SIS holds teach-in to prepare for logging company protest

Karen Wood-Campbell could remember her first environmental group meeting when she first… Karen Wood-Campbell could remember her first environmental group meeting when she first moved to Oregon after college. The meeting was held in a beautiful old growth forest, but to get there she had to drive through miles of barren, deforested land.

“It was like driving on the moon,” she said. “It was appalling.”

She later learned this logging was the work of the Boise Cascade Corporation, a company that takes much of its timber from old growth forests, which “are the most valuable and most rare forests of all,” Wood-Campbell said.

To kick off its campaign to stop Pitt’s usage of Boise Cascade products, the environmental committee of Students in Solidarity held a teach-in Wednesday evening at the Cathedral of Learning.

Wood-Campbell, regional contact for the Allegheny Defense Project, presented information on what she argued were Boise Cascade’s numerous environmental and human rights violations. She also described more environmentally sound alternatives to using virgin wood products and some tactics Students in Solidarity could use to further its campaign.

In addition to her current work with the Allegheny Defense Project, an organization that works to protect and restore forests in the Allegheny region Wood-Campbell coordinated a Boise Cascade boycott for the Siskiyou Regional Education Project for the National Forests in Oregon in 1996. She also ran Fiber Options Paper Co., a tree-free paper supplier, from 1997 to 2000.

Old growth forests are ancient habitats containing trees in multiple stages of life, with younger and decaying trees growing beneath the canopy of older trees. These forests support many types of plants, animals and fungi.

“Old growth is very valuable from a scientific standpoint as well as a habitat for animals,” Wood-Campbell said.

According to the Rainforest Action Network, “78 percent of the planet’s original old growth forests are home to 50 percent of the earth’s plant and animal species, and 75 percent of the world’s indigenous peoples.”

In spite of these statistics and the public support for old the preservation of old growth forests, Boise Cascade is still one of the United States’ top loggers and distributors of old growth forest products. They are currently the top logger of U.S. federal lands and take much of their wood from endangered forests both in the United States and in parts of South America, according to the RAN.

These endangered forests include the Sugarloaf Region of Siskiyou National Forest and the Mt. Bailey section of the Umpqua National Forest, both in Oregon. The Rainforest Action Network also says that Boise Cascade is also the leading plaintiff in a lawsuit fighting a national policy protecting 58.8 million acres of national forests from further logging and development. The company is also under Environmental Protection Agency investigation for alleged 20 years worth of air pollution violations.

Boise Cascade also has also been linked to several human rights violations, according to Wood-Campbell. These include worker safety violations, labor union busting, and sexual harassment. Boise Cascade has also been connected to a 1995 massacre of 17 members of the Organization of Peasant Farmer Ecologists in Guerrero, Mexico. The men were demonstrating against Boise Cascade’s logging, as well as the region’s general logging practices. After the incident, investigators found several arrest warrants for the demonstrators dated for the day after Boise Cascade signed a contract with Guerrero’s governor, according to RAN.

When outlining strategies SIS could use in their campaign, Wood-Campbell mentioned the benefits and relatively low cost of using paper and wood products made out of post-consumer recycled waste and fibrous plants such as kenaf.

Currently, the environmental committee of SIS is examining recycling regulatory policies and the aspects of Pitt’s contract with Boise Cascade and forming coalitions with other student groups for the campaign.

“It’s a good place to start,” environmental committee member Ramin Skibba said. “Boise Cascade is bad, so they’re an easy target. We’re in the beginning stages, but we’ve got lots of stuff ahead.”