Construction crane used for environmental protest

05:05 PM PST on Thursday, February 19, 2004

From KING5.com Staff and Wire Reports

KING Activists hung a banner from a construction crane Thursday.

SEATTLE – Five members of an environmental group scaled a construction crane Thursday morning and unfurled a banner blaming Weyerhaeuser for harmful logging practices.

The banner read: "Wake up Weyerhaeuser. Protect Forests Now."

In a press release, the group said the action marks a campaign to "transform the barbaric environmental practices of Washington-based logging giant Weyerhaeuser, the number one destroyer of old-growth forests in North America."

“We are asking Weyerhaeuser to be an environmentally ethical business in all of the 44 states and 18 countries in which it operates, not just those where local public pressure has forced them to the table,” said Jennifer Krill, director of Rainforest Action Network’s Old Growth Campaign. If left to companies like Weyerhaeuser, every last ancient tree will get turned into two-by-fours and grocery bags.”

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Eric Wilkinson reports

They say the campaign follows the group's recent victory with Boise Cascade Corp. that resulted in the company’s withdrawal from old-growth forests in the United States, and adoption of a plan to exit endangered forests worldwide.

Weyerhaeuser spokesman Frank Mendizabal said the company does log some old-growth areas in Canada, but said all such activity is in cooperation with the government and indigenous people.

KING Protestors who scaled a construction crane to unfurl a banner blaming Weyerhaeuser for harmful forest practices were arrested Thursday after they came down.

He said "there's no way to measure" whether Weyerhaeuser does more such logging than any other company. "The bottom line is, we agree. If their point is that paper products should come from sustainable forests, we agree," Mendizabal said.

Police arrested four demonstrators and the five that scaled the crane when they came down. About 75 workers at the Belltown construction site were told to go home.

A spokesman for the Rainrorest Action Network said the protest was just the beginning of its campaign against Weyerhaeuser.