HEADWATERS RALLY ATTRACTS THOUSANDS This year's massive public rally and demonstration in support of Headwaters For-est once again became the largest-ever protest in the history of the American forest preservation movement, with attendance on September 14th estimated at between 8,000 and 10,000. Despite a last-minute change of plans that moved the demonstration site from Carlotta-the town where protesters have gathered en masse the past two years-to the town of Stafford, the day's event went off very smoothly.
Last year a massive civil disobedience resulted in 1,033 peaceful arrests, but this year organizers took a different tack, deciding in favor of a march through Stafford to a mud-caked site where a massive landslide had destroyed seven homes last January.
The landslide was the result of hillside clearcutting by Pacific Lumber Company, owners of the contested Headwaters Forest. "Pacific Lumber, under Maxxam's regime, has gotten more and more aggressive with their logging practices," said Cecilia Lanman of the Environmental Protection Information Center, one of the rally's sponsoring organizations. "There is illegal logging occurring on these lands on an ongoing basis," Lanman said. "We are here to join with the people of Humboldt County, and in particular the people of Stafford, who have been subjected to the results of outrageous and illegal logging operations that have been conducted with the complicity of our state government."
Some Stafford residents turned out for the rally itself. Michael O'Neal-whose house was nearly destroyed by the torrent of mud and uprooted trees last January when the hillside collapsed on Stafford-was the day's special guest, and at the end of the rally was the recipient of the crowd's good will as thousands formed a quarter-mile-long line of hand-to-hand sandbag passing. The sandbags were placed around his home in anticipation of this year's expected heavy rainy season-which will likely bring the rest of the clearcut hillside churning down and could claim the few homes left standing. Organizers and rally attendees presented a check for $10,000 to residents of Stafford to help in the recovery and rebuilding efforts that have stalled months after Pacific Lumber began negotiations to purchase the land and homes destroyed by the Stafford slide.
EARTH FIRST! BLOCKADES FISHER GATE ENTRANCE TO HEADWATERS
Using steel and concrete devices, 20 activists locked themselves together Sep-tember 18 in an elaborate human barricade to block the main entrance into the 60,000-acre Headwaters Forest. The activists, lying prone across the road, were bound with 60-pound concrete devices that chained the wrist of one activist to another. In a show of solidarity with local residents and timber workers, the activists and 150 supporters rallying at the site vowed to block logging operations until Maxxam "gets out of Humboldt County, and all 60,000 acres are protected," said a news release. These events marked a critical turning point in the campaign. When one logger arriving on the scene was asked if he was a logger or an Earth First!er, his reply was "Both!" While four employees covered a pro-Maxxam billboard with a tarp during the demonstration, another lone employee in a pick-up truck drove through a blockade, striking several demonstrators standing peacefully on the road.
"We are not against logging; we are against Maxxam's full-scale forest rape," said Earth First! spokesperson Naomi Wagner. "Maxx
am is logging at 300 percent above sustainable yield."
Beyond the human blockade, other activists blocked the road with a barricade made of Maxp;xam's own logs and criss-crossed with colorful yarn. At 7:55am police declared the blockade an unlawful assembly and 38 activists and support personnel were arrested. Lockdown participant Will Morris, a licensed contractor from Sonoma County, said, "As a professional builder and a taxpayer, I object to our elected officials making deals with criminals like Maxxam CEO Charles Hurwitz. I refuse to stand by while my hard-earned money goes to pay for land that taxpayers already paid for with a junk bond bailout."
Since January 1996, 17 Timber Harvest Plans have been filed in the 60,000-acre Headwaters Forest, setting in motion the destruction of 1,702 acres of residual old-growth redwood forest. To date, nine of these have been approved and completed. The remaining eight are on the verge of approval, and the clearcutting will result in destruction of hundreds more acres of residual old-growth redwood stands.
-Headwaters Sanctuary Project & Bay Area Action. Contact info.http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/headwaters/· <headwaters@enews.org> Reposted from Ecotopia News Service.