Warrior on Wheels for The Great Northwest

By John Skow/Everett

Bonnie Phillips has been called an eco-nazi. Twice, logging trucks in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest northeast of Seattle have run her off the road. She shrugs. Washington and Oregon are where the big wave of U.S. logging ran out of room, and the timber wars there--between loggers and environmentalists over uncut remnants of ancient Douglas fir and hemlock forests--are not beanbag fights.

Phillips and a visitor have been traversing a short, paved forest trail near the Stillaguamish River. She stands up from her battered wheelchair, folds it and tosses it through the hatch of her hard-used Toyota. She was a skilled, passionate mountain climber until she was 40. Then that part of her life slammed shut. A painful condition called fybromyalgia set in, limited her walking to a few yards and turned her sharply focused energy toward forest activism.

She joined the Audubon Society's Pilchuk chapter, named for a mountain near Everett, Wash., discovered a talent for tactics and alliances and soon became Pilchuk's paid director. Recently she has prowled the halls of Congress, wheelchair and all, for the Forest Water Alliance, a consortium of 21 environmental groups.

At first her battles were simply about preserving the forest, often from the Forest Service itself. It took 10 years of campaigning by Pilchuk, for instance, to get the big agency to back off plans to replace a modest gravel road in an old-growth forest with a broad, paved highway. Although there is no "Endangered Habitat Act," Phillips and other environmentalists were able, sometimes, to wrap the Endangered Species Act around old-growth forests. Two endangered birds, the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, nest in the moss-grown upper limbs of the ancient trees. Phillips is awed by the murrelet, a seabird that flies to Washington's forests--farther away every year because of logging--to feed its young.

From a plane flown by Lighthawk, the activist flying outfit, Phillips scans the scarred forest between Seattle and the Cascades. On land where 500-year-old trees recently grew, she sees bald slopes and cookie-cutter second homes. She is small, white-haired, 56 years old. And full of fire. Her plans? She's starting a nationwide group, Women for Protection of Public Lands. "There aren't enough women environmentalists," she says. "Women can fight without making it personal. Work with the opposition when we can..."--she pauses, smiling--"and sue them when we have to."

--By John Skow/Everett