Earth First! Northwest Regional Rendezvous: June 10-14

p>The Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area is the most diverse conifer forest in the world. It has the largest concentration of rivers designated Wild and Scenic or eligble for such designation anywhere in the US. And it is the area where the "Biscuit Fire Recovery Project" has proposed the largest timber sale in modern history. Last year more than 200 Earth First!ers attended a Rondy in the Biscuit Burn in the Siskiyou Mountains of Southwestern Oregon. The beauty, diversity and threats are drawing us back again....

Join us to celebrate and initiate a season of Eco-resistance in the Biscuit, the Siskiyou and acrosss Cascadia!

Directions:
Get to Hwy. 101 and head toward Gold Beach and turn up Hunter Creek Rd. (not Hunter Cr Loop) a mile or so south of town. Go up this road (County Rd. 635, I believe) along Hunter Creek quite a few miles as it turns into 3680 and heads into the Siskiyous. This will finally bring you to Fairview Meadow and a short distance (< 1/2 mi) later to Rd. 1376 on yer right. Take it. This road will improve after a couple miles. After about 5 miles or so, look for the trailhead to Cedar Camp and the juncture with Rd. 1407 at Mineral Hill (don't go down this). A couple/three miles more and hook up 370 on yer right (r12w,t38s, sec. 3,4). Welcome to the voo.

Flyers:
Click here to download a flyer that you can print out and distribute to all the rocking folks in your town.

For more information contact:
siskiyou@cascadiarising.org / (541) 482-2640

Timber Industry Insiders Visit Southern Oregon

In an amazing stroke of irony and serendipity, the annual meeting of the Society of American Foresters took place at Southern Oregon University last week- in the same space where the Oxygen Collective presented our last presentation of the Fire and Forests Roadshow! Speakers and presenters included Mark Rey, the longtime timber-industry lobbyist Bush put in charge of the US Forest Service, as well as John Sessions, intellectual architect of the largest timber sale is Forest Service history, and Hal Salwasser, Dean of the forestry department of Oregon State University.

The o2 crew seized this opportunity and engaged Mr. Rey and the gathered foresters on many fronts. We parked our bus on the center of campus in such a way that everyone present was sure to pass by the large banners reading ?Forests Need Fire- Salvage Logging is a Hoax?, and set up our new 12 foot by 6 foot speech bubble display board covered with hundreds of pictures of people proclaiming ?Save the Wild Siskiyou!? and ?No Salvage Logging!?

Perhaps the biggest coup was arranging a debate between John Sessions, a PhD in Forest Economics, and Dominick Dellasalla from World Wildlife Fund, a PhD in Forest Ecology. The well-attended debate included a tame but substantive argument on the controversial details of the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project. We feel it safe to say Dominick trounced John squarely on the issues and had the clear support of the audience. There was also thorough media coverage of the debate that substantially expanded local discourse on this timber sale.

The keynote event of the gathering was a private speech to forestry conference attendees by Mark Rey. Frustrated by being systematically shut out of the decision making process on this destructive project, a rally of concerned members of the public gathered to call out the fact that Mr. Rey is a public official, speaking at a public university, about public lands, while the public was shut out from even hearing what he had to say. The message of the crowd was ?Mark Rey- Stay Away!? Away from Southern Oregon and away from the last of the old growth forests left on public lands.

Members of the public interrupted Mr. Rey on more than one occasion during his talk, with one local man arrested for refusing to leave the room. Meanwhile, just outside the door, a respectful but vocal crowd chanted messages that could surely be heard through the closed doors. The event ended with Mark Rey literally fleeing the spirited crowd while his undercover security detail indiscriminately beat people with batons.

Complementing our organizing were many actions by other autonomous activists, some of whom established a tree sit on campus to greet the foresters when they arrived! Besides the platform, the installation included a traverse line to another tree holding a large banner that read ?Save the Wild Siskiyou!?

Our message saturated the media for many days- including front-page stories in both local papers for days, to live local television on multiple stations to fantastic coverage on our regional station of National Public Radio! There can be no question that we swamped the public with detailed information contradicting the lies and rhetoric being used to push through projects the public is overwhelmingly opposed to. Some of the coverage sensationalized the differences in tactics used by different activists, but overall we sent a clear and powerful message of resistance and strength.

Women?s Weekend in the Biscuit: May 14-16, 2004

We will gather along the beautiful Illinois River for a weekend to share, strengthen, rejuvenate and empower ourselves in the midst of the wild Siskiyou forest. We will be camping within the Biscuit fire perimeter and adjacent to thousands of acres proposed for salvage logging.

Arrive on Friday in time for dinner and for an evening around the fire. We will have a Saturday morning circle at 9am to meet and greet each other. Saturday and Sunday will be collectively planned according to what folks want to do. Hiking, swimming, sunbathing, sharing skills, trainings, music and laughter are some of the possibilities. Join us for a unique weekend with women and wild forest.

Timber sale monitoring and public lands logging will be a focus of some hikes on both days. We will be surrounded by some of the wildest country in the lower 48, and unfortunately the Bush administration is threatening this magical and remote area with the proposed Biscuit logging plan. We will discuss post-fire logging and how this administration has systematically rolled back environmental laws making it easier for industry to access and degrade our precious public lands.

Please come prepared for all types of weather-hot, cold, mild, dry and wet. Please bring sturdy hiking shoes, sleeping gear, food, water, musical instruments and anything you would like to share.

We will be camping on the eastside of the Biscuit fire. Take Highway 199 south from Grants Pass or north from Crescent City. In Selma, turn west on the Illinois River road (FS road 4103) and continue for about 9.5 miles to Ring Beach (on your left). If you reach McKaleb Ranch you have gone too far.

