Last month, the Trump administration dealt what to some seemed like a near-deadly blow to one of the most successful legal tactics environmentalists use: showing in court that a proposed project would harm the habitat of a creature on the endangered species list.
But seasoned activists told Street Roots the movement has often faced the seemingly insurmountable. The real task, according to some, is overcoming them. This month, activists are celebrating the anniversary of one such successful campaign to prevent the logging of an old-growth forest. It’s one that many still look to for inspiration.
Aug. 16 marks three decades since activists prevented the logging of 14 acres of old-growth Douglas firs nestled deep in the Willamette Valley Forest. They used both legal challenges and direct action to protect the forest.
On Aug. 24, supporters and participants in the nearly year-long blockade at Warner Creek will come together once more to reflect on the campaign’s legacy at the 30th Anniversary Victory Celebration at WOW Hall in Eugene.
The celebration coincides with a slew of rollbacks on key environmental protection laws, including significant weakening of the Endangered Species Act. Under changes the Trump administration announced July 10, the law no longer protects the habitat of species designated as threatened or endangered. According to the federal government, logging, mining and other development projects are now allowed in areas designated as endangered wildlife habitats, so long as creatures on the list aren’t directly killed or injured.
Noah Greenwald, the endangered species codirector for the Center for Biological Diversity, worries the change will lead to species going extinct.
“The Trump administration’s removal of habitat protections for endangered species through a regulatory sleight of hand will be a disaster for Northern spotted owls and most every other at-risk species across the country,” Greenwald said in an email.
To understand how Warner Creek’s success serves as a guide to confronting these and other challenges, we need to step into the past.
A ‘firestorm of controversy’ ignites
The Timber Wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s was a period of deep division and conflict over clear-cutting ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest. Generations of rural Oregonians had made their living through logging. That changed when dwindling numbers of Northern spotted owls triggered protections of the birds’ habitat.
In the midst of this tense period of history, the 1995 Warner Creek blockade captured the attention of a national audience. But the campaign to save Warner Creek began years before the blockade was erected.
In May 1991, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer blocked timber sales across the Pacific Northwest in order to protect the Northern spotted owls’ habitat after the animal was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Loggers were not happy. And at the time, the U.S. Forest Service routinely logged forests after wildfires.
That October, an arsonist set ablaze 9,000 acres of old-growth Douglas firs, scorching the Warner Creek area. A few weeks later, the Forest Service announced that Warner Creek would be reopened for salvage logging sales.
Tim Ingalsbee, wildland fire ecologist and co-founder and executive director of Fire Fighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, played a key role in the Warner Creek campaign.
“Within the span of a few weeks, it went from an area where any further logging was prohibited, to the nation’s largest timber sale program of its time,” Ingalsbee said. “It sparked a firestorm of controversy.”
Forest activists and supporters in the area quickly came together to oppose the plan, arguing the sale could set a precedent for others seeking to bypass environmental protection laws.
Ingalsbee and others had a slogan to describe what they saw: “Light it, fight it and log it.”
The Forest Service claimed the burnt forest could no longer house spotted owls. But according to Ingalsbee, multiple owl fledglings were spotted during the first spring season following the fire. This added to the growing pressure against the Forest Service.
Overwhelmed by opposition, the Forest Service eventually organized a committee to come up with alternative solutions. Ingalsbee was one of the committee members, due to his experience with forest fire management.
Representatives from the timber industry argued in favor of logging the area, claiming that old-growth clear-cutting would be environmentally beneficial and that clear-cut areas serve as fuel breaks that reduce the severity of future wildfires.
But opposition was strong.
“‘Let’s learn from the burn’, was our slogan, and make this a research natural area,” Ingalsbee said.
Ultimately, the Forest Service did not select Proposed Alternative “EF” (which stood for “ecology of fire,” but was read by many as Alternative “Earth First”).
The Sierra Club and the Oregon Natural Resources Council (now known as Oregon Wild) filed a lawsuit seeking to block timber sales in the burned area.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin issued a non-binding opinion to U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan, suggesting that logging be halted until the Forest Service had considered arson as a factor.
Victory seemed to be near.
But on July 27, 1995, President Clinton signed into law a provision known as the “salvage rider” as part of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1995. This provision suspended environmental reviews and lawsuits against timber sales.
Ingalsbee described the initial response shared by many environmentalists as “shock and dismay.” He claimed national environmental organizations “essentially threw up their hands,” describing their response as just waiting out the provision, which was set to expire at the end of the year.
Local activists were of a different mindset, according to Ingalsbee.
On Sept. 6, Judge Hogan dismissed the lawsuit, based on the salvage rider. With Warner Creek officially back on the chopping block, outraged activists left the courtroom, spread the word, and quickly made their way into the Willamette National Forest, Ingalsbee said.
