Ground Zero In Timber Wars Shows Signs Of Peace

"I wouldn't go so far as to say there is peace in the valley, but we are closer than ever before," said Shane Jimerfield, director of the Siskiyou Project, a local conservation group that grew out of the protests.

The national forests of the Northwest became a crucial national lumber source after World War II when the baby boom fueled a huge demand for new houses. But by the 1980s scientists began to worry that species like the northern spotted owl and some salmon were headed for extinction due to a loss of habitat.

Environmentalists won court orders stopping that logging, and the Clinton administration came up with the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994, which cut logging by more than 80 percent and set aside huge areas for fish and wildlife habitat. After President George W. Bush was elected in 2000 his administration tried to dismantle the Northwest Forest Plan and increase logging but was repeatedly blocked by more court rulings.

Few of the thinning crew were even born when the Klamath Mountains of southwestern Oregon and Northern California became ground zero in the Northwest timber wars. This is the first place Earth First! protesters ever put their bodies on the line to stop logging in old growth forests, at a place called Bald Mountain.