Cockburn, Alexander
The Nation (GTNA), v260 n7, p228
Feb 20, 1995
ABSTRACT: The Wilderness Society's Idaho representative, Craig Gehrke, shocked environmentalists when he told their lawyers to stay an injunction that would have saved trees in the six national forests of Idaho. Gehrke's shameful somersault endangers local environmentalists who will be charged with terrorism if arrested for acts of civil disobedience.
At about the same moment in late January that one Wilderness Society official was faxing The Nation a note saying "we're busting our butts" to protect the environment, another official was scurrying to undo an emergency injunction, recently won by the Wilderness Society, stopping all logging, road building, mining and ranching in six national forests in central Idaho.
The injunction had outraged not only right-wingers in Idaho's Congressional delegation but also the Wilderness Society's Idaho representative, Craig Gehrke. Gehrke called the lawyers (employees of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) and insisted that they ask federal Judge David Ezra, who granted the injunction, to stay the action and allow logging to proceed. The judge, astonished and angered by the retreat, finally agreed to stay the injunction until March 15.
The Society's explanation has wavered from "facing political reality" to protecting Idaho jobs and the lives of local eco-fighters. Thus did Gehrke doom hopes of preventing the Cove/Mallard timber sale, one of the most bitterly contested clearcuts to be drawn up by the U.S. Forest Service in years. Cove/Mallard has been held up thanks only to the Earth First!ers who've put their bodies between the chainsaws and the trees, and by the prospect of the Wilderness Society's injunction. But now Clinton's Forest Service chief, Jack Ward Thomas, who vowed to complete the cut before March 15, will get his wish. Trees have already begun to fall.
Aside from sapping the credibility of future courtroom challenges (Judge Ezra actually threatened to sanction the environmental lawyers for arguing against their own case), Gehrke's shameful, indeed suspicious, somersault also increases the threat to local environmentalists, who must once more brace themselves against bulldozers and risk imprisonment under Idaho's new "trespass" law, which equates nonviolent civil disobedience on public lands with terrorism.
Copyright © 1995 The Nation Company Inc.
Cockburn, Alexander
The Nation, v260, n9, p300(1)
March 6, 1995
ABSTRACT: Earth First! members Tom Fullum and Mike Roselle were arrested in Idaho for protesting logging operations and face five-year sentences and $50,000 fines. The situation was brought about by the environmental cowardice of the Wilderness Society, which has three board members from Idaho.
Even as the Mexican Army attacked squatters in Chiapas, the Idaho state police were hauling Earth First! demonstrators off to jail and charging them with felony conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor. This is Idahonian legalese for saying that if you try to stop logging in the potato state you can be put away for five years and fined $50,000-penalties now faced by Earth First!ers Mike Roselle and Tom Fullum, a onetime co-editor of Wild Forest Review, edited by Jeffrey St. Clair, from whom this info comes.
Roselle and Fullum are in their current plight in large measure because of the cowardice, and worse, of the Wilderness Society. Those who have been following this particular saga in "Beat the Devil" will know that in January the Wilderness Society won an injunction in federal court, staying the start of logging in six national forests in the salmon watershed in Idaho. But as soon as the victory was achieved, the Wilderness Society's regional rep in Idaho, Craig Gehrke, forced the Society's lawyers (from the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) to go back to Judge David Ezra and ask him to suspend the injunction he had just issued.
This bizarre somersault allowed logging to commence on the Cove/Mallard area in the Nez Perce National Forest: the largest roadless area remaining in the Lower 48. Ron Mitchell of Idaho Sporting Congress said, "The Wilderness Society betrayal is devastating."
There are three Wilderness Society board members from Idaho, and the most influential of them is Walter Minnick. He is the C.E.O. of a multinational timber company called TJ International. TJ is partially owned by MacMillan Bloedel, the Darth Vader of Canadian timber companies. With its part owner, TJ International has formed what its 10K form for the S.E.C. calls a "strategic alliance" with Weyerhauser, the Darthian American timber giant. As a manufacturer of doors and windows, TJ International has a big appetite for ponderosa pine.
Minnick attended Bill Clinton's 1993 Portland Summit as a representative of the Wilderness Society. Did he speak of preservation? He did not. The supposed protector of wilderness delivered these winged words to the President that day in Portland: "Essentially what we need the government to do is get out of the way, let the market system work, get some certainty into the west side timber supply because we don't know whether to build another plant here or go to Canada."
We now turn to Cecil Andrus, Secretary of the Interior in the Carter era and former Governor of Idaho. At the sunset of the Carter years, Andrus was enlisted by the Wilderness Society as a part-time consultant, with the Society saying he would try to bridge environmental and business sides over natural resources and public lands issues. He is now a board member of several mining companies.
