Tree-sit at Oregon Capitol holding strong for 4 days.
In the early hours of November 11th Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky, a University of Oregon senior and member of Eugene Rising Tide, climbed up a tree in a park across from Governor Kulongowski’s office in Salem, Oregon. Jasmine plans to sit in the tree until a rally of rural and urban Oregonians join her on the Capitol steps on Friday to pressure Kulongowski to reject a Bush Administration logging plan.
“In terms of carbon per acre, carbon storage in the Pacific Northwest forests is among the highest in the world,” according to Mark Harmon, Professor and Richardson Chair of Forest Science at Oregon State University.
If Kulongowski wants to be a leader in climate policy, he needs to stand up and protect natural carbon sinks by saying no to the WOPR.
The Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR) would increase Bureau of Land Management logging in Oregon by 436 percent. Pending Oregon State Governor Kulongowski’s blessing, 70% of the new logging could be clearcut. Of the 2.6 million acres that the BLM manages, timber harvesting would occur on 1 million acres, including 100,000 acres of old growth. Governor Kulongowski has until December 8th to join Oregonian’s in rejecting the WOPR and protect these precious carbon sinks.
According to the BLM’s own figures, the WOPR would result in 180 million metric tons more carbon in the atmosphere, as compared to a plan that would conserve our forests as carbon storage systems.
This is equivalent to putting an additional 1 million cars on the road in Oregon for 132 years, according to Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild.
Because Oregon still has old growth forests (10% remaining versus 5% remaining nationwide) and its forests have such powerful carbon storage capability, the WOPR and Beyond Coalition contends that WOPR would be a lost opportunity to mitigate climate change.
Moreover, the WOPR clearly contradicts Oregon’s ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets set forth in HB3543, passed by the OR legislature and promoted and signed by Governor Kulongoski in 2007:
- Arrest and begin to reduce greenhouse has emissions by 2010
- Achieve levels 10% below that of 1990 by 2020
- Achieve levels 75% below that of 1990 by 2050
Check out an awesome Q & A done online with Jasmine (yay technology): http://community.statesmanjournal.com/chat/chat.php?id=106
And, other great videos about WOPR and the tree-sitting tactic :
http://www.youtube.com/cascadiarisingtide
Excellent! I love the police – “… you know, whoever is in the tree knows is, you know, knows what there doing, in terms of climbing the tree and everything….” “Just tell her to be careful”
-Matt
this is great..! good luck!
Wow, the Q+A monica posted is really worth a read – I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. Outstanding media work on this!
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