Chapter 5 : No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth!

By Steve Ongerth - From the book, Redwood Uprising: Book 1

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“One man, Charles Hurwitz, is going to destroy the largest remaining block of redwoods out of sheer arrogance. Only we the people can stop him.”

—Dave Foreman, October 22, 1986.[1]

Well I come from a long, long line of tree-fallin’ men,
And this company town was here before my grandpappy settled in,
We kept enough trees a-standin’ so our kids could toe the line,
But now a big corporation come and bought us out, got us working double time…

—lyrics excerpted from Where are We Gonna Work When the Trees are Gone?, by Darryl Cherney, 1986.

On the surface, very little seemed to have changed in Scotia for its more than 800 residents, but deep down, they all knew that the future was very much uncertain. Some seemed unconcerned, such as 18 year Pacific Lumber veteran Ted Hamilton, who declared, “We’re just going on as always,” or his more recently hired coworker, millworker Keith Miller, who had been at the company less than six years and who stated, “It doesn’t bother me much.”[2] Indeed, many of the workers seemed to welcome their newfound financial prosperity. [3] However, there were at least as many workers whose assessments were quite pessimistic, including millworker Ken Hollifield, a 19 year veteran who opined, “I’m sure this place won’t be here in five to seven years.” Former millworker and then-current owner of the Rendezvous Bar in Rio Dell, George Kelley, echoed these sentiments stating, “For 2½ years they’ve got a good thing going. After that they don’t know what’s happening.” Dave Galitz dismissed the naysayers’ concerns as typical fear of change, but careful estimates of the company’s harvesting rates bore out the pessimistic assessments. In the mills and the woods, however, production had increased substantially, to the point that many were working 50 and 60 hours per week. If there was to be any organized dissent, it would be difficult to keep it together, because the workers had little time to spare.[4] There seemed to be little they could do outside of a union campaign, and the IWA had neither been inspiring nor successful in their attempt.

Deep in the woods however, the changes were readily obvious. In 1985, the old P-L had received approval from the California Department of Forestry (CDF) to selectively log 5,000 acres.[5] With John Campbell at the helm, under the new regime, the company filed a record number of timber harvest plans (THPs) immediately following the sale, and all of them were approved by the CDF. There was more than a hint of a conflict of interest in the fact that the director of the agency, Jerry Pertain, had owned stock in the old Pacific Lumber and had cashed in mightily after the merger. [6] Since the takeover, the new P-L had received approval to log 11,000 acres, 10,000 of which were old growth, and there was every indication that these timber harvests would be accomplished through clearcutting.[7] Pacific Lumber spokesmen who had boasted about the company’s formerly benign forest practices now made the dubious declaration that clearcutting was the best method for ensuring both long term economic and environmental stability.

P-L forester Robert Stephens claimed that the old rate was unsustainable anyway, declaring, “About five years ago, it became apparent that there is going to be an end to old-growth. We simply cannot operate on a 2,000 year rotation.”

Public affairs manager David Galitz repeated what would soon become the new regime’s gospel, that clearcutting had actually been in the works for some time before the hint of a merger, even though in actual fact, this was untrue.

Pacific Lumber’s logging operations which had hitherto been idyllic by comparison now outpaced those of even Louisiana-Pacific and Georgia-Pacific. They tripled their logging crews, bringing in loggers from far away who had never known the old Pacific Lumber and had no particular loyalty to the fight to prevent Hurwitz’s plunder of the old company. [8] Most of the new hires were gyppos, and there were rumblings among the old timers that the quality of logging had decreased precipitously. In John Campbell’s mind, such inefficiencies were likely to be temporary and any small losses that occurred were more than offset by the much larger short term gain. The expense to the viability of the forest, however, was never entered into the ledger.[9] One resident who lived very close to the border of Pacific Lumber’s land relayed their impressions, writing:

“I live at the end of (the) road in Fortuna. Maxxam’s Pacific Lumber logging trucks drive by our house six days a week now. (It has) never been like this in the past. Ordinarily, logging was five days a week in summer…

“From Newberg Road you can look up and see the damage they are doing to the badly eroding hills, now bare of third growth. They are logging third growth from their graveled road now. As the trucks come by, it is amazing to see how small their (logs are), like flagpoles.

“What will be the value of their property when all of the trees are gone? Are they trying to eliminate all other competition—L-P, Simpson, etc.—as their long-range goal?”[10]

Environmentalists expressed alarm and outrage at the sweeping and regressive changes that had been instituted now that Hurwitz had assumed control of Pacific Lumber. John DeWitt, executive director of Save the Redwoods League, the organization that had been instrumental in coaxing the Murphy Dynasty to adopt sustainable logging practices in the first place, expressed these fears stating, “We thought they practiced excellent forestry over the past 125 years and deplore the fact they’ll double the cut. It may result in the ultimate unemployment of those who work at Pacific Lumber.”

Robert Stephens countered, “From the standpoint of getting your timber growing vigorously, this is the best method.”

John DeWitt responded by declaring, “In the short term, (clearcutting) may be a good method, but in the long term, it will destroy the productivity of the soil. The forest will not be able to grow trees.” The company’s estimates suggested that if they cut at this new rate, doubling the 1985 harvest of 300 million bf, they would deplete their supply of old growth timber in twenty years, leaving them with only managed second growth stands, not all of which would be harvestable.

NEC director Tim McKay also chimed in, declaring:

“Clearcutting might be the best method if you consider only certain criteria. Ultimately the systemic reduction of the forest to an even-age stand of trees eliminates the habitat diversity that existed prior to clearcutting. We’re being asked to believe that all of this complex ecosystem being thrown away is not all that important.”[11]

Maxxam’s debt servicing was of no less concern. According to company documents filed with the SEC, Hurwitz reorganized Pacific Lumber, separating its timberlands and forest products operations from its highly profitable welding division. He redistributed the debt so that $550 million was assumed by the former and $200 million by the latter.[12] Then Maxxam dumped several of P-L’s assets, including a 100,000 square foot office building in downtown San Francisco, 4,000 acres of San Mateo County timberland, 3,400 acres of farmland in Sacramento Valley, and more than 4,000 of its 189,000 acres of redwood and Douglas fir timberlands. Following that, they transferred P-L’s lucrative welding operations to other subsidiaries.[13] This followed Hurwitz’s established patterns and it raised just as many doubts about the long term future for Humboldt County’s economy.[14]

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In spite of the existing North Coast environmental organizations’ opposition to P-L’s unprecedented changes, they all already had full plates and were not set up for the drastic countermeasures that Maxxam’s rapid devastation warranted. Fortuitously, there was a new militant environmental movement ready to rush in where angels feared to tread , founded by Bart Koehler, Dave Foreman, Ron Kezar, Mike Roselle, and Howie Wolke in 1979, which they called “Earth First!”. In April 1983, this new movement carried out their first act of militant nonviolent civil disobedience in defense of ancient forests, appearing out of nowhere in the Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon to stand between a running bulldozer and a tree. This was the first act in what became an ever and rapidly escalating campaign in protest against the liquidation logging by Corporate Timber. These acts involved tree spiking (driving large nails into trees in order to hinder the cutting and processing of timber), tree sitting (which involved the suspension of small platforms high up in the tree’s canopy), activists chaining themselves to timber equipment, and forming human barricades on logging roads by setting their feet in cement-filled ditches or burying themselves in rock piles.[15] Such forms of civil disobedience were not new, though they had rarely been used in defense of wilderness before, and Earth First! was a typical environmentalist organization. Its adherents described it as “the radical environmental movement” and its guiding principle was (and still is) “No compromise in defense of mother Earth!”[16]

