Forest Workers Get Cards In Case Of Arrest U.S. Forest Service Issues Documents To Thwart Possible ‘Sagebrush Rebellion’ Run-Ins
U.S. Forest Service managers want their employees to be prepared in case state or local authorities come to arrest them for allegedly usurping local control.
Some workers with the Wenatchee National Forest are being asked to carry wallet-sized cards that explain what to do in case of arrest.
The cards are a response to a campaign by “sagebrush rebellion” activists who are challenging the federal government’s land-management powers.
The cards urge employees not to resist if an attempt is made to arrest or detain them while they’re carrying out their normal duties.
The card also has space for employees to write in the phone numbers of nearby U.S. attorney and FBI offices.
If an employee is arrested, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will approach U.S. District Court to try to win the employee’s immediate release, the cards say. In addition, the FBI may be called in to investigate and U.S. marshals will enforce court orders relating to their release.
The “contact cards” are being issued to field employees in areas where local-control ordinances have been passed, or where employees face potential detainment or arrest in the course of their work, regional forester John Lowe wrote in a letter to all agency employees in the region.
About 900 of the cards were handed out late last month to employees in the Forest Service’s Region 6, which covers 19 national forests in Washington and Oregon, Wenatchee forest spokesman Paul Hart said.
Chelan County commissioners approved a local-control ordinance last fall that requires state and federal government agencies to consider the customs and culture of a county before adopting regulations or plans that would affect the county. The measure also says state and federal officials must defer to “all mitigation measures and alternatives” approved by county commissioners.
Similar measures have been adopted in other rural Western counties.
Wenatchee National Forest officials said they don’t expect any arrests as a result of the Chelan County ordinance.
Leavenworth ranger Becky Heath, who carries one of the cards, said she told her employees that the cards are a precautionary measure.
“I think it’s a gesture on the part of (Forest Service chief Jack Ward Thomas) to let employees know that they are supported, that they aren’t out there on their own if they are arrested,” she said.
“Certainly none of us in the Forest Service would have thought that things would ever come to something like this (having to carry cards),” she said.
A local-control ordinance in Nye County, Nev., is being challenged by the federal Justice Department as unconstitutional. Nye County officials arrested a Forest Service worker for protesting an effort by the county to reopen a closed Forest Service road.