LOOK WHAT IDAHO HAS TO OFFER.
Consider what you have to offer Idaho. A Perfect Match.
Imagine a land of enchantment. A place where wild wonders still roam. A place so large you can lose your soul, so intimate that you will breath in the surrounding LIFE. Cove/Mallard and Otter-Wing are two places where a human, if they possessed the power and choice, would choose to turn into a tree and live with the harmony of the winds and peace of the Rocky Mountains. Unless immediate action is taken, this land will be lost and we will depend on our imagination to relive the memories. You are cordially invited to visit and defend this land from the failure of public land management.

Less than 3-4% of the native forests remain within the boundaries of the continental United States. 20% of the remaining native forests stand on public land in the Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem (GSSE). It is finally time to stop the Forest Service from clearcutting our public lands, destroying endangered habitat, and wasting taxpayers money to subsidize the corporate rape and plunder of the last big wild.

The Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem consisting of the Selway-Bitteroot, Frank Church River of No Return, and Gospel Hump Wilderness areas and surrounding National Forest lands is the last intact wild ecosystem left in the lower 48 states. The GSSE is home to many endangered species, century-old trees, the two longest undammed rivers in the country (Salmon and Selway rivers) and two of the most outrageous timber sales in the history of public land management. The Cove/Mallard area sits at the heart of the three connected wildernesses and provides an essential biological corridor for migrating species. The cove and mallard roadless areas are temporarily saved because of the 18-month roadbuilding moratorium implemented by the chief of the US Forest Service Mike Dombeck in January of 1999. The currently threatened Wing Creek-Twenty Mile area contains the Otter-Wing timber sale and is a roadless area greater than 50,000 acres adjacent to the Gospel Hump. Otter-Wing is home of the last pristine spawning grounds for steelhead trout on the South Fork of the Clearwater River. (Activist compiled a mountain of evidence of violations for the Otter-Wing Federal lawsuit through extensive timber sale monitoring efforts and were successful in canceling several miles of roads.) Both of these sales are illegal, uneconomical and unethical and as responsible citizens of the Earth we need to do something about it.

These lands are so deep, steep and wild that human disturbances have so far been deterred. Our goal is to KEEP IT WILD!, so woodland creatures can disappear into the depths and the shadows of a standing old growth forest instead of disappearing from an ungrateful industrial wasteland of clearcuts and roads.

Idaho is the best kept secret for wild forests. Unfortunately, the Forest Service, has also discovered its timber value. Under the guise of 'forest health', the Forest Service continues to build roads in order to 'get the cut out'. The American public must be alerted to this travesty and take action before the beauty and integrity is depleted any further.

IT IS TIME TO STAND UP TO INJUSTICE
The most pressing issues of our times is to preserve ecological and cultural diversity by halted the globalization of the industrial system and attempting to reorient our communities to a local based, Earth-connected economy. An excellent start is to preserve the big chunks of wildlands that still home nearly all of its original species.
The white man's machine does not have a right to be everywhere, all of the time at the expense of life and our children's future. The failure of our industrial capitalist system is evident in the failure of the management of the West. On a mass scale, we have degraded the soils, leveled the forests, poisoned the waters and... Profit seeking corporate elites extort the value from the living landscapes and cultural communities and export it. The timber industry has raped the nation of its native forests from coast to coast and now has eyes for the wood flesh of the northern rockies. It is impossible to feed this insatiable beast- will the last intact ecosystem be spared?

Surprise, surprise, the United States government lies to the people of the region. The local people are operating under the false promise of the American dream. The government and corporations created imagined communities based on unsustainable extractive industries. These implanted communities are alien to the land and cannot live in harmony with nature. Their objective is to maximize the exploitation of the land and the people to feed an insatiable system and please the capitalist elites. The forced dependency of the local people blinds them to alternatives and they are being funneled down the same path as all the failed boom and bust communities of history. We are now witnessing the local people trying to make up from an industrial nightmare and are kept in the dark by corporate propaganda and general denial.
The 'forest health' scam is the Forest Service's most recent lie to propagate the deforesting of our public lands. They use the excuse of naturally occurring phenomenon's or past mismanagement practices to continue to remove biomass, fragment habitat and silt the streams. The triangle of conspiracy (salmon-dams-grizzly) is a fiction created by the wise-use movement to feed the public lies about how environmentalists are attempting to steal jobs and destroy the local economies.

The Cove/Mallard Coalition, in the face of monuments adversity, is remarkably successful. In the outdated 1990 EIS, the Cove/Mallard roadbuilding and cutting operations were marked for completion by 1997. After nine years, and seven years of direct action, the operation is only 20-25% completed.

It is important to personalize this issue for yourself because unless you are actively fighting it, there is a high chance that through your lifestyle you are unwittingly perpetuating the destruction. Come out and witness the clearcuts and experience the sweet taste of dissent. We have the truth and the spirit of everything living on our side. We are unstoppable. We eat curried lentils and never sleep!

MULTIPLE FRONTS
The Cove/Mallard Coalition is famous for its non-violent direct action and roadblocking techniques. The seven-year Cove/Mallard field campaign is the longest running direct action effort in defense of our National Forest system. Tactics range from intricate bi-pod blockades to a web of tree-sits which were the direct action technique of choice to halt the devastating roadbuilding at Otter-Wing this past summer. Our office workers are skilled appeal writers and paper-wrenchers. Our legal team recently filed the Otter-Wing lawsuit on the grounds of water quality and endangered species.

The Cove/Mallard Coalition has a basecamp near Dixie, Idaho, and an office in Moscow, Idaho. Our legal team is spread across the region but generally operates out of Boise. Seeds of Peace is a long time member of the Coalition and provides amazing food and aids with the logistics of the field campaign. Nearly all of your subsistence needs will be taken care of. Field activists spend a majority of the summer out in the field living at satellite camps and are known to make friends with the bears and the chipmunks. The community relies on a non-hierarchical, consensus based method of decision making which opens the channels up to new and creative energy.

The campaign supports a wide range of proposed legislation including the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act (the campaign to end commercial logging on public land), the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act,...

LOOK WHAT IDAHO HAS TO OFFER YOU!
Idaho is an opportunity to take an ethical stance and right the wrongs of our consumer culture and extraction oriented economy. It is a chance to observe the inherent value of the lands, the water, the habitat and the species. It is an opportunity to reconnect with the natural world, live at the rhythm of the sun, listen to the campfire and remember the feeling of freedom.

Idaho is an opportunity to learn many valuable activist skills; how to conduct pre and post timber sale monitoring examinations; stream and sediment monitoring; climbing skills; legal research; office and outreach coordinating; how to live a low-impact life; how to live in a cooperative community...

The community of forest defenders is an amazingly spirited, courageous, intelligent and creative bunch of people. The campaign is a gathering point for revolutionary minded people who are passionate with their beliefs and deliberate with their actions. If you are outraged at the direction of humanity or simply want to spend more time outside, than Idaho is calling you.

When you come to Idaho, you will catch the spirit of the movement that will take you to the wildest place in the country; a spirit that also fights for the breaching of the dams, the reintroduction of the grizzly, the equality of all genders, and against white supremacy hate groups, ignorant right-wing militias, and even nasty incinerators.