Earth First! Litha (1993)

On April 26th NJ/NY Earth First! blockaded the transport of Georgia-Pacific (G-P) rainforest wood with a lumberyard "Stump-Sit" just outside of Trenton, NJ. This stump-sit blockaded the gate of the G-P Yardville lumberyard for nearly two hours. At about 10 AM three activists arrived and immediately blocked the gate with four large tree stumps. G-P's initial response was to send out cameramen and an empty flatbed truck. The driver inched dangerously by as the activists were locking into the stumps. G-P's public relations people quickly arrived and asked the activists to conduct their protest next to the gate or risk arrest. Minutes later a group of chanting support activists marched up NJ Rt. 130tothelumberyard. G-P realized that no more profits could squeeze by when three of the support activists sat down in solidarity with the "chain gang." After a long stalemate, the police moved in.

When the unchained activists refused to leave they were carted off. Next the cops began work on the chain gang. It wasn't easy for them to figure out how the "activists were locked into the logs. Police triedlubricatingthe arm-holes with dishwashing soap, and poked and prodded, but that didn't get them anywhere. Then they tried to move the logs! They gave up on that bad idea when they realized the three people were chained and locked into the logs, with both arms, so that the blockade couldn't be moved much at all without breaking arms and wrists! They eventually figured out how to get at the chain apparatus with various bolt cutters. Three activists were driven away to the Hamilton Township Courthouse and charged with defiant trespass and disorderly conduct. The three chain gang members were also charged with resisting arrest. The six were released on $2,000 bail each and await their June 15th court appearance.

Stump-Sit Against G-P Rainforest Imports

In their written response, prepared for this action, Georgia-Pacific said that it is "impossible to determine" that they are the US's largest importer of tropical wood products from US Department of Commerce data. This is the typical first line of defense for any corporate public relations campaign—DENIAL. It is the same tactic used by governments and advertising firms alike. But if public relations is the name of the game, G-P is in big trouble. Georgia-Pacific is the nation's largest importer of tropical hardwoods, based on US Department of Customs records.

G-P failed to respond to criticisms of their staggering domestic offenses. From 1977 to 1989 Georgia-Pacific was the second most frequent violator of US Worker Safety laws among the fifty largest US corporations. Between 1977 and 1990 G-P was the third most frequent violator of US air and water pollution laws, beaten only by DuPont and USX! As a leading proponent of "acceptable daily intake" of deadly dioxin, G-P has law suits pending for dioxin release as well as being named "Potentially Responsible Party" on 96 Superfund sites! With their daily record, denial is obviously not-their only defense.

Two weeks after the direct action, G-P's cronies in the International Hardwood Products Association (IHPA) issued a statement to the New Jersey State Senate. Besides their faulty assumptions about (or ignorance of) ecosystem biology, they further misled and lied to the NJ State Senators. First, they insisted that boycotts are not advocated by "responsible" environmental groups. They then said, "as far as we know", EF! and Rainforest Action Network (RAN) are the only groups advocating boycotts. Let's hope the NJ State Senators are not as ignorant as the IHPA and G-P think they are. The IHPA referred directly to this action and the Earth First! movement. They claimed EF! groups "promote such dangerous and violent tactics as tree-spiking and suicide bombing in an effort to shut down the timber industry."

SUICIDE BOMBING!? We can't let the covert, "unsolved" attempt to kill activists be spin-doctored into a SUICIDE BOMBING! NJ/NY EF! is preparing a response to the IHPA's misinformation for the NJ State Senators. Everyone should let the IHPA and G-P know what they F A think of this bullshit. This is the typical second line of defense: DISCREDITING the finger-pointer. Since IHPA members import about 80% of the US's rainforest wood, they must be really nervous about the growing international boycott.

By happy coincidence, there is a NJ state law under consideration that would restrict the sale of rainforest wood. By happier coincidence, the blockade was just outside of the state capital and was covered on the front page of the Trenton Times and appeared on the ABC-TV Philadelphia evening news. We hope that the action inspired residents and politicians alike. After nearly unanimous passage through the NJ State Assembly, the rainforest wood ban is now being considered by the State Senate.

NJ/NY EF! would like to thank the many individuals who contributed time and money, the EF! Direct Action Fund for their timely contribution, and RAN and many others for vital information. If you would like more on Georgia-Pacific or have information to share, please contact:

G-P Information Project, c/o Wetlands 161 Hudson St., New York, NY 10013. Please send them stamps and they'll send you a G-P/rainforest/dioxin action package and future alerts.

