Women Take Back the Green Bridge

About 100 people gathered on the corner of Highway 199 and Eight Dollar Road in the Illinois Valley this morning to protest logging at the Biscuit timber sales. The crowd walked a few miles to the closure line and were not met by any law enforcement. The closure blocks public access to the Fiddler timber sale and the famed Babyfoot Lake area.

Five arrests and two citations were issued after seven women entered the federal closure and walked to the Green Bridge, reclaiming for a brief time the symbolic epicenter of our resistance movement. The woman joined arms and blocked loaded log trucks carrying single tree loads of centuries old old growth out from our publicly owned forests. Five women were arrested and spent the night in JOCO Adult jail. Another two were cited and released for violating the closure. Activists consider the closure to be unconstitutional and illegal and are currently challenging its legitimacy in federal court.

The over-reaching Biscuit project has resulted in more than 60 arrests since Old-Growth Reserve logging began March 7. The Green Bridge, leading to the Fiddler sale, is the location of dozens of arrests in the last couple of months. Twenty-two women spanning four generations were arrested on one day in April for refusing to move from the bridge, incuding one woman who was hanging from a platform suspended above the epic Illinois River. The area has since been under a broad closure, denying the public access to the area and any opportunity to monitor logging activities.

John West, owner of Silver Creek Timber, owns the logging contract for Fiddler. West is under investigation for illegally logging trees inside the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in late 2004. Public monitoring of the adjacent Flat Top timber sale brought the illegal Wilderness logging to the attention of public officials, who then called for an investigation.

Posted by Oso at May 19, 2005 11:28 AM | Category(s): Biscuit Fire Campaign