Earth First’s founders had each been involved in various environmental organizations, including especially the Sierra Club, but had grown disillusioned with the latter’s post-David Brower era pragmatism and tendency to compromise with those they felt were responsible for the development (and hence destruction) of wilderness areas. They were inspired by the writings of Ed Abbey, whose bestselling novel, The Monkeywrench Gang, a fictional action-adventure tale about four environmentalists-turned-guerilla saboteurs, whose actions climax with the destruction of the Glen Canyon dam in Arizona. On a more practical level, Earth First! had been influenced by ecologists such as Rachel Carson[17], Aldo Leopold[18], James Lovelock[19], Arne Naess[20], Kirkpatrick Sale, Henry David Thoreau, and of course, John Muir. They took their inspiration from dissidents within the mainstream environmental movement, including David Brower.[21]

The founders of Earth First! positioned themselves as the radical opposition that Brower thought the Sierra Club should be, and they did so unapologetically. Even the use of the exclamation point in their name, a decision made very early on by Dave Foreman, was intended for shock value.[22] Their “No compromise!” position was an articulation of their thinking, that when it comes to the viability of life on Earth, making deals with its despoilers in the interests of pragmatism might save “half a loaf” today, but in the long run would result in the eventual collapse of the entire bakery. This resonated with a great many disillusioned environmentalists, and right from the beginning, Earth First! attracted many adherents through its regular periodical, Earth First! (later renamed the Earth First! Journal), its colorful actions, and its grassroots organizing—which was accomplished largely through the vehicle of traveling slide presentation and music shows, featuring the many naturalists and musicians who had joined the movement.[23]

If this has a familiar ring to it, it should. Earth First! was to the environmental movement what the IWW was to the union movement, and this was not completely coincidental either. It had been rumored that Ed Abbey’s father had been a dues paying member of the IWW, and Dave Foreman confirmed in 1991 that he consciously looked to the IWW for inspiration:

“When we formed Earth First! in 1980, we consciously tried to learn from the strategy and tactics of left social movements. The Wobblies were certainly one group we were drawn to. I even published a Little Green Songbook, taking after the Little Red Songbook of the IWW. I’ve talked to Utah Phillips and some old Wobblies; I am really attracted to a lot of what they have to say…” [24]

Fittingly, Earth First! tended to be composed of a substantial number—though not exclusively—of working class people in contrast with the mainstream environmental movements who tended to be more oriented towards middle class professionals.[25] However, they never saw themselves as a “left wing” organization. Indeed, Dave Foreman once said of Earth First! “We aren’t left, we aren’t right, we aren’t in the middle, (and) we aren’t even in front or behind. We aren’t even playing that game!”.[26] Earth First!er Roger Featherstone elaborated:

“There are as many different opinions in the EF! movement as there are flyspecks in a barn. Earth First! cuts across the political and social spectrum. There are as many folks in EF! who think of themselves as conservatives as there are those who identify with the Left. There are more working class folks in EF! than in most environmental organizations, but we also have some entrepreneurs and even a few wealthy supporters. What unites us is our fight to save wilderness and our belief that Homo-Sapiens is only one of a myriad of equally important species…We aren’t big on conformity.”[27]

Cofounder Howie Wolke agreed, stating that he had wanted Earth First! to appeal to:

“…not only wilderness fanatics like myself, but also to a wide variety of people who are not and have never been locked in to the narrow dogma of the straight environmental movement. I’m talking cowboys, auto mechanics, musicians, construction workers, wilderness guides, bouncers, cooks, dish-washers, welfare bums, topless dancers, and white collar office workers.”[28]

Even the founders themselves shared this diversity. Dave Foreman had a “typical” middle class background.[29] In fact, in his early twenties, he had been a Goldwater Republican and a member of William F. Buckley’s Young Americans for Freedom—hardly what one would expect from a leader of new radical movement. He had enrolled in the Marine Corps Officer Candidates School at Quantico (to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam) and had soured on the experience, which ultimately caused him to jettison many of his conservative political beliefs.[30] By contrast, Mike Roselle had working class roots, had been a high school dropout, and had been part of the student antiwar movement during the Vietnam War. He later worked in the oil industry as a wildcatter, before embracing environmentalism. [31] Earth First! was nothing if not unusual.

As one would expect, Earth First! certainly didn’t appeal to the right. This was largely due to the movement’s advocacy of “monkeywrenching”, essentially a form of covert guerilla sabotage which took on many forms, including the removal of survey stakes, the sabotage of earth moving equipment, vandalism, and “tree spiking” (the driving of large nails into standing tree trunks as a deterrent to logging), among others.[32] Although such actions were not “officially” sanctioned by Earth First! the movement, Dave Foreman, the individual, coauthored and edited a book called Ecodefense: a Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, and while it included a carefully worded disclaimer, it was still essentially pegged as being an Earth First! product. The Earth First! Journal hocked it along with a large selection of other books and Earth First! merchandise, and that publication featured a regular column titled “Dear Nedd Ludd” (after the Luddites of England), which consisted of further monkeywrenching techniques, some of which were added to later editions of the book. Ecodefense advised against the use of explosives and firearms however, and stressed that monkeywrenching was and should remain nonviolent, including towards humans, but to conservatives this mattered little. Their biggest complaint was that Ecodefense advocated the encroachment into and the damage to private property, which was violence as far as the right was concerned. To them, Earth First! were a band of terrorists.[33]

However, Earth First! didn’t exactly endear itself to the traditional left either for many reasons, including its tendency to eschew class analysis in its environmental critique of the status quo. Many Earth First!ers traced the destruction of the Earth to industrial activity in general, destructive technology, and the “myth or Western Progress” rather than the consequences of capitalist economic practices. They rejected class struggle philosophically as being “anthropocentric”, ultimately secondary or even irrelevant to the long term viability of the Earth’s biosphere. At times, prominent spokespeople, including especially Dave Foreman, actively resisted attempts by organized minority tendencies within Earth First! to introduce class struggle and state-power analysis into the debate, ostensibly in fear that too much emphasis on such things might distract from ecological issues.[34]

Earth First! wasn’t a reactionary movement, per se. It’s adherents did have a very highly developed ecological consciousness, often referred to as “Deep Ecology,” which maintained—among other things— that organized human activity should regard ecology and the web of life as its deepest and most essential priority, above all else, including human concerns.[35] It also adopted an advanced environmental philosophy often called “Biocentrism”, which held that each species played an important part of the web of life and had an intrinsic value of its own well beyond the human-centered “Anthropocentrism”. These were fairly valid and advanced theories based on at least partially on peer reviewed biological science and careful observations of nature and human’s civilization’s regard (or disregard in most cases) for it.[36]

Dave Foreman guided a good deal of Earth First!’s vision from the beginning (though he was quickly joined by a great many other deep ecologists with similar perspectives). However, many of these sensible perspectives were layered upon a questionable foundation which drew from at least two sources that divorced environmentalism from class struggle. Rather than incorporate a body of work that deconstructed the capitalist economic tendencies to privatize wealth and socialize or “externalize” its costs and consequences into biocentrism, they tended to reject such ideas as irrelevant. Instead, Earth First! turned to Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons and the unapologetically reactionary theories of Cambridge professor Thomas Malthus, in particular his Essay on the Principle of Population, to explain the economic forces that drove the destruction of the environment. Both of these seminal documents were deeply flawed, however, even on biocentric grounds.

Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons, written in 1968, is accepted by many as a well reasoned ecological argument that “multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.”[37] While perhaps never intended as such, Hardin’s theories were used—time and again—as arguments in favor of both “private” property and strict government regulation of “public property”, by different constituencies, naturally. However, Hardin made it quite clear where he stood, and that was in staunch support of privatization.[38] But there is no ecological basis for such a stance. the actual distinctions between “private” and “property” are nowhere near as simple as one would imagine, since “private” property is sanctioned by the “public” government in the form of deeds, laws, and law enforcement agencies—usually favoring the capitalist class—and “public” property is often exploited by private interests, a critique many Earth First!ers, including Foreman, actually accepted, and logically so. Private property is a relatively recent invention by human beings and is not recognized by nature in any fashion.[39]

Anarchists and Socialists alike have many cogent critiques of Hardin’s on socio-economic grounds. Murray Bookchin, whose writings often critiqued Earth First! from both anarchist and ecological perspectives argued that Hardin’s notion that life is a “war of each against all” and based on “survival of the fittest”, sometimes referred to as The Law of the Jungle was long ago dispelled by anarchist Peter Kropotkin in his famous work Mutual Aid, a text that ought to have comfortably found a place in Foreman’s body of literature (but didn’t).[40] Eco-socialist Ian Angus noted that Hardin provided no supporting evidence to support his theories and, if anything, actual studies of the commons in England and Germany, including those by Frederich Engles, showed the opposite to be true, that the people sharing the commons managed them quite well through mutual self-regulation, a form of laissez-faire communism, if anything.[41] The pioneering studies conducted by the late Elinor Ostrom, which ultimately won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2009, proved both Bookchin and Angus were correct, and that Hardin’s theories were wrong, on both economic and ecological grounds.[42]

There are likewise numerous problems inherent in Foreman’s taking inspiration from Malthus. The latter’s theory seems logical enough on ecological grounds. He argued that human population always expands until it exceeds the available food supply. Specifically, population tended naturally when unchecked to increase at a geometrical rate (1, 2, 4, 8, 16), while food supply increased at best at an arithmetical rate (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). [43] In other words, the destruction of the Earth’s many unique habitats and biodiversity was primarily a result of the sheer numbers of human beings, not their socio-economic relations, and therefore concerning oneself with class is ultimately futile if they’re genuinely concerned about the environment. Indeed, it was Malthus’s writings which led Garrett Hardin himself to promote what he called, “lifeboat ethics” an argument against aiding those in need on ecological grounds, and no doubt this explains some of the link between Malthus and bourgeois environmentalism.[44] Anarchists and socialists alike, however, for over two centuries, have consistently pointed out the weaknesses in Malthus’s writings, and they have had plenty of motivation to do so.

Malthus, who was born in 1766 and died in 1834, was not an environmentalist, and his treatise was not motivated by environmental concerns, but rather a defense of class privilege, in response to the utopian ideals of his contemporary, William Godwin, an early pioneer of anarchism. Godwin had been a protestant minister, but he had resigned from the clergy. Inspired by the French Revolution, he went on to advocate a society based on equality and the abolition of private property, and he married the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Their daughter, Mary Shelley, wrote the original story of Frankenstein, which was essentially a condemnation of the industrialists’ mistreatment of both nature and the working class. Such ideas were an anathema to the thoroughly reactionary Malthus, who was himself an Anglican clergyman. Malthus argued that starvation and want were divinely inspired to teach virtue and the dangers of sin—though he never offered an explanation on how the wealthy managed to avoid it.[45] In fact, Malthus never used the term “overpopulation” in his writings, and—if anything—welcomed the thinning out of human numbers [46], a rather ghoulish perspective that some Earth First!ers seemed to themselves promote from time to time.

Malthus’ radical adversaries were not so enamored with their contemporary, however. Godwin quickly challenged Malthus, arguing that population growth (or lack thereof in some cases) could always be traced to the socio-economic effects, but he was not alone.[47] Marx and Engles were particularly quick to pounce on Malthus's "theory" as being quack pseudoscience in defense of the ruling class.[48] Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid was partly written in response to Malthus, and all other elitist justifications of class privilege that supposedly relied on biological science.[49] Even Malthus's conservative contemporary, the economist David Ricardo, castigated his fellow conservative's arguments as being class ignorant—noting the quantity of grain available is completely irrelevant to the worker if he has no employment, and that it is therefore the means of employment and not of subsistence which put him in the category of "surplus population".[50]

To his critics, Malthus was espousing dogma, not science, and as it turns out, the former were correct. For one thing, Malthus offered no basis for his arithmetical ratio, as well as the admission that he was forced to make in the course of his argument that there were occasions in which food had increased geometrically to match a geometric rise in population thereby invalidating his own thesis.[51] This has been proven without as shadow of doubt in modern times. The rate of population growth peaked in the 1960s and has been declining ever since, in spite of a consistent increase in available food supply. And this is not a case of limited supply either. According to the United Nations, in 2007, there was more than enough food available to give every single person 2800 kilocalories per day, enough to make every person on the planet overweight. By 2030, with population growth continuing to decline and agricultural output predicted to rise, the UN forecasts enough food will be grown worldwide, despite a global estimated population of 8.3 billion, to give everyone 3050 kilocalories per day.[52] That Malthus would make such an error is understandable, because he wrote his treatise four decades before the emergence of modern soil science in the work of Justus von Liebig and others which demonstrated that food production could be increased quite easily.[53] That others who know better would continue to champion such flawed theories is, however, inexplicable.

In spite of the fairly well established critiques of both Harden and Malthus, many Earth First!ers, including Dave Foreman, stubbornly refused to let go of them as foundation stones for their own ecological philosophy. Indeed, as their critics—particularly Bookchin—continued to point out the glaring weaknesses in Foreman, et. al.’s particular brand of Deep Ecology, Foreman and his fellows only grew more entrenched in their views, and as such Earth First! gained a rather disdainful reputation among traditional leftists. At times the bickering between the two radical tendencies even grew downright nasty, even to the point where Foreman and Bookchin routinely engaged in broadsides in print directed at each other. While Foreman may have had a point, that what everyone in the 1980s assumed to be “the left” (namely Soviet and Chinese “Communism”) left a great deal to be desired on ecological grounds, Bookchin, et. al, were no less right to challenge Foreman on the reactionary turkeys he had hung around his own movement’s neck, and there was good reason to do so. Instead of providing a way forward out of the morass of destructiveness wrought by western capitalism and eastern “communism”, these philosophically reactionary underpinnings led Earth First! down the path of misanthropy.

Such misanthropic underpinnings—coupled with their right-”libertarian” political origins thoroughly explain some of the highly controversial stances taken by Dave Foreman and Ed Abbey who were considered by many to be Earth First!’s principal spokesmen. Both Foreman and Abbey had issued highly controversial public statements not only calling for limiting immigration to the United States, but had gone as far as to suggest that the nation’s southern border should be closed and patrolled by armed military forces. Humboldt State University Professor Bill Devall, himself an Earth First!er, interviewed Dave Foreman for Simple Life, wherein Foreman said, “Letting the USA be an overflow valve for problems in Latin America is not solving a thing. It’s just putting more pressure on the resources we have in the USA,” a statement he later claimed to regret.[54] However, he made similar pronouncements a year later in the Earth First! Journal.[55]

Ed Abbey went a step further, cosigning a document titled, An Open Letter to Congress, subtitled Our Borders are Out of Control. The text of the letter began:

“Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and billions of dollars of narcotics are being smuggled into the United States. While these are two distinct problems, they have a common denominator—an open border. At a time when millions of Americans are in poverty and drug use has reached epidemic levels, we cannot continue to wink at wholesale violation of U.S. sovereignty.”[56]

The signers included several union representatives, police agencies, Ed Abbey and—of all people—conservative one-time Washington state governor, Dixie Lee Ray, whose positions on the environment were about as diametrically opposed to those of most Earth First!ers as one could get.[57] The sheer irony in such positions is that supposedly under the logic of Deep Ecology, nature shouldn’t recognize national sovereignty, particularly human created boundaries!

Foreman also uttered rather unfortunate statements about famine stricken Ethiopians in the Simple Life interview, specifically:

“The worst thing we could do in Ethiopia was to give aid—the best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance, to let people there just starve. . .the alternative is that you go in and save these half-dead children who will never live a whole life. Their development will be stunted. And what’s going to happen in ten years’ time is that twice as many people will suffer and die.”[58]

While Foreman claimed that these words were often quoted out of context—and certainly this is possible—even in their entirety, they come across as racist and insensitive. Such statements were hardly scientific in any case, even in a deep ecology sense. Humans are part of nature, so one could argue that providing aid to starving Ethiopians is nature’s way of being “bountiful” as easily one could argue that allowing them to starve was Malthusian regulation of the population. Given the level of western colonialism that still very much exists in the so-called “third world”, the starvation of Ethiopians had as much to do with class stratification within the Ethiopian society as any “natural” process. There were and are far more convincing arguments against overpopulation, even class conscious arguments, but Foreman’s statement, even if taken out of context only served to isolate Earth First! from potential supporters.

