İRainforest Action Network, 2001
June 20, 2001
Contacts:  Shannon Wright, 415-398-4404
Erin Malec, 415-255-1946

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For Immediate Release:

San Francisco - Anti-environmental activists stepped up the campaign against Rainforest Action Network (RAN) by requesting that the Internal Revenue Service repeal RAN's non-profit status. The campaign may be the extension of efforts by Boise Cascade -- the embattled logging giant responsible for clear-cutting national forests in the U.S. -- to smear RAN for its successful campaign protecting forests by reducing consumer demand for products made from old growth wood. Recently Boise sent threatening letters to many of RAN's funders.

RAN's work pressuring Home Depot and other lumber chains to stop buying wood made from old growth forests led to a deal brokered by the Canadian government to permanently protect a huge swath of British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest. It was one of the largest temperate rainforest conservation deals in history. Recently, RAN has been running a high-profile campaign urging Boise Cascade to cease its clearcut logging on public forests in the U.S.  Boise Cascade was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the historic ban on new road building in National Forests.

"The timber industry is attacking not just RAN, but the First Amendment itself," said Chris Hatch, RAN's Executive Director. "Boise Cascade is attacking RAN because we have exposed its destruction of the world's last remaining old growth rainforests. As for the anti-environment activists, they are trying to scare our funders. Let there be no doubt: the work to protect our forests will not only continue, but escalate."

Michael Klein, a Silicon Valley mogul and major financial backer of RAN, said "None of RAN's funders will be threatened by Boise's scare tactics. Who wants to be known as the funder who stopped supporting Martin Luther King's church after receiving a letter from the Montgomery Bus Company?"

"This is a major abuse of the IRS process and an attack on the free speech rights of Rainforest Action Network," said Jim Wheaton, a Senior Attorney with the First Amendment Project (FAP), a non-profit, public interest law firm that defends individuals, civic organizations, journalists and media organizations involved in petition and free speech cases. "There is no basis for the claims these anti-environmental activists are making. The IRS laws are designed to protect against felony abuse - not misdemeanor trespass offenses committed in a campaign to expose forest destruction."

"This appears to be a desperate attempt by Boise Cascade - which lost $35.5 million during the first quarter of this year - to blame RAN for its problems," added Hatch. "The fact of the matter is that ordinary citizens are rejecting Boise's clearcut destruction of the world's remaining old growth forests. A recent L.A. Times poll found that nine out of ten Americans believe protections for wilderness is important, and six out of ten support a halt to road building in national forests."

Two rightwing activist groups are behind an orchestrated campaign against RAN. The "Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise," headed by anti-environmentalist for-hire Ron Arnold, and the "Frontiers of Freedom Institute," founded by retired Wyoming Senator Malcolm Wallop. Ron Arnold's attack website, ranamuck.org, contains much of the same information, including quotations, cited by Boise Cascade in a series of intimidating letters sent to environmental foundations. Already defensive, Arnold claims on his site that his attack of RAN "is not a question of stifling their free speech rights."

Ron Arnold is a well-known anti-environmental activist. Here are a few of the statements he has made to the media:

"We want to destroy environmentalists by taking away their money and their members" (New York Times, Dec 19, 1991)

"We are sick to death of environmentalism and so we will destroy it." (Boston Globe, Jan 13, 1992)

On June 13, Wallop organized a forum on "Eco-Terrorism and Extremism" whose sole purpose appears to have been to smear RAN by falsely linking it with groups associated with property destruction and arson. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Rep. George Nethercutt (R-WA) spoke at the event.

A press release issued by Frontiers of Freedom said that "Ron Arnold, executive vice president of the non-profit think tank, the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, will spotlight the Rainforest Action Network as an attack group not an environmental group. He will present RAN's anti-capitalist and anti-corporate agenda of force, intimidation and unlawful actions. Arnold will also show suspicious links between RAN's rhetoric and Earth Liberation Front acts."

"RAN is a strictly nonviolent organization strongly opposed to property destruction of any kind," said Shannon Wright, RAN's Communications Director. "RAN has a track record of working with and praising major corporations such as Home Depot, Lowe's, and other Fortune 500 companies that have stopped buying wood products made from the world's remaining old growth forests."

The Development Director at Frontiers of Freedom told Shannon Wright that Frontiers is supported financially by the timber industry.

Read more about RAN's campaign on Boise Cascade

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) works to protect the Earth's rainforests and support the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots organizing and non-violent direct action. Error: Unable to read footer file.