Tree farmer wants stiffer penalties for timber protests
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A tree farmer serving in the Legislature wants to put tougher penalties on people who chain themselves to equipment and block roads to stop logging on state forests.
"There's been a 30-year reign of terror by these people having no respect for the rights of others," Rep. Wayne Krieger, R-Gold Beach, said Friday. "If they want to do civil disobedience, they can do that. It's part of the Oregon Constitution, and the federal. But when they go beyond that and start chaining themselves to trees, locking themselves to equipment, and laying down in the road, and in any way they impede access, then they have gone over the line."
His bill (HB 2995) would create a new felony charge of interference with state forestland management, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $25,000 fine. A companion bill (HB 2596) would allow loggers to sue protesters for lost income plus $10,000 up to six years after a protest.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jeff Barker, D-Aloha, said the criminal charge bill won't pass out of committee until it is rewritten to overcome constitutional problems with impairing people's right to protest.
"There seem to be some pretty clear constitutional violations in it," Barker said. "I asked him to try to rework that to make some sense out of it."
Barker added that as written, the bill may also violate the rights of unions to picket on a state road used by loggers.
Krieger, a former state trooper and former member of the Oregon Board of Forestry, cited protests against logging on the Elliott State Forest in 2011 as the latest example of anti-logging protests that stretch back to the 1980s, when people began protesting logging old growth forests on federal lands.
Since the 2011 protests, a judge has blocked logging in Elliott stands occupied by the marbled murrelet — a threatened sea bird that nests in old growth forests — while a challenge from conservation groups moves through court.
Grace Pettygrove of Eugene, who was fined a couple hundred dollars on a misdemeanor charge of trespassing from the Elliott protests, said people would not be deterred by increased penalties.
"I don't think that is what the criminal justice system is for, to punish people for standing up for what they believe in, especially when they are standing up for ecosystems in danger on public land," she said. "The fact that this is happening actually shows that these timber corporations are worried about the impact public awareness and public protest will have on their operations."
The Associated Oregon Loggers testified in favor of both bills.
"The contractors who get damaged by these kinds of activities are small family owned businesses that employ eight to 10 people," said associated President Jim Geisinger. "If they think they will bring Wall Street to their knees by hindering a small business to conduct their affairs, they are wrong."
Jason Gonzales of Friends of Oregon's Forests said the companion bill allowing loggers to sue protesters for damages was a further attempt to intimidate people. He said loggers already had the right to sue for damages, but such lawsuits had not had much success in court.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
We always have some of the unwashed commenting here, courage of convictions, living principals, some great young people carry a hallowed tradition of civil protest, Blessings on their work, this guy will be forgotten soon.
If some eco idiots chained themselves to anything I owned......Â
they would find themselves on the wet end of a water cannon. Â
If getting wet didn't seem to bother them.... Â maybe put some sort of rotting carcass just out of their reach but well within their ability to smell it.Â
Maybe they'd  enjoy some pepper spray.Â
How about some snakes on a chain......
or take a page from the military playbook at blast loud music/noise at them for hours on end.
I suspect it wouldn't be long before  eco idiots were on their merry way.Â
Can't cut down trees, can't build houses, can't have whale sushi. How annoying.
Bottom line is that trees are a renewable resource. They get cut, cleared and replanted. However some people think that it's better if we have forest fires instead. Wouldn't that make a bigger carbon footprint (if you believe in that sort of thing...)?  Â
PBBBBFFFT! Nuke and pave.
If they have the right to protest, it should be without destroying property, or polluting the ground around them, Having the right to protest is one thing, they should perhaps be responsible enough to know the difference between vandalism and legitimate protesting. Also if they have the courage to protest, perhaps they need to take the masks off. Otherwise they are just hiding.
@Just Lookin The ones who vandalize are a minority, and if they brag about it too loudly the police will be tipped off.
The old ones call them "action-junkies": The Occutard-types who show up more in it for the adventure than the cause. They wear masks because of people like a buddy of mine from OSU who was hired to go out in the woods in camo and black sweaters to harrass and terrorize them.