More controversial still, were the dismissive attitudes of these same prominent spokespeople towards timber workers themselves. For example, Dave Foreman was quoted as saying, in 1991 in a well publicized debate with Murray Bookchin:

One of my biggest complaints about the workers up in the Pacific Northwest is that most of them aren’t ‘class conscious.’ That’s a big problem…The loggers are victims of an unjust economic system, yes, but that should not absolve them for everything they do…Indeed, sometimes it is the hardy swain, the sturdy yeoman from the bumpkin proletariat so celebrated in Wobbly (sic) lore who holds the most violent and destructive attitudes towards the natural world (and toward those who would defend it).[59]

While this may have been true in some cases, there was absolutely no proof that this was universally true, nor was it necessarily usually true. There were many timber workers who didn’t fit this stereotype. For example, in the words of Mendocino gyppo operator Walter Smith:

“We have a feeling for the place we work. We have a feeling for the land and the forest as a whole—as a place where we like to work because it is enjoyable to be there, because it is the forest. And in the hopes what our children will be back there doing the same work someday…On the other hand, there are ramifications we have no con­trol over—the land owner. The lan­downer owns it, and he tells us how he wants it done. Of course, we have the option of not doing it. Then it becomes an option of economics: Do we want to work or do we not want to work?

“We can’t influence (Louisiana-Pacific) at this time. We’re just ants on a big ant hill. We can give them our opinion, but that doesn’t really go very far. And as a matter of fact, a lot of times our opinion is held back because they do hold the strings. Not just L-P, all the timber companies. If you want to work, if you want to even sell the timber—we could get a job with a private land owner, say someone who wanted to do some tree thinning and a little fore­stry and we like the job and went to do it. If we’re on the shit list, that per­son isn’t going to be able to sell their logs if they know that we’re working for them. The timber in­dustry can come down on people…

“We complain sometimes about the fact that we don’t think the best job is being done, but we do it anyway and we try to do it as well as we can under the Forest Prac­tice Rules that are in place at the present time…I think that a lot people often see loggers as be­ing pretty heartless, go-getting people. They’re really hard work­ing, that’s for sure. And I find that when it comes to wildlife, loggers will go out of their way to protect or avoid hurting forest animals. I don’t know too many loggers who would squash a squirrel on purpose or squash a fawn…” [60]

The irony in Foreman’s and Abbey’s stances was that they did not actually speak for the Earth First! The vast majority of them, including cofounder Mike Roselle, often disagreed, either in part or altogether, with Foreman’s and Abbey’s perspectives, and many were vocal in their opposition within the pages of the Earth First! Journal and elsewhere.[61] Holding spokespeople accountable to the rest of Earth First! was somewhat difficult however, because from the start it was agreed by its founders that Earth First! would have little or no structure. As Edward Abbey once described it:

“Earth First! is not an organization. It doesn’t have a president, a vice president, or even a secretary. It doesn’t have any officers at all. It doesn’t have a headquarters or a hindquarters. Who’s their leader? It doesn’t have a leader. We’re all leaders, and there’s thousands of us running around loose!”[62]

It was common to hear many Earth First!ers declare that it was “a movement, not an organization.” [63] As such, local Earth First! groups often took on their own, individual character, but—in spite of the apparent lack of cohesion—Earth First! also did manage to organize itself into a seemingly unified whole. Earth First! grew rapidly, just as the IWW did over a half century earlier. In fact, in the 1980s, in the United States of America at least, Earth First! was one of the most vibrant, fastest growing radical movements in existence. [64]

Whatever their intent, or the roots of their founders, Earth First! typically found itself struggling most against multinational corporations anyway, simply because they were the biggest polluters. Earth First!, was in practice unrepentantly anti-capitalist when capitalist interests directly threatened wilderness biodiversity. This was particularly true in the case of government sanctioned livestock grazing (by private interests) on public lands. [65] Earth First! first sounded the alarm (outside of the indigenous movements in Brazil) about the destruction of the tropical rainforests in order to provide vast acreages of cheap grazing land so that US based fast-food corporations could produce cheap hamburgers. Naturally this meant that Earth First! had to confront large fast food corporations, particularly Burger King.[66] In the course of their struggles, Earth Fisrt!ers, including even Dave Foreman, did adopt some pro-worker stances against specific corporations with which it struggled against on ecological grounds, not so much out of a sense of solidarity—though this was evident also—but in recognition of the interrelatedness of their adversaries’ enemies. For example, one proposal by Earth First! to reform the USFS included the demands such as “preference to worker-owned timber companies for bidding on federal timber”; “Require all companies operating on public lands to be labor intensive”; and “A prohibition on the export of raw logs”.[67] Anticipating “just transition”, Local Earth First! groups would even call for reparations for displaced timber workers through the creation of wilderness restoration jobs.[68]

* * * * *

At the time of the regime change at Pacific Lumber, no Earth First! group had yet formed in southern Humboldt County. The process for establishing Earth First! contacts was somewhat ad hoc. Earth First!ers would organize road shows, travel to various locations, principally those where ecological battles were being fought, and give presentations that included information, both spoken and visual (often in the form of slide shows) and sometimes spoken word or live music. Through these efforts, various Earth First! groups had been established throughout northwestern California. Already many of them had participated in ecological campaigns, including the coalition against L-P’s Garlon spraying in Mendocino County, the fight to preserve and expand the Sinkyone Wilderness, and against the bulldozing of a road from Gasquet (in Del Norte County) to Orleans (in northeastern Humboldt County) through Yurok Indian land threatening forestlands located near there. The nearest Earth First! groups were in Ukiah to the south in Mendocino County, and in Arcata to the north. The Arcata group had been established the previous year, after Mike Roselle had made a stop there on one of the road shows, and Bill Devall was the principle contact, but the group was already mostly defunct.[69] The campaigns that had involved the existing Earth First! groups were largely winding down or in a lull, and neither the Ukiah nor the Arcata Earth First! group seemed eager to take on the fight to stop Maxxam, in part because Earth First! focused primarily on defending public wilderness lands and P-L was “private property”. [70] Fortunately, Earth First! was about to receive an infusion energy from two eager young newcomers named Greg King and Darryl Cherney.

Greg King originally hailed from Guerneville in Sonoma County, though he had roots in Humboldt County. The King Range wilderness area was named after his ancestors who had settled in northern California several generations previously, and were—ironically enough—some of the earliest loggers in the region.[71] King, himself, was an investigative reporter who had joined in the environmental movement in response to Louisiana-Pacific’s timber harvest practices in Sonoma County along the Russian River. According to King, he caught L-P in the act of violating several of the state’s forestry laws in its harvest of second growth redwoods there, but the CDF had chosen to ignore the rules in favor of the corporation, in spite of public protests over the transgressions. Two of the violations were environmentally related, whereas the third was a violation of property laws, in which L-P had neglected to notify three of the 20 landowners adjacent to and within 300 feet of the logging site. King wrote and published twenty articles about the issue and received the Lincoln Steffens award for Investigative Journalism awarded by the Sonoma County Press Club and Sonoma State University. King later got involved in the campaign to save Sally Bell Grove in the Sinkyone against Georgia-Pacific’s clearcutting. He recalled:

“I was so amazed and horrified at what I saw, I decided the area up here could use a lot more work ecologically. If that is what was being allowed to happen to the virgin redwood forests up here, I just couldn’t be hanging out in Sonoma County and still trying to work on the issues up here.” [72]

True to his word, he moved to southern Humboldt County and continued to work as a freelance journalist, submitting ecologically oriented articles to various publications, including The Nation.[73]