In 1992 the Wilderness Society, in a cost-cutting mood, decided to close its Idaho office, inhabited by Gehrke. Then-Governor Andrus sprang to the defense of Gehrke, proclaiming that the Society should not close the office, since Gehrke was precisely the kind of environmentalist Idaho needed. Andrus organized a fundraiser in Sun Valley, graced with the presence of Minnick and such high-fliers as Charlotte Ford and Pamela Harriman. Sun Valley has been a Harriman redoubt since the old railroad king and master of capital first set his eyes upon it and found it good. Gehrke stayed in place.
Andrus's own 1990 gubernatorial campaign had been bolstered with contributions from Minnick and from the 3M Corporation. Gilman Ordway, another Wilderness Society board member, is heir to the 3M fortune.
When the Forest Service first offered the Cove/Mallard sale in the early 1990s, the Wilderness Society remained silent. That time, the successful bidder on the ponderosa pine-rich tract was Andrus's close friend and campaign contributor Dick Bennett, who also owns Shearer Lumber.
The Wilderness Society is not new to capitulation in Idaho. For many years one of the most overgrazed allotments in the Challis National Forest has been one owned by the Hewlett-Packard Company. The Wilderness Society never challenged Hewlett-Packard's land management, a hands-off attitude possibly encouraged by the very large sums given to the Wilderness Society by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
So much for corporate environmentalism. Tear up your Wilderness Society membership card and ask for a refund. Send the money to Roselle, Fullum and the Earth First!ers in Idaho. They need all the help they can get (406-251-2385).
Copyright © 1995 The Nation Company Inc.
Cockburn, Alexander
The Nation, v260, n13, p444(1)
April 3, 1995
ABSTRACT: Jeff St. Clair of the Wild Forest Review has determined from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service that the Wilderness Society will be paying about $6 million a year for its headquarters office in Washington, DC, as of 1997. This represents over a third of the Society's yearly budget.
If you visit the headquarters of the Wilderness Society, sanctuary of Society Supremo Jon Roush, in Washington, D.C., tread reverently. Jeff St. Clair, editor of the invaluable Wild Forest Review (503-788-1994) has determined from the Society's 990 forms filed with the I.R.S. that as of 1997 the Society will be paying just under $6.3 million for its headquarters and field offices. A former Wilderness Society officer confides that the field offices cost about $300,000 per year in rent, which means that as of 1997, $6 million per year will go to the Washington H.Q., more than a third of the Society's entire annual budget.
Meanwhile, Roush is blaming the Idaho debacle described here in recent issues [see "BTD," February 20 and March 6] entirely on his man in Boise, Craig Gehrke. It will be recalled that Gehrke, bowing to pressure from the Society's funders, had forced lawyers for the organization to demand that Federal Judge David Ezra overturn the injunction he had just issued, at the Wilderness Society's request, preventing logging in Idaho's national forests.
The Wilderness Society's capitulation allowed four clear-cuts to be completed after the date the injunction was lifted and a new timber sale in the area to be awarded to Shearer Lumber, owned by Dick Bennett, a friend and campaign contributor to Cecil Andrus. Andrus, a onetime W.S. consultant, is former Governor of Idaho. More than 300 logging, mining and grazing operations deemed to pose "irreparable biological harm" to endangered salmon stocks are now proceeding apace in the heart of the Cove/Mallard, America's largest roadless area. St. Clair tells me Judge Ezra exacted another costly concession. He forced the Wilderness Society's lawyers to stipulate that protecting these wild salmon watersheds would cause an economic disaster for rural Idaho towns. Thus in a single stroke did the Wilderness Society undermine ten years of research by economists, such as Thomas Power of the University of Montana, showing that the robust rural economies of the Northern Rockies are growing because of the region's natural beauty and in spite of the extractive industries, which are killing fish runs, elk habitat and wildlands.
A victory of sorts can be reported. On February 27 felony and misdemeanor charges against Earth First!ers Tom Fullum and Mike Roselle were dismissed after the state prosecutor failed to present evidence of a criminal conspiracy under Idaho's so-called Earth First! statute. (Fullum and Roselle were fortunate that the prosecutor was incompetent. Originally, they were to be represented by Idaho A.C.L.U. attorneys; however, under pressure from Idaho Democrats, the A.C.L.U. backed off at the last minute and Fullum and Roselle represented themselves.) The prosecutor is threatening to refile the charges.
The Idaho statute was passed last July by the legislature and signed into law by Cecil Andrus (who called demonstrators "just a bunch of kooks"). It makes it a felony to interfere with logging activities. The law was passed in response to three years of nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience aimed at stopping the Cove/Mallard timber sales.
Copyright © 1995 The Nation Company Inc.