Forest Service Taking Precautions For Workers

Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas says he is taking special precautions to protect his workers in a climate of antigovernment sentiment often directed at federal land managers in the West.

“These are tense situations,” Thomas told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday. “We have a lot of shock after what went on in Oklahoma City, which may or may not be related to us.”

A Justice Department official also said Wednesday that the Clinton administration is concerned that county ordinances questioning federal authority on federal lands may be fueling antagonism toward the government.

“The problem is not so much that the counties are actually enforcing these ordinances, but that these ordinances encourage citizens not to obey federal land managers,” said Peter Coppelman, deputy assistant attorney general.

Thomas told the Senate panel a Forest Service office in Carson City, Nev., was bombed a month ago. No one was injured, and Thomas said federal investigators do not know who was behind the bombing.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that many Forest Service employees in the West were afraid to do their jobs because of intimidation and threats.

“We’ve stopped doing road maintenance in one county because of concern about safety of the lives of crews,” Jim Nelson, supervisor of the Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada, told the Times.

The Carson City blast occurred in an office in Nelson’s district.

“The particular movement that is of concern to the Forest Service and the land management agencies is the county supremacy movement,” Coppelman, who works in the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, told reporters after the Seante hearing.

The Justice Department recently filed suit challenging the constitutionality of an ordinance in Nye County, Nevada, that says federal land in Nevada is under the jurisdiction of the state, not federal land managers.

Other counties in the West have adopted ordinances like one that originated in New Mexico, prohibiting federal land managers from reducing logging, mining or livestock activity on federal lands without the county’s approval.

Thomas said he had stepped up protection of Forest Service offices in federal buildings.

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