This story is co-published with Public Domain.
In November 2024, the U.S. Forest Service sent a cease-and-desist letter to Galena Mines LLC after discovering an unauthorized cabin had been built that fall in a remote area of the Sawtooth National Forest in Idaho.
At the time, tech megamillionaire Michael Boren was listed as the sole manager of Galena Mines LLC, a Boise-based company that was formed in 2020 and owns historic mining claims in the Sawtooths. It’s unclear who was responsible for the cabin’s construction, but one of Galena’s mining claims was nearby. After determining that the cabin was constructed nearly a mile north of where the company’s claims are located, the Forest Service ordered Galena Mines and Boren to not only remove the cabin by July 1, 2025, but also to submit a restoration plan within 45 days and follow through with it no later than Aug. 1, 2025.
“Because there is no authorization for the surface disturbance and construction of the cabin that has occurred on [ Forest Service] land, the cabin must be removed and the area restored to its natural condition,” Kirk Flannigan, the area ranger for the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, wrote in the letter. He warned that “failure to comply with this notice may result in referral of this matter to the United States Attorney for the District of Idaho for appropriate legal action or removal and impoundment of the improvements at your expense.”
“The cabin must be removed and the area restored to its natural condition.”
Nearly two years later, the cabin still stands inside the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, a protected swath of the larger Sawtooth National Forest. Now the undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Boren oversees the Forest Service and the approximately 193 million acres of public land it manages, including those in the Sawtooths.
Aaron Murphy, co-founder of the advocacy group American Hunters and Anglers, recently traveled to central Idaho and located the cabin — a seemingly unfinished log structure in a clearing along a Forest Service road in the Boulder Mountains. His organization posted footage of it to its social media accounts.
In an interview with Public Domain and High Country News, Murphy condemned the fact that the cabin has not been removed, despite clear orders from the Forest Service.
Records and internal communications that government watchdog group Campaign for Accountability obtained through a public records request and shared with Public Domain and High Country News show competing views about where Galena Mines’ relevant patented mining claims are located. In 2003, a previous owner of the claims hired a surveyor named Kim Leavitt to survey the patents, which include full ownership of both surface and mineral rights. Leavitt ultimately concluded that the claims were located along Germania Creek, approximately one mile north of where Bureau of Land Management maps showed them to be. The following year, however, Forest Service and BLM staff conducted their own survey and determined Leavitt’s findings were incorrect.
“In fact, Mr. Leavitts [sic] location is approximately 1 mile north of the original location and approximately 2000 feet lower in elevation,” Forest Service land surveyor Randall Peppersack wrote in his 2004 report. “The location of the Dezdon Lode and Millsite are incorrectly displayed on the Leavitt Record of Survey.”
The BLM’s mineral and land records database shows the claims located in a far less accessible spot, a mile south of where the cabin was built.
Then in November 2020 — about a week before Galena Mines was established — Mark Phillips, a surveyor with Galena Engineering Inc. in Hailey, Idaho, filed another survey of the lode claim and mill site with Custer County. Like the Leavitt survey more than a decade earlier, Phillips determined the patented claim sits a mile north of where federal agencies placed it. Boren hired Phillips to conduct the survey and “place survey markings on site to ascertain exact boundaries,” a USDA spokesperson confirmed.
In a November 2024 email, Flannigan, the Sawtooth ranger, updated Fallon Higgins, a Forest Service law enforcement officer, about a meeting in which he and Boren discussed the cabin and the agency’s cease-and-desist letter.
“Mike did not acknowledge any wrong doing, but basically said if he did build in the wrong place he would move the structure. He also asked about the rehabilitation plan that is mentioned in the letter,” Flannigan wrote. “Apparently the location that Mike built on was verified by a local engineering firm before Mike purchased the claim. Mike mentioned that they would hold some financial responsibility if it is proven he is in the incorrect location.”
“Mike mentioned several times that ‘he did not want to fight’,” Flannigan added.
On Jan. 8, 2025, days before President Donald Trump was sworn back into office, Higgins circled back to request the cease-and-desist letter. He noted he was “finalizing the case report on my end for now, just so everything is documented in case we need to move forward with any charges in relation to this at a later date.”
A little more than a week later, then-President-elect Trump nominated Boren for the USDA undersecretary post. Boren, who has a history of sparring with public land management agencies, including the Forest Service, was sworn into the position in January 2026.
