ABSTRACT
A cold wind blew as Tom Hirons, Larry Robertson, and six other cutters and loggers drove up the road in snowmobiles. Scanning the way ahead nervously, they felt like cowboys riding through Indian country, expecting an ambush. The Second Battle of Breitenbush had begun. Fought just twenty miles northeast of the site of the 1986 conflict of Millennium Grove, near the North Santiam River in Willamette National Forest, it would become known as the Easter Sunday Massacre. It was the first time these woodsmen, who regularly risked their lives felling trees, felt fear. For the loggers things had been going wrong for months. In January the Fish and Wildlife Service, acceding to circuit court judge William Dwyer's order, had reopened review of the petition to list the spotted owl as an endangered species. In March Dwyer, acquiescing to a petition filed by nine environmental groups led by the Seattle Audubon Society, issued an injunction halting 135 Forest Service timber sales.
