Frankentrees

If a mad scientist created the archetypal Portland environmental activist, he might well produce Mark Des Marets.

The 34-year-old works for causes that may be noble, but hardly seem lucrative. His hair is short, yet rakish. He does yoga. He knows his way around a sound bite. You can find guys like him in every lefty city or woodsy college town in the West.

In one way, however, Des Marets is unique. Of all the countless men and women who draw a paycheck for protecting trees, he's the only one whose focus is safeguarding their genetic structure.

"Genetic engineering is one of the greatest threats to biological diversity that exists," Des Marets says. "You can look at nuclear weapons, and yes, that's a threat. But thankfully, we haven't seen a nuclear weapon used in war for 50 years. This is happening willy-nilly, in labs all over the planet, and we don't know the consequences."

So far, the worldwide Gene Wars are mostly about food, about whether it's safe to eat new, "improved" corn or soybeans. Now, though, Des Marets vows to drag genetically engineered trees--"frankentrees," if you want to get Gothic about it--into the political spotlight.

Next month, more than a dozen environmental groups will gather in Portland to plot the first-ever campaign against genetically engineered trees. Along with Des Marets, a founder of Portland's Northwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering, the activists will ponder petitions and protests. And they'll share fears about innovations some call the worst thing for forests since the invention of the chainsaw.

Amid such gloom, Des Marets sees an opportunity to bring the genetic engineering ("GE") fight out of the Safeway produce section and into
the woods.

"No one hugs corn," Des Marets says. "But people have an intrinsic, almost genetic, love for forests. Once people find out that the forests they love to hike in are threatened by this, you'll see a level of outrage even beyond what's happened with food."

If he's right, the fight will be an Oregon family feud. Just down the road in Corvallis, Steven Strauss, an Oregon State University forestry professor, spends his days reprogramming poplar trees. He's recognized as one of the world's leaders in this field, and his research intrigues federal agencies and multinationals. Des Marets and his green allies want to shut Strauss down.

"He's definitely embattled," says Des Marets of Strauss, whom he's debated at protests and policy forums. "I'm sure if you talk to him, the third sentence out of his mouth will be about eco-terrorism."

At first, Steve Strauss seems an unlikely lightning rod for controversy. Though he still speaks with a trace of a Brooklyn accent, Strauss--not unlike Mark Des Marets, in fact--is prototypical Oregon. Skinny and bearded, he's a friendly, sandals-with-socks, denim-at-the-office guy. He shops at food co-ops. And yet part of him savors debate. In his spare time, he referees high-school varsity soccer games.

"I definitely don't shy away from controversy," he says. "It's my personality, I guess."

Strauss, 48, started his academic career with a bachelor's in ecology from Cornell. "I definitely came into this as a green," he says. His Ph.D. in genetics is from Berkeley. In 1985, he gravitated to OSU's forestry department, considered one of the best.

"If you ask people to name the top five forestry schools in the country, OSU would almost always be on the list," says Perry Brown, dean of the University of Montana's forestry department. "Steve Strauss helped the school get where it is."

About 10 years ago, Strauss says, he started genetically engineering trees, tweaking their innermost building blocks to learn how their life cycles work and characteristics develop. Though it still seems freaky to many, scientists now frequently use genetic engineering as a simple lab tool, another way to see how organisms work. One scientist told WW that today's biologists engineer DNA more often than they look in microscopes.

Genetic engineering, however, is not without risks, as Strauss acknowledges. He says his background--its combination of green roots and advanced science--gives him an almost uniquely solid grasp of what's involved.

"I sort of feel like I'm about as good as it gets when it comes to understanding the full range of biotech issues," Strauss says. "A lot of molecular geneticists fail to see the big picture, and not many ecologists really know much about molecular-level gene function."

"He's the world's leading researcher in this field," says Toby Bradshaw, a University of Washington biologist who's collaborated with Strauss. "What's the best estimate of how safe this is? He can tell you, and he's the only one, because he's not just pulling it out of his ass."

You've probably seen a poplar farm without knowing it. They can be glimpsed as you cruise north on I-5 or east on I-84, slender trees growing in dense, tidy rows.

Industry loves poplars because they grow fast: A seed goes in the ground, and eight or 10 years later, a tree goes to mill. Poplars' short fibers make an ideal finishing ingredient in high-quality paper, like that used in laser printers and photocopiers. The white wood doesn't require as much bleaching at the mill as darker wood, cutting down on bleaching's spew of cancer-causing dioxins.

Strauss labors to make this already useful tree even better. In recent years he's obtained 33 federal permits to grow genetically engineered poplars on small test plots. Activists say that means Oregon has more GE poplar experiments than any other state.

Strauss' experiments focus on different genetic tweaks: say, making poplars simply grow faster, or building pest resistance into the wood. He's working very hard to create sterile trees, unable to spread or interbreed with native trees; it's an attempt to allay the worst nightmares of environmentalists. It all adds up to an effort to produce more wood fiber per acre and make that wood easier to mill or make into paper. For instance, he's considering breeding trees with less lignin, a polymer in wood that makes trees sturdy. Such trees would require less chemical treatment in papermaking.

