from Glacier’s Edge Earth First!
To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Glacier’s Edge Earth First! showed our love for Indiana’s wild forests with a demonstration at an active logging site in Morgan-Monroe State Forest. Ten forest defenders walked onto the site carrying banners that read “Make Like a Leaf and Get the Fuck Out”, “Defend What Remains”, and an Earth flag that read “Luv It or Leave It.” Work was temporarily halted as GEEF!ers stood in front of a logging truck and expressed their opposition to the pillaging of public lands for private profit.
The Indiana Division of Forestry and the private timber industry are working together to destroy Indiana’s last wild forests. The current logging in the Morgan-Monroe State Forest Backcountry Area represents an unrelenting march of domination across Indiana’s public forests, destroying entire ecosystems in the name of private profit, legitimized by bought-and-paid-for science. Glacier’s Edge Earth First! is dedicated to defending what wild areas remain in Indiana.
Prior to being clearcut by European settlers, Indiana was covered with magnificent, towering forests of beech, maple, sycamore, chestnut, oak, hickory, ash, and more. This land was populated by bears, mountain lions, grouse, snakes, deer, buffalo, bats, wolves, and innumerable others. Along with indigenous human communities of Miami, Potawatomi, Delaware, Kickapoo, Piankeshaw, Wea, and other tribes, these non-human communities were subject to displacement at best, and extermination at worst, at the hands and axes of European settlers. The Division of Forestry is proudly carrying on this tradition of human dominance over all things natural, wiping out the few areas that have dared to reclaim the majesty of the forests that once covered our state.
Hamilton Logging, Inc, which is currently logging the Morgan-Monroe Backcountry Area, has been subject to civil and criminal charges for illegal and irresponsible logging practices in the past. The state’s decision to enter into a contract with Hamilton Logging demonstrates a dangerous and cozy relationship between a rogue timber industry and policymakers. As long as the timber industry exerts its will over our public lands, our resistance will continue.
While we recognize that today’s action was more symbolic than it was confrontational, we think that it was an important first step– to make our resistance known to the companies and government officials who profit from selling off wild lands, to let them know that we are watching.
We can no longer rely upon government and non-profits to save our public lands. We demand that all logging in Indiana’s state forests cease immediately. These forests make up only 3% of all forests in Indiana, but their potential to regrow into the same wild forests that once blanketed the state makes their protection imperative. It is up to us to defend what remains of Indiana’s wild forests. This is your land to defend. This is the line in the sand.
DEFEND WHAT REMAINS!
Glacier’s Edge Earth First!
