13 August 1997
FOR THE LOVE OF NATURE
Special report by Jonathan Mullin
It sure is quite a CV. Travelled the world over; written a book; sighted every wild animal imaginable; hovered over a primed nuclear warhead; been arrested twice; currently awaiting trial in Vancouver.
Chríostina Ni Dhurcáin, a daughter of John Francis and Anne Durcan, and a native of Barrick Rd., Foxford, is one of Greenpeace's campaigners which have recently hit the headlines for their efforts to save the rain forests in Canada.
It is impossible for us, being such a distance away from the action, to appreciate the extent of the coverage the Greenpeace campaigners have merited through their actions. But let me try and put it into context.
In Ireland our two broadsheet dailies The Irish Independent and The Irish Times dominate. In Canada it is the Vancouver Sun and The Province. For seven days out of ten, Christina and fellow crew members on the Moby Dick, held court on all of the front page and also frequented several articles inside. It was a big story.
Saving the rainforests is a long way from the St. Joseph's Secondary School in Foxford where her interest in the environment was nurtured. Early teen interest turned into late teen pursuits and at the age of 19, after a year of a Marketing course "that didn't really suit me", Chriostina began work as a volunteer in the Irish Office of Greenpeace in Dublin.
"It all began with the around Ireland trip of 1993, on which Chríostina was a campaign researcher for the Solo"
There can be no denying that the fascinating side of working with Greenpeace is in the 'galavatin' - in the thick of the action wherever that may bring one. Chriostína has had many a foray - to the Mediterranean twice, to the West Indies and Florida, and of course to Canada, but it all began with the around Ireland trip of 1993, on which Chriostína was a campaign researcher on the Solo.
She was originally required for a three week spell but the Captain saw it fit that this three weeks should expand into three months and Chriostína gained valuable experience as the ship moved out of Ireland and into the North Sea, basing itself in the Netherlands.
" . .when a protest is launched, the 'crew' can transform themselves into a team of intricately trained campaigners"
On the average Greenpeace ship - those best known being the Moby Dick and the Rainbow Warrior there are an assortment of professionals who blend into the ship structure - captain, mates, engineers, cooks and radio operators. Chríostina is the cook. However when a protest is being launched, the 'crew' can transform themselves into a team of intricately trained campaigners, who, combined, can bring the largest corporations and countries to their financial knees.
But to try and bring some chronological order to her career, her second trip to the Mediterranean came soon after the first. While delivering a ship in the ocean, a technical hitch involving their satellite link-up caused them to dock. Suddenly news from across the sea informed them of action in the Atlantic, and they began to follow a Trident submarine across the Atlantic in order to carry out a protest on a test the submarine was due to partake in.
The Trident was a British vanguard submarine, the first of its kind, and carried a nuclear warhead. It left Rosyth in Scotland and both intelligence networks sprang into operation. Greenpeace knew the planned path of the Trident and its schedule of testing. The web of the MI5 and the CIA stretched quite a distance, as you can imagine, and both governments were undoubtedly aware of the Greenpeace ship and its motives as it docked in Cape Cross, south of the Dominican Islands.
While docked there, Greenpeace held public information days, boat tours and had people visiting the ship viewing their presentation.
In no time they were back in action again with word that the submarine had arrived in Port Canaveral, the port of Cape Canaveral, and was preparing for the test. Intensive training was held at all periods of inactivity as on the previous occasion that the organisation held a similar protest, the American Coast Guard had rammed the ship, puncturing its side. The crew were trained for all possible consequences and as a result Chríostina maintains that "only an Act of God could possibly have impeded us".
"Without delay the crew scurried in inflatables and strategically hovered over the mast"
To carry out the test the Trident needed to raise a mast a certain height and for a certain period of time to carry out radio checks and the like. By high powered binoculars from the Moby Dick the crew carefully kept watch and on two occasions caught sight of the mast. Without delay the crew scurried in inflatables and strategically hovered over the mast. Reinforcing their campaign, a Greenpeace helicopter flew overhead.
This scenario occurred twice. On the third occasion the Trident didn't raise its mast the required height. Chríostina and her colleagues were given no indication that the Trident was going to fire when it did just that.
The test had taken place much to their disappointment, but the media attention that resulted was to prove to be beneficial. Indeed just a few months ago at the MTV Music Awards, in which the organisation picked up an award, a clip of their action in the Atlantic was shown to great acclaim.