The way Strauss sees it, his efforts are a humble contribution to saving forests. Despite the increasing ubiquity of recycling, humanity's appetite for paper and wood products shows little sign of slackening. As more tech-savvy kids in Mumbai buy inkjets and Shanghai tycoons build McMansions, it will get worse. But if the timber industry can get some wood from fast-growing, low-pesticide trees, more old-growth will be spared the ax.

Strauss and others foresee more potential environmental benefits from GE poplars--maybe soaking up greenhouse gases, or providing a new source of alternative energy. And though genetically engineered trees are still in experimental states--there's no commercial application for Strauss' work yet--industry is very interested. And yet there are those who will never be convinced.

"It's difficult to make a non-geneticist love genetically modified organisms, when they don't know what problems they were created to solve," Strauss says.

The fact that these trees are still in beta hasn't stopped environmentalism's outlaw fringe. In the spring of 2001, 800 poplars were chopped, girdled and mutilated at Strauss' OSU test facilities near Corvallis and Klamath Falls. Later that same spring, the University of Washington building housing Toby Bradshaw's office was burned to the ground, damaging the Northwest's finest horticulture library. The Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for that fire, while Strauss received an email from "concerned OSU students and alumni" claiming responsibility for the tree vandalism. None of the crimes has yet been solved.

This explains why Strauss isn't eager to disclose the exact location of his poplar fields. He says American researchers aren't required to do so when they apply for test licenses. In Europe, he says, such permits act as a virtual road map for eco-saboteurs.

"So-called eco-sabotage is really about people who know far less than you do telling scientists that they know better about what's good for society and the environment," he says. "I welcome open discussion, demonstrations, debate of any kind. But that's not what eco-sabotage crimes are about."

Mark Des Marets is no eco-saboteur. But he does take an extremely alarming view of GE trees.

Try this doomsday scenario on for size:

Somewhere--despite the best efforts of scientists like Strauss--genetically engineered trees escape the plantation. Maybe they "decide," à la Jurassic Park, they don't want to be sterile anymore. Lab-altered growth rates and immunities help them muscle out native species. Hard-wired pesticides kill insects in droves. Birds reliant on bugs disappear. The food chain collapses. A domino effect of ecological disruption destroys the fungal soil architecture on which the whole forest depends.

Soon, there's a glorified plantation--silent, devoid of furry things--where a forest once stood.

Imagine this "biological desert" replicated in the Tillamook and the Amazon, the Congo and Siberia, Ecuador and Eagle Creek. This nightmare helps explain why Des Marets has chosen this battle from the smorgasbord of environmental dogfights.

"Say you actually manage to save a little bit of forest, even wilderness," Des Marets says. "And say a patented gene--owned by Monsanto, or whoever--gets in there. The company could say, 'Oh, gee, sorry that happened. We'll be only too glad to clean that up.' Or they could say, 'Wow, that's awful, but we can't do anything.' The answers are equally bad."

And so Des Marets hopes to take GE trees down paths activism has traveled before, on issues like apartheid and Nike sweatshops. He wants to combine protests at industrial facilities and shops with pressure on university administrators. He wants consumers to rise up with one voice--or, at least, a bunch of petitions--demand their photocopiers and laser printers remain free of genetically jiggered paper. He hopes to build a broad alliance with groups working on forest issues, and convince those groups to adopt anti-GE demands. He wants to make GE'ing a tree as un-PC as clubbing a baby seal.

"We're trying to create an economic reality where, when they want to bring this technology to market, there won't be a market," Des Marets says. Next month's Portland war council is an early step in the crusade.

The first target is International Paper. A behemoth that controls 10 million acres of forest in the United States alone, IP helps fund Strauss' work at OSU through a consortium that also includes federal agencies and other companies.

This past summer, the anti-GE-trees campaign kicked off with a pair of protests in California. In Sacramento, Des Marets and about 100 other protesters, some dressed up like old-growth trees, invaded an IP-owned XPedx print shop. They clambered atop stacks of paper, banging drums and brandishing signs reading "GE trees? No way!" Days later, cops arrested three anti-GE-tree protesters at the University of California-Davis after they locked themselves to a giant sculpture of a DNA double helix.

The California protests made for a modest beginning, but Des Marets' aims are ambitious.

"Corporate campaigns are hard," he says. "At some point we'll pursue legislation to ban GE trees entirely, but right now we're looking to make it socially unacceptable."

Already, some in corporate America are hedging their bets. Kinko's declared last spring that it would not "align" itself with suppliers using GE trees. Given that no such trees are being milled for paper in this country, it's hard to say if that actually means anything. But Des Marets claims it's a sign David has a shot against the corporate Goliath this time around.

"These trees pose a gene-pollution threat to some of the last places we have left," he said. "If Yosemite is contaminated, what then?"

"You're looking at two very different approaches to the future," Steve Strauss says. "One is just, 'No, spare me the details, we are not going to do this.' The other one is, 'Hey, the world needs all the potential help it can get. Let's get more precise and imaginative and selective."

