Alliance protects forests

Wednesday nights in a small, upstairs room on College Avenue, members of the Indiana Forest Alliance brainstormed and organized toward a main goal: Stopping logging in state forests.\nThe non-profit group, funded through a $5,000 grant from the Patagonia clothing company, has about 30 active members, said Josh Martin, coordinator of the volunteer organization. About one thousand are involved in other activities, like donations or letter-writing, Martin said.\nThe IFA serves as a watchdog group for the government environmental agencies in Indiana, he said.\n"Just for them to know there's a public citizen watchdog group out there keeps them honest," Martin said. \nWith projects such as organizing hikes, distributing information at places such as the Bloomington Farmer's Market, demonstrating at timber sales and doing forest monitoring, the IFA makes its presence known.\n"A lot of it is the forest monitoring, which is going out before and after the timber sales and taking pictures and actually looking at the damage and catching them in things they shouldn't have been doing, like letting their fuel leak out of their logging equipment and things like that," Martin said.\nThe Indiana State Forest Protection Campaign, associated with the IFA, was created to raise support for a bill sponsored by Rep. Mark Kruzan, D-Bloomington, to halt state forest logging, coordinator Jason Flickner said. The bill missed the Feb. 5 deadline to reach the Indiana General Assembly, but by canvassing door-to-door, Flickner said their effort has been successful. \n"There's a pendulum here and they're basically holding the pendulum to one side, and anything that you can do to get your hands around that pendulum and start pulling it back your way are victories," Flickner said. "In the environmental field, small victories are victories no matter what. You take them however you can get them."\nAmong IFA's members, the number of students varies with time, Martin said. He joined three years ago when he was a student, and the experience has been invaluable to his current job with the American Lands Alliance, one of the groups in the Bloomington Environmental Center located at 116 1/2 S. College Ave., he said. \n"One of the things I got out of it is getting to know the community in Bloomington and learning what a great place it was and all the amazing people here that you can learn from that aren't on campus," he said. "It feels like more of a community and a home when you get involved."\nFor Colleen Briggs, graduate student in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, IFA steered her toward a specialty in environmental protection.\n"I didn't know, environmentally, what I wanted to focus on, though, and I just didn't know how to find a place to get involved with," Briggs said. "Getting involved in forest issues and actually having people that sat down and were living it and experiencing it -- you could learn it hands on with them and it really helped me figure out that that's what I wanted to do," she said. "That's probably the biggest thing I have gotten out of it."\nBriggs spent about a month last fall camped out in Prometheus, a tree in Yellowwood State Forest, which ended in a halt of scheduled logging. IFA did not sponsor the tree-sit, but many members helped on an individual basis with logistics.\nMartin said students don't have to wait until they graduate to make a difference.\n"Even on campus these days, if you want to speak a differing opinion from what the mainstream opinion of what the current administration wants to do to the forests or things like that, there's not an outlet for the frustration that you might be feeling," Martin said. "And this is a way to act on it in the real world."\nProjects for IFA this year include continuing the forest monitoring project and focusing on national environmental issues, such as drilling the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. Two events, one of which will draw volunteers from across the eastern United States to Indiana to learn about skills such as tree climbing and non-violent demonstration, are also on the agenda, Martin said.