On the rare occasions that Andy Kerr dares to show his face in coffee shops while passing through Northwestern timber towns, the local people just stare and glare. Many of them recognize him from homemade wanted posters hung in sawmills or have seen his name on banners with slogans like KISS MY AX, ANDY. Lumberjacks deride Kerr as Andy Cur or Andy Cull (a term for a worthless log). And after putting away a few beers, some loggers have even called him from tavern telephones with death threats.
Environmentalist Kerr, 35, is the Ralph Nader of the old-growth preservation movement. As conservation director of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, a grass-roots coalition, he has spearheaded a guerrilla campaign in the courts, Congress and the media to drive the old-growth timber industry out of business. "Social change comes with social tension. We will do anything that's legal, anything," he says. "The more heat I take as a lightning rod, the better it is for this issue."
Reared in the small logging town of Creswell in western Oregon, Kerr never worked with schoolmates in the mills during summers. Instead, soon after dropping out of college, he joined ONRC in the effort to silence chain saws. In 1981 the young activist filed the first administrative appeal in the Northwest against a Forest Service timber sale. By 1988 he was masterminding 220 separate appeals in a single month, creating a legal logjam. The tactic proved so costly to industry that a House committee summoned Kerr to Washington for a special hearing, at which he was attacked by Oregon Representative Bob Smith, among others. Yet by raising his profile and drawing national attention to the issue, the politicians unwittingly played into Kerr's hands.
On the airwaves and in print, his brass-knuckles commentary pummels adversaries. "Asking the Oregon congressional delegation in 1990 to deal rationally with the end of ancient-forest cutting is like asking the Mississippi delegation in 1960 to deal rationally with the end of segregation," he says. He is not a humorless crusader though. Accused by loggers of looking like a spotted owl, Kerr retorted, "That really ruffles my feathers."
The industry contends that Kerr's notoriety has set back attempts to find a compromise solution to the logging controversy. "He's the most polarizing force out there," fumes Tom Hirons, owner of Mad Creek Logging in Gates, Ore. "He practices mental terrorism." Hirons and fellow loggers refuse even to sit down at the same table with Kerr.
No matter how many insults and threats he receives, Kerr has no intention of backing down in his fight. "I'll be damned," he declares, "if I'm going to let a species go extinct so loggers don't have to face up to the fact that it ain't going to be like it was."