If you want to communicate something to G-P here's their address: A.D. "Pete" Correll, CEO, Georgia-Pacific, 133 Peachtree St., NE, Atlanta, GA 30303. Phone: (800) 477-2737 x4738 or (404) 521-4000. Fax: (404) 521-4581 or 521-4847 or 521-4422 To leave a message on GP's free tree-line (or is that tree-free?) call: (800) 447-6553 x30215.

New Jersey residents should call or fax their state senator and the governor and ask for their active support of NJ Senate Bill No. 1167. Ask for this legislation and join this international movement working to ban rainforest wood use. Make sure your legislation has serious citizen enforcement provisions! Join Arizona, New York, two hundred cities in Germany, more than half of the Netherlands' municipalities and (perhaps) New Jersey and ban rainforest wood use now!

BRITISH HUNT SABOTEUR KILLED

—Black and White and Green

The British fox, stag, and hare hunting season ended with the tragic death of a young hunt saboteur, the finale of a season astonishing in the degree of violent conflict between hunt supporters and saboteurs. Fifteen-year-old Thomas Worby was killed by hunters in early April. Amid much controversy over Worby's death and his part in the Hunt Saboteurs Association, The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has yet to prosecute the hunters.

Saturday, 3 April, 1993. Thomas Worby was out with other hunt saboteurs—disrupting the last meet of the Cambridgeshire fox hunt The day had been a successful one for them, a fox having escaped unharmed when the hounds were called off its trail.

The hunters eventually boxed up their hounds and drove the hound van down a narrow lane away from the meet area. About thirty saboteurs strolled along in front, hindering its departure. Huntsman Tony Belli, driver of the van, began revving the engine and nudging forward, attempting to clear the sabs from the path. They quickly scrambled for the side, but Thomas Worby's jacket snagged on the side-view mirror as the van forced its way past. He was dragged a considerable distance before gaining a foothold on the running-board of the truck.

A Season of Violence in Britain

Worby began banging on the window to encourage the driver to stop; Ball refused. Thomas' grip loosened and he fell to the roadside, only to rebound underneath the vehicle. His head was crushed by the rear wheels of the seven-ton truck.

The truck sped away as Thomas' friends attempted to resuscitate him; blood was pouring from his ears. Three passing hunt riders were implored to go back and call an ambulance, but responded, "We're going the other way." A police car was finally flagged down, and an ambulance summoned. Other saboteurs in the area were taunted by hunt supporters, who seemed amused by the death.

Cops Waver on Prosecution

Police have released Tony Ball on bail; he is now allegedly in hiding. The decision on whether to prosecute the driver or the hunt organization rests with the CPS. We interviewed Superintendent Tony Rogers of the Cambridge Criminal Investigation Service, the officer responsible for the investigation. Rogers stated that the CPS would need evidence of culpability before prosecution is considered, but that the CPS would interview all the witnesses. Rogers also said that the boy's father is on record in the local paper as being critical of the recruitment of such a young person into the hunt sab movement.

"The Hunt"

The death has rocked the normally quiet Cambridgeshire countryside. Ritual fox-hunting is a traditional pastime in this area, and supporters of the hunt consider themselves to be conservationist, but often of a uniquely British "High Tory" political breed. The countryside and the "English Tradition" are seen as key to the national character. This outlook may include acceptance of the aristocratic hierarchy and "progress" in industry. Outsiders to the area are not welcome unless they conform to the unspoken rules and are willing to hobnob with the gentry. The social affair of hunting (and the hunt ball, at which one is supposed to make the "right" marriage and connections) continues, although many hunts are bankrupt. Others are in financial trouble, mainly due to the success of the sabotage movement.

The Cambridgeshire fox hunt has always had a restrained relationship with the regular saboteurs, with none of the violence or injuries which have marked other hunts. Apparently there has been

a level of tolerance between sabs and hunters, a sort of tacit agreement. Superintendent Rogers reported that hunters have made allegations that Worby was an "outsider" and not welcome.

The recruitment of urban youths is a controversial move. It seems that the sabotage movement has successfully threatened the elitist way of life in this area. As an urban youth in local authority care, Thomas Worby was caught up in the British class and social system. The cultural distance between Thomas and the hunters is immense, and this adds to the tragedy of his death.

