Activist arraigned for timber spiking

When someone drove 10-inch nails into trees set aside for logging in the Morgan-Monroe State Forest in June, the trees became no longer good for lumber. Cutting them down might have caused serious bodily injury to the loggers or millworkers.\nAfter investigating for more than six months, authorities believe Frank Ambrose, a prominent area environmentalist, did it.\nIn a faxed statement to the media, Ambrose denied spiking the trees.\nFacing a felony charge of timber spiking, he maintained that position Friday in Monroe Circuit Court, pleading not guilty during his arraignment.\nHe's not the only one who thinks he's innocent.\nChanting and drumming on plastic buckets, more than 75 sympathizers braved the cold in an hour-long protest outside the Justice Building. As his scheduled hearing drew closer, they filed into the courtroom. Dozens loitered around in the hallway and the vestibule.\n"Frank is an innocent man," said Donna McNeely, a friend who has known him for three years. "He's been outspoken on the environment. He's not the type to be involved in the underground activities he's been charged with."\nThe Indiana Department of Natural Resources arrested Ambrose Jan. 25, alleging he had participated in a tree spiking for which a radical ecoterrorist group, the Earth Liberation Front, had claimed responsibility.\nRichard Kammen, Ambrose's attorney, said his client is not affiliated with the group.\n"If we take a step back and look at the stuff that's been in the newspapers, Frank is charged with a crime that others have already admitted to," Kammen said. "The Earth Liberation Front claims responsibility for this."\nAmbrose's arrest is the first made in connection with the ELF, which has evaded authorities for the past four years while destroying more than $37 million of property nationwide. \nThe group left its calling card -- a spray-painted "ELF" -- on five sites in the Bloomington area last year, including a burnt-down house in the Sterling Woods development.\nBecause the loose-knit ELF is not an organization in the traditional sense of the word, authorities said they don't think Ambrose's defense will hold up.\nFBI agent Doug Garrison said ELF is essentially an acronym scrawled near vandalism to identify it as a political statement. \nAuthorities said they have enough evidence to get a conviction.\nA car later traced back to Ambrose had been spotted in the woods near the time of the spiking, said DNR officer Marlin Dodge. Witnesses identified Ambrose as the man seen purchasing the type of nails used in the spiking on a local hardware store's security camera tape, he said.\nThe 10-inch Grip-Rite spiral-shank nails -- only carried by one store in the area -- settled the case, Dodge said.\n"They're very peculiar nails that I've never seen before," he said. "It made it easy for me to track them down."\nThe protesters said they see the arrest as an attempt to suppress political activism.\n"I hope this (demonstration) shows that we will not be intimidated," said junior Jacob Hannan, who waved a placard at passing cars from the street corner. "It's just an attempt to scare activists in Bloomington."\nOthers hoped to divert attention away from Ambrose and toward the "environmental terrorism" allegedly perpetrated by the DNR.\n"The state forest logging program is against the law, and the DNR officials who run it know this," said Marie Mason. "It is high time that these bureaucrats who are implicit in the destruction of thousands of acres of our public land every years are put on trial."\nMason and Ambrose protested the practice -- the presumed motive for the spiking -- by staging a six-hour lockdown in the Morgan-Monroe state forest headquarter this past May. It was only weeks later that officials discovered that 10-inch nails had been driven into 17 trees.\nPrivate logging on public lands is not an uncommon practice, said DNR spokesman Stephen Sellers. In fact, it's necessary for forest maintenance, he said.\nWhen addressing those gathered, Ambrose said he hopes his colleagues will continue to press the issue. \n"I just want people to not focus on this so much, on this case, and move forward with the issues," he said. "We can't let it stop the work we do."\nAmbrose will return to court April 5, when circuit court judge Kenneth G. Todd schedules his pretrial conference.