By Leslie Hemstreet and Jake Kreilick
From the long-logged forests of New England to the remaining strips of ancient forest in the Pacific Northwest, people are resisting the U.S. Forest Service's continuing encroachment into the last of our native forests. Last winter, forest activists converged in central Idaho to fight a controversial timber sale called Cove/Mallard. The sale is the largest of its kind in the Northern Rockies and is a crucial part of the largest untouched wilderness remaining in the lower 48 United States.
After establishing a base camp complete with snow caves and snow shelters, activists from Earth First!, the Cove/Mallard Coalition and the Native Forest Network began monitoring logging operations and preparing for action. In spite of severe weather conditions and long distances, back country teams skied from the base camp to the cutting units photographing and videotaping many violations of environmental laws.
The activists were compelled to protest at the source in spite of the "Earth First!" Law passed by the Idaho State Legislature in 1994. Written by the Intermountain Forest Industries Association, a lobby group for the timber industry, the law makes it a felony to "solicit any other person, or conspire with any other person to commit any crime against property or person with the specific intent to halt, impede, obstruct or interfere with the lawful management, cultivation or harvesting of trees or timber." Breaking the law is punishable by up to five years in prison and $50,000 in fines. Forest and civil rights activists immediately denounced the law as a chilling attack on free speech and civil disobedience. The conspiracy language in the law is reminiscent of the anti-sedition laws created in the teens to dismantle the Industrial Workers of the World. One example is Washington State's "Anarchy/Sabotage Act of 1919," which makes it a felony to "interfere with lumbering" or to "interfere with owner's control of production. "
After
careful consideration of the possible repercussions, two veteran forest activists
decided to test the constitutionality of the law and call attention to the
illegal logging in Cove/Mallard. On February 8, Tom Fullum of the Native Forest
Network and Mike Roselle of the Cove/Mallard Coalition, also a co-founder
of Earth First!, blocked the entrance to Forest Service Road 9505, the Noble
road. The pair were arrested by Idaho County Sheriffs after blocking the road
for three hours. They were charged with both a felony and a misdemeanor and
spent the night in jail. As handcuffs were clamped on Tom Fullum's wrists,
he told the crowd, "This arrest is unconstitutional. We'll fight this
in court as we have fought the logging of Cove/Mallard in court."
In spite of the isolated locale, the blockade got excellent regional media coverage and some national coverage because a film crew was flown in by helicopter. The attention may have caused the Forest Service and the state of Idaho to temporarily modify their draconian approach to citizen's resistance. At Roselle and Fullum's preliminary hearing on February 27, Judge Michael Griffin dropped both charges reasoning that Idaho County Prosecutor Jeff Payne had failed to present evidence of criminal conspiracy. However, the charges can be filed again at a later date.
Although the activists regret losing an opportunity for legal challenge, their case has created and exposed weaknesses that dull the punitive edge of the "Earth First!" law. After the dismissal, the Idaho State Legislature immediately began to revise the law and are attempting to expand its scope to include agriculture and mining.
The Roadless Area
So why all the fury? Cove/Mallard is a critical wilderness corridor in the largest untouched temperate wilderness remaining in the lower 48 United States, the 11 million acre Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem. This ecosystem is the best of what remains of this land's once vast forests. It is the largest area left that looks much as it did before the European invasion, and it is being hacked to pieces by the U.S. Forest Service.
The Idaho State Legislature, Idaho's Republican congressional delegation, the timber industry, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club (yes, you read it right) are effectively in collusion with the Forest Service plans.
A number of regional and grassroots groups have been battling to protect
this vital area from further dissection. They include the Greater Salmon-Selway
Project,
the Cove/Mallard Coalition, the Native
Forest Network, Earth
First!, Seeds of Peace, the Ancient Forest Bus Brigade, the Idaho Sporting
Congress, and the Alliance
for the Wild Rockies who are working to pass the Northern Rockies Ecosystem
Protection Act (NREPA). Independently but in concert, these groups are educating
the public about the significance of the Salmon-Selway and applying pressure
on the Forest Service to stop invading roadless areas.
Lacking the ability to protect the entire ecosystem, these activists have chosen to zero in on Cove/Mallard for several reasons. First, the area provides a crucial link in the Salmon-Selway. Second, the forest containing these sales has a history of being embattled going back to 1980 when political brokers in the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society sacrificed Cove/Mallard in a back-room deal with Senator Frank E. Church and the Forest Service. Third, drawing attention to Cove/Mallard provides an opportunity to educate the public and potential activists about what is happening to what little remains of all unprotected, public-lands wilderness, usually referred to as roadless areas. Lastly, Cove/Mallard is a symbol of activist resistance and could provide a precedent supporting future roadless area protection campaigns.
What exactly is being fought over? Cove/Mallard consists of two roadless areas encompassing 76,000 acres of coniferous forest in the Nez Perce National Forest. It is situated between the two largest protected wilderness areas in the lower 48 states, the 2.2 million acre River-of-No-Return and the 400,000 acre Gospel Hump, and it provides a biological corridor vital to the area's wildlife.
