E-Mail This Article to a Friend On top of the world with Earth First! (continued) BY MICHAEL BLANDING

SUCH ATTITUDES, while admirable, are misguided, says David Crowley, general manager of WMA, which has been owned by members of the Crowley family for decades. "If anything, I appreciate their being so zealous, but I think they’ve picked the wrong issue," he says. "This was not land set aside to be forever wild. This land has been set aside for recreation."

Indeed, Wachusett is the only mountain within a short drive of Boston and Providence large enough for alpine skiing. The Crowleys and the state regulators who approved the expansion say the ski area is providing a public benefit, and even helping create future environmentalists, by getting kids away from their video-game consoles and exposing them to the outdoors. Crowley insists that WMA is a good steward of the mountain, citing an energy-efficient heating system it installed at the base lodge and 350 acres that the company has donated to the state through a land-acquisition program.

The issue, he says, is that there simply isn’t enough space for skiing. WMA has leased the ski area from the state for more than 30 years, and has seen crowds grow and then exceed the capacity of the mountain. At this point, some 400,000 visitors come every year, and the WMA has to close the parking lot early on some winter days when they’ve exceeded capacity. "Sometimes on a Saturday morning, we have to turn away as many as 900 cars, full of disappointed families and kids," he says.

As a solution, WMA proposed an expansion in 1993 that would add another summit trail and an alpine bowl with a trail for snowboarders. Almost immediately, a Winchester-based anti-sprawl group called WEST (Watchdogs for an Environmentally Safe Town) opposed the plans. The group didn’t have much of a case, however, until the old-growth trees were discovered in 1995, exactly where the summit trail was supposed to be. The ski area went back to the drawing board, nixing the summit trail, and scaling back the expansion to an area of forest between the Hancock and Lower Smith Walton trails, just below the old growth.

As part of the review process, however, the state Department of Environmental Management produced an inch-thick resource-management plan that, among other recommendations, designated the same area an important buffer zone. The report said that, while not old-growth itself, the area contained 150-year-old trees that would protect the old-growth from the effects of wind and weather. In 1999, then–DEM commissioner Peter C. Webber and environmental secretary Robert K. Durand both approved the expansion anyway.

That’s when the Sierra Club got in on the act, filing a lawsuit saying that the commissioner had ignored the directive of his own scientists in approving the plan. A Superior Court judge agreed, calling the approval an "arbitrary, capricious decision" that hadn’t considered alternatives to expansion, and issued a permanent injunction against any cutting in 2001. Almost immediately, however, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), the state’s highest court, reached down to take the case. And after two more years of legal arguments, it unanimously overruled the lower court’s decision this past June, allowing the cutting to proceed.

Katie Ford, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, argues that the finding is valid because it upholds the state’s original decision. "We strive to strike the right balance between land preservation and recreation opportunities," she says. "This project strikes that balance." For the Sierra Club, however, it sets a dangerous precedent that could open up more public land to private development at the whims of politicians. "What’s the point of spending all this money and doing all this research if you don’t have to actually listen to what is said?" says James McCaffrey, executive director of Sierra Club Massachusetts. "This sends a clear message to developers that there is a whole new world here for exploitation."

Both sides are trying to claim the role of underdog. "I think of this as a political move on the behalf of a corporation — the Sierra Club — against a small family-owned organization," says Crowley, who estimates that his company has spent more than $1 million in legal fees. McCaffrey counters that the Crowley family controls a multi-million-dollar operation that includes a hotel and a restaurant, and that the family also owns the Polar and Adirondack beverage companies. "They have done a tremendous job of convincing the public they are a small, friendly mom-and-pop operation," says McCaffrey. "They are a large-scale industrial facility." WMA won’t say what its profits are, but it does admit it spends only three percent of its gross revenue on the lease for the ski area. The expansion, says McCaffrey, is nothing more than a grab for more cash. "They spend Lord knows how much to blanket the airwaves with their advertisements, and then they complain they are sold out a couple of days a season," says McCaffrey. "They are just full of it."

BEFORE THE SKI-area-expansion proposal, the Earth First! chapter in Central Massachusetts was little more than a PO box. When Panther learned about the group in a college class, he and his friend Reno began using it to put together creative forms of protest. They hung banners from the trees and showed up at the gates of the ski area with a marching band and drums. They used theater performances to disrupt meetings — once they dressed as trees, while a person wearing a dollar-sign mask used a mock chain saw to mow the others down. At another, they rewarded the WMA’s environmental record with a "Golden Stump Award," slapping a gold-painted tree stump from the mountain on the table, where it sat for the rest of the meeting.