The blockade
What followed would become known at the time as the longest-running blockade of a logging road in U.S. history. The blockade lasted 343 days, with activists holding their ground, even through a cold, wet winter that caked the outpost in eight feet of snow.
Upon arrival, activists quickly set up camp.
What started off as a handful of people quickly grew as word got around, Ingalsbee said. In a matter of days, the blockade at Warner Creek transformed into a lively base camp.
Scenes from the documentary “Pickaxe” (1999), directed by Tim Lewis and Tim Ream, show blockaders using resources around them to build a large wooden fortress with a moat in front to prevent loggers from passing.
Some activists integrated additional direct action tactics. Hazel Robin was one of four “Warner Women” arrested at the end of the blockade.
“The main direct action tactic that was used at Warner Creek is what is called a ‘lockdown,’” Robin said.
That’s when someone creates a barrier to entry by locking themselves to something that prevents others from passing through.
“So in the case of Warner Creek, for example, there was a lockdown in the road, which was buried in cement in the road with a door over it that someone could bury their arm into,” Robin said. “And the other lockdown was a Forest Service gate that was repurposed to be a blockade. So the gate was already there, but people locked it shut with cement barrels and inside the cement barrels were places where people could lock their arms into with a carabiner.”
Direct action combined with continuous legal battles fueled momentum and kept unrelenting pressure on the government.
Eventually, in 1996, the Forest Service capitulated and agreed to cancel the sale.
Activists like Robin fought to the very end. She and the others who remained knew a deal was in the works but was not yet finalized. When police arrived to dismantle the blockade, the activists refused to leave until they saw official paperwork as proof that the deal went through.
Still, police arrested Robin and the other remaining activists, along with two reporters with the Register Guard, as the Forest Service dismantled the Warner Creek blockade.
The arrested activists’ suspicions weren’t unfounded. The official signing that canceled the Warner Creek timber sale wouldn’t be finalized until several days later, after large protests outside and within Lane County Jail.
Those locked inside the jail were oblivious to the extent of work to support them and their mission.
“When I went outside, it was amazing,” Robin said. “At that point I was told that people were having meetings with legislators and doing big protests and all sorts of things to ensure that the deal was in fact followed through on. I believe that it was all of that work that was done and all of the arrests that made it so the deal did finally go through.”
The aftermath
For the next two decades, loggers didn’t touch Warner Creek.
“It became a jungle of new forest recovery and it was remarkable,” Ingalsbee said.
Ingalsbee continued to advocate for the area to be set aside as a research natural area to study the land’s regrowth process after a burn.
In 2022, the Cedar Creek fire again burned much of the surrounding area, including Warner Creek.
Even so, the work to protect Warner Creek still inspires many today.
With major environmental protection laws facing attacks by the Trump administration, the Warner Creek campaign shows a way forward, demonstrating a successful combination of strategies and, in particular, the power of endurance.
“All of these campaigns lasted for years, so people really did dig in their heels which I think is a good organizing strategy, personally,” Pickett said.
Among the current obstacles are the recent rollback to the Endangered Species Act and continuous attempts to cut or limit other laws and policies such as the Roadless Rule, which limits logging and road building on over 60 million acres of forests and grasslands.
“I think a big part of why we want to do this event for the 30th anniversary is to highlight a successful multi-year campaign that can be an inspiration and an example of what’s possible when people come together to take grassroots collective action,” Robin said.
In particular, Warner Creek is an example of the success of direct action.
Karen Pickett, co-founder of Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, is an organizer with Earth First. Since participating in her first direct action in 1983, she has watched the environmentalist movement and its tactics evolve over time.
Pickett said strategy is most effective when it evolves to meet the moment. Adapting is essential when each new approach is met with a fresh counter attack.
“Most of the time, direct action strategies are the most effective when they’re in conjunction with other strategies and tactics as well,” Robin said. “And that was a place where I think Warner Creek really was exemplary.”
Pickett agreed, saying litigation and direct action work well together.
“I’ve seen direct action be a very effective stalling strategy to basically buy time,” Pickett said.
While the future remains uncertain, that very uncertainty may be drawing more people to the cause.
“I was given a boost, being at the annual Earth First gathering in Washington just now because there were way more people than I expected,” Pickett said. “It was huge and there were so many young people and there were so many young people that wanted to engage.”
Rather than running from the fight, many are reflecting on lessons like those exemplified by Warner Creek. People are looking for hope in each other to push through another wave of intense fighting, just as generations of activists have.
“Trump can roll back every federal regulation, sabotage every federal agency, or break any federal law he wants,” he said “but it won’t last as long as people fight back,” Ingalsbee said.