Nine drainages criss-cross Cove/Mallard and the Forest Service plans to build a road and cut maze of clearcuts in each one. The agency has timber sales planned from the top of the 6,000- foot ridge lines all the way down to the Salmon Breaks which drops off steeply to the Salmon River. The forest communities range from Lodgepole pine and Subalpine fir in the higher elevations to Douglas and Grand fir and Englemann spruce in the middle elevations, rolling down to huge, ancient stands of Ponderosa pines in the Breaks. It is the largest sale ever offered in the history of the region totaling 81 million board feet (visualize 26,000 log trucks). In order to access the 200 proposed clearcuts, the agency must construct 145 miles of new road.
This complex ecosystem serves as home to many species which are listed as sensitive and endangered, such as the Rocky Mountain Wolf, Chinook Salmon, Fisher, Northern Goshawk, Lynx, Wolverine, Boreal Owl, Pine Marten, and many others. Cove/Mallard represents some of the best wildlife habitat in the country offering a diversity of life zones and plant communities. More than anything else, this place is characterized by intact primary forest in various stages of succession. Cove/Mallard is also renowned for its high-quality water flowing from its many streams, seeps, and wet meadows.
The animals that inhabit Cove/Mallard, especially the predators, thrive there because of the magnitude of the habitat. Aside from the direct habitat destruction associated with road building, roads lead to human contact which in turn creates potential for hunting, poaching, and trapping. Human contact is also disruptive to the mating and rearing practices of many animals, particularly wilderness dependent species like wolves and bears. Humans also compete with many predators for their prey, altering the food chain and leaving the animals no choice but to attack livestock and feed on human trash.
Conservation biologists have documented that many animals require specifically large<I> areas of core habitat to guarantee an adequate genetic base for sound reproduction. The smaller and more isolated a population becomes the more likely selection of undesirable characteristics, will occur. Furthermore, if animal populations become small and isolated, one environmental calamity, like a massive fire or a new disease, could cause instant extinction.
Cove/Mallard is also a part of the Central Idaho Grey Wolf and Grizzly Bear Recovery Zones. It is one of the few places outside of Canada and Alaska where these endangered predators can still thrive.
Cove/Mallard serves as a sanctuary, buffer and recovery zone all in one. Beyond the biological and ecological values, Cove/Mallard and other roadless forests have value to humans that far outweigh their economic values. One resource that the Forest Service and timber industry always neglect is the necessity of wildness in maintaining (or restoring) the sanity of the human species.
The Long and Winding Road(s)
Since 1979 when the Forest Service compiled an inventory of all remaining unprotected wilderness, the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE II), they have been trying to build roads and cut trees in Cove/Mallard. Back then, the area was known as Jersey Jack. The Forest Service, the Idaho Congressional delegation, and the Sierra Club viewed the area as a bone to be thrown to the timber industry. Interviewed two years ago in <I>The Oregonian, Sierra Clubber Dennis Baird defended his sacrifice of Cove/Mallard saying, "If the country needs lumber and timber jobs, the Cove/Mallard isn't such a bad place to get it." Nonetheless, local folks weren't willing to let the Forest Service carve up their backyard. Local rancher Harold Thomas and local outfitter Emmett Smith sued the Forest Service over their plans for Jersey Jack . Eventually, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals deemed the sale illegal.
Not to be deterred, the Forest Service returned to the drawing board in the late 1980s and created a new plan for the Cove Roadless Area and the Mallard Roadless Area. In 1990, they released a single plan, the Cove/Mallard timber sale. The agency planned to spend $6 million from the U.S. Treasury to build the roads necessary to access the area. The Cove sale was appealed again by Emmett Smith. Ron Mitchell of the Idaho Sportsmen's Coalition appealed the entire plan. Their appeals were denied by the agency.
Construction on the Noble Road, one of six planned for the Cove Sale, began in the fall of 1991 and continued till early winter when snow halted operations. The Forest Service defied a Fish and Wildlife Service recommendation to avoid logging along the little Mallard creek which runs parallel to the Noble Road. Their strategy was to cut Cove/Mallard down the middle to make it ineligible for wilderness designation. A tried-and-true trick of the U.S. Forest Service, witnessed in many other timber sales. An area must consist of 5,000 continuous roadless acres to qualify for protected wilderness status.
Earth Day 1992 saw the first direct action addressing Cove/Mallard when an Earth First!er climbed atop the Nez Perce Supervisor's office in Grangeville, Idaho and unfurled a banner saying, "Save Cove/Mallard--Abolish the Forest Service!" That summer, about 20 activists from Wild Rockies Earth First! and the Ancient Forest Bus Brigade set up a base camp near the Noble Road. The Forest Service had started building a road into Grouse Creek along with the Noble Road. Despite the low numbers and the fact that the area was closed to the public, the activists were successful in blockading road building activities with twenty-foot-tall tripods (three poles lashed together teepee style with a person standing in the crux) and by locking themselves to logging equipment with Kryptonite bicycle locks.
