Ashland man arrested in Monday protest

Medford Police arrested one Ashland man in a Monday protest of the Mike's Gulch timber salvage sale.

Derek Volkart said he was taking pictures of the police arresting protestors when he was taken into custody.

"I really wasn't causing trouble," Volkart said. "I was just caught in the middle."

Police arrested 10 adults for disorderly conduct and cited one minor. All of the adults were out on $100 bond by Wednesday.

Volkart, who heads to Paraguay Sept. 20 for a Peace Corps assignment, said he is working on getting the charges dismissed. The Peace Corps rescinded an invitation to Volkart to serve in Morrocco earlier this year after an article in the Ashland Daily Tidings quoted him making inflammatory remarks about the current U.S. administration. Volkart was the only Ashland resident arrested Monday.

"Everybody else was from out of the area," Medford Police Lt. Tim George said.

Protestors halted traffic on Eighth Street before police arrested them. Monday's protests of the timber salvage sale in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest were followed by a blockade over the Illinois River bridge on the way to the timber salvage sale. Officer's from the Josephine County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Forest Service arrested 29-year-old activist Laurel Sutherlin for interfering with an agricultural operation Tuesday morning. Sutherlin suspended himself above the Illinois River on a platform hanging from a 40-foot log that blocked the bridge to the timber salvage sale area.

Forest officials later said the tree was cut from a nearby botanical area and accused the protestors of illegal logging. Environmentalists called this accusation a petty point.

The timber salvage sale area is located in a roadless area that was charred by the 2002 Biscuit Fire. A Clinton administration rule put 58.5 million acres of designated roadless national forest lands off limits to logging. The Mike's Gulch area is the first roadless area in the country to be logged after the Bush administration eased restrictions on timber harvests in these areas. Silver Creek Timber Company is working on the operation. They paid $300,052 for the timber. The Merlin-based company will log 9 million board feet of timber in the project.

Staff writer Alan Panebaker can be reached at 482-3456 x 227 or apanebaker@dailytidings.com.