The Next to Last Stand: a brief history of Cove/Mallard

by Billy Stern,
written October 4, 1997.

   On September 17, after 74 days, the second longest timber sale blockade in US history was busted.  This was no simple tree-sit.  The Forest Service had to bring in a 50 foot high "cherry picker" over seventy miles to take down activists sitting on platforms suspended from four huge wooden tripods and bipods.  But before they could even get to the sitters, they had to deal with the "Dragon". 
   The Dragon consists of a metal pipe large enough to put your arms through, with a metal pin welded in the center.  The pin is positioned so you to clip or lock a small chain to it, with the other end locked around your wrist.  This set up is then encased in a pair shaped concrete slab, and buried in the ground.  Above the dragon sat a carefully constructed huge pile of slash timber (left over from roadbuilding).  It took authorities over seven hours to cut and chisel out the blockader locked into it.

   The Cove/Mallard timber sale in the Nez Pierce National Forest in Central Idaho has all the symptoms of the Forest Service's failing land use policies.  A poster child of the misguiding land use policies in the West, the sale calls for 200 clearcuts and 145 miles of new roads in a 76,000 acre roadless area.  All this at an estimated cost of only $6 million to the taxpayer, for preparing the sale and road subsides, bringing out 26,000 truck loads of timber-profit for timber companies.
   It's hard to describe the subtle ecological treasure of Cove/Mallard.  It isn't the most spectacular landscape in the West.  Its magnificence comes rather from its wild expanses and diverse wildlife.  Cove/Mallard is home only to deer, elk, moose, cougar and an array of smaller critters, but also numerous rare, threatened and endangered species, including bull trout, chinook salmon, steelhead, westslope cutthroat trout, fisher, martin, lynx, wolverine, river otter, gray wolf, bald eagle, golden eagle, boreal and flamulated owl, goshawk and winter wren.  It's also prime grizzly habitat for the expected reintroduction.
   This (previously) roadless area forms the only viable migration corridor between Idaho's Gospel Hump and River of No Return Wilderness areas.  These in turn lay in the middle of a 26 million acre complex of national forests, roadless and wilderness areas known as the Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem -- the largest untouched ecosystems in the lower forty-eight states.  Relatively untouched that is, as every year logging further intrudes on unprotected roadless areas.

   Behind all the facts and figures is a story.  A thousand stories really.  The place and events that unfold there become personal chapters for everyone who makes it there.  Some say that the story begins back in the early 1980's.  The old timers say that the Cove Mallard area was sold out by the Wilderness Society in a back room deal -- intentionally left out as a sacrifice to timber interests, in a trade for expanding of the River of No Return Wilderness.  As the west coast timber supply slowed, it didn't take long for the Forest Service to propose the Jersey/Jack sale.  Oddly enough the local sportsman and recreationists came together to fight this sale, winning on the grounds that the Environmental Impact Statement was insufficient.
   Forced back to the drawing board, the Forest Service renamed the sales Cove/Mallard, finishing its Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) in 1990, again offering them up to the chopping block.  Undoubtedly the decision-makers weren't aware they were about to set off a six year series of protests that continue as I write.  The call went out to the forest activists of the West and dozens showed as the snows melted in 1992.  Since then, protests, blockades and well over two hundred arrests.  These were not mass arrest like those of Headwaters, but mostly ones, twos and threes -- the biggest after the blockade in 1995, fondly nicknamed "The Dirty Dozen," and set of arrests were planned to slow the cutting as much as possible.
   Perhaps you're wondering why someone didn't just sue to stop the sale before taking to the woods in protest.  Actually, Idaho Sporting Congress did sue, first in 1993, after the Spring and Summer Chinook Salmon were listed under the Endangered Species Act, and again in 1995, but the Idaho District Court let the cutting continue, letting the slow wheels of justice creak, as they set the court date, heard the case, and deliberated.  In one of the greatest ironies of environmental injustice, more than a few sales have been started, or even finished, and then ruled illegal.  A moral victory, but empty.
   Over the years, two injunctions have slowed the sale, but again this summer, the Ninth Circuit denied an injunction on the second lawsuit and will hear the appeal of the second lawsuit, based on three counts, in January of 1998.  The suit claims that these sales fail to comply with conditions imposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service.  By inaction, the Forest Service has continued to endanger the threatened Snake River Chinook Salmon, in violation of the Endangered Species Act.  Further, by increasing sediment levels in Big Mallard and Little Mallard Creeks, both of which have been declared Water Quality Limited by the state of Idaho, the Forest Service is violating the Clean Water Act.  In addition, the Cove/Mallard timber sales are based on an EIS produced in 1990.  The suit asks that to comply with the law, the Forest Service must produce a Supplemental EIS (SEIS).

