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04/21/2003
Remember where the Ewoks from Star Wars lived? Well, there's a village
just like theirs and it’s in Oregon.
Two hundred feet above Oregon's Willamette National Forest, a battle is
underway – a battle being waged by warriors who say the issue is
clear-cut.
These environmental activists call themselves Red Cloud Thunder. They
started building the tree village atop a stand of old-growth Douglas
firs near Eugene, Oregon last April and they are protesting the
government's sale of the old-growth forest to a logging company.
The protestors say as long as they're up in these trees, loggers cannot cut them down.
There is no electricity and food and water has to be hoisted up, waste and garbage lowered down, but their belief are strong enough to keep them out there.
"It's magical walking through here and having the trees actually speak to you and talk to you. They give you their energy,” said one of the protestors.
But the trees aren't the only ones who've been talking to the protestors. The Forest Service has, too.
"The Forest Service has sold the rights to log those trees to the timber company and it's our position that they have the right to do that,” said Bruce Gainer, U.S. Forest Service.
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"We've had a couple of physical assaults where protestors have tackled officers," he said. He also claims that protestors have dropped objects like jugs of urine toward officers.
But Dean Rimerman says that never happened. “We are in a position where the Forest Service very much wants to discredit us,” he said. “Forest Service law enforcement has been very violent and aggressive towards us."
Officer Terry Bertsch is especially concerned about teenagers living up in the trees.
"There's a number of young people, very impressionable. They're the ones I'm concerned about,’ he said.
But the protestors say they will stay in the tree tops until they get written proof the old-growth will be saved. They say when a protestor briefly left this tree, the logging company cut it down.
"They can't replant the eco-system that's taken 600 to 800 years to become the way it is,” said a protestor.
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So how will this end? Like the protest, that's up in the air.
April 2003 update
Fall Creek will be celebrating their 5-year anniversary with a variety of events between April 20 - 22, 2003