Hired Thugs

The past hunt season saw the introduction of security firms specialising in deterring saboteurs. This provoked a dramatic escalation in violent confrontations between sabs and hunt supporters, and vicious acts of retaliation by the hunting fraternity "protecting their threatened way of life." This retaliation included: an attack on two Leeds sabs in January by a hunt supporter armed with a scythe; a man requiring seven stitches from a blow from a horsewhip; and a woman who was pinned down and had sheep shit stuffed into her mouth. In addition, there have been instances of attacks on saboteurs in their vehicles.

In September, the Northumberland Beagling Festival was policed by Estate Management Services (EMS). These thugs were effective in removing opponents, and have since been hired by rich foxhunts eager to bump up their security.

In a letter to clients, EMS included the sinister claim, "We are constantly updating our files on the Association. We have identified and profiled their leadership. We have names and addresses of the committee members and prime movers in the group. We know their vehicles and their methods of operation. We are investigating their methods of generating income and the ways they recruit new members."

Of the 193 hunting packs in England, about 50 are "bothered" by saboteurs, and 8 employ security firms. Police have supported the use of hired heavies, "if properlytrainedandbriefed." This would seem to indicate that the police themselves are not "properly trained and briefed."

The British Field Sports society claim that there have been 28 "attacks" on hunts since September, 1992. By this they mean orchestrated disruption by hunt saboteurs.

Mic Womersley, our roving UK reporter, also contributed to this article.

Twyford Down But Not Out

—Oxford Earth First!

When yellow-jacketed security guards employed by Britain's leading stonecrushers, Tarmac, brutally ejected the Dongas tribe from their camp blocking the motorway cutting through Twyford Down in December, 1992, the press decided it was the end of the story.

For twenty years local people and activists had tried to prevent road-builders gutting this ancient chalk downland site and strewing its contents all over the surrounding watermeadows in the form of 40-foot embankments. Now, so the story went, the protesters had come to the end of the line; there was nothing to prevent Tarmac from swarming in with their CAT 245 earthmovers and turning arcadia into carmageddon. The mainstream environmental organizations agreed with the press: Jonathan Porritt, England's green guru, declined to join protests; and the deputy director of Friends of the Earth announced magnanimously that it was time to say, "that's it, we've lost."

But the press and the media greenies underestimated the resilience of an angry rump. Groups such as the Dongas tribe, the Friends of Twyford Down, Earth

First!, Reclaim the Streets and Alarm UK put their heads and fists together. A new camp was established and a telephone hotline called Twyford Down Alert was formed. Since the end of February, the hotline has sent out a deluge of mailings and press releases advertising regular actions at the cutting.

The response has been phenomenal. So far there have been some fifty demonstrations at the cutting, at contractors' offices and in the center of Winchester, the local town. Tarmac have been harassed everywhere they go. Their survey stakes have been tom out, their earthmovers immobilized by demonstrators armed with bicycle locks, their machinery sabotaged and burnt. Tarmac reckon the damage at nearly three million dollars.

For three months the national press preferred to ignore the demonstrations. But on May 22nd, Tarmac shut down the main road to construct a temporary Bailey Bridge overnight, and foolishly dramatized the event by bringing in several hundred extra police for "Operation Market Garden." Demonstrators responded with "Operation Greenfly."

Resistance Pays Off In UK Road Wars

About 250protesters marched up to the site, linked arm to arm in a scrum to form a Roman tortoise, strode with ridiculous ease through the chain link fencing, the razor wire and the cordon of police, and swarmed over the bridge like greenfly. It took police some six hours to get them down.

This was too much for the press to resist. The next day the national papers were full of pictures of protesters and policemen dangling from floodlit girders, and the British public realized that Twyford Down was going down fighting. Going down, nonetheless. Tarmac have gouged an irrevocable chasm out of the hill and chances of stopping them completing the project are, frankly, negligible.

But the resistance is not in vain. The road lobby has observed the anarchy and noted the disturbing fact that the good citizens of Winchester, even if most of

them are not willing to participate, are decidedly sympathetic. And the straight environmental organizations have seen how the road lobby is becoming nervous; they have started to conclude that direct action, rather than tarring them with an anarchic brush, in fact gives a bit of clout to their irreproachably moderate stance.

Thus it is that an unprecedented alliance of environmental groups has formed around Oxleas Wood, the next in line of the government's 200 or so road schemes. For the first time the lamb is lying down with the lion to stop the Machine. Respectable green groups such as FOE, WWF and the London Wildlife Trust are now happy to be quoted alongside Earth First!, whose representative, Jason Torrance, says: "For Oxleas there will be no talk of slowing construction work, only of halting the whole project, through mass non-violent direct action, if necessary."

