Captain Paul Watson, Earth First! Journal, Mabon (September 22), 1990
By September 1990, the events that would follow the April 11, 1990 press conference, including Redwood Summer would have wide ramifications within all of Earth First! Among other things, Dave Foreman (and several others) would publicly “quit” Earth First!. Additionally, disputes and political differences would lead the entire standing Earth First! Journal staff to resign their posts by September. The atmosphere in the Mabon (September 22), 1990 issue of the Journal was highly contentious, and included in that issue was a debate on whether or not Earth First! Should renounce the tactic altogether.
Watson's “defense” of tree spiking is certainly not the best or most articulate example. The errors in judgment, insensitivity to workers, lack of class consciousness, and macho posturing are—in the mind of this editor—particularly glaring and betray the fact that Watson's defense is essentially weak to nonexistent. It is nevertheless, the one defense of tree spiking that the outgoing (and somewhat disgraced) Earth First! Journal staff chose to run
To spike or not to spike? That is the question this summer - what with Redwood Summer denouncing the tactic and Earth First!ers seemingly at one another's throats over the issue.
The whole goddamn issue needs to be debated in the pages of the [Earth First!] Journal. The last edition seemed to gloss over the announcement by the compromisers of Northern California Earth First! as if it was a decision of little significance. In fact it was a decision of great significance, one that threatens the foundation of Earth First! strategy.
But first, some background. I have never gone public on this before but I am now. I was the person who first thought up the tactic of tree-spiking and as such I fell obligated to defend this child of my imagination.[1]
As a child I witnessed my father break a chainsaw on a horseshoe that had been nailed to a tree a century before and became over time internal armor protecting the heart of the elderly and noble being. I was delighted.
In the mid-sixties I spiked some trees to protect them from developers in my neighborhood. It was not successful. The trees were cut down, but with the small satisfaction of two broken saw chains.
Then in 1982, the Grouse Mountain Ski Resort in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada announced that they were selling the timber rights to the south slope of Grouse Mountain. The decision meant that loggers would bald-face the mountain overlooking the city of Vancouver.
The public was outraged. Despite efforts by the North Vancouver City Council, petitions from school children, and appeals from prominent citizens, the resort would not relent.
I organized a small cadre of concerned eco-activists and we formed the North Vancouver Garden and Arbor Club. We started out early on a Sunday morning, each armed with a hammer and backpack filled with metal spikes. The six of us spiked some 2000 trees, and pulled out every survey stake we could find. We posted warning signs starting that the entire condemned lot had been randomly spiked. We then drove into Vancouver and dropped off press releases to the media.
The next day, the shit hit the fan. The Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Province both ran front page stories. We followed up with interviews on TV stations wearing masks - all of us identified as spokesperson Wally Cedarleaf.
Within a day, the sawmills stated flatly that they would not buy logs from the spiked lot. The deal was off. Grouse Mountain Resort people were furious. We were denounced as terrorists and criminals by those we thought were our allies--The North Vancouver City Council, Greenpeace and assorted other eco-bureaucrats. We didn't give a damn--the trees were saved. Grouse Mountain would remain intact. The tactic worked.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) investigated the case and their sleuthing led them to our doorsteps where we were questioned but not charged. The logging interests quickly realized that any publicity over such a simple tactic would do them more harm than any benefit they would derive from prosecuting us. Not only was it a tactic that worked, it was [a] tactic we could get away.
Prior to the spiking I had consulted an aborist. I asked him how to spike a tree without harming the tree. I then made inquiries of the logging industry while pretending to be an insurance investigator. I asked if chainsaws had safety mechanisms that would prevent the chain from breaking and striking the operator. I was assured that such an accident could not happen, for all the chainsaws used had chain guards to prevent a broken chain from whipping back into the face of the logger. I was also told that the sawmills required safety shields between the mill saws and the operators.
I also asked, "Is it possible for a logger or a sawmill worker to be injured if the saw should strike a metallic object imbedded in a log?" The answer from three different industry spokespeople was a definite "no." The companies I questioned were MacMillan Bloedel, Crown Zellerbach, and Weldwood Lumber.
