Eco-Terrorist Sentenced for Tree Spiking
At the end of 1996, US District Court Judge Charles Lovell sentenced Ronald Constable of Cottage Grove, Oregon to 12 months in jail and a year of supervised probation which includes 500 hours of community service. The spiking occurred on the Challenge Blowdown Timber sale in the Flathead National Forest in Montana.
Last summer, a jury found Constable guilty of violating a 1988 federal law which prohibits the placement of devices on federal lands which could cause bodily injury or death to another person. He is the first individual convicted under this statute.
Constable has been actively engaged in protesting and appealing timber sale projects in the Northwest. He was arrested in 1993 for civil disobedience on the Cover Mallard Timber sale in Idaho and documents show he has a history of appealing Forest Service timber sales.
AND, at the time of sentencing, not only was Constable an admitted proponent of Earth First! but he was an employee of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Service, where he was working on a salmon research project.