Meanwhile, Darryl Cherney, a former English teacher and child actor with a penchant for songwriting and an interest in ecological issues himself, arrived in California just about the same time that Maxxam raided Pacific Lumber.[74] Cherney was born in New York City in 1956.[75] At age five, while riding his tricycle around West 57^th Street, he had the good fortune to be “discovered” by Tony Schwartz, the famous television producer who produced the infamous anti Barry Goldwater “Daisy” commercial for the Lyndon Johnson presidential campaign.[76] At age six, Cherney began playing music and his talent developed quickly. Between the ages of six and eleven, Cherney starred in three dozen TV, radio, and voice-over commercial pitches for various products, including Ivory Snow, Upjohn Unicap chewables, High Grade Baloney, Hunts Catsup, and Bosco Chocolate Syrup (“the art of making Bosco”). After that, he went on to earn a BA in English and a Master’s Degree in Urban Education, both from Fordham University. In 1982, while traveling on the West Coast, Cherney walked among the ancient trees of Humboldt Redwoods State Park and knew he wanted to relocate to California permanently. [77]

In October of 1985, Cherney headed west to stay.[78] On his way south from Oregon, Cherney stopped to pick up a Cheyenne Indian hitchhiker named Kingfisher. Cherney explained that he desired to live off of the land, and Kingfisher responded by admonishing Cherney to settle in Garberville, California, in southern Humboldt County, which Cherney did. Kingfisher had practically guided Cherney straight to the doors of EPIC in Garberville, who were deeply involved in the fight to save the Sinkyone wilderness area from the chainsaws and axes of Georgia-Pacific.[79] He managed to make a marginal living as a caretaker and building manager at the old Bridgewood Motel in nearby Piercy.[80] In exchange, he was able to live there rent free and earn a very small sum of money for basic needs.[81] Cherney quickly involved himself in Redwood forest issues, the fight to save Big Mountain, and Cen­tral American Solidarity work. When Cherney heard of the Maxxam takeover, he was initially surprised that cutting old growth redwoods wasn’t illegal altogether, and felt that a strong community response was needed.[82] He had never heard of Earth First! before he saw a sticker on the door of the EPIC office showing a clenched fist Earth First! logo.[83] He asked around and learned of the contacts in Ukiah and Arcata, but that neither group was especially active at the time.[84] Cherney met Greg King in the course of an action to save Sally Bell Grove during the Sinkyone campaign, and the two had become good friends.[85]

The two made an effective team. King was adept at dissecting THPs as well as a skilled reporter, but he was at heart most at home walking deep in the forest, much like Henry David Thoreau. Cherney, on the other hand, was—much like his singer-songwriter persona—very much drawn to the media spotlight. Both agreed that something needed to be done in response to the Maxxam takeover of P-L.[86] Cherney took on the leadership role immediately and appealed to local activists to stand up and be counted, even though sometimes—with all of the crises affecting the environment locally and worldwide that “sometimes we might feel like (Hans Brinker) putting his finger in the leaking dyke, only to find two new holes (had) appeared.” [87] In due time, King and Cherney decided to call an Earth First! meeting in southern Humboldt County, and announce the formation of their new group, the “Redwood Action Team” (otherwise known as Southern Humboldt Earth First!). They were soon joined by others interested in stopping this new threat to the already devastated old growth forests of northwestern California, including EPIC, Greenpeace, the Humboldt Greens, the local chapter of the Sierra Club, and the socialist leaning Peace and Freedom Party.[88] The new group quickly became adept at utilizing the local and vibrant community and environmental press in both Humboldt and Mendocino Counties, including the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Country Activist, EcoNews, Mendocino Commentary, and Mendocino Country.

In spite of the urgency, the new Earth First! group didn’t immediately rush into battle against Maxxam, because they were relatively unknown. Their first demonstration consisted of rally, held in August 1986 (less than a year after Maxxam’s takeover of Pacific Lumber) in the safe and relatively friendly confines of Arcata Plaza against the World Bank and the latter’s policy of financing the liquidation of old growth forests around the planet. The destruction of the tropical rainforests—included in the broader description of ancient woods—was recognizable to a much larger audience, and that target served to draw people’s attention to the depletion of temperate old growth much closer to home. In contrast with Foreman, Cherney established from the get-go that this Earth First! group would be sympathetic to the plight of the timber workers, declaring:

“With this entire region being logged out at an alarming rate, the timber companies will be looking to foreign countries more and more. Loggers here will be out of work quickly unless they want to work as cheaply as in Indonesia. Local companies must become interested in sustained yield, which also translates into sustaining jobs for northern California.”[89]

Shortly following their debut, at the California Earth First! rendezvous in Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Redwood Action Team announced their next demonstration, specifically targeting Maxxam to immediately follow the gathering.[90]

Earth First! organized a public protest against the corporation on October 22, 1986 in San Francisco at the PALCO corporate offices at Sansome and Washington Streets. Since Cherney and King were relatively unknown, the two lined up Earth First! cofounder Dave Foreman (from Arizona) and none other than David Brower (from the San Francisco Bay Area) as keynote speakers. The protesters called for an international boycott of all redwood products until old growth logging was banned. After a rousing speech given by Foreman, in which he declared, “What right do we have to think we can make a buck by cutting down 1,000-year-old-trees to make picnic tables and planter boxes for yuppies on their patios?” the 70 assembled demonstrators let out the signature Earth First! coyote howl.[91] Then, Brower came right to the point, opining:

“For many years, Pacific [Lumber] was the best lumber company in the business, managing its lands on a sustained-yield basis, (but with the vastly accelerated cutting rate under the new regime, Pacific Lumber will be) stealing natural resources from future generations adding instability to the North Coast.”[92]

This initial environmentalist protest against Maxxam would be followed by hundreds more over the coming quarter century. Right from the start, however, P-L management had anticipated the demonstration and had closed the offices for the day. Maxxam issued a statement in response to the event declaring, “Pacific Lumber Co. has adhered strictly to a policy of responsible forestry…for over 100 years and…remains firmly committed that policy,” never once admitting that the increased timber harvests were contradictory to the Murphys’ old logging methods, a point hammered home by Foreman and the other speakers. [93] The P-L executives, mostly getting ready to close the San Francisco office for good and move their operations south to the MCO offices in Los Angeles scoffed and pondered what sort of reaction the activists would receive in Scotia.[94]

Suspecting that the company’s official statement was a lie, in early November, 1986, a small group of Earth First!ers led by Greg King, risking arrest for trespassing on private property, hiked into the woods of Pacific Lumber for a firsthand look at the threatened redwood stands. They had been motivated to such action by news of a new logging road into the forest sited by a sympathetic pilot.[95] While in the forest, they could easily see the contrast between forests once logged by company under the previous ownership, which were decidedly logged yet spaced every twenty to forty feet were “small” old-growth trees left to regenerate the forest. King said, “Although the tract looked logged, it also looked like a viable forest. In today’s world of Nazi logging, the old Pacific Lumber was a gem.”[96] Passing through an area being clearcut, they came to a large, more than 3,000 acre stand of untouched roadless virgin forest at the highest point Little South Fork of the Elk River and Salmon Creek that had been rumored to exist. Due to its relatively large size, the 96 percent elimination of the original redwood biome, and the absence of similar redwood groves within a 25-mile radius, it was quickly identified as one of the world’s most important biological remnants. [97] Another local Earth First!er, Larry Evans, named it “Headwaters Forest”, because of its location. [98] Greg King described Headwaters thusly: 

“Walking across a landing at least a half-acre in size, we slowly approached what I knew then to be a legendary forest: steep, clas­sic California coastal ridges, flowing for miles into the far dis­tance, di­vided by year-round pure water streams, and choked with huge redwood trees that sprouted be­fore Chr­ist’s birth. This par­ticular area was ap­proximately (3,000) acres—never logged, rarely even walked upon, one of as many five such tracts owned by Pa­cific Lumber that may not exist (except as wasteland) in five years.

