ST. REGIS, Mont. (AP) - The man who allegedly kidnapped two children and spirited them away into the wilds on the Montana-Idaho border may have remained undetected because a single local law enforcement officer patrols more than a million acres of rugged, densely treed U.S. Forest Service territory.

Joseph E. Duncan III, a Fargo, N.D., man suspected of killing at least three people and kidnapping two others in a May 17 attack, spent part of seven weeks at a remote campsite perched on a ridge with an eagle-eye view of the Two Mile Creek Valley - a site where investigators say he killed 9-year-old Dylan Groene.

Typically, 42 officers cover about 17 million acres of federal forest and grassland in northern Idaho, Montana and the Dakotas. That's now reduced to 37 positions, with some positions unfilled because of budget cuts.

It could fall to 32 by next year with retirements and scaled-back funding, Forest Service officials said. If the force shrinks, it could make the nation's national forests an even more appealing spot for alleged criminals to melt away into the trees.

"Even at full staffing, we unfortunately are in the reactive mode," J.W. Allendorf, the Missoula-based patrol commander for the region, told the Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane. "This is just going to increase that."

According to a national watchdog group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, there are at least 200 law officer positions within the Forest Service that have been left vacant because of budget cuts. The current size of the force is 660 officers, or about one person for every 290,000 acres.

The patrol commander for national forests in Washington state, Barb Severson, declined to reveal officer counts in her region or the number of positions being left vacant - for fear that could encourage lawbreakers.

"I don't want to list numbers. If I have only one officer on a national forest, then it's going to be a clue," for those looking to hide out, Severson said.

Isolated terrain in the Inland Northwest's forests has always appealed to those looking to get away from it all, from traditional campers to those such as Randy Weaver, subject of a 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge on the Idaho Panhandle, who want to withdraw from society to be left alone.

In addition to Duncan, authorities also believe John R. Tuggle spent several days in the woods near Wallace before wandering into a convenience store after allegedly raping, binding and stabbing his 12-year-old daughter last month. He faces charges including attempted murder in Shoshone County following his July 27 arrest.

Although alleged sex offenders and separatists represent a fraction of forest users, high-profile crimes in recent years have cast a cloud over the notion of the national forest as a refuge from big-city problems.

In 2000, grouse hunters stumbled across a jaw bone containing silver fillings on a national forest hillside about 30 miles northwest of Coeur d'Alene. The remains were from 14-year-old Carissa Benway, who was murdered and raped by her boyfriend's father while camping along a nearby river.

Two years later, woodcutters found the body of 20-year-old Brendan Butler in a national forest campground on the east side of Hayden Lake. Butler's throat had been cut by a rival marijuana trafficker.

And a decade ago, Faron Lovelace, an avowed white supremacist, shot Jeremy Scott in the head at his northern Idaho cabin because he thought Scott was a government informant.

"The very remoteness of the country is an attractant to those kind of people," said Allendorf. "This country lends itself to somebody with those kinds of aspirations. Many people that are on the lam, they go to national forest land. They know we have a whole lot of land and few officers."

The Kootenai County Sheriff's Department has a contract with the Forest Service to patrol some of the heavily used federal lands surrounding Coeur d'Alene - about two-thirds of the county is public land, Sheriff Rocky Watson said. But Watson said he has few officers to spare.

His department is already well-below recommended staffing levels, he said, and the Forest Service only pays $8,400 per year to the department for its patrols. Watson also noted that the Forest Service does not pay property taxes to support local services.

"It's a neat asset," Watson said of the national forests. "But give me something to keep it safe. We need to provide service up there."