In Oxleas' case, direct action may not even be necessary. The British Roads Federation, the main road-lobbying group in Britain, took one look at the alliance massed against them, took a second look at the hassle given to BRF member Tarmac at Twyford, and within a week withdrew their support for the Oxleas scheme. The government's Department of Transport are now totally isolated at Oxleas; soon they will find themselves isolated on the majority, if not all, of their ludicrous road schemes.

The road-building era is coming to an end. This key strategy in the project to keep economic growth expanding indefinitely is unraveling and on the point of disintegration. There will be other strategies; but this one will soon be dead.

Twyford Down, however, will not die. It will remain a livid scar on the ancient British landscape; a testimony to the idiocy and ugliness of capitalism; to the power which a small number of determined people can exert when the majority waver; to the power of direct action.

EARTH FIRST!

NO COMPROMISE IN THE DEFENSE OF MOTHER EARTH!

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On the Road Again...

It seems that the big problem in putting out the Earth First! Journal is that there is always so much to cover, but so little space. The Litha edition has been no exception. We have tried to balance regions and perspectives, and give you the good news with the bad. We have also made some changes in the appearance of the Journal. The new format for the back cover was conceived with an eye toward improving circulation—making the Journal more "bookstore friendly."

We hope the Litha edition will amuse you, annoy you, but most importantly, inform you. Hell, it may even inspire you.

We have devoted a fair amount of space to British Columbia issues in this edition of the Journal. Many people are not completely aware of what is going on in Canada. If we do not prevent it, endless forests, abundant wildlife, and trackless Arctic wilderness could live only in our memories. BC is the anchor of North American wilderness. But BC's wild places are under a more vicious and sustained attack than most of those in the US, and Canadian activists have fewer tools for fighting the destruction of these wild places. Th? best efforts of a dedicated few have scarcely slowed the slaughter. Using every tool available to us, we must pressure the government of Canada to stop the destruction. We must also take the fight directly to the corporate monster. Direct action, boycotts, letter-writing, the whole range—all are tactics which have proven effective. We must use them all, and more.

Go to BC. See for yourself.

Work with some of the most dedicated and visionary activists you will ever meet, who work under the most adverse conditions imaginable. They will inspire you.

Idaho also means big wilderness. In defending the Cove/Mallard roadless areas, we have the chance to preserve the most intact ecosystems in the lower 48. Places where the grizzly and the wolf will thrive, if reintroduced and protected. We cannot allow a crucial part of Idaho's wilderness complex to be devoured

by a rapacious industry and its bureaucratic lackeys.

The Ancient Forest Bus Brigade is offering a ride from the RRR to base camp in Dixie, ID. Accept their offer, or get there any other way you can. The Bus Brigade has set up an awesome camp on private land, right in the middle of the area slated for Forest Service destruction. Plus they will feed you great vegetarian meals, if you come to work. You can also play for the EF! softball team—yes, there is one, and we'll be playing the loggers. And who knows, by the end of the summer, the locals might be right neighborly.

Major campaigns are also planned for Headwaters Forest in Northern California, and Mt. Graham, the site of this year's Round River Rendezvous.

If you have plans to leave (hopefully not flee) the country this summer, check out the campaigns overseas. From Twyford Down in England to Samarskaya Luka National Park in Russia to Jackey's Marsh in Tasmania and all points in between. Don't just travel, make it a working vacation. Get involved.

The so-called wise use movement still exists, and harassment of activists continues. Another hunt saboteur has been killed in the UK, and the police again may not file charges. Rik Scarce has been jailed, and Mark Davis and Darren Thurston are still in jail. The movement is under attack. But this is because we are effective; we are making a difference; we are a threat.

On the positive side, Peg Millett has been sent to a halfway house,

and is due to be released in August. Judi Bari and Darryl Chemey are fighting back against the FBI, and winning. We have a piece by Jonathan Paul, who beat the system: forced them to play by his rules, and won.

It is likely that the Journal will be going to a new home after the Lughnasadh issue. Undoubtedly things will be a little rough at first, but they will settle down. The support community, and the staff or editor or editors (whatever is decided at the RRR) will need our support. Not our unconstructive criticism, bickering, threats to withdraw, etc., but our support. Communication is the first step, not self-indulgence. If you have a problem with something you see in the Journal , talk to the people who put it out. Talk to, don't yell at. If we act together, if we remember who the real enemies are, if we remember just what we are working for, we have proven that we are an effective movement—a group that gets things done.

