Environmentalist Convicted For Timber Sale Protests District Court Judge Rejects Man’s ‘Necessity Defense’

An environmental activist was convicted of three misdemeanors in U.S. District Court in Coeur d’Alene Tuesday for protest antics in connection with the Cove-Mallard timber sales.

Steve Wandrus, 41, of McCall, Idaho, will be sentenced Oct. 11. He was charged with threatening a U.S. Forest Service officer, interfering with Forest Service operations Aug. 2, and entering a closed area of the national forest June 27.

Wandrus and an unnamed accomplice stormed into an office at the Red River Ranger District on the Nez Perce National Forest and interrupted an official meeting, said Robert Amon, a spokesman for the Cove-Mallard Coalition. He walked into the ranger’s office because he had no success getting Ranger Ed Wood to respond to his complaints, Amon said.

The other charge, entering a closed area, happened when Wandrus was trying to intervene between loggers and another activist, Rick Valois. Valois, 42, of Montana, had locked himself to the Noble Creek logging road gate when the confrontation began, Amon said.

That area has been closed to the public for several weeks.

Wandrus raised a necessity defense on all three charges, arguing he broke the law to stop a greater wrong. U.S. District Judge Larry Boyle rejected that argument.

This conviction, one in a long line of defeats in court, won’t dampen protests, Amon insists. The amount of time and money the federal government pours into the “petty” cases shows “our version of the truth of what the Forest Service is doing to the forest is a lot closer to the ecological truth than what the Forest Service is saying,” Amon said.

, DataTimes