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Environmentalist group sabotages road By PAUL FATTIG WILLIAMS - Environmental activists opposed to planned logging of a tract of Boise Cascade Corp. forestland on Grayback Mountain have sabotaged a road leading to the site. Calling itself the Kangeroo Wilderness Defense, the group released a statement Thursday claiming to have removed a culvert five feet in diameter on the road, leaving a deep trench. They also fortified a gate on Clapboard Gulch Road, using "recycled" materials. The road is part of the Bureau of Land Management's Medford District. A 17-year-old high school student and his classmates participated in the road removal over the weekend, according to the group's statement. The group is committed to non-violence to stop clearcutting on the mountain, said group spokeswoman Lorraine Ashton of Williams. She acknowledged that the site where the group hopes to prevent logging is on private land. "But we are at a point where we have to resist Boise Cascade at all costs," she said. "They are such a destructive entity and have been for so many years." She noted that the company logged the nearly 700-acre Sugarloaf timber sale on the mountain in the mid-1990s despite angry protests from local residents. Several hundred people were arrested during those protests. "The time has come when we have to shut them down in our community for our survival," she said, adding that intensive logging harms the watershed and the mountainous habitat. "Our community has never healed from Sugarloaf," she said. "We are committed to nonviolence but we will make it very expensive for them to conduct business." Sabotaging the road costs taxpayers, said Bob Smith, human resources manager for Boise Cascade's Central Point office. "If folks are going to disagree with harvest activities, there are legitimate ways to express their disagreement," he said. "This will require the expenditure of public funds to repair it." The destruction of the culvert and the barrier on the road was discovered Monday, he said, describing the culvert as three feet in diameter rather than five. Holes were punched into the culvert to render it useless, he added. "This is not only a road hazard but a hazard to water quality," he said. "It doesn't matter whether this was public or private land. It was inappropriate and illegal." No logging is presently occurring at the site, he said. The incident is under investigation, said Don Ferguson, spokesman for the BLM's Medford District. "It's not a nice way to treat a watershed," he said. "Our intention is to repair the road as soon as possible." The agency also intends to prosecute those who did the damage, he said. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.