Is it the unparalleled magnificence of the redwood forest or the human population that rose up to defend it that spawned the kind of campaign that became iconic? The David vs. Goliath battle against Charles Hurwitz and his Maxxam corporation became a poster child for opposing corporate power in America. The historic Headwaters Forest campaign, begun with only a handful of activists, embodied many unique aspects and "firsts": the Headwaters Deal included the first multi-species, large forest acreage Habitat Conservation Plan. The Headwaters Forest campaign had to be one of the first times Earth First! and the Sierra Club held hands in coalition. Redwood Summer, Judi Bari's brilliant strategy of morphing a small direct-action effort into a mass organizing campaign, catapulted the redwoods onto the national environmental map in 1990; and Redwood Summer in turn spawned many other campaigns on the same model, right up to the recent "Mountain Justice Summer," organized to stop mountain-top removal for coal mining in the heart of Appalachia. The Steelworker / "hippie tree-hugger" alliance that grew into the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment was without precedent and spawned the "Teamsters and Turtles" alliances at the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle and other "blue-green" alliances. The courageous and precedent-setting litigation championed by EPIC also stands out, as well as legislation like Dan Hamburg's 1994 Headwaters Forest Act that could only be called bold and biocentric, certainly a rarity in the D.C. Beltway. There was magic; there was power; and those whose attention was captured went all the way to the White House and Bill Clinton. Everyone wanted a piece of the action to save the redwoods.
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But without the cadre of people willing to go the extra mile, bank their strategy on innovation, and literally lay their bodies on the line, sometimes in the mud, the campaign would not have become what it did.
Many people who now work as restorations, homesteaders, or teachers and are community pillars in northwest California migrated there as part of the "back to the land" movement of the '60s and '70s. I was headed there myself, or perhaps Oregon or British Columbia--subscriptions to Organic Gardening and Farming and the Mother Earth News in hand and candle-making skills in my back pocket--but I stumbled upon the recycling movement in the Bay Area, a new and radical concept back in the '70s, and that activism kept me in the Bay.
But that migration and, more importantly, the sensibilities, idealism, and political awareness of those landing in Northern California were the seeds that made that area a breeding ground for political activism and campaigns that would be springboards and iconic examples of possibilities elsewhere. And just as significant as the new arrivals were those who were already there--the locals who had "woods work" in their blood, the fishermen, and the indigenous population that Northern California remains home for, in significant numbers (tragically, a rarity in the 21st century). That combination of humans proved to be a singularly potent group of people to meet the challenges of addressing, and in some case repairing, impacts of years of industrial logging on fisheries and watersheds, which culminated with the arrival of a Texas-based corporation that would ultimately exhibit zero regard for community needs or ecological systems.
No doubt this is a unique area. One has only to hear the stories that emerge from the canopy from people like Remedy, Steve Stillet, and Julia Hill about flying squirrels, and voles that never descend to the ground, to feel the awe. But we have kept the remnants intact because of the unique population of human beings--human beings who have a deep sense of place, also a rarity in the 21st century.
Those who know me well know that I am much more likely to be singing the praises of a wet-backed salamander, or a predator feline, or even a chirping cricket than those of my own species. Being a dyed-in-the-wool biocentrist, a Deep Ecology fan bordering on misanthropy, I sometimes feel that I was mistakenly born into the "wrong" species. So I feel particular empathy with those of the human persuasion who operate with a strong sense of place. It is that strong sense of place that brings strong hands and backs to carry out stream and hillside restoration whose benefits only future generations will see.
It is that strong sense of place that provided the bodies to grow groups like the Mattole Restoration Council which, in an area with its population in small numbers and spread out, still has enough high-octane people trained in science to carry out restoration projects that set the bar for hundreds of other groups and to track Pacific Lumber's watershed analysis with aplomb. The rich biodiversity of the wet coastal forest has indeed been matched by the richness of the human-staffed groups--groups like Sanctuary Forest, the Institute for Sustainable Forestry, Seventh Generation Fund, EPIC, Friends of the Eel River, the many watershed groups, and Earth First!
Those who live in a rural forested area defined by watersheds may be delivered a responsibility to care for and restore those watersheds, but the work can only spring from a sense of place that brings the understanding that we ARE the mountain defending itself.
Here in the mid-southern reaches of the redwood forest ecosystem, it is a bit harder to get to that place--not difficult for those like myself who have the luxury of feeling the fog drip from redwood branches fifty feet up, but for those who encounter concrete when they step outside their front door. That, in part, defines our job here in the Bay Area.
Because those people are part of the web as much as those living 150 miles north of here, my organization--the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters--was formed at the height of the Headwaters Forest campaign in 1993. Part of our job is to help engender in people removed from their forested back yard, from their birthplace, a sense of place and an understanding of the quality-of-life issues involved with maintaining healthy forest ecosystems and rushing cold streams with scrabbly gravel beds--quality-of-life issues that do relate directly to those living in the urban jungle. And that is how we got 6,000 people to rally for the forest in 1996 and 8,000 in 1997.
As Aldo Leopold said, "Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization." And so it is still the raw material, under the concrete, that we stand on.
All of this brings us, as a human community working together, to the understanding that yes, we are the mountain defending itself.
We are the forest defending itself.
And that has been one of the most valuable and joyous
lessons of my life.
For more information please visit www.headwaterspreserve.org*