You sense Strauss would rather criticism didn't bother him. He says he wants to back away from the pro-con GE debate--in his view, conducted on scientifically invalid grounds--and just do his research. But he really believes Des Marets and his ilk understand neither the specifics nor the aims of his research, and it gets to him.

"It's hard for me to keep perspective," he says. "It can be hard not to get defensive sometimes. When you see an entire branch of science attacked indiscriminately, as a scientist you want to defend it. But do I really want to defend it all? Of course not. I want to take it on a case-by-case basis and help society make good, informed decisions."

Strauss' frustration is shared by much of the scientific establishment around the world. Last week, 113 British scientists sent a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair. The scientists said Britain's poisonously partisan GE debate has left them demoralized and disaffected. They blasted Blair's government for failing to debunk anti-GE claims.

"In Europe, researchers are just fleeing," Strauss says. "The world's in a real quandary over this issue."

At the same time, while they have a significant chunk of the public worried, anti-GE forces have not forged a scientific consensus backing their views. In essence, environmentalists are asking the public to trust scientists on global warming or over-fishing, but not on genetic engineering. Not every scientist is sure GE is an unalloyed blessing. But calls for research moratoria, efforts to scuttle funding and, especially, sabotage play poorly with a profession that prizes freedom of inquiry even above government grants.

Strauss says much of Des Marets' doomsaying is misplaced. Human beings have been altering gene pools for millennia through barely regulated breeding and planting. "Take a look at your dog next time you walk it," Strauss says. Through tight regulation, responsible science and sterility--GE's magic bullet against gene pollution--he believes his poplars could be a safe and beneficial solution for a world addicted to hitting the "PRINT" key.

Strauss favors an analogy involving salmon to spell out his view on the fight. "There are some real problems with farmed salmon," he says. "And it's easy to say that farmed is bad and wild is good, and that's it. But wild salmon is financially out of reach for 95 percent of the people in the world. Then again, all farming is harmful, even organic farming, so we have to make hard choices.

"The point of view that there are simple answers is antithetical to what I would call the scientific outlook. As Mencken said, there's a simple answer to every complex problem--and it's inevitably wrong."

Of course, greenie squealing helped reveal that food companies were dyeing farmed-salmon flesh pink. The best question raised implicitly by Des Marets and others is whether science can be trusted to answer the questions GE raises on its own. Science is rarified, and on most days it's invisible to most people. When corporations get involved, things can take a nasty turn. Just ask any soy farmer sued by Monsanto for saving the company's patented seeds for future planting. So is science humble, or pure, enough to mess around with the fundamentals of life?

"GE advocates always want to talk science," Des Marets says. "Do they want to talk about ethics, or morals, or societal values? No."

It is the irony and the tragedy of the genetic engineering debate that Strauss and Des Marets--two articulate, nature-loving Northwesterners who might be hiking buddies in a better world--find themselves on opposite sides. Des Marets even gives Strauss credit for being one of the most accessible genetic scientists, and for acknowledging that risks exist. "The cool thing about Steve is that he is open," Des Marets says. "If you go talk to people at Monsanto, they'd never admit that there was even an issue with safety."

It's impossible to predict, at this point, whether genetically engineered poplar trees will be part of the solution to the eco-crisis. It's also hard to believe that environmentalism's future lies in going full-bore after leading scientists.

Using the part of his brain that is a soccer referee rather than a geneticist, Strauss says he harbors one fond wish. "What I'd really like to do is get some sanity back in the debate," he says.

It's a worthy sentiment. It sort of makes you want to wish Strauss luck. If he's looking for sanity in the Gene Wars, he may need it.

Mark Des Marets is paid to fight GE trees by a Vermont-based group called Action for Social and Ecological Justice. For more on ASEJ's trees campaign, see www.asej.org/home.php?articleID=55&page=getrees .

Private companies and the federal government provide funding to OSU tree research through the Tree Genetic Engineering Research Cooperative, directed by Steven Strauss. See www.fsl.orst.edu/tgerc/

The federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service maintains a database of applications for GE field tests. The database currently lists 324 tests for Oregon. The list includes experiments on corn, potatoes, tomatoes and grass varieties. See www.aphis.usda.gov/

Des Marets believes that even if genetically engineered trees can be grown safely, cultivation problems inherent in plantation growth make them unsustainable. "This is just unnecessary technology," he says.

So far, the only commercially approved GE tree in the United States is the papaya. After the ringspot virus devastated Hawaii's papaya crop, Cornell scientists developed an engineered tree resistant to the virus. About 50 percent of Hawaii's papaya crop now comes from GE trees.

University of Washington professor Toby Bradshaw says the irony of the May 2001 arson is that he does not actually genetically engineer trees. "These people couldn't even pass my freshman biology class," Bradshaw says.

Strauss says he'd really like to invite students and the public to see his trees, but security concerns prevent such an open-door policy. "We want to show them off," he says, "so people can see and hear about their real value and safety, rather than the Internet myths that are rampant."

More info on Kinko's environmental policies can be found at www.kinkos.com/about_us/newsroom/newsroom.php

WWeek 2015