Letter Claims Cove-Mallard Trees Spiked This Time, It’s Possible Ceramic Spikes Were Used

(From For the record, Wednesday, July 19, 1995): The U.S. Forest Service claims that an environmental activist warned a federal law enforcement officer that “someone was going to die as a result of the Cove-Mallard conflict” in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest. Because of a Forest Service error, a story in Tuesday’s newspaper incorrectly reported who allegedly received that threat.

Environmentalists and loggers alike are condemning possible treespiking in the Cove-Mallard timber sales on the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho.

It would be the second time in as many years that trees in the contentious logging area have been spiked.

This time the perpetrators may have used ceramic spikes. Like metal spikes, ceramic spikes destroy saws and can injure loggers and mill workers. But ceramic spikes are impossible to find with metal detectors.

The U.S. Forest Service’s Grangeville office received a letter Saturday warning that trees in the Jack Creek, Noble Creek and Rhett Creek timber sales were sabotaged. The envelope had a Portland postmark.

The Red River Ranger Station and Idaho County Sheriff’s Department received identical letters.

The letters said, in part, that ceramic spikes “were placed approximately six to eight feet above the tree bases. Understandably we are not at liberty to reveal the location of the specific trees.”

It was signed “elves for habitat.”

This was not good news to Dick Willhite, resource manager for Shearer Lumber Co. in Elk City, Idaho, which purchased the logs from two of the sales. But it won’t stop logging.

“There’s no way you can’t harvest an entire sale because it’s spiked,” he said.

While the company will keep an eye out for the spiked logs, “we will probably find them at the head rig,” the first saw that logs hit when entering the mill, he said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the spiking. Although Earth First! and other groups say they had nothing to do with it, Willhite and others assume they are the guilty party.

After getting to know Earth First! members and other activists who have been protesting the sales during the last four years, he said he is surprised.

“I didn’t think they were this vicious,” Willhite said.

Leanna Pitcher, whose husband works in the mill running several of the machines, worries about her husband’s safety.

“I don’t think they realize what kind of danger they put our families in,” she said.

Her husband, Dee, said it’s tough news. Still, he’s not afraid. “You can’t be. You have to do your job. There are other things that are going to be in these logs. Bullets even.”

Ihor Mereszczak, U.S. Forest Service resource officer, called the potential spiking an alarming change in the tempo of the protests of 81 million board feet of logging and 135 miles of logging roads.

“Anyone who will put their ideals and agenda above the safety and lives of people is a terrorist in my book,” he said.

Mereszczak has other reasons to worry, he said. Earlier this year, an activist warned a federal judge that someone is going to die as “a result of the Cove-Mallard conflict” according to a press release issued by Mereszczak’s office.

But Cove-Mallard Coalition members say Richard Valois never made such a statement and they say they have a transcript from the arraignment to prove it.

“I can’t imagine a federal judge putting up with that,” said coalition spokesman Wayne Price, pointing out that Valois is out on bond.

All this may amount to, he added, is the Forest Service “looking for an excuse to close more of the forest.” In past years, the agency has made broad swaths of the Nez Perce off-limits to protesters after equipment was vandalized and after another spiking.

No one was arrested in those incidents, said Robert Amon, another coalition spokesman. So it’s dangerous to assume Earth First! or any other group was responsible, he said. “It’s not on the table as far as the coalition is concerned,” Amon said. “Our position is non-violent resistance, no danger to persons and property and no tree-spiking.”

Someone “acting outside of the campaign” may have written the letter, he said.

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