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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>From the Spokesman-Review</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><TT><FONT color=#000000><X-TAB>
</X-TAB>Friday, January 19, 2007<BR><BR>Forest activist LeRoy Lee, 50,
dies<BR>Last years spent as science teacher<BR><BR>James Hagengruber<BR>Staff
writer<BR>January 19, 2007<BR><BR>LeRoy Lee, hailed as a "giant" by
conservationists for his work in exposing the overcutting of federal forests,
died Wednesday morning at his home in Santa, Idaho. He was 50 and is believed
to have died of a heart attack, friends said.<BR><BR>Although Lee once
testified before the Congress and uncovered what many in the conservation
community say was one of the biggest environmental scandals in recent Inland
Northwest history, he lived a simple, private life and focused most of his
energy for the last decade on teaching science classes in the St. Maries
School District.<BR><BR>John Cordell, principal of St. Maries High School -
where the school mascot is a lumberjack - said Lee was beloved by students for
his eccentric style of teaching physics, chemistry and biology, which included
frequent use of a guitar, a harmonica and magic tricks.<BR><BR>"It just ticks
me off - he goes to the grave with the tricks he's never even shown me answers
to," Cordell said. "He was way cool. He was a great teacher."<BR><BR>Lee
assumed an important role in a community where he was once told never to
return. It happened in the early 1990s during a meeting in St. Maries with
small logging contractors, according to Barry Rosenberg, a friend and director
of the Kootenai Environmental Alliance. Tension was high because timber sales
were being curtailed in national forests across the nation. Many loggers
blamed environmental lawsuits for the slowdown, though Lee and other
conservationists contended the situation was partially due to years of
overcutting by the U.S. Forest Service.<BR><BR>"The minute I opened my mouth,
people started yelling at me," Rosenberg recalled of the meeting. "It just got
out of hand. LeRoy and I were back to back. We thought we were going to get
nabbed. We were both warned never to come back to St. Maries
again."<BR><BR>Lee never really left the place, though he steered clear of
public environmental activism after getting work as a teacher in the late
1990s. Cordell, the high school principal, said Lee never hid his
views.<BR><BR>"He was a tree-hugger kind of guy at heart," Cordell said,
adding that Lee and his students sometimes engaged in vigorous debate over
land-use practices. "It was never vicious, never mean."<BR><BR>Lee, a
California native, was working as a seasonal contract worker for the Forest
Service near Avery, Idaho, in the mid-1980s when he discovered what he
believed were widespread inaccuracies in how the agency tracked timber
harvests. Essentially, the Forest Service records showed tens of thousands of
acres of mature trees where the ground showed stumps.<BR><BR>Using piles of
maps, aerial photos and agency computer records, Lee uncovered massive
discrepancies in records kept by national forests across the region. In
northwestern Montana's Yaak Valley, for instance, three-quarters of clearcuts
were listed on paper as mature forest.<BR><BR>In 1992, Lee explained his
findings before the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. Forest Service
managers were exaggerating, Lee said, because the forest couldn't grow fast
enough to keep up with the pace of harvest, but these large-scale cuts also
meant big budgets.<BR><BR>"They've fabricated a paper forest," Lee told the
subcommittee.<BR><BR>Congress investigated and found inaccuracies on 15
national forests across the West.<BR><BR>Rosenberg traveled with Lee to
Washington, D.C., for the testimony. Lee wore leather-braided ponytails and
had gaps in his teeth. He didn't own a suit or a tie, but Rosenberg eventually
persuaded him to wear a jacket and tie bought at a secondhand
store.</FONT></TT></DIV>
<DIV><TT><FONT color=#000000><BR>"He was a back-to-the-lander, the salt of the
earth," Rosenberg said. "He was a giant."<BR><BR>Spokane conservationist Dr.
John Osborn was also closely involved in the so-called "phantom forest" issue,
which received national media attention. He said Lee had nothing to gain by
blowing the whistle on the agency that employed him.<BR><BR>"He was a guy with
incredible personal integrity and concern about the forests," Osborn said. "He
knew the woods. Š It took someone like LeRoy, who knew the woods, who had the
skills as a timber stand examiner and had the personal integrity, to do this.
To lose him at such a young age is just a heartbreak."<BR><BR>Lee insisted he
did not blame the Forest Service for the discrepancies. The agency was simply
"implementing the will" of the American public, who wanted "toilet paper and
cheap two-by-fours," he said in an interview with the Lewiston Tribune shortly
after testifying in Congress.<BR><BR>When he was in his 40s, Lee earned a
teaching certificate from Lewis-Clark State College. He had a gift for
connecting with troubled students, Cordell said. In 2005, Lee was named North
Idaho's high school science teacher of the year by a statewide
association.<BR><BR>By all accounts, Lee lived the light-on-the-land lifestyle
he preached. He and his longtime partner, Elizabeth Taylor, raised two sons
and organic vegetables at their home in Santa - friends say he always seemed
to have produce to share. Lee also had an interest in the culture of the Nez
Perce Tribe and spent hours hiking the nearby backcountry, which is one reason
many were shocked by his sudden death.<BR><BR>"I bet he didn't have 5 percent
body fat," Cordell said.<BR><BR>Lee's intimate knowledge of the forests of his
backyard is what made him such a powerful force, according to Chuck Pezeshki,
an environmentalist from Pullman who worked with Lee. In a message sent to
colleagues across the region, Pezeshki hailed Lee for teaching him how
important it was to "walk the ground you are trying to defend and know more
about what you're trying to defend than the guys that are trying to destroy
it."</FONT></TT><BR><TT><FONT color=#000000></FONT></TT></DIV>
<DIV><TT><FONT color=#000000>Lee was buried Thursday afternoon in the Santa
cemetery.</FONT></TT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>