Forest Service won't reveal employee affiliations

The U.S. Forest Service "said it's nobody's business" if its employees are members of environmental groups, as it turned down the request of Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, to reveal employee affiliations, the Albuquerque Journal reports.

In July, Young sent a letter to USFS Southwest Regional Forester Eleanor Towns, asking her to turn over names and professional backgrounds on Forest Service and Agriculture Department employees involved in grazing litigation in the Southwest, including possible affiliations or contacts with environmental groups.

But in a Sept. 17 letter to Young, Towns wrote: "The Forest Service does not track the membership of employees in organizations, and in fact the Privacy Act prohibits the agency from maintaining records of such First Amendment information" (Keith Easthouse, Santa Fe New Mexican, 9/22).

Environmentalists had criticized Young's request, saying it "smacked of 1950s McCarthyism." Peter Galvin of the Tucson-based Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, one of the lead environmental groups in grazing litigation: "The letter was an obvious attempt to intimidate federal officials."

But Pat Jackson, the Forest Service regional coordinator for appeals and litigation in Albuquerque, said the agency didn't feel intimidated by the request. Jackson: "We don't track that sort of thing for employees any more than we track their religious affiliations" (Mike Taugher, Albuquerque Journal, 9/21).