Forest Officials Swamped With Document Requests Environmentalists Deny They Are Trying To Delay Logging

Nez Perce National Forest officials have been swamped with requests for documents in what they believe is a campaign to block further timber cutting in the Cove-Mallard area.

But a spokesman for a number of environmental groups requesting the documents under the Freedom of Information Act denies the suggestion.

Gary MacFarlane of the Cove-Mallard Coalition said the documents are part of the effort to show that the Forest Service is violating environmental laws the critical ecological corridor that links in the Selway Bitterroot and Frank Church-River of No Return wilderness areas.

Since timber harvest began in the area in 1993, document requests under the federal law have been triple what they were before then, averaging between 60 and 70 a year, officials said.

Forest Service spokesman Ihor Mereszczak said each costs at least $20,000 to process, emphasizing that the government is not allowed to decide whether any requests are frivolous and should be ignored.

“People have found a mechanism that they can manipulate and cost the government a lot of money for a particular agenda,” Mereszczak said. “We don’t have any mechanism to say, ‘That’s a dumb request.”’

MacFarlane rejected the suggestion of a conspiracy to confound the Forest Service’s mission with frivolous requests.

“All it is is a way to get information,” he said. “I’ve found the forests up here, particularly the Nez Perce, are very reluctant to give information anyway except through the FOIA. That’s the only way we can guarantee an answer or an honest answer.”

But Forest Service officials pointed to an October 1994 request from Greg Mullen of the Wild Rockies Earth First! organization for all documents the Forest Service has on Sasquatch, or Bigfoot.

Then-supervisor Mike King responded that there were no documents because Sasquatch had never been proven to be an actual species. Still under the law, the Nez Perce Forest had to funnel that request through the regional office in Missoula for a final reply.

Forest Service officials also pointed out that all requests have come from the same postal box in Moscow - an address MacFarlane acknowledged is used by various groups. He declined to disclose it, however, “because all of us have received death threats.”