June 24, 2004
Devastation in its Wake

Everything is calm at the Greenpeace Forest Rescue Station in the Siskiyous as we continue our educational and outreach activities at Unit 6-2 of the Kelsey-Whisky timber sale. Last night our merry forest crimes unit kept vigil over the fading light of spring and through the shortest night of the year.

Now summer is here, and logging season is in full swing. Whole groves of towering old-growth trees and the delicate ecosystems they support are falling to the saws of greed and power. I don't blame the good folks who work in the woods. I am hearing the cable yarders now, singing "its a beautiful day" over their two-way frequency as they work in the sun. They are just people, doing their jobs, as are the BLM rangers and law enforcement officers for whose vehicles we watch and listen all day and night. No, the real adversaries in this struggle are those who stand to profit big in the short term by the sale of old-growth logs, with no regard for the long-term, the future; no commitment to or concern for the communities that depend on the forest, human or otherwise.
The folks who live in these woods know the drill.

It's an old story, boom and bust. They have jobs for a while, the boss makes a lot of money, then the trees are gone. Desertification sets in. The landscape changes; the climate changes. The local economy fails and families are left to struggle for survival. This isn't the way old logging used to be. This is something different. Mechanized, with hydraulics and helicopters. This deforestation moves quickly and leaves devastation in its wake.

Yesterday I took a much needed break from my duties at the communications tent and walked down to the East Fork of Kelsey Creek. It was only the second time I have ventured down through Unit 6-2 this month. It didn't take long for me to lose the path and find myself scrambling down the steep slope holding onto rhododendrons and young Douglas fir trees for support, passing huge trees marked with flagging to indicate the presence of nesting threatened Red Tree Voles. I reached the bottom and bathed in the crystal clear, cold
water, then sat looking at the forest all around me.

Places like these are the source of life. They are the womb of clean air and clean water. So many people live so disconnected from the source, they don't even think about it. But what is the source of water? The tap? The utility company? The tank? The reservoir? Go deeper.

The source of life-giving water is the spring, deep and protected in the cool forest. Filtered by the rocks, the roots. When the trees are all cut down, and the ground exposed to the blistering sun through the thinning atmosphere, and the soil loosened from the roots that hold and allowed to slide into the stream, choking fish, what have we lost? What we are losing is more than mere beauty. It is more than endangered species, and majestic old growth trees furry with green usnea. It is more than sustainable forest communities. We are losing life itself. We are losing the source.

I sat and looked at the profound power of the place I am in and cried. If this place is logged, this forest taken, will you know what you have lost? Please come here and see for yourself. Feel for yourself. Go to any old-growth timber sale unit, anywhere, and sit by the stream. Think about how it will be when the forest is gone. And do something to help stop this unconscionable taking of life.

Khaos