It’s the 1990s in the Pacific Northwest. A march of chainsaws clear-cuts the country’s last available ancient forests. Protesters bury themselves in front of bulldozers and spend months sitting in the tallest trees in the world. And at the center, the Northern Spotted Owl becomes the most controversial bird in the country.
Hosted and produced by by OPB’s Aaron Scott in collaboration with30 Minutes West (“Bundyville,” “Outside Podcast”) and with original music by the singer-songwriter Laura Gibson, “Timber Wars” is a seven-part podcast series from Oregon Public Broadcasting. Episodes will be available Sept. 22 on Apple Podcasts, the NPR One app and at opb.org.
“Timber Wars“ tells the behind-the-scenes story of how a small group of activists and scientists turned the fight over ancient trees and a bird that no one had heard about into one of the biggest environmental conflicts of the 20th century.
In addition to the podcast, OPB will release an accompanying e-newsletter series that combines the podcast with further OPB reporting to take readers through the history of this epic battle — and explores the ways it’s playing out still — in stories, images, videos and more.
When loggers headed into the forest on Easter Sunday in 1989, they found a line of protesters blocking the road. The battle that ensued would change lives on both sides, help catapult old-growth forests into a national issue and become known as the “Easter Sunday Massacre.”
For most of America’s history, trees were seen as crops, and the plan was to log the country’s last available virgin forests and replant them with tree farms. We see forests very differently today. How did things change so quickly? It started with a bunch of contrarian scientists in an Oregon forest.
Depending on who you are, the northern spotted owl is either the hero of this story, or the villain. And the Endangered Species Act is either an incredible conservation shield or the hammer used to smash rural economies. But those beliefs miss the fact that it was a single sentence in an entirely different law that locked up the forests. We tell the unlikely story of how a reclusive bird halted the march of chainsaws.
Mill City was one of dozens of flourishing timber towns, where a job in the woods could support a good life. But the protesters and the court cases upended that, leaving locals asking, Who’s the true threatened species here?
The Timber Wars grew so hot that one of President Clinton’s first acts in office was to fly half his cabinet to Portland to resolve the conflict. From a Capitol Hill bathroom-turned-office to a presidential lunch buffet, we tell the behind-the-scenes story of the most sweeping conservation plan in U.S. history: the Northwest Forest Plan.
Before the Northwest Forest Plan had a chance to succeed, Congress threw it out the window. With old growth back on the cutting block, the fight to defend it grew both more mainstream and more violent, seeding the tactics for many conflicts to come.
Is the Northwest fatally divided, or can we overcome our differences to work together? We tell the story of one group of loggers and environmentalists who have found some semblance of common ground. But it didn’t come easy. And no one knows how long it’ll last.
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