10 — THE BULLETIN — Thursday, June 29 to July 27,1995
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By MARLA LEVY
Before Tzeporah Berman left Toronto for Vancouver in the summer of 1993, her intention was to rent a rustic cabin at a quiet, secluded, scenic West Coast location where she would begin writing her Master's thesis on ecofeminism.
She did make it to the West Coast but, a stint in jail and thousands of dollars in legal costs later, her summer shaped up to be anything but quiet.
Berman became a blockade coordinator and spokesperson for Friends of Clay-oquot Sound, the organization which garnered much international media attention when it attracted 10,000 protesters (including MP and now NDP leadership candidate, Svend Robinson) to engage in Canada's largest civil-disobedience campaign on record.
The Clayoquot blockade — a knee-jerk response to the provincial government's
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decision in April 1993 to protect only one-third of the ancient temperate rain forest located on Vancouver island — effectively impeded timber giant MacMillan Bloedel from clear-cutting.
The day after the blockade began on July 5, the then 24-year-old Berman was catapulted into the media spotlight, her photo donning the front pages of daily newspapers — including the Globe and Mail — across the country.
"So 1 can't say I was surprised," says Berman, "when my thesis advisor contacted me from Toronto and asked. ^Getting much writing done?'"
No, she wasn't. But what Berman was doing — and passionately — was coordinating and organizing people, and teaching them about non-violent protest.
Her high profile at Clayoquot peaked when she was arrested for allegedly aiding and abetting those who were blockading the road.
"I was standing at the side of the road having a coffee," says Berman, who. as a key spokesperson, had made a
point not to block the road herself.
"There's never been anyone else arrested at a blockade who didn't stand in front of a truck and blockade."
Berman spent four days in jail before being released on bail and returning to Clayoquot. A year later, the judge threw the case out of court.
Despite her personal wranglings with the legal system, Berman. who now works for Greenpeace, says that the Clayoquot protest has reaped tangible results, such as providing the kick-start for the government to appoint a scientific panel to study logging practices in B.C.
The l9-member panel, which recently released its recommendations — all 120 of them — is calling for sweeping changes to the way logging is done in Clayoquot.
For environmentalists such as Berman, the report was met with elation.
"I think what we are seeing is the first step in a phase-out of clear-cut logging in B.C. What we're talking about is a fundamentally
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TZEPORAH BERMAN
different approach to forestry."
Berman says that groups like Greenpeace and Friends of Clayoquot Sound are not against logging altogether.
"We're not against logging; we're against destructive logging practices like clear-cuttini^ And we're against logging li^ some places that are fragile and rare.
"Clayoquot Sound is one of the largest, lowland coastal temperate rain forests that's left in the world. From a biological perspective, it's an incredibly important area. Worldwide, we've already destroyed over 50 percent of the temperate rain forests that we have."
What Berman also finds frustrating is the rift that exists between environmentalists and loggers, a gulf which she says is only likely to widen given the alliance between the government (both federal and provincial) and the forest industry.
"They're spending $52 million over the next five years on a public relations campaign to counter ours. What they're trying to do is convince the workers that environmentalists are against all logging. And people in the resource communities are scared because they are losing their jobs.
"Yes, 27.000 jobs were lost in the forest industrv in B.C. between 1981 and 1991. But those jobs weren't lost because ot environmental-ism because there wasn't even a huge area that was protected then they were lost as a result of mechani/a-tion and the quick export ol old growth forest.
"So. rather than the workers focusing their fear and anger on the companies, they're focusing it on the
in Clayoquot Sound.
environmentalists."
Berman says that the industry doesn't have the workers' best interests at heart. "The workers need to sit back and ask themselves why they don't have community tenures and local control over the resources, and what we are going to do when the old growth forest runs out. We're liquidating the old growth forest so quickly that eventually we won't have any left, and we'll be dependent on second growth forest, which won't provide the quantity or quality of fibre to sustain the industry."
What the now 26-year-old advocates is the banning of conventional clear-cutting, citing the U.S. example as a model to follow.
"From 1988 to 1993, they managed to reduce clear-cutting of their national forests from 44 percent to 12 percent. Here in B.C., 95 percent of the logging we do is clear-cutting."
Berman says that there are other ways to log, such as selection logging, which "employs more people in the forest to log the same number of trees and maintains the existing structure of the old growth forest."
And she believes that it would still make forestry a profitable industry.
"1 think it would be very profitable certainly for smaller companies and community-controlled companies, but maybe not for the large multi-nationals which are looking to make the highest profit they can in the shortest amount of lime. And we have to decide whether we value short-term profits over environmental health. 1 don't think most people do."
F.(OFKMIMST- Pagell