“They were grand, these free-flowing trees, huge dancing branches in the wind. I absorbed their peace, their energy, their life that supports so many wild animals, including a few humans. I stood, stared, breathed deeply, and felt their power. I was unaba­shedly awed. Yet concurrently I felt tragic, forlorn, as if embrac­ing a friend, a lover, moments before what I know will be her brutal torture, rape, and destruction.”[99]

King and his companions were soon discovered by Pacific Lumber forest manager Robert Stephens and Carl Anderson, the P-L security chief who was, “the size of a refrigerator”. Stephens asked the visitors what they were doing.

“Hiking” responded the Earth First!ers, to which Stephens responded,

“(How would you like it if I were) walking through your front yard?” (as if Stephens himself lived in and personally owned Headwaters forest). King and his companions were warned against further trespassing and then escorted out of the forest.[100] They perceived, however, that in order to monitor what they assumed would be an ever increasing onslaught, they could not honor Stephens’ admonishment. Their reasoning was certainly justifiable on environmental grounds. Headwaters Forest and five other nearby smaller but similarly diverse old growth groves now threatened by Maxxam’s accelerated clearcutting represented a crucial habitat island at the midpoint between Redwood National park to the north and Humboldt Redwoods State Park to the south some 80 miles apart. Preserving this newly identified ecological gem in the middle of both was perhaps critical to the long term survival of old growth redwood forests at all. To make sacred the notion of “private property”, a concept and status that was literally unknown, save for a mere fraction of this forest’s lifetime, was, in their eyes, tantamount to ecological suicide, or perhaps even genocide. [101]

Earth First! wasted no time in responding. The next demonstration against Maxxam took place in Arcata at the town’s central plaza on November 25.[102] Other participants included members of the local chapter of the International Indian Treaty Council, who were appreciative of Earth First!’s opposition to the G-O Road. [103] This time, Cherney and King were the keynote speakers, and again, the similarly sized crowd of demonstrators howled enthusiastically in response to them. As some had done in San Francisco, a handful of skeptics pooh-poohed the event, perhaps thinking, “Arcata doesn’t count. This college town has fifteen different places to buy tofu. The meat-and-potatoes part of the county is where it all really matters.” Nowhere was that sentiment displayed more than among the staff of the Humboldt Beacon and Fortuna Advance, a publication which routinely ran paid advertisements from L-P, P-L, and Simpson, and whose editorial positions were, for the most part on the far right of the political spectrum. They explained to Darryl Cherney—who questioned their absence in Arcata—that only if Earth First! had the cajónes to march into Scotia itself, would the workers bother to show. Darryl responded that the newspaper wouldn’t be disappointed.[104]

Sure enough, Earth First! mobilized a third time on December 3, though this time they did so under the name of “Save the Loggers’ League”. Cherney had chosen this name because, in his words, “No matter how active the environmentalists become, the key to success on the Maxxam issue rests with the woodworkers. If they don’t believe they need help there’s little anyone can do for them.”[105] In anticipation of the event, Darryl Cherney had created a newsletter with the same name. The publication was sent, by mass mailing, to post office boxes in towns with heavy woodworker populations, including Scotia and Carlotta. It included an appeal to fight Maxxam in order to protect the workers’ jobs, a story about the return of Paul Bunyan—who could find no more trees to cut, a description of the Maxxam corporate structure, quotes from timber workers as well as Maxxam themselves revealing the latter’s crassness, and a humorous description of the endangered species known as “The Scotia Logger”, (Latin name Sequoius Devourus Beerdrinkusi); the benevolent former owner, the “Woody Murphy” (Latin name Hometownus Sustainus Murpholi); an outside predator, the “Greenbacked Hurwitz” (Latin name Treeranosaurus Maxxamus Profitus); and the strange long-haired, tree-loving creature known as the “Humboldt Hippie” (Latin name Environmentallus Hippus Freakus), who was actually the friend of the Scotia Logger even if the latter didn’t realize it yet.[106] The newsletter even included the following statement from IWA Local 3-469 representative Don Nelson:

“The greatest manmade disaster ever to befall the redwood forests of Northern California is occurring today with the sale and profit taking at Pacific Lumber Company…The last remaining Redwood Region company town will soon be a thing of the past, a subdivision will likely replace it, The economy of Humboldt County will boom for a few short years while the overcut is occurring but then the fall that will come will be worse than we’ve ever seen before. People will be jobless, tax bases will disappear, (and) the North Coast economy will founder…

The federal and state governments must take immediate action to control timber harvesting by the redwood companies at a level that will be sustainable over the long term now while there is still timber available to harvest. You must act now to prevent the clearcut, break-up, and destruction of the finest single timber property in Northern California.

The people’s right of eminent domain must be asserted to prevent the destruction of the economy of Humboldt County and Northern California. The stability of the economy of Northern California redwood region depends on timber being available to harvest each year. The former Pacific Lumber Company owners dedicated their lands to sustained production of high quality forest products. Now the lid is off. The race is on the cut as much of their redwood timber as can be harvested. A production cycle such as we have never seen in this area is beginning. When the boom is over, the redwood lumber industry will be a fragment of history.” [107]

Darryl Cherney had stressed that the activists would frame their message carefully:

“We will not be venting anger towards the woodworkers…ultimately we are all environmentalists, with varying standards. Loggers want and need forests too. We want to bridge the gap now that we have something in common: a fear that Maxxam is going to sell Humboldt County down the road.”[108]

True to their word, approximately 70 marchers carried banners, chanted, prayed, and sang songs written by Darryl Cherney, with a deliberately chosen pro-timber theme, marching into the heart of Scotia itself. They issued a list of demands to the company which included a return to sustained yield policy and a halt to the cutting of old growth redwood trees, pledging that if these demands were not met, they would continue their call for an international boycott of redwood products. They also passed out many copies of the STLL newsletter.[109] Mike Roselle, who joined the marchers, noted the significance of the efforts to reach out to the affected timber workers, declaring, “Before companies were the ones holding demonstrations and crying ‘Save our Jobs’. Now it’s the conservationists saying ‘save our jobs’.”[110] The marchers circled the mill and ended with a Native American prayer.[111] There were reportedly no counter demonstrators to contradict Roselle’s optimistic assessment, though in most estimates the few workers who weren’t busy slaving away at their mandatory sixty-hour workweeks regarded the mostly “hippie” looking protesters with curiosity above all else.[112]

The press spin on the “Save the Loggers League” message was varied, however. The McNeil Lehrer News Hour devoted fifteen minutes to the event, including coverage of Darryl Cherney performing his pro timber-worker anthem, Where Are We Gonna Work When the Trees are Gone, in spite of an acute case of laryngitis.[113] Eureka Times-Standard reporter Gina Bentzley did quote maintenance worker Fred Elliot, but the latter repeated a standard Corporate Timber talking point, that there were more trees preserved in parks than one could see in a lifetime, which missed the point of Earth First!’s message entirely.[114] Elliot’s perspective was no doubt influenced by a leaflet published preemptively by P-L management warning the workers and residents of an invasion of “eco-terrorists”. On the other hand, EcoNews noted that the response from many Scotians was “varied”, but quoted some anonymous workers who viewed the demonstration favorably, noting that many even flashed “thumbs-up” gestures. One resident declared, “I used to work for the company, but got a job in Arcata so I could get a better feel for a secure future.” Another resident, still employed at P-L stated, “You know everybody in town is thinking pretty much the same thing, but no one will organize together, let alone go public. We’re sure our days are numbered.”[115]

As the new year began, the Earth First!ers immediately stepped up their efforts. On January 1, 1987 Greg King mailed out dozens of letters to federal and state officials, environmental organizations, and even a few timber industry heads urging them to meet with Earth First! and negotiate a solution to the problem presented by Maxxam’s accelerated harvest. “Otherwise this will be a battle with years of litigation and civil disobedience,” the activist declared.[116] Much to everyone’s surprise, P-L president John Campbell answered King’s letter and arranged to meet with his adversary in Scotia. The meeting, which lasted less than an hour, accomplished little more than reinforce to both sides that the other would not budge without a fight. Campbell declared that King was at best naïve, and at worst a threat to the long term livelihoods of the timber workers under P-L’s employ. By contrast, King perceived Campbell to be condescending and dismissive of the longer term consequences of Maxxam’s accelerated timber cut. The encounter concluded with Campbell curtly declaring the meeting had ended.[117]

