Cove/Mallard Coalition: Actively Defending Our Last Wildlands

Media Advisory, June 1999

Within the wildlands of central Idaho, also known as the Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem, is the largest intact and viable ecosystem in the lower 48 states. This large unroaded and unlogged wilderness area is among the last reservoirs of wildlife habitat and biodiversity left in our country. Today this biologically crucial ecosystem remains unprotected.

At least 3 dozen Forest Service timber sales are planned for roadless areas contiguous with the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Areas such as the unlogged and unroaded National Forest land in the 52,000 acre Wing Creek-Twentymile roadless area is slated for continued logging this summer at the Otter-Wing timber sale.

The Wing Creek-Twentymile roadless area provides crucial wildlife habitat for fish and other species listed under the Endangered Species Act, and is one of the few relatively intact ecosystems left amidst surrounding logged lands. In the 77,000 acre Cove/Mallard region, the US Forest Service (USFS) plans to punch in 145 miles of roads and 200 40 acre clearcuts. Cove/Mallard is a crucial link connecting wildlife habitat in the ecosystem's Gospel Hump, Frank Church-River of No Return, and Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Areas.

A current roadbuilding moritorium, issued by Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck, stopped roadbuilding and associated logging on the Cove/Mallard sales until August 2000. However, the currently proposed Dixie Fuel Fire Break project would log part of the Cove roadless area within the first unit of the Rhett timber sale, a sale which was stopped by the moritorium. All over the Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem, citizens have documented how the USFS is breaking its own environmental laws and have stood up against the irreparable destruction of our last wild places.

Why Wilderness? During the last decade, the growing scientific consensus by leading scientists such as Dr. Michael Soule, Paul Ehrlich, and E.O. Wilson asserts that even our biggest wildlands are already too small and too fragmented to insure the survival of large carnivores and to maintain the processes that result in evolution for large terrestrial vertebrates. Some species, such as many reptiles, amphibians, and some small mammals won't cross roads. Others, such as elk and grizzly, avoid areas of high road density.

Many songbirds and carnivores such as marten and fisher require interior forest habitats, and disappear when a patch of woods becomes too small. Isolated habitats lose species because isolated populations are vulnerable to inbreeding and random natural events like disease, volcanoes, and floods. Fragmented habitats become smaller because of "edge effects", where weedy or other non-native invader species increase at the expense of the native resident species. Greater Salmon-Selway: A Theater for Evolution The sheer size of the Salmon-Selway allows evolutionary processes to fully function--something that has been stopped almost everywhere in the temperate world by industrialized human activity. Less than 5% of the US's primary forest remains intact;

By comparison over 90% of the Salmon-Selway's forest is still unlogged--so far. There are 34 vast roadless areas in the Salmon-Selway totaling 11 million acres. This represents more than 20% of the nation's unprotected national forest. A Reservoir of Diversity The Salmon-Selway is a reservoir of biological diversity harboring many rare, sensitive and threatened creatures including bull trout, chinook salmon, steelhead, westslope cutthroat trout, fisher, marten, lynx, wolverine, river otter, gray wolf, bald and golden eagle, boreal and flamulated owl, northern goshawk, and winter wren. Many of these inhabitants of the ecosystem are declining or have declined in significant portions of their ranges due to public lands logging and road building.

Other species in decline due to these activities include black bear, various thrushes, sockeye salmon, coho salmon, caddis flies, stone flies and mychorrizal fungi. Wild Salmon- Missing and Depleted The streams and rivers of the Salmon-Selway used to host millions of anadromous chinook and sockeye salmon and steelhead trout. These fish were a major part of the food web and the survival for the grizzlies, bald eagles, osprey, otter, and humans. Today these salmon runs are depleted, chinook populations are down 90% since 1960, and recently, exactly one sockeye returned to its spawning waters in the Sawtooth's Redfish Lake. Logging and road building cause erosion which smothers the spawning beds with silt.

