Another Day, Another Protest

I think there’s some protesting over on the coast or near the coast, maybe about logging. Or drilling, or a bridge, or the name of a town over there. 

You say there are no angry mobs at the moment? Wait a day.

There’s always some gaggle of malcontents gathering here or there or both, and you must forgive me if I don’t have the details right. I can never remember exactly where the angry idealists are currently shaking their fists, or why they’re shouting their shouts. Who can keep it straight?

It’s always the same enraged but righteous swarms yelling from the same script: “Hey hey, no no, gabba gabba and we want it NOW!” about the sacred trees and the watershed thing. I know, I know, you can’t keep it all straight either.

We’ve got protest fatigue. We’ve had the same drama on the same stage with the same people shouting the same lines for 50 years. Forgive us if we don’t remember whether your protest is located at Jackson State Forest or the Lost Coast or the Yolla Bolly wilderness.

Or all three. Plus another two or ten in Humboldt County.

I can’t remember a time in Northern California when there wasn’t an anti-logging protest somewhere nearby, and each time every protester promised us squirrels would die, streams would collapse, skies would grow dark and the world would end if another tree went down.

At this point Northern California logging protesters have no credibility. They are the Chicken Littles of our world, always squawking, always running around panicked, sweaty, in a feverish state. Always screaming the same things, always hoisting the same signs. Forever blaming and scolding everyone else, forever self-righteous, always so smug.

We’ve tuned them out. Their complaints are bogus because whenever lumber crews return to the scene the deer survive, the streams flow, trees grow back and grow tall, plus a secret bonus: houses get built, loggers get paid, families have food and economies thrive. 

But the protesters never notice. They’re already off in Yolla Bollyland shrieking about a picnic table installation near sensitive nesting habitats of endangered Contrails. Shhh! Listen. Hear their bugles?

From the way faux idealists weep when trees shed their leaves, which they do annually, you’d think trees were rare, precious and impossible to replace. But in Mendocino County there are more trees than there are people, squirrels, deer, houses, cars and weeds put together. 

Don’t believe me? Take a three-minute flight out of, and back to, the Ukiah airport. Spend 10 seconds looking at aerial photographs of the county. Or count them yourself.

My favorite tree grievances over the years:

1) There was a tree at Ukiah’s Grace Hudson Park that was diseased or whatever. Had to come down.

The usual gray haired old crones gathered to squawk and croak, but had little success until they announced plans to sing protest songs while topless. I don’t remember if the tree got offed or not, but traffic along South Main Street quickly evaporated as drivers, fearing an encounter, detoured six blocks out of their way.

2) Four redwoods along Hospital Drive at Perkins Street were to be removed to build a Walgreen’s store. Came the usual screams and roars and then a threat: If the trees were cut and the store was built none of the protesters would ever shop in it! Ever! And they’d tell their friends, too!

(How long did they laugh at the next Walgreen’s board meeting in New York?)

3) Whatever Judi Bari used to yell about.

4) Years of rage from Morons Against the Willits Bypass, a group opposed to building two lanes of raised pavement around the eastern edge of Willits, because it would result in (fill in the blank) _____________ to trees.

Once in a while an inspired eco warrior weaves new threads into tired narratives and announces a threatened area is suddenly a sacred burial ground for indigenous peoples, or essential to rare invisible butterflies, snail target darts, freckled owls, rodentus typhoidus, migrating abalone, coastal flamingos, arctic mosquitos or flightless pterodactyls. 

These eco-props hold a warm place in the walnut hearts of environmentalists only until the latest protest plays out, then are forgotten along with inland viewsheds, dairy spawning grounds or desert wetlands. So we ignore them and forget them.

Why pay attention to people who have less credibility than robo callers, but aren’t as polite?