Oregon community activist Aiden Wilson has lived for three weeks on an 8-by-4-foot platform in an old growth tree located in the southern part of the state. They said it’s a little windy up there, but they feel connected to nature. It’s a healing experience, except when they are being harassed by law enforcement or the sounds of chainsaws.

“This beautiful area of forest that I’m sitting in right now is slated to be destroyed,” Wilson said. “The trees that surround me have markings on them indicating that they’re going to be cut down and that all of this serene and peaceful forest probably wouldn’t exist right now if I wasn’t sitting in this tree.”

It is the second major effort led by local community members protesting the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) logging of forests across Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. The Rouge Gold Timber Sale project targets more than 2,000 acres of land, with significant amounts of old growth trees. Environmentalists said the area is wrongly described as “overstocked,” meaning it’s a fire risk.

Community groups have opposed the project since it was announced in 2021, but logging has moved forward in spite of protests. Activists are camped out near Rogue River and Gold Hill in southern Oregon to protest timber sales, which studies say increases the threat of wildfire and threatens endangered ecosystems and rural communities.

Activists said mature forests gather and hold large amounts of carbon and are a cost-effective way to mitigate climate change. Studies have found that forests in Oregon are among the most carbon-rich in the world and logging is the state’s largest source of carbon emissions.

In total, BLM has proposed more than 700,000 acres of logging across Oregon.

“We see ourselves not just protesting individual trees from being cut or specific sales, but more broadly, the agencies’ continued actions to log mature and old growth forest on public lands and  the divided administration’s hypocrisy and failure to take any kind of meaningful action to stop these projects,” Shields said.

These same environmentalists have made some headway. Earlier this year, activists camped in the forest for three weeks and occupied a tree slated to be cut down in the nearby Poor Windy Forest Management Project, successfully thwarting the BLM’s plans to construct an “unnecessary” road that would have cut down a swath of old growth trees in the area.

“Tree-sits work, and we learned that there is a lot of desire in the local community to protect these forests,” Shields said. “Direct action works, community organizing works.”

Actions like these are a last resort for activists like Shields, however.

“We volunteer with nonprofits to write formal comments and to rally and protest and ask elected officials to oppose these sales,” Shields said. “But at the end of the day, when the chainsaws start revving, that is when we put our bodies on the line because we are not willing to see even one more tree be felled by this administration or administrations to come.”

Activists rallied in Portland on June 13 to protest the Biden administration’s continued logging of mature and old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest but also in public lands across the country.

Environmentalists called on the Biden Administration to issue a moratorium of logging mature and old growth forests on federal land until legal protections and agency requirements are put in place. Activists also demanded a reduction, if not complete elimination, of annual timber targets set by the U.S. Forest Service and the BLM.

Two major fires sparked in Southern Oregon in the last several days about 30 miles away from where protestors are tree-sitting. One fire burned about 830 acres, sending evacuation warnings to residents south of Medford. Another blaze burned more than 1,000 acres, with local campgrounds closed and people evacuated.

Activists said they don’t plan to leave until the forests receive protections, but the fire and smoke is concerning.

Shields said wildfire talk in Southern Oregon comes with a lot of “baggage, especially for folks who experienced unimaginable hardship from the Almeda Fire in 2020,” Shields said. The wildfire was at the time the most destructive in Oregon’s history, destroying more than 2,600 homes.

Activists say politicians have latched onto these concerns all over the country. H.R. 8790, the “Fix Our Forests Act,” was introduced in response to devastating wildfires impacting communities in the last several years.

Lawmakers say the legislation would increase forest health while also protecting local towns but environmentalists say this is a logging bill in disguise.

“These unchecked logging practices would lead to increased wildfire risk while also weakening environmental safeguards … that are crucial to maintaining these ecosystems and ensuring that these activities don’t harm endangered species or degrade the environment,” said Jennifer Mamola, the advocacy and policy director, for the John Muir Project.

According to advocates, tree logging, or “thinning,” exacerbates wildfires by tearing down old fire-resistant trees, making the local microclimate hotter and drier. Environmentalists said these practices contributed to some of the deadliest fires in recent years, including the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California that killed 82 people and destroyed 11,000 homes.

Timothy Ingalsbee, the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology said sensational media coverage of wildfires creates and instills fears of a natural process. Activists said the timber industry and politicians bank on these worries.

“Scientists call it a natural disturbance but I prefer to call it an ecological stimulus,” Ingalsbee said. “Fire is nature’s recycler. It helps create a diversity of habitats.”

Ingalsbee said fires burn down small trees while larger and older ones are able to resist the same type of damage. Timber companies, on the other hand, cut down the larger trees to maximize profits, leaving behind younger and highly flammable forest.

Experts believe wildfires will become more frequent and severe, with fire seasons starting earlier than usual due in part to the effects of climate change.

To mitigate the impacts wildfires have on humans, advocates suggest taking protective measures such as home hardening, creating smoke centers and improving evacuation routes in areas with a lot of vegetation — instead of tearing down old growth trees.

“We really should take a step back and trust that nature will recalibrate and rebound,” Mamola said. “Wildfires are not catastrophic unless human lives or structures are lost. That’s why we advocate to work from the community out, because I understand the terror of a wildfire.”

Up in the tree about 100 feet above the ground, Wilson wakes up every morning at 5:30 a.m. to the beauty of nature.

“It’s such a special experience to be able to hear bird song – not just above me, but below me and on all sides of me,” they said. “But then after a few minutes, the construction starts around 6 a.m. and then the bird song is drowned out by all the noise of heavy machinery.”

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