U.S. Forest Service employees in Nevada say they’ve been harassed, intimidated, and threatened by locals who are hostile toward federal land-use policies, and some say they fear for their safety. The USFS sent an investigative team to Nevada in December to interview more than 100 workers after the regional supervisor for the agency, Gloria Flora, resigned in November, saying she was worried she couldn’t guarantee the safety of her employees in part because locals were angry over the closure of a road to protect a threatened fish. The investigators released a report on the allegations this week, but said they uncovered no prosecutable crimes. In the meantime, the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility contends that the U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada has failed to aggressively prosecute natural resource crimes referred to it by USFS officials.
