Officers Arrest 2, Clear Way For Roads To Timber Sale Parts Of Cove-Mallard Remain Closed To Discourage Annual Summer Protests

At least two environmental activists were arrested early Wednesday as county, state and federal law enforcement officials cleared the way for a contractor to resume work on roads into the Jack Creek timber sale area in the Cove-Mallard portion of the Nez Perce National Forest.

Forest spokeswoman Elayne Murphy said one of the men arrested had locked himself to an object buried in a road near Dixie, and the other simply refused to get off the road to make way for the contractor’s crews.

Nez Perce Forest Supervisor Coy Jemmett issued an order Saturday closing several roads into the timber sale area 45 air miles southeast of Grangeville in response to vandalism and the need for the contractor to resume work.

“At this point we feel a limited closure is our best tool to maintain safety - safety for the public, employees, contractors and the activists themselves,” Nez Perce staff officer Ihor Mereszczak said. “We ask everyone to be patient as we work through yet another summer of protests.”

Officers from the Idaho County Sheriff’s Department, Forest Service, U.S. Marshal’s Service, Idaho State Police and state departments of Correction and Fish and Game accompanied workers returning to the area.

Highland Enterprises of Grangeville is building the Jack Creek roads for Shearer Lumber Co. of Elk City. Work resumed Wednesday after bad weather shut down the operation in late June.

While workers were out of the area, Murphy said environmental activists built barriers and dug trenches in an attempt to stop road construction. She said an estimated 20 to 25 protesters have been camping along the forest roads for more than a month, and more arrests were expected.

“There are a number of safety concerns. We weren’t exactly sure what we would encounter when we got out there,” she said. “We didn’t know what were in the structures we observed from the air.”

Those structures include fortlike stacks of logs, piles of timber slash and culvert pipes stuck upright in ditches as barricades. A man and a woman also were suspended atop log tripods on one road Wednesday, but Murphy said crews were able to go around them.

Robert “Ramon” Amon of the Cove-Mallard Coalition said law enforcement officers were sent in because the government was tired of protesters controlling the area.

“After 40 days and 40 nights of a successful blockade of a road being built into the heart of the wilderness, the powers that be just couldn’t take it anymore,” Amon said.

The 77,484-acre Cove-Mallard area links the Gospel Hump Wilderness and the River of No Return and Selway-Bitterroot wildernesses. Timber sale opponents contend it is a key piece of a 3.7 million-acre roadless area, the largest in the lower 48 states.

Of the 81 million board feet of timber approved for harvest in Cove-Mallard, less than 7 million have been logged so far. The Forest Service contends much of the area is mature lodgepole pine, capable of exploding in a firestorm.

More than 200 arrests have been made in response to protests and acts of civil disobedience and sabotage since Cove-Mallard logging began in 1992.