Since Trump’s return to the White House and Boren’s arrival at the USDA, the Forest Service appears to have reversed course, with no sign of enforcing the demands it made of Boren and Galena Mines in 2024.
The USDA largely dismissed the Forest Service’s previous assessment of the claim boundaries, instead pointing Public Domain and High Country News to the two independent surveys that placed the claim where the cabin was built. An agency spokesperson described those surveys, including the one Phillips conducted for Boren, as “official” surveys of record.
“The USFS does not conduct official land surveys of patented mining claims; it contracts the Bureau of Land Management surveyors with appropriate expertise,” a USDA spokesperson wrote. “To our knowledge, BLM has not conducted a survey of the relevant parcel. Mr. Peppersack’s comments do not constitute an official survey and were not recorded as such.”
“To our knowledge, BLM has not conducted a survey of the relevant parcel.”
Phillips did not respond to Public Domain’s and High Country News’ request for comment.
Asked if the Forest Service has any intention of requiring Galena Mines to remove the cabin and reclaim the area, the USDA spokesperson wrote: “No action can be taken until an official federal survey is completed.”
The Forest Service’s 2024 cease-and-desist letter noted that “official government records and surveys place the location of this patent” in a section of land south where the independent surveys recorded with Custer County show it to be. And in a November 2024 update to his 2004 survey report, Forest Service land surveyor Peppersack wrote “the current landowner and the 2020 Phillips survey are relying on Leavitt’s survey, even after the Forest Service land surveyors notified Mr. Leavitt in 2004 that it was incorrect.”
“Recommend trespass notification if any improvements or other unauthorized use is commenced on these Leavitt locations,” Peppersack wrote in his report.
As for the intended use of the cabin, the USDA spokesperson said that “backcountry skiers built the warming hut on private land for public use as needed. It has no other purpose.” Pressed about American Hunters and Anglers’ video footage showing the door boarded over, the spokesperson said, “The hut could be used in the event of a winter emergency.”
The spokesperson dismissed the American Hunters and Anglers’ social media video about the cabin as “maliciously false and therefore libelous.”
In April 2025, a few months after being nominated to the USDA post, Boren signed an ethics agreement and a financial disclosure — neither of which listed Galena Mines LLC.
Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist and ethics expert at the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen, said ethics rules require Boren to disclose all outside corporate posts during the previous two years, including his position with Galena Mines LLC.
The USDA spokesperson told Public Domain and High Country News that Boren’s financial disclosure is “accurate” because “neither he nor his family had ownership of Galena Mines at the time of the initial financial disclosure or any subsequent time.” The agency said the Boren family has not had an ownership stake in the LLC since May 2024.
However, internal Forest Service emails indicate agency officials discussed the cabin issue directly with Boren months later, in November of 2024. Idaho business records also list Boren as the LLC’s manager up until late February 2025, a month after he was nominated to the USDA undersecretary role, at which point his daughter Amanda Boren assumed the management role.
The Forest Service did not respond to several follow-up questions about those records and communications.
The Forest Service’s 180-degree turn on the Boren cabin has coincided with significant leadership changes in the Sawtooth National Forest. Flannigan, the head ranger for the Sawtooth National Recreation Area who sent Boren the cease-and-desist letter in 2024, stepped down from his Forest Service post in June 2025 and took a job as administrator of Blaine County, Idaho. Similarly, former Sawtooth National Forest supervisor Jake Strohmeyer, a 30-year veteran of the agency, left his position in early 2025 for a job at the Idaho Department of Lands.
A couple of months before Boren was confirmed to his current Trump administration post, his daughter Amanda, the board director of the Sawtooth Conservation and Recreation Alliance, a private property rights group that her father is a past board member of, emailed top Forest Service brass to endorse Michael Fuller, then the acting area ranger of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, for the permanent ranger post — and take a swing at Flannigan.
“Ranger Fuller seems to be able to get more done in 3 months with a staff of 9 people than the previous ranger was able to get done in 12 months with a staff of over 30,” Amanda Boren wrote in a November 2025 letter to Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz.
Amanda Boren’s father now has oversight over Fuller, Schultz and every other Forest Service employee.
Flannigan did not respond to a request for comment.
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