Biscuit Logging One Year Later: What Have We Learned?

It is now one year since the US Forest Service first allowed chainsaws into the old growth reserves of the Siskiyou National Forest as part of the Bush Administration’s Biscuit Fire Recovery Project. The massive scale and pristine location of this logging plan ignited a fierce controversy that grew into a community-supported campaign of civil disobedience that resulted in over 70 arrests and gained national media attention. A windfall of new evidence is shedding fresh light on a debate that has too often focused on ideology and politics rather than science or economic reality. It is time for Oregon’s political leaders, and the American public, to demand that these facts be used to shape future policy instead of being buried under the Orwellian rhetoric of a preset logging agenda.

With the Forest Service's recent announcement that they are planning to auction off two new, Roadless Area timber sales in the Biscuit fire area, and legislation moving through Congress that would suspend environmental laws and mandate post fire logging, it is more clear than ever that Southern Oregon’s forests are a proving ground at the forefront of a national debate that will affect the management of millions of acres of public lands for decades to come.

A recent World Wildlife Fund report documents that upwards of $14 million of taxpayer money has already been lost with the Biscuit logging project. This leaves no funds left over for the restoration that was supposed to occur and makes it clear that millions more are likely to be lost if future sales are carried out as planned.

The original post-fire logging plan called for cutting about 90 million board feet of timber from areas close to existing roads. This plan was quickly shelved by the Bush Forest Service and replaced with an outlandishly overzealous super-harvest that called for cutting half a billion board feet, mostly from remote, protected wildlands. This new project was based on a non-peer reviewed paper written by a pro-industry forest engineer who was sponsored to the tune of $25,000 by timber industry allies at the Douglas County Commissioners.

Opponents of Biscuit logging have always maintained that the proposed logging will damage sensitive soils, remove important nutrients, send sediment into salmon bearing streams, and otherwise harm the natural process of recovery of these fire-adapted native forests. Since logging began, a series of more credible scientific studies have shown that there is no ecological rationale whatsoever for salvage logging.

Most recently, OSU Forestry Department graduate student Daniel Donato published a report in the prestigious journal Science that challenges the underlying science of the 'fire recovery project'. His study concludes: “Post-fire logging can be counterproductive to the goals of forest regeneration and fuel reduction.” Donato immediately became the target of a revealing and distasteful campaign of ridicule and censorship by the timber industry and the old school academics and politicians who do their bidding.

Rich Fairbanks, the origianl USFS project head of the "Biscuit Fire Recovery Project", has gone public to confirm that this project is being orchestrated by political operatives in the Bush Administration who totally disregarded input from their own people on the ground. The following is a direct quote from Mr. Fairbanks: “What they were really saying was, ‘We don't give a *@#& about the local economy, much less restoration forestry. We're into this to get the Republicans re-elected.’”

In the time lapsing since logging within old growth reserves began, every major argument made by environmental activists has been affirmed and supported by scientific study, economic analysis and public sentiment. In that same time, we have seen the Bush Forest Service systematically undermine the process of public involvement while timber companies have gone virtually unpunished for illegally logging in Wilderness Areas, Botanical Reserves and streamside corridors.

Now the Bush Forest Service is gearing up to use Oregon’s forests to put a stake through the heart of one of the most popular pieces of federal environmental policy in decades, the Roadless Rule. It is time for this shameful assault to be called out for what it is. People have put their bodies on the line demanding to be heard, now it is up to our regional leaders to take a strong stand in defense of our forests and our rights to a meaningful process of public involvement.

Biscuit Flares Up Again: Trials, an Anniversary and New Timber Sales

Arrestees from last year's civil disobedience actions against the Biscuit logging project are set to begin their trial hearings today, March 7th. This occurs on the one year anniversary of the day logging began within formerly protected old growth reserves in the Siskiyou National Forest. At seventy-two years old, Cave junction resident Joan Norman was the first of dozens to be arrested in what grew into a multiple month, community supported resistance campaign that gained national media attention. Joan would be going to trial today but she was killed in a car accident last July after spending 16 days in the Josephine County jail for her second Biscuit arrest. The remaining 20-some defendants are challenging the Forest Service and the legitimacy of the government's actions that allowed these unprecedented sales to move forward against massive public opposition.

The trials will take place against the contentious backdrop created by a wave of new reports that fundamentally challenge the science and economics behind the Biscuit logging project, as well as the Forest Service's recent announcement that they are planning to release two new, highly controversial timber sales in as little as ten days time. The release of these remote, Inventoried Roadless Area sales is a direct assault on the Clinton-era Roadless Rule, one of the most widely supported pieces of national environmental policy in decades.

With the addition of the Blackberry sale about to be auctioned, the USFS will be logging more volume out of the Indigo Creek watershed alone than the Probable Sale Quantity (PSQ) of the whole Siskiyou National Forest. The other timber sale, Mike's Gulch, is immediately adjacent to the now clearcut Fiddler sale, just above the federally designated Wild and Scenic Illinois River, the site of the majority of the arrests during last year's demonstrations.

Activists from the woods of Southern Oregon to the halls of Washington DC are gearing up to confront and expose what Governor Kulongoski has called a "violation of the public trust" by the USFS.

A quick review of revelations about Biscuit logging since 3/7/05:

--Rich Fairbanks, former USFS project head of the original "Biscuit Fire Recovery Project", confirms that this project is being orchestrated from above by political operatives in the Bush Administration who are attempting to use this project to undo crucial elements of environmental law with nationwide implications.

--Forest Service admits Silver Creek Lumber illegally logged hundreds of trees from a protected Brewer's Spruce botanical reserve at a time when the public was excluded from exercising oversight of their operations by a federal closure order barring access to large sections of the SNF.

--WWF report says $14 million of taxpayer money has been lost already with the Biscuit logging project, with millions more likely to be lost if future sales are carried out as planned.

--OSU Forestry grad student Daniel Donato's report published in the prestigious journal Science questions the underlying science of the 'fire recovery project' and shows that salvage logging kills seedlings, harms soils and otherwise hurts the natural recovery of the forest.

O2 Sends Donated City Bus to New Orleans Relief Effort

The Oxygen Collective delivered a 30 foot City Bus to the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans last week to aid in their ongoing hurricane relief work. Common Ground plans to use the bus to transport college students who are traveling to New Orleans during their spring breaks as part of their Freedom Ride campaign. The fully equipped Diesel Gillig passenger bus will then be used to bring groups of volunteers to and from their daily work sites gutting and restoring houses as well as to host tours of the city and Common Ground's network of relief operations.

The photo to the right shows Common Ground founder Malik Rahim showing the new bus to residents of the Algiers neighborhood.

Harold Hardesty, a resident of Ashland, Or, saw a local news story about the Oxygen Collective's upcoming "Bound for Common Ground" relief trip to New Orleans last December and contacted us with a generous offer of gifting the bus to the folks on the Gulf Coast who badly need reliable transportation for the hundreds of volunteers working at any given time with the Common Ground Collective. The bus is just out of rotation as a public transport vehicle for the city of Pasco, Washington, and is in good mechanical shape with all its seats and systems fully intact.

A local television news crew filmed the transfer of the title and a $200 donation from Harold to o2 member and Common Ground organizer Kerul Dyer just before she and a small crew boarded the bus and drove it to the Gulf Coast.