Threats to the Wild Modern industrial (plantation) forestry damages the environment in many ways. It fragments habitat into isolated patches of forest, destroys soil structure, creates habitat for weedy edge species, destroys habitat for increasingly rare ancient forest and forest interior species and many times ruins the soil's long-term productivity by removing so much biomass. Roads fragment habitat, disrupt the hydrology of watersheds by increasing sedimentation and erosion, eliminate species sensitive to human activity (i.e. elk, grizzly), create avenues for invasive noxious weeds, provide access for road "hunters" and recreational motorized vehicles, all of which jeopardize the survival of various species.

The Tragedy of Public Lands Destruction On our National Forests today, timber and salvage sales are planned to destroy the last roadless areas in the Salmon-Selway. The Otter-Wing sale includes 694 acres of clearcuts and 12 miles of new road construction, all to yield 13 million board feet of timber. The Cove/Mallard timber project is the largest USFS road building and logging project in the history of this region. It calls for developing new roads in nine different drainages to access 81 million board feet of timber-- enough to fill 26,000 logging trucks.

This six year project will cost American taxpayers millions of dollars from road-building subsidies and deficit timber sales. Citizen Response: Resistance Since 1992, courageous activists have been on the front lines defending Cove/Mallard. Those engaging in non-violent civil disobedience have helped to delay the devastation. Earth First! and other activists have used road blockades, tree and tripod sits, equipment lockdowns, and demonstrations to bring the issue to regional and national attention. Resistance to logging in Otter-Wing last summer culminated with a series of tree sits and arrests for civil disobedience. Others have travelled over country, giving slide presentations and encouraging more people to come hike these sales, and conduct local outreach. Documentation Citizens from several organizations have been on the ground exploring the unique biology of the area, documenting violations of environmental laws, and bearing witness to the destruction of our national treasures.

The USFS has a poor track record in following environmental laws in Otter-Wing and Cove/Mallard. Citizens have found multiple and ongoing violations of environmental laws and timber sale contracts in places that have been cut. For example, protective buffer strips around streams were less than required by law, trees have been cut in no-cut zones, new cutting areas have been added without the citizen input required by law, old-growth stands have been cut in violation of the forest plan, roads have been gouged into sensitive areas causing stream pollution, and USFS monitoring has been inadequate. Litigation The Idaho Sporting Congress has filed two lawsuits since 1990 challenging the legality of the Cove/Mallard sales.

The suits challenged the agency with violations of the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Clean Water Act. Both cases were overturned in District and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Solutions: Proposals for Protecting Northern Rockies Wildlands Dr. Reed Noss, editor of the journal Conservation Biology, has recently described a new approach to wildland conservation based upon conservation biology. This approach is a landscape-level system of large reserves surrounded by buffer zones which are linked by corridors of natural habitat.

The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) is a federal public lands protection bill that designates different land management strategies on over 20 million acres to help maintain functioning ecosystems in the bioregion. In the 105th Congress, the bill gained 72 sponsors. The bill's proposals include:

* Extensive new designated Wilderness in roadless areas

* Wild and Scenic Rivers designation would protect more than 1800 miles of free-flowing streams

* A system of habitat linkage corridors designated to connect isolated core areas

* Two areas are proposed for study as possible additions to the National Park system Studies by University of Utah economist Michael Garrity (1997) show that NREPA would create more than 2000 jobs through wildland restoration work while saving taxpayers more than $100 million dollars over 10 years by ending timber sales in roadless areas.

The National Forest Protection and Restoration Act is a bill proposed by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Congressman Jim Leach (R-IA) to eliminate the commercial logging program on federal public lands and assist communities dependent on this program with economic recovery and diversification. Included in this bill are provisions to:

* Redirect logging subsidies to provide training, employment services, and need-related payments to dislocated timber workers

* Redirect moneys currently held in Forest Service accounts to continue funding to counties and local governments during the transition period

* Begin a scientifically based ecological restoration program for federal public forests through re-vegetation, prescribed burning, road removal, stabilizing soils, and removal of barriers to fish migration. Job preference would be given to dislocated timber workers.