I went to Warner Creek for a press tour and had all four of my tires destroyed, but it was by people sympathetic to, if not employed by, the Freres Brothers logging company, and not Earth First. In the news, however, it was reported as ecoterrorism.Â
At Tobe West, they rubbed poison oak on the seat of the portable toilet the protesters had brought to use. They weren't blocking anything; logging hadn't started yet. But if you were -on- the road, even though there was no logging, you got arrested. A friend of ours who lived on a ranch down the road got ticketed for riding up the road on her horse to see what the fuss was all about.Â
Having been there, I want to tell you guys that reading reporters coverage of the issue must have been what it's like for Vietnam of Afghanistan war veterans listening to people who weren't there talk about how things were. There is a vast difference between what is reported and what is actually happening because the photographers will aim for the radicals and the reporters will interview the people who bully their way into the interview and say the most sensational things.
@Playanekes @Just Lookin Spot on. There is a huge difference between blocking a road or hollaring at the forest service and being a terrorist. But those that think differently probably also assume anyone who protests outside planned parenthood is guilty in some measure of murdering doctors and bombing abortion clinics, and should also be prosecuted as terrorists. I wonder how these loudmouths feel about taking guns anywhere they please, regardless of laws, and if they think those who do should also be prosecuted as terrorists...
@Playanekes@Just Lookin"At Tobe West, they rubbed poison oak on the seat of the portable toilet the protesters had brought to use"
now that is definitely stepping over line no matter who did it. Sometimes it is more of who has the money than who may be right or wrong. Yes, the Freres Lumber company is one who want to protect their $$ more than do what is right.Â
Thanks for sharing the information
There's been a 30 yr. reign of terror on Oregon's forests. Have you people actually gone out there and seen the decimation! It's like a nuclear bomb went off. No slash clean up, no utilization or salvage of a lot of wood, no re-forestation, mud slides and enormous erosion, oil and petroleum waste all over, and God only knows what damage to the environment. Then people wonder why wildlife is showing up in neighborhoods and destroying farmers fields. It's cause and effect-- you stupid stupid people.
@None Anyone here ever looked at Google maps???
Now go to the forests and look at the patch work of clear cutting going on.
The mill jobs are gone ( china ) but they are Still stealing the timber...Â
The irony of someone proposing such a draconian law uttering the words "There's been a 30-year reign of terror" is too rich. Â Someone get this proto-facsist garbage a one-way ticket out of the USA!Â
I dont see a problem here. someone needs to fight for mother nature
Oh yeah they really care about trees by the looks of that pickup on it's side spilling fuel and oil into the ground. And then there are the ones that set fire to equipment or the University of Washington to protect the enviroment.
@32jim2 So, are you going to lump all gun owners into one category based on the rare actions of a few?
The spotted owl turned out to be lies
@Bert Yes at the time of the "Spotted Owl" outcry, I worked in a plywood mill. There was a Spotted Owl nesting in the rafters of the mill. Of course the timbers in the mill were cut from so called Old Growth timber. Maybe it was just confused.
Most protesters know nothing about the issues they protest.
Timber is a renewable industry. It is no different then a field of corn. It just takes many years to re-grow instead of one season. If left too many years it gets dry rot and bugs. A forest with lots of wood peckers is a forest with lots of bugs eating on the trees..
Many of the forest fires where we have lost the use of the timber were a terrible waste. Had they been harvested when they should have been there would have been no forest fire. And it would have been replanted already
@Yamhill354 @Bert That's a total lie, the spotted owl was just the tipping point and no you cannot replace thousand year old trees, 500 year old trees? or 300 year old trees?, your a mighty soul to make bold claims you couldn't tender, much less sharpen my chain, i cut timber for a living and your full of what ever turned your eyes brown, as it was not me set policy and only work we loved to be outdoors, your as ignorant as any stump could be and that insults the stump, we overcut, because corporations like wierdhousers, longview, georgia-pacific tramped leaving nothing but one clearcut to the next is why we, loggers united to change forest practice act and get buffers between cuts of 160 ac, because we fish, pilgrim
@Yamhill354 @Bert Sometimes a Great Notion is a great movie
@Yamhill354Â @Bert You worked at a plywood mill?Â
Is that before they started shipping the timber offshore to be milled because it was cheaper than having local mills do it, and then blamed the loss of jobs on the spotted owl?
@kramr @Playanekes @Yamhill354 @Bert EXACTLY right! Most of the world doesn't give two s--ts about a 2x4. They're metric.
