If I was going to characterize my Oregon home with a particular song, I’d go with Tom Wait’s “All the World is Green.” It’s a song my hippie roommates sing by the fire when it’s raining too much to leave the house. It’s melancholy, like the blanket of clouds over Eugene that never really breaks from September through May. It longs for things to grow back that we have destroyed, like relationships and forests (“We can bring back the old days again, when all the world is green.”) The title describes one observation that many people have when they first visit Oregon, before they see between the trees and notice all of the scars on the land.

In February I took up a photography project to document the ongoing conflict between Earth First! activists and the logging industry. Here, activism still has a physical battlefield. The environmental anarchism that characterized Eugene in the 90′s has waned since the federal government made a number of arrests in the early 00′s (the ). Still, the forest defenders come back every year.

View the rest of my photo essay after the break. Listen to while you watch for a more complete sensory experience. It’s a love song, I know, but the color is just right.

The State of Oregon sells native forest to logging companies to create revenue for public schools.

In July of 2009, when Roseburg Forest Products, one of the largest privately owned corporations in the nation, went to cut a tract of 80 to 100 year old trees (“mature growth”) on the Umpcoos Ridge of the Elliott State Forest, loggers found dozens of masked Earth First! activists blockading the road with barrels, slash piles, and an overturned van. Several protestors sat in delicate treetop installations, called “bipods” and “skypods,” intended to collapse and kill the sitters if tampered with.

“No matter how much you lobby, the Bureau of Land Management isn’t gonna listen to you if a timber company is paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says Ben an Earth First! activist who participated in the “Elliott Free State” blockade. “Forest defense is direct democracy: participating in the world you want to see.”

In four days, law enforcement managed to extract all of the protestors from trees and locks. “As soon as we learn a new tactic, they learn it too,” says Ben.

“I think a lot of them are just misinformed,” says Brant, who runs a trucking company that hauls woodchips for Roseburg Forest Products. “The idea that we’re running out of trees—they’re like potatoes; you can plant more.”

In keeping with state laws intended to protect the endangered species that inhabit Oregon’s forests, clear cutters must leave “habitat trees” on every acre of land.

“There’s so little natural habitat left for any animals at all. Humanity is destroying the planet, and if we don’t stop really soon we won’t be able to sustain ourselves,” says Ben.

Post-cut, logging companies raze the ground with fire and herbicides to control pests and undergrowth that might inhibit new tree growth.

“Really the most important war we can fight is inspiring other people to do what they think is right. I’d like to think that we did that,” says Ben.

A mill that processes Roseburg Forest Products timber into plywood, particleboard, stud lumber, and melamine, in Dillard, OR. “They’re designed to run 24 hours, seven days a week, and if they’re not they’re losing money,” says Brant.

The company survived the housing market crash by cutting some night shifts, though the mill continued running seven days a week.

Brant’s trucking company, which works exclusively with timber products, had to take trucks out of commission when business dropped by 50 percent last year. “We’re directly tied to housing,” says Brant.

Business is back up to 75 percent, and Brant sees new markets for chips in Asia. “Chips are good for cardboard. We ship them to Japan. They use them to make boxes, put the electronics in, and ship ‘em back.”

Mills use every part of a log. “Hog fuel”– pulp and undergrowth that don’t have value on the market–is burned to provide electricity for mill operations. “Everyone’s gotten more efficient,” says Brant. “That’s the only way to survive.”

The economy of Douglas County is fueled by logging, an industry that has long failed to support community development. ” “I’m 33 years old, and the population hasn’t grown here since I was born,” says Brant.

Vance works nights at the mill and remembers when “Pappy” Ford, father of Roseburg Forest Products’ current owner, rebuilt the mill to accommodate smaller timber because of changing laws and declining supply. “They used to be two, three log trucks–old growth, they call it–but Pappy sold that land and moved the mill across the road,” says Vance.

Vance lives in old company housing, built in 1927, just down the highway from the current mill. Brant calls this area “felony flats.” “This is our Hilton,” says Vance. “We don’t have a sign or anything.”

I also had the opportunity to head across the border and visit a standing tree sit. Humboldt Earth First! have maintained a sit-in the McKay Tract, a grove of old and second growth redwoods near Eureka, CA, since late 2008. The land is owned by timber company Green Diamond, the largest landowner of redwood trees in the world. The girl in the photos is my friend Erin, a Eugene forest defender who occasionally visits Humboldt Earth First!-ers. The masked fellow is “Snuffles,” a (justifiably) media-shy activist who has lived in the sit on and off for over two years.

“Their current plan is to clear-cut all trees that they own over 50 years old,” says Snuffles. Here, Snuffles traverses.

Sitters have tied in dozens of trees, so that activists are able to cross from platform to platform without descending.

Sitters rest in “dream catchers,” webs of rope cradled by sturdy branches in the upper canopy. “Tree-sitting doesn’t necessarily save a lot of trees,” says Snuffles, “but living in trees itself is a pretty radical thing. If we could get more people to live in trees and have a relationship with trees and the wildlife around them, it would be a great thing.”

The tract has survived in part by the efforts of the sitters, but also, says protestor “Snuffles,” because of the housing market crash. Timber company Green Diamond is in no rush to extract the entrenched sitters without a market for timber.