Transcript for END:CIV Clear Cuts - Cut 2

The first written myth of this culture is Gilgamesh deforesting the plains and hillsides of Iraq.

When people think of Iraq is the first thing they normally think of cedar forests so thick that sunlight never touches the ground?

That's how it was prior to the arrival of this culture. . .

♪ Chainsaws roar ♪

♪ Tree falling and crashing to the earth ♪

♪ Chainsaw's roar continues ♪

♪ Another tree groans and falls to the earth ♪

So, as a long time

grassroots environmental activist

and as a creature living in the thrashing endgame of civilization,

I am intimately acquainted with the landscape of loss.

And have grown accustomed to carrying the daily weight of despair.

I've walked clearcuts that wrap around mountains,

and drop into valleys and climb ridges

to fragment watershed, after watershed.

And I've sat silent near empty streams

that two generations ago

were lashed into whiteness

by uncountable salmon coming home to spawn and die.

Out here in BC and across North America

When they do industrial logging

They just take and remove all the trees.

They level everything and leave nothing but stumps and slash piles.

And they burn the slash piles and they take out all the timber

and what's left is a wasteland.

They take a rain forest and turn it into a desert.

That's what a clear cut is. . .

They use them for pulp, they export them whole to the United States, and to Japan.

There's not very much milling that happens any more in BC

It's just getting exported for pulp and paper.

and fiberboard, and plywood and whatever else.

Not a lot of value added. . .

I'd say if we were sitting in the middle of a forest

Chances are that the original growth has been

clear cut for lumber for development purposes

and what you're seeing is second or even third generation growth

that's occurred over the last 100 -150 years

depending on what part of the United States you happen to be in.

There's still a strong push to harvest as much of the Western Red Cedar as they can.

They're bringing in huge helicopters to do that.

and they're high-grading:

selecting only the really good, high quality timber

and leaving the rest laying there

in a junk heap.

So that's why we keep on fighting back.

I think the last straw was when they wanted to log the valley of Ista.

because of its historical and spiritual significance to our people.

But they log it in spite,

Ya know. . .

Just to make a point against our resistance,

against our overall persistance

in regards to treaties or encroachment of industry development in our territories.

It destroys the soil,

and in a lot of these areas like this clearing behind me up on the hill,

you can see the soil is exposed

the ultraviolet kills off all of the mosses,

the fungus's that hold the forest; hold the soil together.

When the stumps rot, and the roots die

then the slopes slide, and often

there's not much regrowth. There's no regeneration of the forest.

They do some replanting.

It doesn't always work because there's no soil left.

It washes down into the streams, kills the salmon, fills up the reservoirs,

It causes all kinds of flood damage downstream.

This is also a tremendous resource

that life on Earth has provided

in order to make more life.

The basis of life on Earth is soil.

Without it we would not be here. . .

That's terrorism: stripping down all the trees trees,

ripping out the trees in the forest,

and now their going to rip out the guts

of the land here with ...

looking for copper and gold.

And, there has to be some kind of focus to address the injustice to our people,

the injustice to the land, to the water, to the wildlife.

The injustice to the green life and the salmon life,

and the injustice to the people that want to stand up for it.

When we block the road,

these trees are very valuable,

and the laws are all profit driven,

they're all driven by the corporations.

The police are there to enforce

the corporation's right to log;

not to enforce our right to stop them and protect the ecosystem.

There is so little that's left of the old growth forests

like this that we see on the sides here

that people are putting their bodies on the line.

They are willing to make huge sacrifices to stop the forests from being sacrificed,

and the water, and the air quality, and the global climate.

Now how many people are they going to drag away and put in jail,

so they can continue to exploit the land for megaprofits.

Wildlife habitat is being destroyed,

our rivers are being poluted,

the salmon are disappearing.

This is an atrocity!

This is a violation of our physical rights!

I will not go to jail.

END:CIV is a crowd funded project.

To help make this project a reality visit www.endciv.com