Hull-Oakes, outside of Alsea, wanted taxpayers to turn their mill into a historic exhibit, so that they would be guaranteed a certain volume of old-grown-diameter timer every year, which was required to use their 1910-era steam operation which required large diameter logs for reasons I don't know.
They were trying to get you and I to pay for the roads, pay for the trees, give them exclusive access to the forest so nobody would see what they were actually doing, and then give them tax-exempt status for being Historic, and then keep all the revenue AND all the tourist money.
The real reason for all of this is that they didn't want to invest in modern milling equipment. Anybody who opposed them was a commie ecoterrorist who hates history.  There were over 1000 arrests made that year, and over 900 of them were thrown out for being unConstitutional. It was awesome to observe.
@kramr @Playanekes @Yamhill354 @Bert There is a universal standard for chopsticks
@Playanekes @Yamhill354 @Bert """"""shipping the timber offshore to be milled because it was cheaper than having local mills do it,"""""
Another significant  reason raw timber is shipped overseas vs being milled here first is the Asian markets need the  lumber to be cut into metric sizes and for whatever reason  American mills couldn't/wouldn't do that.Â
@Playanekes @Yamhill354 @Bert Yes and our mill went down.
they are not protesters, they are eco-terrorists and should be dealt with like all other terrorists, ship em to guantanamo.
@franksbeans I would think that after 9/11 you'd know the difference between terrorism and civil disobedience.
People engaged in civil disobedience speak English, and terrorists speak in other tongues?
@Playanekes  guess you've never heard of the ELF (earth liberation front) and what they do.Â
They like to burn up Log Trucks, SUV's  all in the name of saving the planet
So while you may call  it civil disobedience  I as most of the world call it eco terrorism.Â
@jpk No, Mr. Obtuse.
Terrorism is blowing people to f--king bits or videotaping their heads being sawed off or zooming in on the way an Iraqi boy's mouth foams and his eyes fade after he and his father have just been publicly executed in the Anbar province.
Terrorism is flying airplanes into buildings, or setting off bombs in airports, or going house to house with machetes. To Marine veterans I know, "the walking dead" referred to somebody who had made to stand up in a dark closet in his own excrement for six months, suddenly rescued and released back into the public.
At Warner Creek, terrorism was two dudes in a pickup throwing rocks at a hippie girl swimming in the creek near the bridge. They took her clothes and threw rocks at her while she stayed in the cold water, until they tired of it, and then dropped thousands of roofing nails on the road on the way out. One of the victims they got was the sheriff, off duty, taking his boy fishing. The hippies waved him off the road and walked ahead clearing the tacks off and trying to direct weekender traffic to the cleared areas. Of course, -that- was never reported.
If three hippie girls blocking a road "terrorizes" loggers, then, loggers are certainly not the manly-men they portray themselves to be, are they?
Maybe what should happen is that these so-called protesters are the ones that go in after the farming is done, and they plant the new little saplings. Be ecologists, not just "environmentalists". That word disgusts me now like no other, because it has been taken to the extreme.Â
That those lands are supposed to be public, and corrupt legislators and tree farmers continue to steal them at taxpayers expense, is a small source of joy to me. Â I say log the hell out of all public forests, subsidize the process, sell the timber to china, and have them make crap that generations of logging families can buy once it's shipped back here.Â
If you don't like it, write a letter to your congressman.Â
@U. Slag That's obviously irony, but it's the most intelligent post I've read so far here.
I got to tour a log truck company owner's private B-25 bomber. HE isn't starving.
There should be stiffer penalties for this group! Have you ever been in a sawmill and have the bandsaw hit a spike driven into a log? The teeth to the saw break off and on the most part the bandsaw will break and your running for your life getting out of the way!! Maybe attempted murder? So yes stick it to them! Make them pay for the dumb ass stuff they do! It is clear these people have no jobs or they would be doing something else! And don't ask for the Forest Service to help cause they will support the timber industry. Surprising the State doesn't call this group a gang? More then a group of 5.
@Rough Grader Some sawmills have metal detectors in some places for that exact reason. On occasion equipment would shut down, so the operator could check what was going on.
Especially the chipper...
