Summer’s here and it’s protesting time in the woods:
Cove/Mallard Coalition’s third summer of logging resistance has
begun in central Idaho. Protests and civil disobedience will once
again be the tools of the campaign as loggers start building the
third of nine access roads into the mostly roadless area. Holding a
banner that read “The Cut Stops Here,” activists in June attempted
to block timber cutters from moving into another section of
roadless area. A logger was videotaped tearing the banner in half
and felling trees in the road right-of-way; an activist was
arrested for locking himself to the gate at the Noble logging road.
“I love the Earth and I owe it something,” said the unidentified
Earth First!er. “It’s payback time.” On the legal front,
anti-logging activists lost a round when U.S. District Court Judge
Edward Lodge ordered the Idaho Sporting Congress to pay legal
expenses – about $4,000 – of the Intermountain Forest Industry
Association and Shearer Co. The expenses came from fighting
environmentalists’ lawsuits and appeals, which were brought to halt
logging in the Nez Perce National Forest. Back in the Cove/Mallard
Coalition office in Missoula, Earth First! contact Ramon predicts
more actions. “We’re starting to see individuals doing individual
acts of conscience. It’s not just a posture we take to save our
asses.”
*Shea
Andersen
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Idaho woods again inspire “acts of conscience’.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
