No sooner had the courts given the Forest Service a
go-ahead to resume logging in Idaho’s Cove-Mallard than activists
took to the woods to begin a sixth straight year of
protest.
Nez Perce National Forest officials
responded by arresting two activists perched in 40-foot-high
tripods. The June 18 arrests came one week after U.S. Magistrate
Larry Boyle ruled against the Idaho Sporting Congress in its suit
to halt logging and 145 miles of
road-building.
Nez Perce Forest staffer Ihor
Mereszczak said the court decision proves once again the Forest
Service is in the right: “We’ve gone way beyond meeting the law,”
he said.
Disagreeing is Ron Mitchell of the Idaho
Sporting Congress, which has now lost two federal court cases and
one appeals case since 1994. The group recently filed another
appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals.
“Just obey the law. That’s what we’re
asking them to do, and they haven’t done that since 1990,” Mitchell
said. That’s when the Nez Perce National Forest finished plans to
log in the 67,000-acre Cove-Mallard, which lies between the Gospel
Hump and Frank Church-River of No Return wilderness
areas.
While activists claim their 40 days of
road blocks held up logging crews last summer, a logging official
says they were only an “annoyance.” Crews will continue where they
left off last year, said John Bennett of the Grangeville,
Idaho-based Shearer Lumber Co. “We’re going to carry out our end of
the contract,” he said.
*Dustin
Solberg
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Cove-Mallard warms up for another summer.
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