@Just Lookin @Rough Grader
A porcelain electric fence insulator will escape the metal detectors. Also, as in 1997 when one was found in a tree, it will be claimed on the news to be a tree spike (by, say, the Freres Brothers again) and no retraction will ever made when it turns out to be a just an artifact from an old fence.
Lore will have it, though, that somebody's dad was hit by a tree spike back in '97 and it was the worst carnage you can imagine. Those dirty terrorists!
@Playanekes @Just Lookin @Rough Grader Â
True, the old porcelain or glass insulators would not be found by a metal detector. The retraction or updates need to be made by the reporters when they find out what actually happen.
I do not know of anyone who was almost hit by a spike, but did see the aftermath of a large bolt after it went through a chipper...the cleanup person had tossed it on the wrong side of the metal detector, so it went in and shut things down for a few hours.Â
@Playanekes @Just Lookin @Rough Grader I lived it, and saw it!! You can assume anything you want!! I know what was driven into them logs (trees). So assume all you want. Enough said on my part I know what happened.
@Just Lookin @Rough Grader Not all detedtors are fool proof.
@Rough Grader "bandsaw hit a spike driven into a log?"
Can you tell us when the last time that happened was? In the 1990s the Freres Brothers claimed to have found a "spike" which was reported around all the media, but it was never reported that investigators determined that the "spike" was just a piece of an old fence that had grown into the tree bark.
@Playanekes @Rough Grader I made a living working in a sawmill from the early 70's until 1989! The spikes started happening when the protesters were screaming about the spotted owl in the early to mid 80's. The roads into the logging areas were also getting blocked and the Sherriff had to go make the protesters move! Cause the Forest Service would not do that because they are on your side. So I have then moved on with another job cause the mill is no longer in operation.. So you can now do your happy dance that the mill is down!!!!!!
@Rough Grader @Playanekes
And naturally you assume that the spikes were put there by nonviolent hippies, and not somebody trying to discredit them.
I interviewed an old-school Earth First!er, who ended up turning in somebody who burned a USFS truck in 1997 or whenever it was. She referred to the instances in the '70s and '80s. That was a handful of people doing their own thing, and if it was tolerated as an "experiment," it was an utter failure.
In the words of an old "ecoterrorist," vandalism and violence are more destructive to the cause than they're worth, and if there were every any gain at all, it's not worth maiming somebody's daddy.Â
They refer to the new batch as "action junkies" who steal all the attention. Tre Arrow is the poster boy. They hate guys like that.
I like this proposal.
Or make a law that says if they chain themselves to a piece of machinery the operator can just get in a drive off. Either the protestor better have the keys to unchain themselves or become part of the road.
@RalphCramden just take a welding torch and cut off the chains. the burns they get from the chain will keep them form doing it again.
@32jim2Â @RalphCramden It's interesting that Americans are advocating burning other human beings over a timber protest.
"The contractors who get damaged by these kinds of activities are small family owned businesses that employ eight to 10 people," said associated President Jim Geisinger.Â
So Jim who is getting the $300 million from the sale of the timber??
"If they think they will bring Wall Street to their knees. by hindering a small business.??
Well they are wrong this wall street company will steal your timber and sell it to china weather you like it or not..
It's like protesting the rail services for transporting the Jew's to death camps..
It wasn't the train but the people doing the killing..
When I worked for the forrest  service their was rampant theft of timber from corporations.
The Forrest service would sue and the corp would disappear(Bankruptcy)  and come back with the same people just in different positions and would steal another $45 million in timber and not do any clean up or replanting.
So.....
Don't protest the delivery driver ( log truck driver ) protest the corporate theft and the business of theft of State lands..
Remember It's OUR Forrest too .....
Unions don't have any rights, nor does anyone else, to use these kind of tactics to stop what they don't like - I hope the bill isn't rewritten, and passes!!!
punishment needs to be jail time, Â many protesters don't have two nickels to rub together so fines won't effect them at all.Â
@kramr Maybe the punishment should be that they actually work for the tree farmers...for free! Community service, so to speak.Â
@washcomom @kramr  Has anybody ever asked them what else they do?
Hint: Once again, you're only hearing one side of the story/
@kramr The cheapskates in Oregon, who won't spend a penny to keep real criminals in jail are not going to spend anything more to keep protesters in jail. Â
They look like they need a shower.
@TreeWizard So they can come over to your house???