by Gladys and Murtyl Dunn
The crooked contours of the Roman Dunn old-growth timber sales stand out like an island in a sea of clearcuts and shoulder-high tree plantations. Thirty miles from the flatlands of the Willamette Valley, twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean, the 300-500 year old trees are part of the last two percent of the Oregon Coast Range's ancient temperate rain forests. For Marbled Murrelets, Northern spotted owls, Tailed frogs, Southern torrent salamanders, bears, and cougars, the lush forest is a refuge in the midst of a decimated landscape, one of the last parcels of land without which they face complete extermination.
For Don Oakes and Ralph Hull, co-owners of Hull-Oakes Lumber Company of Monroe, Roman Dunn is another sort of refuge. With the release of 318 sales under Section K of the Salvage Rider, precious habitat previously closed to timber extraction is now available all over the Pacific Northwest. Hull-Oakes' old-fashioned steam-powered mill relies exclusively on old-growth logs between 12 and 16 inches in diameter. For this obsolete mill, the old Roman Dunn timber is a last chance at life. The large beams that Hull-Oakes produces are rapidly being phased out of the market in favor of smaller laminated beams made from second and third growth trees. The Roman Dunn sales will reap the company huge profits, and keep the 80-worker mill in operation for another five months- until it, like the old-growth, are a part of history.
Like the plantation owners of the ante-bellum South, Hull and Oakes are willing to go to war to prolong the dying gasps of an economic system as exploitative as it is unjust. "This company is proud of its record of more than 55 years of improving the environment by harvesting overripe and defective trees and replanting them with healthy and fast-growing Douglas Fir," Hull said on September 22. Environmentalists are "wasting their time" claims a logger contracted by Hull-Oakes, "we're going to cut in there." "We've told protesters we're not going to play this game forever," said BLM official Lee Lauritzen, referring to civil disobedience tactics. The message from industry and their government lackeys is clear: nothing can stand in the way of the saws.
In the misty darkness of early morning, with torrents of rain that soaked through rain slickers in minutes, the fifty activists, ranging from high-school-age to senior citizens, from Newport, Gold Beach, Yachats, Florence, Eugene, Corvallis, and Portland strung themselves out in the middle of BLM Road 18-8-28. 1, about a mile and a half downhill from the small spur road leading into the sale units. A dozen or so radio, newspaper, and TV folks came along to watch the fun. The two fellers who came up the road took one look at the drenched protesters and took off back down the mountain. Don Oakes, who swears up and down that those pesky "en-vir-O-ment-lists don't scare me" drove all the way to the coast and up the west side of the road and snuck down into the sale units. The chickenshit made his dozer crews drive their big cats up and down the newly constructed dirt roads for awhile. He also sent his night watchwoman down the hill back to town. Activists scurried to make way for a logger heading off the mountain, but not quite quick enough. She plowed through our group, narrowly missing several and clipping an elderly woman on the arm with her side mirror. When protesters caught on to Oakes' cowardly end-run they hurried up the mountain to the gate blocking off the access spur, positioning themselves in the road to block tree fellers from getting into the site from the west.
The only one who showed up was Wes Steckland, a rotund cutey from BLM Law Enforcement in a shiny new Bronco. Wes is generally happy enough to chat amiably with a dozen or so protesters, but the sight of fifty snapped him out of his melancholy long enough to muter "the problem is you're committing unlawful acts and you need to cease from that and start acting in a more lawful manner." Six of us laid down in the road and wouldn't budge. Wes gave up and drove down to try his luck with Oakes. Oakes evidently felt that running the engines on his dozers for a few hours was enough to prove his point and within minutes he and his crews roared out of the units without stopping to talk. It was past midday by now and we were bored so we headed to Eugene and the BLM office on Chad Drive to see if they would please arrest us.
We found the entrance to the BLM blocked by an unhappy security guard who wouldn't let us in and wouldn't tell us why. We demanded to be allowed access to our public building and to speak with BLM District Manager Judy Nelson. He told us to clear the entrance because we were "blocking access to the public." When we gently reminded him that we were the public and that he was the one standing in front of the door he told us to go away anyway.
Eventually Judy Nelson came down to talk with us. We asked her why she was allowing logging of spotted owl and marbled murrelet habitat. She said there were no such birds in the area. When we reminded her that. a group of activists had filmed a spotted owl in the logging site on September 2, she assured us that. it was only passing through, not actually living there. When we asked her how she could know for certain whether the elusive inhabited the area she pointed out that they are, after all, a hard bird to find. We asked her if it might not be a good idea to survey downed logs for fecal rings, a tell-tale sign of nesting. She responded that this would be a "fine idea." We asked her to please halt logging for a few days to give scientists a chance to look for fecal rings. "No," she said.
The day after the October 11 action a group calling themselves "Housewives for Habitat" violated the federal closure on Roman Dunn and disrupted logging operations for the day. Seems the closure order designed to keep the media and citizen monitors out of the area can't keep determined housewives from seeing what's happening on their public lands. Sometime early the next week monkey-wrenchers caused an estimated $150,000 worth of damage to heavy equipment in Unit 3.
Mating spotted owl pairs in Oregon typically require around 2,200 acres of old-growth habitat for nesting, foraging, and roosting. Two pairs of owls-the Leopuld Creek Pair and the Whittaker Creek pair live within a mile and a half from the 58 acres of Unit 3. The Leopuld pair currently has only 1,452 acres of habitat and did not fledge young when last surveyed in 1492 The Whitaker Creek pair has 2,491 acres of habitat and fledged one young in '92. US Fish and Wildlife Service scientists continue to maintain that owl pairs in the area have "extremely low amounts of habitat and may be at the threshold of local extirpation. Even minimal loss of habitat may have serious ramifications for spotted owls in this critical area." The situation for marbled murrelets is equally depressing. The group of 318 sales in the Coast Range released by Section K of the rider represent as much as 20 percent of the known nesting habitat for murrelets. The Fish and Wildlife Service has concluded that the release of these sales would "jeopardize the continued existence" of the murrelet. Biologists have determined that to maintain viable habitat for endangered species 70% of the canopy cover must be retained after logging operations are completed. But because Roman Dunn was initially auctioned off along with other 318 sales the original terms of the contract will be respected. Units will be completely clearcut, leaving zero canopy cover. No riparian buffers to protect the two salmon spawning creeks in the area will be required. Nothing.
Hogan is a huge fan of direct action, and we're sure that his decision will encourage more of the same, just as his September 6 decision to release the Warner Creek arson sales led to the massive direct action campaign in the newly formed Cascadia Free State. Don Oakes claims that the trees in Unit 3 are "dead--full of rot," a stupid assertion that fits well with the Salvage Rider's equally absurd goal of mending our national "forest health crisis" by cutting down every old-growth stand they can get their hands on. More of the same, we guess. Roman Dunn is just the latest plot to cut down pristine old growth habitat under the guise of salvage. Well, more of the same from this end too- more road blocks, more fun and games in the woods. Here's your war assholes.