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which have repeatedly happened over the last decade. My Audubon 

 Chapter has been a plaintiff in all of the major litigation since 1987 

 surrounding the Westside forests of the Pacific Northwest, and in 

 most instances, the courts have agreed with us. 



Litigation, however, is not entered into easily by community or- 

 ganizations such as ours. We not only understand the kinds of po- 

 larization that have been occurring during the past decade over 

 natural resource issues, but we have lived through the effects of 

 this polarization in our personal lives. I have been the target of 

 angry outbursts publicly and privately. I have received many, 

 many telephone death threats, and newspaper articles have called 

 me in my own community an eco-Nazi. 



But I live in a rural community where many people have been 

 affected and I have become close personal friends with people on 

 all sides of the issue. In short, my personal and professional lives 

 have been totally absorbed by the timber wars in the Northwest. 



In 1994, when the Clinton plan was proposed, we reluctantly 

 joined in litigation to challenge its adequacy. We lost, the timber 

 industry lost, and Judge Dwyer upheld the plan. However, he also 

 stated that it was barely adequate and that there were a number 

 of factors that could cause him to revisit his decision. 



The group of plaintiffs, including my Audubon Chapter, rep- 

 resented by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, chose not to chal- 

 lenge the Dwyer ruling in the Ninth Circuit. Instead, we and a 

 great majority of conservation organizations decided it was in the 

 best interest of all to make the plan work. I was selected to serve 

 on the Western Washington Provincial Advisory Committee set up 

 under the plan and I entered wholeheartedly into the success of its 

 implementation. Although no one was totally happy with the plan, 

 most of us felt that the decade of our timber wars had finally come 

 to an end. 



Unfortunately, in the year since the logging rider began, we have 

 seen the momentum of the plan grind to a halt. I worked with the 

 Forest Service for a long time, and if I were to find a way to get 

 the maximum volume out of that plan over the next five years, the 

 worst thing that could have happened and the way I would have 

 stopped it in its tracks was to do the logging rider. So last year's 

 rider, with its three components, has had a devastating effect on 

 the plan ecologically, psychologically, and socially. 



The Section 318 old growth sales have had the most dramatic ef- 

 fect on the land and have led to renewed protests in and polariza- 

 tions of communities worst beyond the worst tensions in the late 

 1980's. Many court challenges over aspects of Section 318 have en- 

 sued. 



While we waited for the court ruling on marbled murrelet old 

 growth sales at risk on my local forest, the Mount Baker- 

 Snoqualmie, middle class mainstream citizens, such as myself, 

 search our consciences to see whether we would be willing to be ar- 

 rested for our beliefs should the court rule that the murrelet could 

 go extinct. We heard from so many people, bankers, businessmen, 

 workmen, lawyers, architects, teachers, folks in the labor commu- 

 nity, doctors, seniors and youth, that we began holding civil disobe- 

 dience training and discussing our plans with Federal, State, coun- 

 ty, and city law enforcement officers. This was a very difficult deci- 