1993 saw a much larger campaign thanks to a full year of public outreach and the purchase of 20 acres of private land located on an old mining claim within the Cove/Mallard project area. The direct action throughout the summer included many creative blockades, barricades and tree sits. For many who participated in the campaign, the Noble Road emerged as the symbol of Forest Service malevolent mismanagement. Seven miles long with an additional six miles of side roads, Noble plunges like a dagger into the heart of Cove/Mallard.
In mid-July 1993, over 30 activists participated in a blockade that halted construction for 12 hours. Four activists were buried to their chests in the road and locked neck-to-neck with Kryptonite locks while two others were sitting in tripods perched 30 feet above the road. Another protester was locked to the base of one tripod. The bravest activist of all climbed underneath the first Forest Service truck to arrive and locked herself to the chassis by her neck. This action resulted in felony charges, which were eventually reduced to misdemeanors.
ISC
In the fall of 1993, Ron Mitchell of the Idaho Sportsmen's Coalition, now called the Idaho Sporting Congress, sued the Forest Service contending that they were not in compliance with the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act. However, lacking legal support, Mitchell was unable to get a hearing in federal support before the Noble and Grouse roads were finished and the Grouse Timber sale logged. In February of 1994, U.S. District Judge Harold Ryan granted a temporary injunction protecting Cove/Mallard. The injunction lasted until Judge Ryan became seriously ill with cancer and the case was transferred to Judge Allan McDonald in Yakima, Washington. The new judge decided to reopen the case. On December 6, 1994, without hearing any oral arguments from the Idaho Sporting Congress, the judge quickly ruled in the Forest Service's favor.
The Noble Timber Sale
On January 4, 1995, under a five-foot blanket of snow, the Forest Service began plowing the Noble road to make way for the loggers. Within a week, the road was clear. The Bennett Lumber company began extracting the projected 11 million board feet of timber from the Noble Sale in Cove.
Logging
lasted only two days before a new injunction from Judge David Ezra of the
U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals halted all logging, mining, and grazing
activities in six Idaho National Forests. The Sierra
Club Legal Defense Fund (SCLDF) obtained the injunction on behalf of the
Wilderness
Society and the Pacific Rivers Council arguing the Forest Service's failure
to adequately assess the extractive industries' impact on the endangered Sockeye
and threatened Chinook Salmon.
Predictably, the lawsuit brought on the wrath of the timber industry, the Idaho Congressional delegation, Idaho Senator Larry Craig, and Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons. In the week that followed the January 13 ruling, the environmental plaintiffs crumbled under the pressure. The Wilderness Society's Idaho representative Craig Gerkhe asked SCLDF to tell the judge they wanted to relinquish the injunction. Reluctantly, SCLDF met their request. Judge Ezra agreed to stay the injunction until the requested date, March 15, which was, not coincidentally, the same date that logging was to stop in Noble to comply with Elk calving restrictions. Gerkhe maintains that he was forced to surrender the injunction because of threats of violence to environmentalists, including him.
By the end of February, 4 of the 18 units in Noble had been clear-cut when the melting snowpack staved off logging.
The Wilderness Society's about-face revealed a fundamental difference within the environmental movement: the Big Ten environmentalist's posture of compromise and capitulation, stemming from loyalty to their funding base, versus the grassroots dedication to a no-compromise stance, which reveals that they have no endowment to jeopardize. Mike Roselle, director of the Cove/Mallard Coalition, expressed his disappointment by saying, "Field campaigns like Cove/Mallard play a pivotal role for the environmental movement and allow us to operate from a position of strength. For one of the most venerable environmental organizations to acquiesce to political pressure is one thing, but to stab allies in the back by sabotaging 20 years of conservation efforts in Cove/Mallard makes a mockery of solidarity within our movement."
As an obituary to hope, the National Marines Fisheries Service (NMFS) rubber-stamped a request from the region's Forest Supervisor David Jolly to find the Noble Timber Sale in compliance with requirements for protecting salmon. The NMFS's decision means that Cove/Mallard will not be covered by any injunctions based on salmon protection.
Taking Action: A Call For Public Participation
Although Cove/Mallard is no longer eligible for wilderness designation, it would be protected through the passage of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA-H.R.852). NREPA has the same chance of passing the 104th Congress as a lab rat has of beating cancer. Until the political climate changes, logging must be held at bay to keep the Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem as intact as possible. If the public outcry is loud enough, much of what remains can be protected. Plus, a large contingent of citizens descending on the area is sure to make the Forest Service reluctant to enter any more roadless areas.
All types of activists are welcome to take part in the campaign. There are many roles ranging from front-line forest defense to nonviolent peace keeping to helping with biological surveys. All those who participate can be assured of a secure, private-land base camp complete with a kitchen and food from Seeds of Peace. It is well worth the long trip into the heart of the Idaho Rockies if only to experience the best of what is left of the wild lands that once covered this continent.
For more information contact the Native Forest Network at (406) 542-7343, email: nfn@wildrockies.org
Leslie Hemstreet is a professional child-care worker, an environmental, labor and indigenous rights activist, and a singer/songwriter with the band Mothers of God. Jake Kreilick is a forest activist with the Native Forest Network, an international coalition of non-governmental organizations, indigenous groups, environmental activists and scientists fighting for the protection of temperate forests.