I recently crossposted information about a TV news report on the "home rule"
or "county supremacy" movement on a couple of discussion lists, suggesting
that you might want to ask your local TV station to run the 3-part series.

Here is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle which mirrors much
of the content of that TV report.

If you think that Federal lands are yours, and especially if you are
a Federal land resource employee concerned about your safety and welfare,
you'd best write your Congressional representatives to let them know....

If you want to give Congressional Representative George Miller a little
moral support in his effort to protect Federal environmental employees
from harassment and physical harm, send him an email message to:
gmiller at hr.house.gov (He happens to be my Rep; Contra Conta Co. Calif)

It would be nice if Miller could have a thousand or so email letters
from this readership to shake in front of Congress (you may have seen
him on TV recently, angrily telling Congressional members that their
actions are fascist). Let him know your state/congressional district so
he can show the breadth of concern.

Peter

The Chronicle article can be found at web URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/old/aug-14-95/MN1987.html
Size: 199 lines
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PAGE ONE -- BATTLE OVER U.S. LAND GETS NASTY, PERSONAL

Alex Barnum, Chronicle Staff Writer
Carson City

On a warm Friday evening 10 days ago, a bomb ripped through the Pence
family home on a quiet cul-de-sac, shattering the peace of this
eastern Sierra town.

Forest Service ranger Guy Pence was hundreds of miles away on a
horseback trip. But his wife, Linda, and the eldest of their three
teenage daughters were at home. The two were canning pickles at the
time and had walked from the front room to the kitchen seconds before
the bomb exploded outside and ripped through the front-room windows.
They escaped injury, but just barely.

As workers hauled away the broken glass and concrete from his house,
Pence returned to work last week, vowing not to be intimidated by the
attack -- the second involving him in four months -- but struggling to
cope with the fact that his job overseeing national forest land may
have put the lives of his family at risk.

``I am angry that someone would go after my family to try to get to
me,'' said Pence, 45, who is a district chief of the Toiyabe National
Forest, a vast expanse of wilderness straddling the California-Nevada
border. ``I am sad that someone would express hostility against the
work that I do in such a personal, cowardly way.''

The August 4 bombing is the latest example of how the battle over
public lands in the West can turn suddenly violent. And when it does,
workers for agencies such as the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land
Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service are likely to be caught
in the crossfire.

Increasingly, federal employees are taking precautions. Fish and
Wildlife has stripped insignias off its cars. Forest Service employees
are shedding their brown uniforms in favor of more discrete civilian
clothes. In some troubled areas, they travel only in pairs. The Forest
Service also recently issued employees cards with the phone numbers of
the local U.S. attorney's office in case they are jailed or detained
by local officials.

Last week, Representative George Miller, D-Martinez, the ranking
Democrat on the House Resources Committee, called for a Congressional
hearing in light of the bombing. ``This latest explosion follows a
long series of acts of violence and intimidation against federal
employees charged with enforcing the laws on public lands,'' Miller
said.

REBUKE FOR ANGRY RHETORIC

Federal law enforcement officials say they have ruled out the
Unabomber and do not have any suspects in the Pence bombing. But
Nevada lawmakers and Forest Service officials have rebuked advocates
of the state's ``county supremacy movement,'' which is trying to wrest
control of public lands in the West from the federal government --
saying their angry rhetoric and tactics may have indirectly inspired
the bombing.

Over the past decade, the county supremacy movement has gathered
support among miners, ranchers and other landowners throughout the
West who are bitter about laws that restrict their use of federal
lands. More than 70 counties have passed resolutions asserting state
control over public lands.

But few counties have been as aggressive in enforcing that claim as
Nevada's Nye County, a vast expanse of mountains and desert 250 miles
south of Carson City. Ninety- three percent of Nye County is owned by
the U.S. government. The Justice Department chose Nye to challenge the
movement and in March sued the county in federal court in Las Vegas. A
decision in the test case is expected within a month.

Nye County Commissioner Dick Carver, the movement's provocative
leader, condemned the bombing and expressed anger at comments by state
politicians tying the movement to the bombing. He points out that his
cause would have nothing to gain by violence at a time when it has a
chance of winning in the courts.

`WE WANT TO LITIGATE IT'

``Our position is we want . . . to litigate it,'' Carver said. ``We've
been working too long and too hard to blow it with something like
this.''

