Note: All visuals by Paul Robert Wolf Wilson. Story and interviews by Erin X. Wong.
On April 1, activists from the group Pacific Northwest Forest Defense ascended into the uppermost branches of an approximately 150-foot-tall ponderosa pine in southern Oregon. Nearby, they said, road construction for the Poor Windy Forest Management Project, operated by wood product manufacturer Boise Cascade and approved by the Bureau of Land Management, had already begun. While the pine was not part of the project’s timber sale, it stood in the path of a planned road, in danger of becoming a collateral cost.
For three weeks, a handful of activists took turns in the tree, sitting on a wooden platform 120 feet in the air. By April 23, the BLM had amended its contract with Boise Cascade: No road would run through the stand the activists occupied after all. The tree where they sat — which they nicknamed Poor Princess Wendy and which some arborists estimate is more than 300 years old — will, at least for now, live to see another season.
A spokesperson for the BLM said that the road cancellation was part of normal pre-harvest planning and unrelated to the occupation. Two environmental advocates familiar with the Poor Windy project, however, said that the tree-sitters showed that direct action can effect change faster than legal strategies; with time, climbing rope and donated food, the activists kept at least one old-growth tree out of harm’s way.
High Country News recently spoke with two Wolf Creek tree-sitters, both of whom chose to use pseudonyms to protect themselves from future legal consequences. HCN also spoke with George Sexton, conservation director at Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and a lead plaintiff in a 2020 case challenging the Poor Windy project, and Nick Cady, an attorney with Cascadia Wildlands who is leading several cases against the BLM in southern Oregon. These interviews were edited for length and clarity.
Salal Golden, tree-sitter: We chose the spot we did because it clearly showed how the BLM gets around their own regulations to log old growth. Road building is something that the BLM doesn’t consider logging, but last year, over 25% of the timber volume that came out of BLM lands (in the Medford District) came from what they call ‘add-on volume.’
All of the tactics recognized by the state as lawful and appropriate protests have been tried. There have been letter writings. There was a lawsuit that took place against the sale. There’s been a lot of public advocacy and comment on the BLM’s decisions to log in this area. Other things had failed and logging was about to begin, and that’s why we were out here.
Rat Daddy, tree-sitter: I think tree sitting and blockades work because you’re putting your body out there, showing how much you care. It gets people to look, and it hopefully inspires other people to do similar things. We are privileged in that we have time to be able to do this, but these are skills that anyone can learn.
SG: We’re in a big ponderosa pine, and there’s a big crack, like a seam running down the bark, with a ton of sap oozing out of it. If you’ve ever smelled a ponderosa pine in the sun, it’s like really sweet butterscotch.
RD: The wind is really intense sometimes, especially at night as the sun is setting, and it feels like you’re on a rocky sea. I was feeling that way yesterday, and a thought that comforted me was, “This tree has been standing for 300-plus years and hasn’t gone down yet, and my body’s weight isn’t going to change that.”
These trees were old growth before settlers arrived here, and they were probably alive before settlers arrived on the continent.
There are no words for the feeling that we’re all a part of something here, that we’re part of something much, much bigger than ourselves. Keeping this tree and the other trees in this old-growth grove living and standing feels right. It just feels like our duty. We have to do it.
SG: Especially on sunny mornings, there’s just so much birdsong from so many different species. In the upper branches, where there are lichens getting covered in clouds all the time, there are a lot of areas that look like tide pools or have little things that look like corals.
RD: When you get up there and look out, the branches themselves are the size of a lot of the younger trees around here. You feel so, so tiny when you’re way high up.
SG: These trees were old growth before settlers arrived here, and they were probably alive before settlers arrived on the continent. It’s powerful to feel like you’re directly protecting something that old and sacred.
If we weren’t out here doing this, these trees would have been cut, and that would be tragic. There’s not that much old growth that remains. And the old growth that does remain, these agencies that are supposed to be protecting it are the biggest threat to its existence.
George Sexton, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center: The tree-sitters went to one of these locations where a new logging road was proposed through classic old-growth trees and said, “Okay, BLM, if you’re not logging old growth, then why are we in these trees? What’s going to happen here?”
A lot of people don’t even know that the Bureau of Land Management manages forests. And they have no idea that in southern Oregon, the Medford District (of the BLM) is proposing 14,000-acre old-growth timber sales. We’re way off the radar.
Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands: There are built-in administrative hurdles to bringing a lawsuit or filing a complaint. A tree-sit takes time and organization, too, but I think it can mobilize slightly quicker. I think it serves as a check on the logging industry and agencies by showing them what society will and will not tolerate.
There was a big (logging) project proposed several years ago down outside Roseburg, Oregon, and we challenged it in court. But the only reason it didn’t get logged in the meantime was that tree-sitters went up there and stopped the logging while the lawsuit was happening.
These activists are putting themselves at criminal and other risks. They’re usually young, college-age kids. What could this do to their future? What are their parents telling them? It’s a selfless act.
GS: Young people being willing to put themselves in harm’s way to get those images (of the old growth forest) out is just invaluable. It provides an opportunity to reset. I would love it if, collectively, we could take that opportunity to just say, “Man, climate change is here. The summers are longer and longer. The fires are worse and worse. Let’s hang on to the old growth we’ve got.”
NC: (Since the BLM released a new resource management plan in 2016, the focus on timber production) has definitely massively accelerated. The projects that we were seeing that were 100 acres here and there have transitioned to these landscape-wide, 40-, 30-, 20,000-acre projects with no site-specific considerations, all in the name of predictable timber volume generation. They started taking out all of those site-specific pieces that truly inform whether a project’s going to be good or bad for fire or restoration.
This is happening in 500 places within a 50-mile radius of where the protesters are. This is a big thing that’s occurring programmatically across these 2.6 million acres (of BLM-managed forests in western Oregon). I think calling attention to it is noble and good, but the reality is that it’s a larger problem.
This is happening in 500 places within a 50-mile radius of where the protesters are.
GS: In most of the U.S. Forest Service proposals that we see for timber or vegetation management, instead of removing the late successional habit, they’re retaining it. What the BLM is doing in most of their timber sales in old-growth forests is removal. If there were a fix for the BLM, it might be to take a page out of the Forest Service’s book and do treatment and maintenance instead of removal.
RD: I don’t think it was entirely surprising that it worked, but I think the timeline of it was surprising.
SG: It is really great to see the power that on-the-ground organizing and direct action has in these contexts, but ultimately this is just one tiny fraction of the old-growth forest that the BLM is planning on logging in this area. So, it’s bittersweet in some ways. It’s great, but it’s just a start.
RD: This is one sale of many that are happening in Oregon right now in which the BLM uses the same road-building loophole to log mature and old growth trees. I hope that people’s awareness of that is increased, and that they’re motivated to get out there, get up there.
SG: One of the excuses that BLM uses to log old-growth trees is fire resilience, which is totally backwards when it comes to logging super fire-resistant, old-growth trees. But returning land to Indigenous stewardship and (using) Indigenous fire practices that help manage the forest and prevent huge wildfires that are happening now — I think that’s just going to be more and more important as climate change progresses.
Who’s taking the extreme action here: the people who are trying to log these trees or the people who are putting their bodies on the line to defend them?