One of the best ways to see things you want to see in the Journal is to come and work on it. Everyone I know who has worked on the Journal says it was one of the most rewarding things they have ever done. I certainly agree.

Moves cost money. Now more than ever, the Journal needs our financial support. I can't say it enough—subscribe to the Joumal Now! I'm amazed (maybe I shouldn't be) by how many activists have told me recently that they have never subscribed. They get a Journal from the local contact, take one from the table at an event, or occasionally buy one at a bookstore. I myself subscribed only last year, inspired (or maybe guilt-tripped) to do so by Mike Roselle (I wonder if he subscribes). There is absolutely no excuse for EF!ers not supporting our own journal, and face it, 25 bucks a year ain't that much.

Enjoy the summer, and get out and do something. As the bumper sticker says: Pay your Rent; Work for the Earth. And have a great time doing it. See you at the RRR.

—John Green

Litha: Summer Solstice

By Peggy Sue McRae

Flaming wheels of flowers circle the shore on Midsummer's Eve. The biggest bonfire-lighting holiday of Europe is celebrated on the eve of the longest day of the year, Midsummer, or Summer Solstice. Litha, Europe's goddess of abundance, power and order, captures the Sun King at the apex of his power and whirl him across the celestial dance floor into the declining light. What blossomed with the spring is now imbued with power from the sun to grow fruit. Litha, crowned with roses, celebrates the longest day of summer with feasting and dancing. The ritual bonfire, which represents the sun, is kept burning through the night. Leaping through the flames will bring protection in the coming year. At the end of the feasting, wreaths of flowers worn by revelers are cast upon the flames. Midsummer is a traditional time to gather herbs for use in healing and magic throughout the year. Irish tradition holds that on Midsummer's Eve one's soul wanders from the body to the eventual place of death.

Earth First! Litha

June 21, 1993 Vol. XIII, No. VI

Earth First! Journal is published by a collective of voices within the Earth First! movement. Entire contents are copyrighted 1993, but we are pleased to allow reprinting if credit is given, except for those articles specifically copyrighted by the author. Art, photographs, and poetry are copyrighted by the individual artists and permission for use must be received from them.

Earth First! Journal is a forum for the no-compromise environmental movement. Responsibility rests with the individual authors and correspondents. The contents do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of this newspaper, the Earth First! movement, local Earth First! groups or individual Earth First!ers.

Submissions are welcomed and should be typed or clearly printed. Send a SASE if you would like them returned. We encourage submissions on Macintosh disks or via EcoNet (send to "earthfirst"). We appreciate a cover letter with any pertinent information, including a telephone number where we may contact you if we have questions. Art or photographs (negatives are best, prints are good, slides are fair) are desirable to illustrate articles and essays. They will be returned if requested. Please include explicit permission to reprint slides.

All submissions are edited for length and clarity. If an article is significantly edited, we will make a reasonable effort to contact the author prior to publication.

ISSN 1055-8411. Earth First! Journal is indexed in the Alternative Press Index.

All inquiries regarding subscriptions, merchandise orders, donations, letters to the editor, articles, photos, etc. should be directed to:

Earth First! Journal P.O. Box 5176 Missoula, MT 59806 Phone: (406) 728-8114 Fax: (406) 728-8160 EcoNet: earthfirst

Managing Editor: Mary Lou Fox

Systems Zymurgist and

Staff Analyst : Timothy Bechtold

Darkroom: Uncle BillBob

Poetry Editor: Dennis Fritzinger

Staff: Chris Schwaderer, Scott Greacen. Kris

Maenz, John Green, Jim and Droog

Artists in this issue: Pete Hampton, Mary Lawton, Toles, Scott Greacen, Vasily Solkin, Sauts Netamux'we, Slugthang, Dr. Seuss, Kris Maenz, Peg Millett, Bob Cremmins, AsanteRiverwind, Lone Wolf Circles.

Cover art: Peggy Sue McRae and Jane Hart-Meyer

SCHEDULE

Earth First! Journal is published 8 times a year on the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days: November 1, December 21 or 22 (Winter Solstice), February 2, March 21 or 22 (Vernal Equinox), May 1, June 21 or 22 (Summer Solstice), August 1, and September 21 or 22 (Autumnal Equinox). Deadlines for articles, artwork and ads are three weeks before the cover date. One-year subscriptions in the U.S. via third class mail are $25. First class delivery is available for $35. Outside the USA, surface delivery is $35 and airmail delivery is $45.