* * * * *

Meanwhile, EPIC—whose acronym accurately spelled out the struggle that was about to ensue—led the environmentalists’ legal fights against Maxxam. In fact, there was no legal nonprofit better equipped and more dedicated to fighting such a war, and they were more than prepared to do so, having established their reputation through EPIC vs. Johnson. Although “Woods” Sutherland and Cecilia Gregori, along with many other EPIC members and volunteers, had attended the initial Earth First! meetings, for strategic purposes, although they often worked alongside of and in concert with Earth First!, they kept their legal game plan independent of the latter. [118]

Environmentalists of all stripes were convinced that the CDF had been dragging its feet on complying with the ruling. So far, the CDF hadn’t done much beyond adding a list of questions with a yes or no check-off box to the THP submission forms.[119] Pacific Lumber had filed an unprecedented number of THPs since the Maxxam takeover but there was no indication whatsoever that the CDF was considering the cumulative impact of the logging proposed therein, especially on old growth dependent species, such as the tailed frog, Olympic salamander, and the Northern spotted owl, any more than they had done in any past harvest plans.[120] Since the beginning of 1987, P-L had inserted a disclaimer into its THP applications which read, “Transition from old-growth to young-growth pro­vides beneficial environmental ef­fects (1) Increased wildlife habitat and carrying capacity. (2) In­creased wildlife species diversification…,” and the CDF foresters seemed content with this explanation. Ross Johnson (the “Johnson” mentioned in EPIC vs. Johnson), did concede that the CDF had its hands full, but he also revealed that his considerations were primarily economic, namely Corporate Timber’s bottom line.

“We know we’re going to be getting a lot of heat this year over old-growth cutting. The state is committed to balancing the needs of timberland owners with the needs of the environment. To a forester, old-growth trees don’t produce. People who manage forests in an industrial sense want trees that are growing in order to produce a continuing crop, so they cut the old trees. There’s no doubt that (Pacific Lumber has) doubled the amount of timber they want to cut.”[121]

Johnson’s attempt to find “balance” between the short term needs of profit oriented capitalism and environmental considerations, and his labeling of old growth forest stands as “unproductive” betrayed his ignorance of the emerging scientific consensus that business as usual was detrimental to the long term health of the forests as well as the viability of a timber based economy. His words were not altogether different from those of David Galitz who declared, “We’ve been here for 118 years and we could be here for another 100.”[122]

EPIC wasted little time in taking on both Maxxam and the CDF. Their first legal success came in February 1987 after they challenged the CDF approved Pacific Lumber THP 1-87-50HUM which proposed clearcutting 144 acres of old growth forests, most of it redwoods at Elk Head Springs on the divide between Humboldt Bay and the Van Duzen River watershed. Citing EPIC vs. Johnson, “Woods” declared that the CDF failed to show that it had adequately assessed the cumulative impact of Maxxam’s accelerated logging and that, “(CDF) should deny the THP and require a full environmental impact report.” He also indicated that EPIC would file additional challenges and even a lawsuit if necessary if the CDF didn’t comply with the letter and the spirit of the law, stating, “This is the first of a number of THPs we will be reviewing very closely.”[123] EPIC stood by their guns, and after much critical public comment at the review team meetings, Pacific Lumber withdrew THP 1-87-50.[124] Although this was a victory, it was hardly earth shattering. A fellow Earth First!er, Mokai, reasoned that the THP withdrawals were less a result of any growing democratic control over the CDF than the CDF’s actions as a willing legal advisor to Pacific Lumber, helping them redesign their THPs more effectively from a legal standpoint.[125] Still, it was an auspicious beginning.

* * * * *

Elsewhere, Bill Bertain resumed his “David versus Goliath” struggle against Maxxam’s questionable stock trading that had facilitated the takeover of P-L in the first place. He had plenty of incentive to do so. In the summer of 1986, Drexel Burnham Lambert’s Ivan Boesky had been implicated for insider trading. As a result, the Securities and Exchange Commission had begun conducting investigations of twelve companies that had engaged in transactions with DBL, including Maxxam, in its takeover efforts at Pacific Lumber.[126] On February 2, 1987, Business Week, published an article condemning Hurwitz as “an opportunist who borrows heavily to gain control of a company and then milks it of cash to finance his next raid.” [127] The next month local PBS television stations KQED in San Francisco and KEET in Eureka aired a half-hour documentary called “Takeover” which featured Earth First!ers and woodworkers—including John Maurer, who had quit the company in disgust by this time—condemning Maxxam’s acquisition of PL.[128]

Maxxam had anticipated the negative press, however. In order to whitewash their image, they retained the P.R. firm of Hill and Knowlton (H&K) for just such an eventuality, which was ironic given the fact that the very same firm had originally been hired by the old P-L Board to craft press releases against Maxxam.[129] H&K’s efforts resulted in a three part front page series in the Humboldt Beacon and Fortuna Advance, written by Enoch Ibarra. The series was a collection of exaggerations and strawman arguments designed to make it look like Maxxam’s critics were predicting immediate economic ruin.[130]

The first installment touted a study commissioned by Maxxam by the Oakland, California based consulting firm Hammon Jenson and Wallen which argued that P-L could continue at their current, increased harvest rate for another twenty years before returning to the harvest levels of the old Murphy-run Pacific Lumber. The article did cite concerns about sedimentation raised by the North Coast Environmental Center (NEC), but for the most part it attempted to paint environmentalists as pessimistic doomsayers, making irresponsible and unlikely predictions. At one point it stated, “(Andy) Alm (of the NEC) does concede that much of the concern on the environment is ‘speculative’” as if Alm, the NEC, and environmentalists in general were making numbers and predictions up out of thin air rather than careful, peer-reviewed science.[131] This was an unfair dismissal. Environmentalists, including those at the NEC, could only use the best available figures they had available to them—since much of the data on private timber lands was proprietary—but what information they did have available to them was sufficient enough to make a conclusive case that all was not well with the health of the forest based on the loss of biodiversity.[132]

The second installment ostensibly dispelled the “myth” that P-L’s overcutting would “hurt the economy of Humboldt County in the short run,” and challenged the KQED documentary Takeover. It also presented the supposedly astonishing revelation that Maxxam had retained all of the employee benefits from the old regime. Nobody was arguing that any of these had (yet) disappeared, and it left unaddressed the arguments presented by Maxxam’s critics was that there was no way for Hurwitz to guarantee the benefits’ survival after twenty years if he maintained the current, increased timber harvest rate. The article also made the inadvertently damning admission (by the timber industry at any rate), using figured provided by the California State Employment Development Department, that the number of jobs in Humboldt County had already been reduced by two thirds, from 13,000 to 4,500 since the 1950s.[133] Since environmental activism against Pacific Lumber only dated to the previous year, blaming environmentalists for this job loss would be utterly ridiculous and the recitation of the figures, at best, were a non-sequitir.[134] The article restated P-L’s arguments that their increased cutting—hence increased employment—were offsetting job losses by workers at the other companies, namely L-P and Simpson, thus helping the economy. Again, however, this only dealt with the immediate term, not the conditions that would exist after the twentieth year—a fact that Don Nelson was quoted in the article as pointing out. Finally, the article touted the 250 additional employees the company had hired since the Maxxam takeover[135], but didn’t mention that many of them had been hired from other states.[136]

