A blockade has been launched at the Capitol State Forest, Washington to stop clearcut logging. Learn more about the blockade.
Forest Defenders today have launched a blockade to prevent the clear-cut logging of a 100-year-old forest west of Olympia on the traditional territory of the Chehalis people. The forest, part of the critically endangered Puget Lowland Eco-Region, was auctioned off by the Department of Natural Resources as the “Chameleon Timber Sale” to the Elma based Murphy’s Logging Company. Protesters have set up a blockade preventing road building and logging in one of the largest and most biodiverse units of the timber sale. The site is home to a late-successional Douglas Fir forest (over 100 years since it was last logged), which is gaining old growth characteristics that support endangered wildlife.
“It’s absurd,” one protester said, “That the state of Washington under the leadership of the ‘climate change candidate’ Jay Inslee is still sanctioning clearcut logging on public lands.” Recent fires have been testament to the northwest’s vulnerability to the climate crisis, yet our elected officials are carrying on a business-as-usual approach as the world burns. Older forests such as those targeted by the timber industry not only store massive amounts of carbon and support tremendous biodiversity, but are less prone to wildfire and are more resilient to climate change.
“Not only are we in a climate crisis but we are in an ecological crisis, with more species going extinct today than at any point in millions of years. Every wild place that we can save today, every species we save from extinction will quite literally shape the future of life on earth for millions of years.”
In light of the ongoing climate emergency and ecological apocalypse, protesters are demanding:
An end to industrial logging on public lands in the State of Washington.
A complete ban on clear-cut logging in the State of Washington.
The return of “Capitol Forest” to the Chehalis, Nisqually, and Quinault peoples, for DNR to completely fund the restoration of that area, and for DNR to return all stolen lands.
Until these demands are met and the Chameleon timber sale is canceled, protesters will maintain and expand the blockade to prevent industrial clear cutting on public lands.
Right on, shut it down permanently!
Humans have been killing trees and destroying forests for thousands of years. Much of the desert in the Middle East was caused by humans doing this. Killing trees is both totally immoral — a tree has as much right to live as a person, and is in fact infinitely more important ecologically — and ecologically devastating for obvious reasons. The only ones on this planet who have any business killing trees are beavers. Humans should be prohibited from killing any native trees unless they do so with their bare hands, and even then they should have to provide a compelling reason.
I’d go one step further, Jeff. Given that trees have no history of clear-cutting people, they have an infinitely greater right to life than industrial man.
Some industry, done sustainably, can be tolerated. But civilization squandered its claim to ecological citizenship with the invention of motors and the harnessing of electricity.
I was recently amazed to read that in 1852, when my ggg-grandfather built his “luxury” hotel in western North Carolina, each guest was given a candle every evening for light.
That was 168 years ago, and no one in the affluent America of their time complained about the lack of cars, trucks, motorcycles, airliners, elevators, streetlights, TV, radio, telephones, computers, or the Internet.
They probably wished they’d had air conditioning, on summer days. But I’d wager there will soon be a time when we’d trade it for hand-held fans, if we could get back the climate we had, before our addiction to fossil fuels and the power grid.