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Breaking: Activists Still Stupid

The Big O is reporting that authorities have a arrested a large group of activists who were blocking a logging road near the Elliot State Forest. The action was organized by Cascadia Rising Tide and Earth First!. A lot of the activists no doubt came from the Cascadia Summer Action Camp, which was based largely out of Eugene. The activists have a website up at forestdefensenow.org (as opposed to forest defense sometime in the foreseeable future).  Besides the obvious silliness of a person sitting in a tree and crapping in a bucket, the Oregonian explains why the protest is absurd:

Earlier this week, Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky of the group Cascadia Rising Tide said the activists are trying to protect native forests that help prevent global warming by storing carbon, as well as providing habitat for northern spotted owls, marbled murrelet and salmon. The blockade was the culmination of the Round River Rendezvous, an annual gathering of Earth First and other groups, she said.

State forestry officials said surveys in 2005 and 2006 found no evidence of marbled murrelets nesting in the 79-acre timber sale site. Spotted owls live in the Elliott State Forest, and about half the 93,000-acre forest is set aside as owl habitat and cannot be logged.

Several small seasonal streams run through the sale area. A year-round stream also runs through the unit, but it does not have migratory fish runs, according to the forestry department. Buffer zones have been established near yet another stream that empties into the Umpqua River.

So what you have, in effect, is a bunch of activists locking themselves down to protest a relatively small, well-planned and conscientious logging operation. Of course, the poseur revolutionaries at the Student Insurgent will let no such facts get in the way of their environmental zeal. No compromise in defense of mother earth!

Snark aside, if y’all want to actually do something proactive for the environment, rather than play martyr, there are NGO’s out there that use these things called “science” and “money” to identify important wilderness areas, buy the property and preserve them. The biggest is perhaps the  Nature Conservancy, but there are plenty of other local ones, such as the McKenzie River Trust. Remember, kiddos, money talks just as loud, if not louder, than a stinky hippie in a tree.

  1. L. Hamlett says:

    Perhaps a professor at a state university should check his language at the door. (Language… see what I did there?) The least you could do is utilize the degree your parents paid for, you oozing hemorrhoid.

    As luck would have it, the sawyers were able to continue in on foot all of two miles in and cut away, since the real equipment on jobs like those are always kept on site.

    I hope the hippies get charged for the damage they did to the state roadway, too. Make them refill it by hand with trowels and a 5 lb dildo on a stick to tamp the dirt and slap each other in the face with.

    As far as salmon goes, it’s illegal to cut the trees in riparian zones in Oregon. The spotted owl may be another species, but lo and behold they somehow produce offspring with barred owls. Unlike mules, the sparred owl is able to reproduce. (What if black people are really a different species?) And lastly, the marbled murrelet is a dumb animal, as it only lays one egg a few miles inland, and always closer to the top of the trees. Hippies think Darwinism ought to be taught in public schools in lieu of creationism, but heaven forbid it actually follow its course. Hypocrites.

    Wait, let me rephrase that.

    Fucking hippies.

    As an aside, I found it funny that it was mostly people from out of state protesting on a state forest.

    “**PLEASE DONATE IF YOU CAN, ALL MONEY RECEIVED NOW GOES TO LEGAL FUND!**” — from the forest defense now site…. By “legal fund,” do they mean to pay off their misdemeanor fines because they spent all their cash on pot?

  2. T says:

    May I suggest blowing up this comments thread and starting over?

  3. Orev says:

    What about this fella? In charge of the “WSU Anime Club.” I didn’t realize that there were that many ways to draw a cow…

    http://www.crs.wsu.edu/facstaff/jussaume/jussaume.html

  4. Orev says:

    GW Hayduke…isn’t that from the Monkey Wrench Gang? Yes, I’ve read all of Edward Abbey’s books, and appreciate that they are works of fiction. That link to the professors website is comical, how does a pansy liberal like that survive in Pullman? I know that the locals ride cows to their classes, what does he ride in? Probably a hybrid, covered in cow manure, flung by self-respecting students. It sure ain’t Christian to judge a stranger, but I just hate looking at him.

  5. Miles Rost says:

    I was going to say something about using guns to shatter the kneecaps of the protesters, but I’ve decided it would be much better to just find them, bring some rotten butter, and throw it at them.

  6. Vincent says:

    You

  7. CJ Ciaramella says:

    And you, if you’re using your real email address, are Christopher Arigo, an assistant professor of english at WSU. You write poetry, and your interests include: “Ecopoetics and anticivilization theory, Ethnopoetics (especially in regards to hunter/gatherer cultures) and Ecocriticism.”

    And you look like a douchebag.

    I hope your poetry is better than your trolling.

  8. G.W. Hayduke says:

    You’re a fucking douche bag of the most virulent and ignorant kind.

  9. Vincent says:

    The mistake you’re making is assuming that these protests are actually about the environment; They’re not. What they’re really about is giving a bunch of self-righteous 20-something narcissists an excuse to go out and pretend like they matter.

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