The third piece was much like the other two, this time addressing the concerns, by Pacific Lumber workers mostly, that Maxxam would sell the houses in Scotia. Steve Hart, director of P-L employee relations had gone on record saying that the rent for the houses in Scotia which then stood at $250 per month, would remain at that level for the foreseeable future.[137] P-L Public Affairs manager David Galitz responded to the claims that Maxxam would sell the houses in Scotia by declaring, “That we’re going to sell off this community and (sic) one house at a time—that’s absolutely asinine![138] Neither Ibarra, nor anyone else in the article cited any hard evidence that Hurwitz didn’t have plans to do exactly that. Maxxam had liquidated many of P-L’s non-timber assets elsewhere,[139] but interestingly Ibarra barely mentioned these, choosing to merely include a quote by Galitz explaining that the Public Affairs manager had orders by the Murphys to sell the San Mateo timber holdings and Sacramento valley farmlands before Maxxam’s appearance on the scene.[140] The article only alluded to the others—in the future tense, as if liquidation of them had not yet already happened—and it certainly neglected to point out that the liquidation of non timber assets had substantially increased on Hurwitz’s watch.[141] Ibarra went on to document P-L’s expansion before the Maxxam takeover—including the acquisition of 24,000 acres of timberland from L-P—as well as after, including the purchase of an L-P mill in Carlotta, as “evidence” that the workers’ benefits wouldn’t be liquidated.[142]

Not content with this, Maxxam followed up with a prepared statement by Robert Stephens making numerous accusations towards Greg King that painted him as uncaring outsider with no real roots in the community, insensitive to the Pacific Lumber workers, and being uninformed about forestry or anything having to do with Pacific Lumber; the statement was published in the Eureka Times-Standard and the Humboldt Beacon and Fortuna Advance as a paid advertisement.[143] King had already gone on record calling for a dialog with the Pacific Lumber timber workers. [144] Yet, that didn’t stop Stephens from making the absurd claim that King wanted to shut down Pacific Lumber altogether.[145]

Greg King quickly responded to the Times-Standard refuting every one of Stephens’ accusations.[146] King had been on record advocating that Pacific Lumber “return to harvesting 4,000 to 5,000 acres per year and to sustained yield.”[147] King not arguing against logging per se, but rather that the new pace was unsustainable:

“On March 17, following one of the season’s heaviest rains, crews used tractors, which caused large expanses of mud to slide down hills into streams. Such massive degradations have gone unchecked by the California Department of Forestry (CDF). PALCO’s seed tree removal cut is a de facto clearcut, taking old growth trees from tracts selec­tively logged within the past few years. PALCO is clearcutting its untouched stands. Sources close to PALCO say that large portions of the company’s virgin red­wood and Doug Fir stands may be sold to other North Coast timber giants—such as Louisiana Pacific, Simpson Timber, and Georgia-Pacific—in­citing the elimination of these forests within a few years.” [148]

As for job losses, King noted the possibility that the 250 or so new employees hired by P-L since the takeover might have to be laid off, but he called for taxpayer funded relief programs to assist them in finding new timber related jobs.[149] Darryl Cherney offered his own defense of Greg King in a letter to the Humboldt Beacon and Fortuna Advance, suggesting that Maxxam’s statement was the pot calling the kettle black, that Hurwitz was the real outsider, and that conservationists were not opposed to logging, and wanted to see the old Pacific Lumber restored.[150]

Maxxam’s propaganda assault was no doubt also organized in anticipation of the opposition that would inevitably arise in response to the corporation’s plans to log the untouched old growth stands, including Headwaters Forest. Sure enough, in the spring Maxxam filed THPs 1-87-230, 240, and 241HUM with the California Department of Forestry. THP 230 proposed a clearcut of 111 acres of the last virgin forest on the Mattole River on Sulpher Creek, a stream that was undergoing extensive restoration due to past clearcutting. THPs 240 and 241 called for the harvesting of 265 acres from Headwaters Forest. As they had before, the CDF approved them without question.[151] This drew a quick response from Earth First and another lawsuit from EPIC.

EPIC was not alone in this case. They were joined by a group calling themselves “Concerned Earth Scientists”. Judith Waite, a graduate student studying geology, but not fully registered at Humboldt State University, sent a letter of protest identifying herself as part of CES, HSU Department of Geology & Environmental Systems”, to Dr. Gerald Partain, the director of the CDF, protesting the approval of the THPs. In a letter addressed to Waite, dated March 27, 1987, Don Christiensen, HSU Vice President for University Relations excoriated the activist for unauthorized use of the letterhead to legitimize her protest, charging that, “This university has no record of having authorized the activities or sanctioned the name of the organization”; that they had no record of Waite being a student there; and that they would pursue legal action if she continued her actions. Waite was convinced that the letter was politically motivated, perhaps prompted by Partain himself.[152] This was not an illogical deduction. Partain had been part of the CDF for three decades, and he was certainly no friend to the environmental movement.[153] And for that matter, HSU, a public university received a substantial percentage of its funding from private donations, particularly Corporate Timber.[154]

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Earth First!ers responded by organizing actions against Maxxam on March 25 in several locations, including Marin County; at the Maxxam headquarters in Houston, Texas; and at the corporation’s shareholders’ annual meeting in Santa Monica at the Miramar Sheraton Hotel.[155] It was at this southern California action where Greg King—who, with the help of a newly formed group of Los Angeles Earth First!ers, had cobbled together enough funds to purchase a small handful of Maxxam shares—carried out his intent to meet with Hurwitz directly. After convincing a pair of unbelieving gatekeepers that he was indeed an actual stockholder, he gained entrance to the Starlight Room of hotel where the meeting was in progress. King initially attempted to dialog with Hurwitz outside of the meeting in the convention room, but failed.[156]

The Maxxam CEO evidently had a lot more on his mind than a few pesky “hippie” environmentalists. An independent group of Maxxam shareholders were angry that he had effectively shortchanged them in restructuring the complex relationship between Maxxam and MCO. As part of this move, P-L had been valued at $840 million, but consultants had meanwhile assessed its depreciation value in excess of $2 billion. After a lengthy report announcing the merger of Maxxam and MCO into a single financial entity—which no doubt would enrich Hurwitz and solidify his empire still further—King attempted to address the shareholders but was denied the opportunity. Hurwitz would not be swayed by appeals to reason or citizenship.[157]

In response, Greg King and Darryl Cherney then unveiled their ambitious plans to take the protests against Maxxam to a national level. Earth First held two further protests against old growth logging, one at the College of the Redwoods on April 8 and the other at the CDF in Fortuna on April 16.[158] They then announced that the third week of May, beginning on the 17^th, would be a “Week of Outrage Against Maxxam” with actions in every location where the corporation had an office or operations. Furthermore, the demonstrations would involve direct action, including various instances of civil disobedience.[159] The actions were heavily promoted in the area of every location where a part of it was scheduled to take place, and by the looks of things, it would be Earth First!’s most complex demonstration yet.[160] Since the protests would involve a large degree of civil disobedience with a potential arrest risk Earth First! coordinated the planning through a loose federation of “affinity groups”, which facilitated decentralized, bottom-up planning as opposed to centralized top-down planning, following in the footsteps of the IWW, and other radical libertarian movements.[161]

The week before the week of outrage was set to commence, environmentalists continued to try and fight the THPs before the CDF during its weekly harvest review team meeting at the local office of the agency in Fortuna. On Thursday, May 7, 1990, four members of EPIC as well as King and Waite attended the review to address their concerns about the impact of the THPs on the nearby wildlife habitats and watersheds. Registered Professional Foresters Dave Drenman and Steve Davis, speaking on behalf of the CDF, argued that the proposed harvests posed no significant impact to the existing wildlife, though one of the pair based their conclusions on the existence of “plenty of other habitat for the wildlife to move into.” When questioned by King on the basis for which the CDF arrived at their determination, Drenman responded by declaring that the approval of the THPs was based on “the best available information they had.” The environmentalists then asked if any THP had ever been denied on the basis of significant adverse impact on wildlife habitat, to which the CDFs foresters had to answer in the negative. Then when asked if the THP process was not in fact actually based on economic considerations, one of the foresters admitted it was.[162]

This was a damning admission, and it is likely that it was an open secret that corporate timber would likely have preferred not be stated “on the record.” If P-L had hoped to manufacture consent, an inexperienced RFP had just blown it for them. In anticipation of the Week of Outrage, Earth First! had been handed a PR victory on a silver platter. Unfortunately, the very next day, the wheel of fortune would take a 180-degree turn.