The deadline for the next issue is July 10.

Page 2 Earth First! Litha 1993

OpEd: There is hope—butnotforus!

by Guinea Worm Emerging

Well, folks, it looks like the time has come for Wild Rockies Earth First! to say good-bye to the Earth First! Journal Boo hoo. Don't forget the Desert Camo hats on the way out.

Let me explain my bad attitude. The other day, when I was ranting and slobbering about all the nauseating dreck we in Missoula had to put up with, and how I would personally set fire to any Journal equipment or editors that remained in town after the Lugnuts issue was finished, a friend asked me, "Why do you care, like, why do you take it so personally?" I had to think about that one; after all, I had not worked on an issue for nearly a year (though I have often foisted my sage advice upon any hapless staffers I could comer), whereas others who have worked considerably more than I generally don't get all worked up, especially not in public meetings such as Activist Lynchings, er... uh, Conferences, I mean.

The reason, I suppose, that I feel compelled to put poison pen to paper, is that the self-important morons who've worked very hard to make publishing the Journal a miserable experience for everyone involved PISS ME OFF! You see, forme, working on and publishing the Journal was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. In a life filled with shame and failure, it's something I'm actually mildly proud of. I know most of the cool Wild Rockies people are above stooping to the level of the finger-pointers and communique-senders, but maybe there was a time when if we had stood up and told 'em to fuck off, publicly and in no uncertain terms, things might be different now. Oh well.

I was in Moscow, Idaho last week, attending a demo that had to do with the Cove/Mallard campaign. The level of enthusiasm I saw there astounded me. Coming from Missoula, it was like comparing bright-eyedand bushy-tailedlittlefoxes to abunch ofwhipped dogs. Understand now, those of you who are considering putting out a bid to take the Journal home, that you are going to face some interesting times.

There are people in this movement who consider themselves to be important, maybe more important

than you are. Those people do things (and say so too) like network with each other. They worry that people they don't know or like might be allowed to say things that might offend loggers or social justice activists or compromise the careful coalition-building they're engaged in. They ask for, and expect, handouts of money so they can fly to conferences and make decisions about the way you are going to have to do things from now on and what can and cannot be printed. They demand resignations. They will call you up on the telephone and scream at

C'/Mn already.

Snap out of if—

He ALLM

you. They will call you an FBI agent. They will hold meetings and tell people that you are a racist. They will demand to be taken off the contact list, then demand to be putin charge of purging it They will alter records of meetings to further their personal agendas. They will crucify people if it suits them. They will try to appoint large San Franciscans into positions of power over you, if they didn't like an article you ran. They will slander the people youlove andrespect

most in the world. They will try to make your life a living hell.

Why would anyone do stuff like this? Because they know they are right, because they are not, like you, subject to self-doubt. If they could only control things, then it would all be OK. And they feel good when they're quoted in the paper, have articles published regularly in alternative weeklies, speak at large conferences and have their words listened to by lots of people.

Rv frOHI Don't vnil (TPt it? TViott'tq im/inrf/uif nn/4

gested that, were it not for five people—five people, that's all—then your experience as a joumalista would be smooth as a baby's bottom. That may or may not be the best answer. These are my thoughts:

Since we seem to have no trust in each other, we must resort to legalistic means of coming to agreements. When you make a formal proposal, insist that whatever other structural or content decisions get made at the Rendezvous, your host group, say, Big Clearcut EF! in Stripmine WV, gets the final say on what goes on at the Journal. If you can't accept some control freak's proposal, tell 'em to get lost If they insist and a lot of folks agree with them and you're at an impasse, inform them that the computers are ready to travel at a moment's notice if they don't shut up. Maybe they will, or maybe they'll go off and publish the rag elsewhere. Either way, they're outta your hair. Just don't get in the position of accepting top-down impositions that you disagree with on principle and/or resent. Producing the Journal is a lot of hard and poorly paid work; you've got to be happy about doing it.

Also insist that monstrosities like the Journal Advisory Committee, a body that some folks would like to see have executive authority over all aspects of the Journal (but who are silent on how the executive authorities are chosen), are either disbanded or rendered toothless; ditto for the Activist Show Trials ... no, Conferences, dammit! I never can get that one right. In other words, reduce the number of venues by which powertrippers can call the shots and set you up. EF!'s most democratic forum is the Round River Rendezvous. Let the Journal meetings there be the only mecha-

-y -nism for proposing changes to the paper. Invite as

By God! Don't you get it? They're important now and many of the great unwashed as you can to take part. Be they can't have unknown people like you defining wild and dangerous, don't take the assholes seriously, their Movement and messing up all thatthey'veworked and be ruled by your commitment to Mama Earth, not so hard for all these years with your irresponsible talk, by anyone else's fears.

