Washington: Seattle P-I newspaper goes out of business after 40 years of tree protection efforts

When a tired Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating the North Cascades National Park in 1968, it marked the end of an uphill battle in which citizen activists were pitted against the state’s powerful timber industry. An editorial writer with The Seattle Times had dismissed park boosters as “mountain climbers and bird watchers.” P-I City Hall reporter Michael Conant revealed that Seattle City Light had secretly opposed the park, as a bill wound through Congress, because it planned hydroelectric projects that would flood its valleys. City Light then put on a show of celebrating the park’s creation.

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The P-I and its writers since have helped draw the map on Northwest
conservation, even — dramatically — when the editor in chief of its
parent Hearst Newspapers lined up on the other side. Persistence runs
through it. We’ve spent 35 years as defenders of Puget Sound. We’ve
been advocates for Alaska’s wild places since the 1970s. And we’ve
told truth to power — development-hungry politicians as well as
utility brass that wanted to flood mountain valleys and dreamed of
nuclear “parks.”

Some famous battles:

ALPINE LAKES: In the mid-1970s, Congress took up legislation to create
an Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area in the “land of 600 lakes” between
Stevens and Snoqualmie passes. A timber industry front group
campaigned for an “octopus” plan in which ridges would get protected,
and valleys would be logged. The P-I campaigned for a big wilderness:
Surprisingly, conservationists packed House hearings, and a
393,000-acre plan wound its way through Congress.

ALASKA’S CROWN JEWELS: The independence of the P-I was tested on the fate of what Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus called “the crown jewels of Alaska.” Just before Ronald Reagan took office, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation protecting 103 million acres of Alaska as national parks, preserves and monuments, plus wildlife refuges, wilderness areas and wild and scenic rivers. It was the biggest conservation action in American history and bitterly opposed by oil, mining and lumber interests in Alaska, the Port of Seattle and William Randolph Hearst Jr., then editor in chief of Hearst Newspapers. Although a Hearst paper, the P-I supported Carter’s effort, in Andrus’  words, to “for once do it right” in planning development of a piece of  the American frontier.

CLEARCUTTING BRITISH COLUMBIA: A cover story in Sierra magazine by
this writer — “British Columbia: The Big Cut” — exposed massive,
environmentally destructive overcutting in a Canadian province that
billed itself “Beautiful British Columbia.” It also set off an
argument, at a San Francisco reception, between Canada’s
consul-general and California Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy.

CUTTING CAMP PARSONS: The P-I took the lead role this winter in a
Hearst Newspapers’ expose of the clearcut logging and development of
Boy Scouts’ properties across the country. On the series’ first day, a
color photo showed a sprawling logging scar at Camp Parsons, the
Olympic Peninsula retreat where thousands of Scouts (including two
future governors) received their introduction to the outdoors. The
series discussed the six-figure salaries of senior Scouting
bureaucrats, and conflicts of interest in which volunteer leaders have
been involved with timber cruising and logging.

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