As it became more clear that the court battle was failing, however, the group turned to more radical tactics. They asked all the West Coast veterans they could find how to pull off a successful tree-sit, and attended activist training camps to learn the basics of rope-climbing. Reinforced by recruits from Maine anti-logging campaigns, they spent the summer building practice platforms, hauling the wood dozens of feet up the tree trunks and learning to secure it without nails.

Then, on July 31, the night before the ski area was set to start cutting, they stole into the reservation and installed the first penthouse residents of the old-growth-buffer zone. At first, Panther says, it was unnerving. "During the first few weeks, I would be up in the middle of the night worrying, calling their cell phones asking if everything was okay." By six weeks into the sit, the forest defenders had settled in, and had even started drawing attention from activist circles around the country. "I think people out West are really excited there’s a movement out East now," Panther says. "People are always glorifying the tree-sits out West. Now they are saying there are things we can do in our own back yard."

"It was pretty inspiring to hear about it," says Leanne Siart, a member of the Cascadia Forest Defenders, which has thwarted logging on public lands in Oregon since 1995. Frustrated with the apathy on the East Coast, Siart, who grew up in Shrewsbury, moved West, where it was easier to find other radicals. But, since hearing about the Wachusett issue from family in Princeton, she’s considering returning home. "I’ve been thinking a lot about coming back to the East Coast to start something or help with something that’s already been started," she says.

She’s not the only one who has supported the tree-sitters. At the same time that the direct activists were climbing trees, the Sierra Club filed a petition for the SJC to rehear its case, temporarily delaying the tree-cutting. For the entire month of August, members of Earth First! turned their efforts to rallying more supporters for the issue. Public response has been mixed. A message board on a pro–Earth First! Web site was outnumbered four-to-one with messages against the forest defenders. "I have to laugh at you radical environmentalists that put down anything others want to do because it doesn’t fit into your agenda," read a typical posting. "The earth belongs to all of us, not just those of you who think you are ‘protecting’ it."

On the other hand, the Earth Firsters have gotten support from some unexpected quarters. The Worcester-based New England Native American Institute has donated housing near the mountain for the activists’ "base camp," and Adventure Outfitters, an outdoor-equipment store in Hadley, sold them climbing gear at a discount. At a rally a week after Parker climbed up into the tree, participants included students from the Worcester Global Action Network, a Native American shaman, and a Gulf War vet from Amherst who represents Veterans for Peace. Dotting the crowd were a few non-activists, including a couple with a minivan and mirrored sunglasses whose two boys recognize the trails where they’ve skied in the winter. "We home-school our children, so this is school for us," says the man, who identified himself as D. Trahan. "We want to teach our kids that there are some times you have to break the law for what you believe in." After a Native American ceremony, small groups walked among the trees to talk with Lyons and "Dan," a soil scientist who replaced Parker.

In the three weeks after the rally, the environmentalists held other protests, including one coinciding with the annual blues fest at the base lodge. On September 5, however, their luck finally ran out when the SJC ruled on the Sierra Club’s 11th-hour appeal, striking it down without comment. The ski area almost immediately moved to start cutting. Last Sunday morning, a half-dozen state troopers were stationed outside the swath of trees, now cordoned off with police tape as a construction zone. "We’re here to ensure the safety of anyone in the area," said one trooper after aggressively interrogating and demanding identification from a hiker.

When the trees started falling, Lyons says, they came dangerously close to where she and now another activist who goes by the name Badger are sitting. "In the few minutes that they shut off their machines, we try to shout down and tell them they are putting our lives in danger, but they pretty much just laugh in our faces," she says.

ALTHOUGH THE Earth Firsters failed to keep these red oaks standing, the real legacy of the battle of Wachusett might be larger than just a few trees. For East Coast forest defenders, this could be their Stonewall or Seabrook — the incident that sparks a movement. Panther, obviously, thinks it’s the former.

"What the ski area has done is create a direct-action environmental movement in Central Mass that’s going to spread everywhere in the Northeast," predicts Panther. "Clear-cutting trees is just not going to be accepted anymore."

Additional reporting by Susan Ryan-Vollmar. Michael Blanding can be reached through www.michaelblanding.com