   The courts are not the sole source of injustice at Cove/Mallard.  This summer one of the slash piles used to block the road was set on fire, presumably by local loggers.  The pile could easily have been human occupied-and most loggers are aware that blockaders often inhabit these piles.  This is just the culmination of a six-years pattern of physical and psychological aggression that locals have repeatedly displayed, and officials consistently ignored.
   Although I've heard of harassment and assaults from as early as 1992, my direct experience started in 1995, when loggers "teased" blockaders with gunshots fired over their heads, and after a "citizen's arrest" put a chain around one activist's neck and toyed with him until federal officials came, threatening to kill him, or just drag him tied behind their pickup for ten miles to the nearest town.  The following summer Forest Service employees dropped one tripod-sitter over 15 ft, dislocating his shoulder socket.  They could easily have broken his neck.
   This August (a few days before the firebug's attack) two activists were assaulted from behind.  Further, the one who tried to report it had his life threatened by his assailant, in front of both Forest Service and County law officials, who did nothing.  As workers caught in the middle of a political dispute, the loggers' frustration and anger are understandable, but the passivity on the part of local officials is inexcusable.

   Finally, after years of protesting in central Idaho, at times blockading roads in the forest and at times chanting slogans to the unreseptive ears of citizens in the small city of Grangeville, the protests are spreading out.  On September 18, the day after the blockaders were arrested, a tripod went up in the middle of campus at the University of Montana, and literature was distributed to 1700 students calling for them to write Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck, a great verbal proponent of ecosystem management.  On September 22, two citizens were arrested after locking themselves to the doors of the Boise Federal Building calling for an end to the cut.
 
   This encouraged 35 University of Montana students to lock the front doors of the Forest Service Headquarters in Missoula Montana, and construct a 28 foot high tripod on the sidewalk outside.  The student who locking himself to the doors was arrested.  Two others, who had locked themselves to the railing steps, were also cited.  The next day, the Regional Supervisor Hal Salwasser agreed to tape recorded meeting with a representative of the students to hear their concerns.  As I write, the tripod remains standing, with the plan to keep it standing at least until October 9, when a representatives from the Cove/Mallard Coalition and Native Forest Network have a meeting scheduled with an assistant to Mike Dombeck, and possibly until Oct. 31, if logging continues at Cove/Mallard.

   Due to the six years of protests and lawsuits, only twenty percent of the sale has been completed.  A third lawsuit has just been filed that cites the sales impacts on steelhead, newly listed under the Endangered Species Act.  With luck, the courts will cancel the sale, or at least call for a SEIS.  The hope is the Forest Service will not bother with the SEIS, and if they do, it would still delay the sale two to three years.
   Unfortunately, in the high money game of western resource politics, you can never count on luck.  Local political pressure is high to continue this sale.  Idaho's Senator Larry Craig and Rep. Helen "Salmon aren't endangered- I can buy them in the supermarket" Chenoweth both receive large campaign contributions from the timber industry, and not surprisingly, are two of its biggest proponents.  Forest activists see them as a big part of the timber triangle: the industry gives politicians big donations, the politicians lobby for big cuts and subsidized access, the increased logging can then be used to finance the big donations.  A cozy scheme.
   At times, it seems that the industry wants to continue the cut in Cove/Mallard just because environmentalists have put so much effort into stopping it.  Both sides see it as a major fulcrum in the struggle over timber politics in the Rockies, and the West.  Environmentalists hope that stopping the sale could mean an end is in sight to all intrusions into roadless areas.  Conversely, the timber companies see completing this sale as the green light to future sales in the area, and freer access into roadless areas.

   Growing up in an East Coast city, what I remember most about the Forest Service is the smile on Smoky the Bear.  I never would have believed the devastating amount of timber cut by corporations on our national forests.  Having spent my adult life in the West and having gained a clearer understanding of the political and social power of timber corporations, it no longer surprises me.  A core part of why these practices continue is that many, if not most Americans east of the Mississippi, are completely unaware that any trees are cut on our National Forests.  This, in turn, is largely due to the failures, or inhibitions, of the media.  Still, the word is getting out about the taxpayer subsidized destructive road building in our national forests, not to mention the fifty-year history of over-harvesting.
   Its time that the citizens take a stand.  Time to call loudly and clearly for the end to the Cove/Mallard timber harvest.  Time to call for a stop to roadbuilding on our national forests, a stop to cutting in our roadless areas, and a stop to the cutting of our old growth.  It's time to call for zero commercial cutting on our public lands.

   Please write, call, or fax Chief Dombeck, Congress, and Bill Clinton:

Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck
USDA Forest Service
P.O. Box 96090
Washington, D.C. 20090-6090
Phone: (202) 205-1661
Fax: (202) 205-1765


Billy Stern, based in Missoula, Montana, is the Pulp and Paper Strategist for the Native Forest Network.  He is also working on a Masters in Environmental Studies at the University of Montana.  He can be reached at billysun@wildrockies.org.

See the corresponding Missoula action of October 1997