On March 3, Glen Ith passed away unexpectedly of sudden cardiac death, an abrupt loss of heart function often associated with undiagnosed coronary artery disease. Glen, forty-eight, is survived by his wife, Marketa; daughter Izabelle, nine; his mother, Helma; and other family members.

Glen began his U.S. Forest Service career on the Tongass National Forest in the mid-1980s, and he was promoted to wildlife biologist on the Petersburg District in 2001. A hunter, fisherman, craftsman and builder, he was also president of the board of the Petersburg Childhood Education Center in Alaska.

Glen was also a whistleblower. In 2005, he learned of a logging road being constructed in an area of the Tongass National Forest where no timber sale had yet been approved. Glen appealed to the agency, but his concerns fell on deaf ears. He contacted Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics in August of 2005 and sent us photographs of the road work, together with an e-mail message suggesting that because the road construction, the timber harvest for the log stringer bridges and the decision to harvest were all connected actions, something was amiss in the Forest Service’s process.

It turned out Glen had uncovered a pattern of illegal road building on the Tongass which, together with FSEEE, he challenged in federal district court. In December 2006, Judge John Sedgwick agreed, saying (in words almost identical to Glen’s) that “the Forest Service concedes that it has violated NEPA, specifically that the use of a categorical exclusion for the road contracts at issue was improper because the road construction and the planned timber sale projects constitute connected actions that should be considered in the NEPA documents for the timber sale projects.”

Glen also appealed the Scott Peak timber sale—slated to log 347 acres of temperate old-growth rainforest on Kupreanof Island—because he believed cumulative impacts from nearby logging hadn’t been adequately studied. Again, his concerns were upheld, and the timber sale was remanded for further analysis. Glen’s subsequent challenge against the re-issued Scott Peak sale, on the grounds that it failed to consider environmental analysis critical of the logging, was pending in federal district court at the time of his death.

In the months prior to Glen’s passing, he was reassigned to a different office and then placed on administrative leave pending his supervisor’s request that he be terminated. Glen protested his reassignment and administrative leave to the Office of Special Counsel, which agreed there was sufficient evidence of retaliation to launch an investigation. With Glen’s death, the office closed its investigation.

On a personal note, it was my great privilege to advocate on Glen’s behalf. He had an unshakable belief that our system of government would work. Although the path might be difficult and demand perseverance, he believed that the truth would prevail. Glen had the character, intelligence, wisdom, moral fiber and family support necessary to vindicate the truth. He won every fight—only his heart muscle denied him the chance to clear his name of the Forest Service’s baseless accusations. I have no doubt he would have prevailed. —Andy Stahl