Cove-Mallard Logging Delayed Both Sides Declare Victory As Judge Studies Issues Of Suit

There won’t be any more logging until at least next spring in the contentious Cove-Mallard area of central Idaho, a focus of five years of Earth First! protests.

Both environmentalists and timber industry officials are claiming victory with that news, which grew out of recent hearings on a lawsuit filed by the Idaho Sporting Congress.

The Sporting Congress sued the Forest Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service in U.S. District Court in Boise 18 months ago.

It alleged logging in the Cove-Mallard area of the Nez Perce National Forest was illegal under the environmental impact statement prepared for the sales.

The allegations include taking too many trees, cutting in riparian areas and insufficient road maintenance. The suit also said the logging violates National Marine Fisheries Service guidelines for salmon and trout.

The Sporting Congress asked for a preliminary injunction to stop the logging, pending the outcome of the suit.

The agreement reached between government attorneys and the Sporting Congress Monday “gives us the same thing we would have gotten with an injunction,” said Ron Mitchell, executive director of the Sporting Congress.

“I’m thinking they didn’t want the embarrassment of a ruling against them,” Mitchell said.

Absolutely untrue, said an attorney for Shearer Lumber Co., which purchased the timber sales in question.

“I take strong exception to their characterization,” said Bruce Smith, a Boise attorney who represented both Shearer and the Intermountain Forest Industry Association. Those two groups intervened in the case on the side of the Forest Service.

The federal judge needs additional time to sort out the issues in the complex legal case, Smith said.

It was simple to give him the time.

“We never agreed to stay out,” Smith said. “Shearer never had plans to go in until 1997.”

The Cove-Mallard timber sales call for logging a total of 81 million board feet of timber and building 135 miles of new roads. Protests of the logging, in a finger of land between the Gospel Hump and Frank Church River of No Return wilderness areas, has produced more than 200 arrests.

, DataTimes