Suspended Forest Service Worker Sues to Block Off-Roaders

A 23-year employee of the U.S. Forest Service has sued the agency and two supervisors, asking a judge to compel the Forest Service to keep off-highway vehicles out of portions of Angeles National Forest.

The cause of the dispute--and the patrolman’s suspension by his superiors--was a series of road signs posted along a remote road known as 3N17.

The patrolman, Robert Libershal, said that after seeing the signs allowing off-highway vehicles such as ATVs to travel on 17 miles of 3N17, he spoke with co-workers, studied the forest plan and concluded that the road was not open to such vehicles. So he took the signs down.

Forest supervisors countered that Libershal was misinterpreting forest regulations and ordered him to replace the signs. After he refused, they suspended him for three days last week without pay.

As part of the lawsuit, Libershal is asking the judge to overturn the suspension. “I chose to correct a wrong,” he said of his actions. “I was doing what I know to be right according to the regulations for the forest plan and the laws.”

In the suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court on behalf of Libershal and the organization Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, attorneys for the plaintiffs asked a judge to declare that the directive issued by Libershal’s superiors, ordering him to reinstate the signs, violated the National Forest Management Act.

Named in the suit are the Forest Service, Forest Supervisor Jody Cook and District Ranger Don Cosby.

Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit group based in Oregon, said he believes this is the first time a Forest Service employee has sued to enforce the basic blueprint that the Forest Service must follow in managing the forest for all uses, including recreation, wildlife and water.

The Forest Service is revising the forest plans for the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres and San Bernardino national forests.

At the heart of the suit is the larger question of what portions of Angeles National Forest are open to off-highway vehicles, labeled OHVs in forest parlance.

The 1989 forest plan labels the 17-mile stretch of 3N17 between the Mill Creek and North Fork ranger stations as closed to OHV traffic. The road is roughly 20 miles north of La Canada Flintridge.

“The forest plan is very clear,” said Patrick Parenteau, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys. “It says only those routes on the attached map that are designated open are, in essence, open.”

Forest officials, meanwhile, maintain that the signs Libershal took down had been appropriately placed.

Cook said that because the road had been designated an interim route on the state’s Back Country Discovery Trails program--a series of interconnected routes that allow off-highway vehicle travel from Oregon to the Mexican border--it was open to all kinds of off-highway vehicles. A June 2000 forest map shows the road as a designated off-highway vehicle route.

But Libershal disagrees with that assessment, saying that map was put out in error.

He pointed to a March 1997 letter to state parks and recreation officials by then-District Ranger Clara Johnson, asking for roads within Angeles National Forest to be designated back-country discovery trails. Referring to the western end of 3N17, Johnson wrote that “the route is unpaved and over 50 inches wide, but is not currently an OHV route.”

“No one I work with is aware of any change,” Libershal said. “I would think that a legal order would have to change the land management plan, with a review period and public comment. It wouldn’t just be someone in an office making a decision. For those 17 miles, it’s not an OHV route.”

Cook said she was aware that a lawsuit had been filed, but had not yet received an official copy. Citing pending litigation, she said she was not at liberty to comment.