Therefore I concluded that it was a perfect tactic. It would not hurt the tree. It would not hurt the logger. It was simple. Materials were easy to obtain. It was not illegal. It could not even be defined as damaging property, since trees - being living sentient creatures - are not human property. Recognition of trees as property is anthropocentric.[2]
A few months after the spiking of Grouse Mountain, I ran into Mike Roselle in a Greenpeace hang-out in San Francisco. Another Garden Club member and I told Mike about the tactic. He was thrilled with the idea and, because of Mike, many others became involved.[3]
Thus it was with both pride and satisfaction that I relished the reports of tree-spiking from California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska Reports came from the Bahamas and Sweden of spiking operations that saved forests.
Native Indians spiked trees on Meares Island in British Columbia. Tree-spiking was becoming epidemic. For the first time, the logging industry found themselves on the defensive.
The industry reacted with propaganda about the dangers of tree-spiking to humans, conveniently forgetting that only a few-years ago, they had informed me that an injury was impossible. Industry money was used to lobby politicians into passing laws to make tree-spiking illegal. The industry began to spend large sums on security and investigation. But the forests are vast and detection is difficult and after years of effort, all the new laws and money have not paid off with a conviction of a single tree-spiker.
Tree-spiking also keeps the issues of old-growth and clearcutting in the news. It is controversial and as such generates discussion in the media and amongst the public. With the tactic of tree-spiking, forest defenders could keep the industry and their lackey workers on the defensive.
Tree-spiking as a tactic has been continually stimulated by the imaginations of many eco-defenders. The addition of ceramic spikes, augers, and twist nails have all benefited the original tactic and thus the trees.
When the industry threatened to log spiked trees to spite the spikers, I suggested that ecologists escalate by spiking cut logs on the floating booms and in the yards. Tit for tat. Escalate if you like, you bastards, and we'll go for the heart of your operations - your machinery. Thus we found that tree-spiking could be both defensive and offensive.
In a biocentric context, tree-spiking is simply a form of preventive medicine. It is the inoculation of a tree against the disease of logging.
But in our society, money talks and industry money was successful in swaying anthropocentric opinions against tree-spiking. There was a weak link in our movement. Those anthropocentric, socialistic types - whose hearts bleed for the antiquated rights of the workers -were won over. Concerned that the logger was a "victim" these so-called defenders of the forest proceeded to weaken our one totally effective tactic by denouncing it.[4]
I attended the Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Oregon, in the spring of 1990. Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney said there was unanimous consensus at the tree-spiking workshop that the tactic should be retired. There was not. Many Earth First!ers were in opposition. Judi Bari even told me at the conference that she considered me the enemy.
It was tragic that Judi and Darryl were hurt in the bombing of their car. We will probably never know what really happened. But it is more tragic if the bombing continues to give martyr status to two people who have seriously compromised the established principles of Earth First!
Redwood Summer is not an Earth First! type of action. Civil disobedience is costly to its participants both financially and physically. It is a tactic that springs from deep Judeo-Christian ethics of self-sacrifice and self-inflicted persecution. It was not practiced by North American native peoples. The establishment loves CD. The authorities are trained to deal with it. There are no surprises.
Redwood Summer would have us believe that the loggers are not our enemy. Judi Bari considers them her allies while accusing me of being her enemy. The reality of her views are plain. She is acting from an anthropocentric ethical foundation and I am coming from a biocentric base.[5]
The hands of the individual who has destroyed a tree are the hands of a person who has murdered a sacred citizen of this planet. Livelihood, material well-being, these are not sufficient justification for this crime against nature. Loggers are pathetic foot-soldiers to the corporate generals of the logging industry. Certainly they are being exploited by the companies, but they have made the decision to be exploited.[6] The trees have not.
Yes I realize that humans have long used and believe themselves dependent upon the cutting of trees. I also realize, however, that with a vastly reduced population, wood can be made available without killing trees: dead wood, weather preserved wood, living planks cut from living trees (a practice of Northwest Indians which provided them with planks without depriving the world of a tree); cotton and papyrus for paper. There are alternatives, the most important being disciplined conservation. Yes, this is extreme, but so is massive clearcutting to provide cheap logs for Japanese mills or bags of redwood charcoal for California cook-outs. I would occasionally even condone the cutting of a live tree if it was diseased and if done with proper respect and used for a noble purpose. Unfortunately, 99% of all trees killed are of good health and used for ignoble purposes.
