"Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

The battle continues over the Hobson timber sale in the Siskiyou National Forest.

A log cabin erected by protesters trying to block logging on the timber sale area in southwestern Oregon was removed by loggers and U.S. Forest Service officials. The cabin was erected this past weekend in the middle of the only road leading to the Hobson timber sale in the Siskiyou National Forest. KGW reports that the Forest Service used equipment provided by loggers, including a skidder and a front-end loader, to push the log cabin aside. Laura Sutherlin, a spokesperson for the activist, told KGW that there were about 40 protesters on the site at the time. Oregon Live says that it was unclear if any arrests were made, but the Josephine County Sheriff's Office said no activists had been taken to its jail.

As the cabin was constructed earlier in the weekend, the forest activists declared the area the "Siskiyou Free State."

The Siskiyou area is the site of the 2002 Biscuit Fire that burned through 500,000 acres of forest.

Cascadia Rising says Bush is using fire hysteria to launch an attack on western forests and reap the profits from corporate logging interests of which Siskiyou National Forest is just one front.

The Oxygen Collective points out that, “The area is home to botanical species found nowhere else in the world; the Siskiyou is considered the last wild place in the continental United States.”

According to the collective, sporadic forest fires are natural and healthy processes, renewing wilderness areas and spurring re-growth.

“Fires have contributed to the diversity of this land for 10,000 years,” said Oxygen Collective member Lesley Adams during the slide show. “Land needs fire like fish need water.”

The Collective says that although a variety of measures were taken to fight the Biscuit Fire, it eventually burned out on its own. The collective said that more fire damage could actually be attributed to fires started intentionally to create a fire line. The areas where dead trees were hauled away have failed to grow back as quickly due to the lack of nutrients from burnt material. Areas that had been logged and replanted were completely wiped out because the trees had been placed too close together.

“When Bush came to announce his healthy forests policy, it was like a dark force spreading over the land,” said Oxygen Collective member Rolf Skar. “And they are coming in a big way.”

Skar said that most people assume the Siskiyou is a protected area. In other regions that have fallen under healthy forest policies, forestry services have claimed they will pluck out small trees and then have proceeded to saw down trees that have stood for hundreds of years. Thinning out small trees proved to be too expensive, and as a result the forestry service removed the most fire-resistant ones, Skar said.

“Logging opens up the canopy to sunlight that dries out the land,” he added. “This makes the area only more vulnerable to fire.”

Logging operations also require the construction of roads, which means more bulldozers and more erosion, he added. Runoff water is often contaminated and washes into larger rivers that provide spawning habitat for salmon.

The goals of the impending Biscuit Fire Recovery Project — termed the Texas Chainsaw Massacre by collective members due to the involvement of the Bush administration — include logging 20,000 acres of old-growth reserves and 12,179 acres of inventoried roadless forest; as well as creating 50,200 acres of artificial flammable tree plantations.

According to Oxygen Collective representatives, the project will violate the Clean Water Act, further endanger dwindling salmon populations and actually increase the risk of fire for surrounding communities.

“No one has ever seen anything like this before,” Skar said. “This is more logging than has ever been proposed in a national forest. Fire is just their smoke screen to log. It flies in the face of science, public opinion and common sense.”

Coming up Wednesday for those in the area the film, Truth and Lies of the Biscuit will be shown for free at the Green Room on the corner of 5th and J in Grants Pass at 7:00 PM. Sources: Cascadia Rising, KGW (Oregon), Oregon Live, Rouge Valley IMC