Besides, you didn't print their last diatribe, so obviously you re a threat to the Movement. James Barnes (Guinea Worm) has been a parasite in the

So how do you keep from ending up like some of body of Wild Rockies EF! for some time now; his origins are us, demoralized and bitter? One fellow I know sug-English and Virginian.

Letters to the Editors...

Dear SFB,

So i hear the pope is coining to Colorado this summer to speak to the faithful, and the site where his holiness is to speak is outdoors, so they (you know, THEM) want to build a bunch of bleachers to park Christian butts on. The only problem is that the bleacher site is already home to a town of prairie dogs, and they're worried that the dogs' tunnels will undermine the bleachers. Well i say right on doggies, but the religious fucks say they gotta vacuum all the doggies outta there. That's right, they plan to suck all the prairie dogs out of their homes with a giant vacuum device, and then transport the ones that aren't maimed in the process, and dump them in another prairie dog town. I believe this is called forced relocation. My idea is to make up bumper stickers that say THE POPE SUCKS PRAIRIE DOGS and plaster 'em everywhere, then go to the Vatican (or your local church) dressed as large rodents, and hold a demo where we try to suck the pope out of the Vatican with vacuum cleaners.

This idea is from Alan Ginsberg: at demonstrations groups of demonstrators with cameras and tape recorders should surround newspaper and television reporters demanding to know why they are there, have they been paid to attend, what they expect to achieve, etc. Every way they turn they should find cameras pointing at them and microphones thrust before them to record their every word.

—CRAZYMAN, BERKELEY

Dear Shit Fer Brains,

So I see the Joumalistas have changed from being willing to print everything that isn't a "travesty" to excluding anything "racist, sexist bigoted or violent". My my, some things never change.

I recall back when Dave Foreman edited

the Journal. Dave and his pals thought that Earth First! should devote its energy towards wilderness, biodiversity; and they made the editorial decision to not print a lot of material that strayed from that. (Yours truly is one who had a letter deep-sixed by the Formanistas.) The masses were enraged and revolted.

Now, Dave & crew are gone; and the new Earth First! marches on with its shining vision of social equality incorporated. We have advanced so far that we have reached the point where Dave Foreman stood nearly ten years ago: We realize that not everything fits in the journal. Congratulations.

Well to hell with this! At least Foreman's prejudices were clear and consistent. You want to exclude everything racist, sexist, bigoted or violent? Have you forgotten bad manners? I hereby announce the formation of a splinter faction: Always Say Something Wild In Public Especially (ASSWIPE). Our goal is to wipe out the shit that clings to our collective foundation. You may laugh at us now—as Dave once laughed at you; but one day the journal will be ours!

Speaking of which, I understand Roselle is dusting off his traveling shoes. Well, I cannot type quickly; but I have a phenomenal talent with spelling, grammar, proofreading, etc. How about it? Love,

—Matthew

HIEarth First!!! Dear Sirs,

My name is Casey Egan. The thing I like to do is swim, and jump on my trampoline. I'm 9, and in Mrs. Mitchell's class. I'm concerned because mankind is cutting down habitats and it is making certain problems. Antarctica is melting, same as North and South Pole. There's also problems in California. What can our class do to help? Would you send us something? Please give me a picture of you and I'll give you a picture of

me. Thank you for your time I'm enclosing a self-addressed stamped envelope. Love, —Casey Egan

Dear EF!

I've been reading about the problem the Journal has coming up with money.

I would like to make a proposal—perhaps other would be willing to do the same thing.

I am willing to undertake paying for 2 one-year subscriptions to EF!ers who are unable to pay for one. Perhaps things are tight for them financially or they're spending more time sitting in trees than in making money! I consider that time well spent. In fact I could consider it like hiring someone to do a job for me!

I'm not sure how you could administer such a program. Maybe having all those who need that free subscription could send their names in and they could all go into a jar — then you could collect all the names of the people who are willing to donate a subscription. Then someone could just pick some names out of the jar — sort of the lucky winners.

In any case, my offer stands. Let me know.

Sincerely,

—Eloise Johnson

P.S. Our family had 18 really bad months financially—I can really understand if someone is having the same problem. Things got better for us — we were one of the lucky ones.

