Oregonian (PO) - WEDNESDAY, July 31, 1996
By: DAN GALLAGHER - The Associated Press
Edition: NORTHWEST FINAL Section: NORTHWEST Page: B05
Summary: Activists claim the demonstrations and anonymous damage to heavy equipment have frustrated the industry.
"There have been slowdowns in the work when we had to dig people out of the road or grind chains off their necks or remove a bumper from a vehicle or remove their arms from cement," said Elayne Murphy, Nez Perce National Forest spokeswoman.
"In terms of really obstructing the project, cutting them back, it hasn't happened," she said.
However, others note that publicity about the peril to a key piece of the 3.7 million-acre roadless area -- the largest in the lower 48 states -- has helped sway many Americans against logging there, including locals, said Robert "Ramon" Amon, the affable owner of land where the activists stay when they are not actively trying to halt logging in the Cove-Mallard area.
"If you talk to most Idahoans one on one, outside of the logger bars, we have 90 percent of the support," he said.
Amon claims the forest demonstrations and anonymous "monkey-wrenching" damage to heavy equipment have frustrated the timber industry and forced the federal government to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the protesters under surveillance.
He claims success for the campaign simply because the Forest Service intended to have all the logging under way in six years and will not make it.
Of the 81 million board feet of timber approved for harvest at Cove-Mallard, fewer than 7 million have been logged so far.
Murphy concedes the deadline will be missed but swears Earth First! is not the reason.
Copyright © 1996, The Oregonian Publishing Company