For more information about the weekend camp-out, please contact Lesley at 541.821.3882 or lesley@kswild.org

For more information on plans to log the Biscuit-fire affected forests of southwest Oregon, visit: www.kswild.org

Please spread this message far and wide.

Olympia, Eugene, Corvallis, Bend and Ashland

Back in our wild Siskiyou Mountain home, the Oxygen Collective shifts directions from tour mode to organizing mode, continuing to build the campaign to save this bioregion from extreme salvage logging. The last leg of our tour brought us back from the wet shores of Puget Sound, through Olympia, Corvallis, Eugene, and East over the Cascades to the dry expanses surrounding Bend, and around the still-snowy peaks to home again. While faced with some of our most challenging spaces and smallest turn-outs, we continued to collect hundreds of letters and to meet new allies.

In Olympia, we were escorted to an 'undisclosed location' for a pirate radio interview with DJ Megawatti on Radio Free Olympia. Our presentation that night was in the cavernous lobby of the Evergreen State College library, and managed to attract around fifty people to come out early on a rainy Sunday night. The next day, we parked the bus in the center of Red Square, 'got stilty', and talked to throngs of students, many of whom were happy to write letters and postcards to their Washington senator Patty Murray. We drained the local CFN biodiesel pump into the bus the next day, and pointed our steel chariot south.

In Eugene, we set up during the Earth Day events at the University of Oregon, where we performed that night to a smaller crowd than anticipated. Though we connected with old friends and seasoned forest defenders, we hope that more people in Eugene can become involved in defending the relatively close Siskiyou Mountains this summer. Maybe Priscilla and crew will return for a second show.

Our second night in Eugene we enjoyed a wonderful home cooked meal put over the top with a decadent array of dessert delicacies from Sweet Life Bakery. Later, we returned to the university to see Julia Butterfly Hill in a public forum and found many happy speech bubblers on their way out of the auditorium.

The Oxygen Collective spent Earth Day outreaching on the OSU campus in Corvallis and ended at an event on an organic farm tended by student volunteers. Here we found many people already familiar with the issue of salvage logging in the Biscuit, including some students who had just covered the topic in class that day. While to some our views were controversial, we continued to find widespread support for the protection of old-growth and roadless forests on our public lands.

At OSU the next day, six of us paid a visit to Dr. John Sessions at his office in the forestry department. Dr. Sessions, a Ph.D. in 'Forest Economics' and architect of massive logging and plantation-creation projects in the tropical rainforests of Malaysia and the Amazon, is the author of the 'Sessions Report' that argues for salvage operations in the Biscuit Fire affected area. Because this report contends that there are 2.5 billion board feet of marketable timber left by the fire, the Bush Administration's current proposal to log one half billion board feet almost appears reasonable.

After an hour of intense dialogue and a gift of a burnt stick from the Biscuit Fire itself, Dr. Sessions offered to participate in a public debate at the upcoming Society of American Foresters conference in Ashland. We agreed to arrange for a debate and it will be taking place on campus at Sou on Thursday May 6th at 10 am in Science room 118. Anyone interested in the issue of extreme logging this summer should make a point to attend this event and the other opportunities this week to have our voices heard when the timber beasts gather to advance their agenda.

We presented our Corvallis show at Intaba's Kitchen, an organic restaurant where an earth mother-faced cob oven provides the backdrop to a covered outdoor seating area.

After crossing the snowy crest of the Cascades, we arrived in Bend for our last show on the road and our smallest audience yet, at the Central Oregon Community College. We were hosted by some of the dedicated few activists who monitor timber sales in the Deschutes National Forest and throughout eastern Oregon. We shared solidarity and admiration at their hard work in these vast areas threatened by many logging projects that receive little or no attention from the environmental community. As the 'Biscuit Fire recovery Plan' could set dangerous precedents in the new rollbacks in environmental protection laws, we hope that our concerted efforts to stop the effects of the 'Healthy Forest Initiative' here in the Siskiyou will pay off for these overworked folks as well.

Crossing to the east side of the Cascades offered us an opportunity to spend our last days on tour in a different type of ecosystem ? dry ponderosa forests where the beautifully cold Deschutes River winds its way down from the snow-capped peaks. The Clark's Nutcracker, Mountain Chickadee, Pygmy Nuthatch, Gray Jay, and Williamson's Sapsucker are a few of the birds unique to the high mountains and dry east side forests that rounded out our list to 111 species in three weeks of traveling the West Coast.

Our homecoming event in Ashland was the keynote event Saturday night of the Act For the Earth Conference at Southern Oregon University. A diverse cross section of our community came out for our last show and it was one of our best receptions of the tour. It is rejuvenating to come full circle back to the Siskiyou, and the evening was charged with enthusiasm and inspiration. We are glad to have the whole show filmed for cable access broadcasting. Parts of our show will be playing on local cable channels in the Portland area, Eugene and across Southern Oregon from Klamath Falls to Medford and Grants Pass.

After a whirlwind month on the road, we return exhausted and exhilarated, loving each other and this land more than ever before. We have already hit the ground running as members of the collective are advancing their work within and beyond the O2 to work with Greenpeace, Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center, National Forest Protection Alliance and others. This summer promises to thrust Southern Oregon to center stage in a heightened national debate on forest policy and public lands management. These mountains are this year?s epicenter of forest defense-and we will be here advocating for the wild creatures and intact ecosystems we draw our life energy from! Stay tuned to this site and to our allies in the region, and get ready to come to the Siskiyou this summer!