Boise Cascade Corp manipulates Roadless plan, charges Idaho Conservation League
June 12, 2000
For Immediate ReleaseContact: John McCarthy, Idaho Conservation League, 208 345-6933
BOISE Conservationists obtained an email memo written by a Boise Cascade Corp. attorney demonstrating the company wants its employees to manipulate the U.S. Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation plan.
The memo urges all Boise Cascade employees to request a copy of the Roadless plan Draft Environmental Impact Statement, a 400-page, two volume, three inch thick set of documents.
The company would then testify at public meetings that many people requested documents but did not get enough time to review the information.
Jeff D. Neumeyer, a Boise Cascade staff attorney wrote, "We would like to able to comment at public meetings and in written comments that, among other flaws in this process, multiple individuals requested a full DEIS and did not receive it until some late date which did not provide them enough opportunity to comment on the proposed rule."
"It¹s obvious that Boise Cascade doesn¹t care about the real issues in the roadless plan, it just wants to manipulate the process with fake requests for information," said John McCarthy, conservation director of the Idaho Conservation League.
Boise Cascade filed a lawsuit in March against the Forest Service roadless plan, claiming the proposed plan was not "a fair and open process."
"Trumping up a bunch of phony requests for massive, complicated documents shows Boise Cascade doesn¹t care about any fair and open process, it's just trying to stall and drag the process down," McCarthy said.
The Forest Service circulated announcements on how to order the roadless DEIS in April, a month before the DEIS release in May. Anyone who participated in the earlier planning meetings was mailed the announcement.
The documents could be ordered as a 15-page summary, a compact disk or CD-ROM, or the full printed text. The documents are also available on the Internet, at libraries, at Forest Service offices and at the information meetings held last month for each National Forest in the country.
"If Boise Cascade cared a whit about getting information about the roadless plan to its employees it had many opportunities," McCarthy said. "To waste more trees to provide 400-page documents is shameful and pointless."
The Idaho Conservation League ordered one set of documents for each of its offices. Conservation groups are providing analysis, maps, background information and DEIS fact sheets to members and other interested people.
"We are encouraging everyone, including Boise Cascade employees, to get involved and to understand the important values of roadless area protection," McCarthy said. "And now a giant logging corporation manipulates the process for its own gain, not for the good of citizens or the forest."
A copy of the memo is available from Idaho Conservation League