But federal officials say that as part of the movement's strategy,
Carver has publicly advocated intimidating federal employees and
threatening them with criminal prosecution for implementing federal
laws. In one notorious confrontation, Carver drove a bulldozer at a
Forest Service agent in an attempt to open a road into the Toiyabe
National Forest that had been closed by the agency.

``What began as a legitimate philosophical difference of opinion over
the management of federal land has been transformed into a call to
battle for many,'' said U.S. Senator Richard Bryan.

Federal officials are concerned that the August 4 bombing is part of a
general rise in violence against government employees in the West. On
March 30, a pipe bomb exploded outside Pence's office, blowing out
windows in the building, which was unoccupied at the time. On
Halloween 1993, a bomb was thrown onto the roof of Bureau of Land
Management headquarters in Reno.

`A REALLY SMALL MINORITY'

Federal workers say minor incidents -- such as being refused service
in rural restaurants, obscene gestures on the highway, threats at
public meetings -- also are on the rise.

Nathan Caldwell, a Fish and Wildlife public affairs director in Reno
who helped form a multi- agency Task Force on Violence Against Federal
Employees, said the federal agencies have good relations with 90
percent of the people they deal with. ``A really small minority of
people is driving this,'' he said.

The bomber could hardly have picked a better symbol of the Forest
Service than Guy Pence. Highly regarded in the agency, Pence did not
so much choose to work for the Forest Service as he was born to it. He
is the youngest of five brothers from Mackay, Idaho, all of whom went
to work for the agency, inspired largely by their father, an avid
outdoorsman.

Pence's career connects two very different attitudes within the Forest
Service. Raised in an era when the forest was viewed as something to
be ``beaten back,'' Pence says he has had to learn some new ways.
Today, he places a premium on the science of forestry and speaks
eloquently about the need to conserve natural resources.

An affable, outgoing man, Pence takes his job very seriously, and says
he is not afraid to make enemies in carrying it out. For the past
eight years, Pence has been the ranger for the Carson district of the
Toiyabe National Forest, a relatively peaceful swatch of wilderness
that is used largely by hikers from the Bay Area and the Los Angeles
region.

But for a brief period in the 1980s, Pence was district ranger in
Tonapah, on the western edge of Nye County. At the time, Congress was
appropriating more Nye County land for wilderness protection and
imposing new restrictions on mining and grazing operations -- a fact
that did not endear Pence to the growing county supremacy movement.

2 VIEWS OF CONFRONTATION

One rancher he clashed with was Dick Carver. Pence once denied Carver
a 10-year grazing permit because the land was still recovering from
overgrazing. Pence also was involved in a battle with an old-time Nye
County miner named Bob Wilson, a close friend of Carver. Carver says
the Forest Service killed Wilson just as surely as if it had pulled
the trigger.

Wilson had laid claim to a mine in South Twin and had cut a road to
it. Pence said the road was destroying a fragile watershed and revoked
the road permit when he arrived in 1984, telling Wilson he would have
to ``build it right.'' Wilson was arrested in 1990 driving his tractor
onto the property in violation of federal law, for which he served 100
hours of community service. He later died of cancer.

Carver claims that Wilson's arrest in the desolate southern Nevada
hills ``was like a minor Ruby Ridge (Idaho) or Waco,'' with ``armed
(Forest Service) officials'' hiding behind trees. ``From that day on,
he just went downhill. It just ate him up inside,'' Carver said. ``I
will always say the Forest Service killed Bob Wilson.''

Pence says that idea is ridiculous. He is sometimes on the other side
of an argument with ranchers and miners, Pence said, but he feels a
strong affinity for them. Compared with the new generation of Forest
Service workers who grew up in the East or in big cities, he has a lot
in common with them. ``My grandmother raised the first potatoes in
(Idaho's) Lost River Valley,'' Pence said. ``I've branded my share of
cattle and changed my share of irrigation water.''

But what sets Pence apart is a belief that the forest needs to be
preserved for future generations, including his three daughters. ``My
work is to take care of the valuable natural resources that belong to
all American people,'' Pence said. ``It's a tough time to take a
strong stand for good land management. But in the long run, taking
care of the land is in the best interest of all of us.''
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The San Francisco Chronicle Monday, August 14, 1995, Page A1 )1995
San Francisco Chronicle : All Rights Reserved : All Unauthorized
Duplication Prohibited
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