Greenpeace action suggests new forest war

Promising an "unprecedented" summer for forest protests against Bush administration policies, Greenpeace on Tuesday fired a first salvo by blocking an Oregon logging road with a three-ton container and three activists chained to it.

The activists spent seven hours chained to the container — two were inside, and a third outside — before police broke their locks, according to Greenpeace spokesperson Celia Alario.

The container was set down on a southern Oregon road leading to a federal timber sale site in what Greenpeace said were "236 acres of old-growth forest."

The administration's latest policies have been framed around the idea of minimizing wildfires by additional logging of overgrown or diseased national forests and other federal lands.

Moratorium sought
Greenpeace said its protest Tuesday marked the start of its campaign to declare a moratorium on commercial logging on public lands.

"These beautiful, old trees are our national treasures and the lungs of the planet. But instead of protecting the last remaining forests, the Bush administration is attempting to destroy them," Bill Richardson, campaigns director for Greenpeace, said in the statement. "If Bush continues to ignore the public’s wishes to keep their forests healthy, it will be up to the American people to rescue our public forests from this imminent danger."

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Citing a need to speed up projects to thin overgrown forests, the Bush administration has limited the public appeals process and encouraged additional logging via "stewardship contracts" and post-fire "salvage logging."

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'Forest rescue stations'
Greenpeace expects additional actions and earlier this month also debuted its "forest rescue station," a mobile lab and tents set up on forest land and open to the public. That station is also in southern Oregon, and Greenpeace said it plans to open more in "endangered forests across the country."

Plans include opening one in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest, said Alario, who predicted an "unprecedented response this summer" by activists.

Greenpeace and others "are going to be taking to the defense of their public lands," she added. "This is going to be a big summer in terms of forest activism."