Tim Ream, a forest activist, is best known for his 75-day fast outside the Willamette National Forest office in the fall of 1995 to protest passage of the Salvage Logging Rider. After that, he went on a 34-state tour, with a slide show. When not out in the forests, Tim has often hosted the weekly Cascadia Alive show on public access TV in Eugene.

A lot more people know me and have an idea about me and the idea is that I'm the guy who didn't eat for 75 days. The timber salvage rider was passed; all environmental laws governing public laws were eliminated by an act of Congress and the signature of the President. How do you respond to that? What could be more intense than not eating? Many people came up to me and said, "Well, if you could do that, then I can..." and they would name something they found hard to do.

I think, too, young people really took to it, especially students from the Waldorf School and South Eugene High. Before it was over, some of them were doing three day hunger strikes plus campouts at the Federal Building and at their schools. They were doing weekly fasts, wearing green arm bands, writing letters to the editor, doing television interviews. That was great. Some of them got even more involved after the hunger strike. And I think they felt a lot of empowerment, a lot of learning, so that was good.

I took a couple of months to recover from the fast. Around the beginning of March 1996, I did a 6-week road show. I drove around 10,000 miles and talked to more than 1,000 people. I got a chance to testify before Congress. I talked to a congresswoman in Kansas City, who'd taken a stand against repeal of the salvage rider. I did a radio interview and during the interview I asked people to call her office. Within a week, I got a fax forwarded to me on the road that said "Back in Kansas City, our congresswoman just changed her position." That was rewarding.

Forest Service polls show a majority of Americans--as high as 75%--are infavor of ending all resource extraction on public lands. So what is decried as the radical position by the media and by members of Congress happens to be the position held by the majority of Americans. Our movement is preaching Zero Cut, but we're not just preaching Zero Cut,our movement is preaching sustainability--which is an end to a lot of commercial activity. That's not a message that the mainstream media wants to tell. So you have very limited access to mainstream media.

You're not going to be able to tell your story in depth very often. We repeat our main message over and over again: "They're cutting old growth today. They're cutting old growth right now!" We just have to keep telling people that. That's the fundamental message. That's why we sit in trees,that's why we chain ourselves to dozers and lock down in the middle of the road. It's because if we didn't do that, the public would be very able to forget and the media would say, 'It's an old story, of course they're cutting forests.' They'd be able to just ignore the issue.

There are also more coordinated campaigns specifically targeted to save certain places, like Warner Creek. Here was years of getting the public involved in a place, of exposing criminal arson that was about to be rewarded with a Forest Service timber contract, and dedication of a lot of people. And not only did that 11-month blockade and all the other work save Warner Creek--at least until this point and, it will be saved--it's just amatter of how much work we have to do. Not only that, federal roads were ripped up, a federal insurrection was in place. We declared ourselves independent from the United States. Not only did we do all this, but even the system had to admit we were right.

So now we just have to keep telling that story. And this wasn't a unique occurrence. I mean it was, but it can be done again. The Boston Tea party was a unique occurrence. But it can happen again. The Underground Railroad was thousands of people breaking laws in favor of doing what they thought was right. And that is what we need: widespread standing up for what is right. So that's the message.

The people in this movement can be so brave, so fearless. And they're so connected and loving and tolerant and so politically and socially conscious. It's a constant inspiration to be around them, a constant learning experience and constant challenge to get to run with this tribe. They've become such a source of comfort. To be attracted to this, I think, you have to have a value system that is pretty rigorous and is so anti-mainstream. The wilder the place, the more I seem to love experiencing a connection with its harmony.

The situation of the forests in the Pacific Northwest is desperate. At the same time, it's hopeful. The hope is this is one of the few places, other than the Northern Rockies, where large tracts of wild places remain unroaded and can provide the potential for whole ecosystems. Do you believe we can't find one place for the wolf? One place for the grizzly bear?

From the state of Washington (from just about the Canadian border)through Oregon and all the way through California to Mexico, there's nowhere with the predators at the top of the food chain. There's nowhere in that whole area with a pack of wolves running wild--with grizzly bears. So the entire West Coast states--with the exception of just a little bit of Washington near Canada--don't have an intact ecosystem.

It's so lopsided, it's so out of balance. The hope in the Pacific NW is that it's one of the few places that can be brought back into balance. I'd say the chances of our current state and federal governments saving the forests is about equal to the chances of aliens coming down and saving it. Certainly, the OLIFE petition banning clearcutting could really be an education device. Ultimately, though, it's going to take a change in values.

We have to respect other beings as having inherent rights, having a right to live. Not by regulation, but by first understanding, for example, that the bodies of salmon are running through the electric wires, and there aren't many of them left. Honor and respect trees, wolves and grizzly bears.

I will quote you Genesis, Chapter 9, Verses 8 & 9: 'I establish my covenant with you and your descendants and every living creature on earth. I set myrainbow in the clouds. And it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.' This is Old Testament at the roots. This is not in the J.C. tradition from the start, a covenant between man and God or God and humans. This is a covenant between 'you, your descendant and every living creature on Earth.'

And in Job, Chapter 12, it says, 'Ask the animals and they will teach you. Or birds of the air and they will tell you. Or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In His hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all human kind.'

So, animal as teacher is in the Bible. Of course, there's a whole lot of other stuff in the Bible that says, in effect, 'Go out and rip it! Dominate it, control it. It's yours. I say, maybe it's yours if you understand this earlier covenant. It's yours if you're honoring the covenant and if you're letting the birds and the animals teach you. And if you're respecting your descendants and every living creature as also happened in that covenant with God--then you can go ahead and be fruitful and multiply and use the fullness thereof. But if you haven't honored that covenant, then you're trying to do all the rest of that stuff is putting the cart before the horse. And that's destructive.

And that's what we're seeing. What drives all this is species extinction. Once gone, gone forever. Not just death, but an end to birth, as one author put it--creatures that are never ever born again. And that our generation should decide this for perpetuity? That's insanity. That's missing Genesis' instruction that the covenant is with descendents.

There's no way to say there's "the most effective thing" to save the Northwest forests. But do something. Go visit public land. Find out what the next native forest about to be cut. Figure out what your most effective thing is.