Old-growth activists target Weyerhaeuser; 5 arrested

By Craig Welch and J. Patrick Coolican
Seattle Times staff reporter

	GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Protesters climb onto a construction crane yesterday in the Belltown area of Seattle to unfurl a giant banner criticizing Weyerhaeuser. The Rainforest Action Network and the Forest Action Network claimed responsibility for the action. Five women were arrested.
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Forest activists who helped persuade building giants Home Depot and Lowe's to stop buying products made of wood from some old-growth forests have set their sights on a new target in Seattle's back yard: Weyerhaeuser.

Citing a breakdown in talks with the Federal Way timber giant over its forest practices — primarily in Canada — a group of environmental activists climbed a construction crane in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood for five hours yesterday, hanging a 50-by-50-foot banner that read: "Wake up Weyerhaeuser, Protect Forests Now."

The Rainforest Action Network, based in San Francisco, and the Forest Action Network, based in Canada, claimed responsibility for the spectacle, which led to the arrests of the five women on suspicion of reckless endangerment and criminal trespass, both misdemeanors, police said.

The environmental groups have been in talks with Weyerhaeuser since September, trying to persuade the company to stop cutting down trees in parts of Canada that never have been logged. The move is the first in a campaign that, based on earlier crusades, could include boycotts of Weyerhaeuser customers.

"They haven't moved off the dime — they're talking to us as if it were still the mid-1980s and they didn't have to respond, but the reality is the market has changed," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Rainforest group. "In the public consciousness, old-growth forests are now as fundamental as baseball, apple pie and Derek Jeter. Areas that have escaped industrial logging to date should remain off-limits."

But Weyerhaeuser officials, who were caught off-guard by the display, said they've been working with environmental groups across Canada to set aside sensitive lands there. They said negotiating operational changes takes time. Company officials also said they're proud of their environmental track record.

"We were surprised today by their aggressive actions in light of our recent discussions," said Weyerhaeuser spokesman Frank Mendizabal. "We're not going to be intimidated by groups making erroneous claims about our practices. Actions like today do not help in establishing trust."

Weyerhaeuser holds logging rights on lands in Canada nearly the size of New York. Worldwide, it has operations in 18 countries, and buys and sells many wood products from trees it doesn't cut down itself.

Greg Higgs, of the Forest Action Network, said Weyerhaeuser is logging vast tracts of old-growth forest every year, much of it in Canada. "We all have a vested interest in the world's forests," Higgs said.

The Rainforest Action Network is behind a wave of environmental activism that combines civil disobedience and protest with aggressive free-market campaigns to try to force changes in the forest-products industry. They hang banners and disrupt business, while conducting behind-the-scenes negotiations, urging companies — including financiers such as Citigroup — to only do business with companies that follow guidelines for environmentally friendly forest practices.
 
Four years ago, after the group took its issues to building-supply companies Home Depot and Lowe's, the companies agreed to phase out purchase of products from "endangered" forests such as British Columbia's so-called Great Bear Rainforest and give preference to wood certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council — an independent auditing organization favored by environmentalists. Company officials from Lowe's, for example, visited the Northwest and Canada to get a firsthand look at forest practices.

Last fall, Boise Cascade became the first large U.S. timber company to accede to some of the Rainforest Action Network's requests, agreeing to work to protect forests in Chile, Indonesia and elsewhere, and no longer log old-growth timber on public lands in the United States.

Yesterday, in a letter to Weyerhaeuser's chief executive officer, Brune applauded the company's work to help protect 2.4 million acres in the Great Bear Rainforest, along the north and central coast of British Columbia.

He expressed regret that the company still logs in otherwise untouched areas of Canada and imports products from around the world from areas it considers "endangered." It called for a complete and immediate moratorium on logging in so-called first-growth forests, forestland that has never been commercially logged.

Mendizabal, however, said Brune's group was misinterpreting the company's record, and said no such moratorium would take place.

Weyerhaeuser has worked with environmentalists and the B.C. government on agreements to make wildlife habitat and acres of old-growth off-limits to logging, while continuing to log first-growth trees.

Its forestry practices are certified under an independent auditing system favored by the timber industry, but the company is working to build international certification standards. The company also said it supports some conservation measures in Canada's northern and inland forests. It is also working on a long-term initiative, but that takes time, Mendizabal said.

"We're working on these things," Mendizabal said. "We were hopeful that we were on a path to help (the Rainforest Action Network) understand our environmental stewardship. Now we have to decide if we're willing to continue those discussions with this group."

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com

J. Patrick Coolican: 206-464-3315 or jcoolican@seattletimes.com

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