guacamole explained to Forest Service law enforcement officers, "because thisarea and thissale [are] unchallengeable by law." He spoke clearly, enunciating his words, parsing his sentences, looking straight into Crazy Owl's video camcorder with a look of conviction.
"I don't believe I have enough input regarding things like outside timber sales and the salvage rider," Guacamole said. "I have a different definition of forest management than the U.S. Forest Service seems to. I just think it's mismanaging our forests. This is an intact ecosystem. I keep hearing that only burnt and dead logs are being cut."
Burnt trees are an integral part of the forest ecosystem, Guacamole explained. The ecosystem uses them as compost, and as habitat for diverse species of forest life.
The Forest Service cops seemed mostly annoyed at the interruption of their daily routine. Eventually, though, nonviolence proved effective that day. The cops agreed to cite Guacamole and Whippoorwill with a simple charge of blocking the roadway. The pair got tickets and returned to base camp with the rest of the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders.
Background
The "Timber Salvage Rider" was tacked on to a 1995 federal budget balancing package. Soon after President Clinton signed the bill into law, timber interests won a federal court decision allowing timber "harvesting" on national forests, with the definition of "salvage" timber, and the selection of trees to be felled, left entirely to local rangers. The same rangers stood to gain from logging in "their" forests, because they get to keep a portion of the "fees" timber companies pay the US Forest Service for timber "harvesting" rights.
Not surprisingly, the definition of "salvage" timber accommodated timber companies. A number of loggers admitted privately that the definition of what qualified as "salvage" timber, as "sick" or burnt or dead/dying trees, allowed for clearcutting of vast areas. Much of the timber is burnt, but not all is dead or dying. Yet all trees in a given area are cut, loggers told me privately.
Dillon Creek, a "key watershed" in President Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan, which also established a reserve in the heart of that watershed, is recognized internationally as a center of plant biodiversity and renowned for its wealth of conifer species.
The Dillon Creek timber sale was touted as an emergency measure to avert a "forest health" crisis, an alleged threat of "catastrophic fire" that is not supported by the US Forest Service's own data. When Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman instructed his Forest Service employees not to proceed with "salvage" sales in roadless areas, Dillon received an apparent temporary reprieve. Local managers soon drew a new map, though, readjusting the roadless area and dubbing the reconfigured timber sale an "outside" sale, claiming it was outside the inventoried roadless area.
On Dec. 31, 1996, just hours before the rider expired, the "outside sale" was completed. When the rider expired, environmental laws and citizen appeal rights were restored, but with the outside sale completed, logging in Dillon Creek began in April, in Dillon's "adjusted" roadless area.
To members of the Dillon Creek Forest Defenders, this history demonstrates a wider, more pervasive corruption that, taken together, renders the administration's policies illegitimate.
To find out more about Dillon Creek Forest Defenders, contact the Klamath Forest Alliance, P.O. Box 820, Etna, CA 96027; or call (916) 4675405, (707) 8258911 in Arcata; or call the MEC at (707) 4681660 in Ukiah.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited