I was thinking that you might be put off by “Overstory Zero” in reference to Douglas County at that time. (WW laughs).
I was definitely struck by the clear cutting, but I had seen that before near Redwood National Park, so I knew about the logging and was motivated to contribute to the effort to rein it in.
Were you identified with environmental groups early on, or did that take a while?
I distinguished myself as a teacher because I became the proponent for a research natural area that was finally designated. It was just to the east of Myrtle Creek. I took students out there and actually got the school board to pass a resolution saying they would use the area for outdoor education if BLM chose to protect it. In other words, they didn’t want to be an advocate for it. But it was a case where there was a new superintendent who wasn’t really savvy to all of the political controversy over logging, so he went along with the proposal. I think the local paper misreported the school board’s decision, which was a passive position to go along with what BLM wanted. The paper made it sound like the board opposed it. When they finally came out and printed the letter that I kept pounding on the superintendent to write, I remember my principal told me that one of the mill owners stormed in and said “We want that teacher fired!I1 (laughs) Some of the other teachers jokingly called it “Wendell’s Woods.”
I remember in one of the faculty meetings that the principal said, “Well, gosh, you’re interested in forestry things. There are some places out there that you could get kids interested in planting trees.” I remember saying at that meeting, “Thank you very much, we’re trying to save the trees, not cut them down so that we can plant little tiny ones. Sorry you missed the point, but that’s not what this
is about.” The Umpqua National Forest Plan was being developed when I was teaching and there were 19 roadless areas. The local conservation group, at that time called the Umpqua Wilderness Defenders, wanted to save 3 of the 19. That was a pretty modest proposal, I thought. Part of my biology curriculum involved a plan for the Umpqua National Forest, which involved even the kids from logging families. I rode the line in terms of my teaching with those folks. But they still said, “1 think we should save Boulder Creek.” Even those kids saw that maybe one roadless area out of 19 wasn’t so bad. I didn’t feel that they had to say that just to get a grade because these kids were very verbal in their general opposition to wilderness protection.