Two years ago Chríostina's work brought her back to Ireland. Most of you will remember the Brent's Bar Saga. Brent's Bar is off the Donegal coast and it was in this scenic area of the country that the multinational petroleum company, Shell, were planning to dispose of an oil rig. Greenpeace worked on the case for months and so it triggered great fulfilment when the company announced that it wasn't, after all, planning to dump the rig. A case won, in Chríostina's mind.
The Brent's Bar episode underlines how important and vital it is to have a lobby group of campaigners like Greenpeace and related organisations.
" . . .the Canadian angle . . .a story that is as complicated as it is simple . . ."
Currently however it is the Canadian angle that is capturing the attention. It is a story that is a complicated as it is simple. The simple story can be divided into two sections. Here goes:
(i) At present in Canada there is a company attempting a clear-cut logging of the Great Bear Rain Forests, on the mid west coast of the country.
This vast area is the natural habitat of a wide range of fauna including, to name a few, the grizzly bear, the black bear and the white bear while the water inlets house the Orca (Killer Whale) and there are huge numbers of salmon in the rivers and this salmon is food for the bears.
The eagle soars high above the forest in its natural environment. There is an intricate natural system there and the cutting down of the trees will have detrimental consequences, not to mention the whole global warming issue.
(ii) One particular area that of being logged is an site called Ista . Ista is the sacred site of the Nuxalk Indians (pronounced new-hawk). The Nuxalks are the native people of the area. One independent journalist compared the logging of the area to "bombing Bethlehem".
For Greenpeace, the Canada campaign is a 6 year one, with four years yet to run. During the winter the campaigners work on the political side of things - meeting with leading politicians and logging company representatives. The summer is spent orchestrating protests from the ground.
It must be added at this stage that there are a number of people in Canada who are against Greenpeace's protests. Indeed it is a source of deep division between families in the area.
There are, as you can imagine, a great number of people involved in logging the forests and some see Greenpeace as coming to take their jobs. Greenpeace are not against logging, they are against clear-cut logging. Clear-cut logging is a highly mechanised form of logging that requires the use of an extensive amount of machinery. If, Greenpeace argue, the forests were logged in a more sustainable fashion, jobs would actually be created.
"Log smaller tracts of land, away from the pristine area", is the argument they have put forward. But it is an assertion that has, to date, fallen on deaf ears. "The Nuxalk people invited Greenpeace to . .save their religious site"
Setting a precedent, the Nuxalk people invited Greenpeace to come into the area and try to save their religious site. This action bestowed on Greenpeace, what Chríostina describes, "a great honour". Greenpeace docked the Moby Dick beside the area and proceeded to blockade the logging for 19 days. Chríostina relates the scene:
"The workers would come in the morning and we sat at the entrance to the site. They would approach the native Indian Chief, a man called Quatsinas, and ask him "Can we go to work?", to which he'd reply "No, it's a sacred site". Then the workers would go home. Our blockade meant that they could not get their machinery up to the site."
There was a heavy police presence in the area and the Greenpeace campaigners held a close relationship with them. So much so, that frequently they shared coffee with each other and swopped surveillance videos and photographs.
The police supported them in everything the did but ultimately had to do their job. Their sympathy remained right to the death however and a week before the had to perform the inevitable task, they informed the Greenpeace expedition that they were to be arrested.
The arrest was expected as they had broken an injunction which banned them from being on the Ista side. In the Canadian scenario, Chríostina was given the option of getting arrested, or not. She needed little time in making up her mind and as the only Irish person on board she "felt duty-bound" to get arrested.
"If getting arrested is what we have to do, well so be it, but while we do break some laws and get arrested for doing so, we stay away from violence and are a one-hundred-per-cent peaceful organisation."
In her six years involved Chriostina has been arrested twice - shrugging it off as "in the nature of the job I do". "It's a pity we have to go to such lengths to make people aware." Publicity is the chief tool of Greenpeace campaigns and publicity is the main outlet to public information.
Chríostina returns to Vancouver for trial this September or October. Four of the city's best defence lawyers have offered their services free of charge - "a kind of a 'dream team'" - and Chríostina has no fears about going back.
She'll go back to continue a never-ending struggle to defend the liberties of nature - the most powerful mute force on earth.
