ELLIOTT STATE FOREST — Environmental groups said they were calling in reinforcements after police arrested activists who blockaded a remote logging site nearly 20 miles from Reedsport.

Police handcuffed at least 23 activists on Wednesday and drove them to the Douglas County Jail in Roseburg. But Wednesday’s action didn’t stop what activists call a “passive protest” against cutting 107-year-old trees in the Elliott State Forest.

The groups Earth First! and Cascadia Rising Tide said they had made a national call for assistance, and they expected more people to show up in the woods today. Law enforcement officers planned to be there as well, to make more arrests.

“We are not negotiating with people who are committing an illegal act,” said Rod Nichols, public information officer for the Oregon Department of Forestry.

As police ferried activists out in a van, supporters of the blockade pumped their fists in the air and cheered alongside the gravel road. Oregon State Police and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office sent a team to the 79-acre timber sale at mid-morning to break up the protest that began Monday.

“They had an opportunity to leave,” said Lt. Doug Ladd, explaining police served papers on protesters Tuesday.

About 50 officers converged on the site, including a squad from OSP’s mobile response team, troopers from around the state trained for handling crowd control and protests.

Early in the afternoon, occasional shouts came from the woods, and one person sang the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” as police rooted out protesters.

“Everybody’s being passive. No officers have been assaulted,” Ladd said.

Nichols said at least five activists remained at the site toward the end of the day, including two chained to a barrel. Police also were working to remove two on overhead platforms, said OSP Lt. Darin Lux.

Officials said they had hoped to have the Umpcoos Ridge No. 2 timber sale freed up for loggers to return this morning. About 10 percent of the trees were already on the ground when protesters arrived.

The environmental groups say the forest combats global warming by absorbing carbon. Francis Eatherington, conservation coordinator for Umpqua Watersheds, said in this temperate climate trees grow year-round, sequestering atmosphere-warming carbon in the soil.

Eatherington said there’s still time to save the trees, if the state buys back uncut timber from Roseburg Forest Products.

“The economy being what it is right now, we don’t really need to cut this timber,” she said.

According to The Associated Press, Scott Folk, Roseburg’s vice president for resources at its subsidiary Scott Timber, said the company would consider any request the state might make, but “we are not advocating a sale back to the state, period.”

The environmental groups also are concerned logging is damaging habitat for threatened species. ODF’s Coos District Forester Jim Young said the state surveyed for marbled murrelets in 2005 and surveys for fish before each sale. Spotted owl conservation is observed under the Elliott Habitat Conservation Plan established in 1995.

Kristin Stankiawicz, an Earth First! legal observer, contends the Elliott conservation plan is outdated and environmentalists are challenging it in court.

The state told activists Wednesday they could take their protest elsewhere on the forest. Officials proposed Millicoma Myrtle Grove State Park, about six miles away.

“It’s been offered as a legal protest area,” Nichols said.

Activists complained that’s too far away.

“I wouldn’t call it a protest site,” said Earth First! volunteer Panagioti Tsolkas. “It doesn’t have any visibility.”

Deputies drove a pickup load of camping gear from the protest site and piled it near a police roadblock. Ladd said police collected some as evidence. The rest would be available for owners to claim today at the OSP office in Coos Bay.

Police planned to charge activists with interfering with an agricultural operation, and they are considering criminal mischief and criminal trespassing charges. Interfering with an agricultural operation is punishable by a maximum sentence of one year in a county jail and/or a fine not to exceed $6,250.

Earth First!’s Stankiawicz and Tsolkas said arrests won’t stop their battle.

“It’ll be ongoing,” Tsolkas said. “Here and in the court.”

(Staff Writer Jessica Musicar contributed to this story.)