A few years ago, a Santa Cruz reporter told me she did not believe that all the redwoods in California were worth the life of a single human. What incredible arrogance! This opinion is the extreme of anthropocentric Judeo-Christian thinking. I am of the extreme opposite view. To me, all the humans in California are not worth the extinction of the mighty ancient forest dwellers we call the redwoods.
The debate really comes down to this: Is Earth First! a movement of anthropocentrics or a movement of biocentrics or is it a little of both? Can the anthropocentric mindset work harmoniously or even work at all with the biocentric mindset? There is certainly a vast chasm between the two modes of thinking. Perhaps we need two Earth First! groups - one for anthropocentrics and the other for biocentrics.
As for myself, I do not believe in loggers, I believe in trees. I do not believe in fishermen, I believe in fish. I do not believe in miners, I believe in the rocks beneath my feet. I do not believe in pie in the sky spirituality, I believe in rainbows, rivers, mountains, and moss. I do not believe in environmentalists, I believe in the environment. I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her, those parasites who believe the Earth is here to serve human interests.
The Earth abides. We overly glorified primates are a stupid species. We have chosen not to be interdependent and have bestowed deity upon ourselves to justify our separateness from the living Earth. We will pass and in our passing the rocks will scream joyously for the liberation of the Earth. Or we will survive as equal citizens who have finally realized that the path to bliss lies in surrendering to nature, not dominating her.
If we are removed from the Earth, the loggers will slowly fade from the consciousness of the Earth like unpleasant and distant memories. If we survive, the loggers will also fade from the consciousness of humanity as perverse and embarrassing aspects of our once primitive selves. Either way, the logger is a rot, a disease and an aberration against nature, and I among others will not weep a single tear at his demise.
To sum up, tree-spiking works. It does not hurt trees. It does not injure people.[7] It is simple and cheap. The logging barons have little defense against it. They moan and groan and gnash their teeth but they can do little--except of course to employ the old tactic of divide and conquer. They can manipulate members of our movement to spread division and hatred amongst the movement through the anthropocentric Judeo-Christian morals. In this way they can spread their rot amongst us and destroy us.
Whatever political stance the Earth First! rank and file take, tree-spiking will continue. It continues in northern California - more covertly because it is plain that advocates may now fall victim to former brothers and sisters. But continue it shall, despite criticism, despite the laws of society, despite the so-called "rights" of the loggers and their ilk.
Tree-spiking is an idea and an idea is impossible to kill. It will continue and I will continue to advocate it until I die. No compromise, not now or ever.
[1] This contradicts the widely held belief—among many Earth First!ers—that the tactic dates back to the IWW.
[2] Unfortunately, Watson's argument doesn't hold up. Trees are considered property by the employing class, spikes have been known to hurt mill workers on at least two occasions in Northern California alone, and laws have been passed in numerous states against tree spiking.
[3] Mike Roselle repudiated tree-spiking as a tactic in April 1990, as is evidenced by his signature on the controversial document in question.
[4] Watson either forgets or is ignorant of the fact that sawmill-workers have been hurt by tree spikes (despite the assurances Watson received from the timber industry), so in that sense, the loggers, or more accurately mill workers were victims. Watson also departs from any pretense of dispassionate objectivity and professes that he essentially couldn't care less about the rights of workers. Logging and loggers are not the problem (in an environmental context) per se; unsustainable logging and exploited loggers are the problem. Watson either fails or chooses not to admit that such a distinction exists.
[5] Judi Bari always maintained that she was approaching the issue from a biocentric foundation in direct contradiction of Watson's statement. Her alliance with timber workers was as much a strategic concern as it was "ethical".
[6] This is an incredibly naïve declaration. The working class has no more "choice" where to work than they do whether or not to starve, espcially in rural logging communities which are essentially run like company towns. Furthermore, in the case of Pacific Lumber, the workers once worked for an environmentally sustainable company and that company was raided by a corporation that began cutting unsustainably and allowed the workers no choice in the matter.
[7] Gene Lawhorn and Judi Bari have argued that tree spiking can and already has injured workers.
