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GLENDALE, Ore. (AP) The environmentalist group Greenpeace opened its summer campaign to protect old growth forests in southern Oregon with a mixture of low-tech tactics and a high-tech way to tell the world what it was doing. Three protesters were arrested Tuesday after being dislodged from a 20-foot shipping container that had been plopped down in the middle of a logging road to block workers from getting to 236 acres of forest designated for a timber sale. Two men equipped with a video camera and a laptop computer with a satellite Internet connection were locked inside the steel container, giving updates. Another protester sat outside the container, her arm through a hole in one side and locked inside a concrete-armored box. After authorities removed the three protesters, loggers hooked a chain to the back of a pickup truck and dragged the container to the side of the road, getting to work seven hours late on the Soukow Timber Sale about five miles west of Glendale.
"It is more important to draw attention to the broader public issue that our ancient forests are being sold off to the highest bidder," said Bill Richardson, Greenpeace campaign director, as loggers drove past the container. "This is a national campaign to end commercial logging on ancient forests on public lands." Painted yellow and emblazoned with the words "Ancient Forest Protection Starts Here," the three-ton shipping container was hauled in by truck before dawn onto the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Medford District and slid into place to block the gravel logging road, Richardson said. The container was equipped with solar panels to power the laptop, a speaker to communicate with the outside, and an air vent to keep the inside cool. Those inside transmitted videos and statements via satellite that were posted to the Greenpeace USA web site. Protests like this one have become part of doing business for timber companies, and are likely to continue, said Don Hardwick, south region timber manager for the Swanson Group, which bought the Soukow timber to supply its sawmill and plywood mill in nearby Glendale. "It's just becoming more of what we do," Hardwick said. The three protesters -- Jennifer Kirby, 26, of Washington, D.C.; Kingman Lim, 23, of Berkeley, Calif.; and Anthony Villagomez, 22, of northern Oregon -- were freed after posting $500 bail. They were charged with misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and interfering with agricultural operations. |