Dear Earth First! Journalists,

You may wonder sometimes why you should keep mailing your publication to people with "L" on their mailing label. You may be asking yourselves, what have those "L" people done for us lately?

So I'll mention to you that I appreciated your recent publication of "An Appeal from Mark Davis" (from prison). It helped bring

me up to date on the Arizona 5. And I was able to respond by providing a substantial part of the funding help he was asking for.

Keep up the good work,

—W. "Tuck" Forsythe

Dear composted mentality:

A suggestion from my trusty dictionary: a Journal is a record or account of occurrences, experiences, and reflections. Like a ships log. And for you present or wannabe writers: edit means to prepare for publication as by correcting or adapting. Also: to eliminate, delete. Anarchist that I am, can't imagine a publication without an editor(s).

My only complaint: some writers are a bit long-winded—not enough "adapting"—succinct and salient please.

Also, like mostly knowing what's going on in my own area, the Pacific Northwest. Any possibility of two smaller Journals like an eastern edition and a western, with some overlap of general interest like hearing from those raunchy Brits?

Given the givens, I say the Collective is doing a great job! My Best,

—David Coe ...more letters, p. 32 Page 3 Earth First! Litha 1993

B.C.

New studies provide irrefutable evidence of a joint government-industrial strategy to destroy the remaining wild areas before they can be protected. Most of the remaining wild areas will be roaded and logged in the next three to five years.

—Scott Greacen

The war over British Columbia's last vast wilderness areas is moving into its final stages. BC populations of keystone species like Grizzly and Salmon face a future so bleak it defies imagination. How could a region so vast and wild be so swiftly and utterly laid waste?

British Columbia has millions of acres of roadless wilderness, the last and greatest wildlands of temperate North America, and some dedicated folks working to keep the wild alive. But the province's politics are still caught in an industrial death-grip. BC is a virtual colony of the multinational corporations which hold the rights to strip the almost all of the province's remaining forests. BC's legal system protects timber companies, not natural systems. Its citizens cannot sue to stop illegal projects; in most cases, they don't even have the right to see government plans.

In BC as elsewhere, activists are moving from a blobs-on-the-map vision of wilderness protection to landscape-level conservation planning. Unfortunately, the multinationals have learned from the US, and the BC government is running full steam ahead on a program of landscape-leveling devastation. A stream of barges is now steaming up the BC coast, carrying heavy equipment to the last great valleys of virgin temperate rainforest. And nobody even knows it's happening.

This spring, BC's New Democratic Party (NDP) government approved the timber industry's plan for the forests of Clayoquot (klak'-wit) Sound, and by doing so dropped all pretense to environmental sensitivity. As the last large, mostly intact area left on either coast of Vancouver Island, Clayoquot Sound is essential to the survival of native ecosystems on the island, and the decades-long struggle to protect the sound has become the political centerpiece of the battle for BC's forest wilderness. In rage and disgust at the government's decision—and its investment of $50 million in Macmillan Bloedel—even the terminally timid groups which dominate BC environmental politics have withdrawn from the government's CORE (Commission on Resources and the Environment) processes.

The CORE process is a multiparty roundtable process which, together with the ludicrous PAS (Protected Area Strategy)—a scheme focused on protecting a representative scrap of each of BC's native ecosystems—was supposed to have been the NDP's great solution to the crises of BC's natural resource policies. But both "planning" processes have been revealed as "talk-and-log shows," in which the only areas getting even temporary protection are those for which replacement sacrifice areas can be found. The Webb Reports Activists' bitter feelings have been crystallized by two reports prepared for CORE by researcher Clinton Webb. Using government plans not previously available to the public, Webb has painstakingly confirmed activists' worst nightmares, providing irrefutable evidence of a deliberate government-industrial strategy to destroy the remaining wild areas before they can be protected. "The conservation options are disappearing very quickly," Webb told thejoumal. "There are hundreds of people working full time planning and approving logging plans, and only a handful working to monitor and trying to stop the plans."

Webb prepared reports for the three most hotly disputed regions of the province: Vancouver Island, the Cariboo-Chilcotin, and the Kootenays. His first task was to inventory wilderness areas, including many important areas about which environmental groups know little or nothing. Having mapped the "conservation options," Webb then compared the remaining undeveloped areas with five-year logging plans approved by the BC Ministry of Forests.

The results are stupefying. On Vancouver Island, where between 2.5% and 3.5% of the islands magnificent temperate old growth forests have been protected in reserves, Webb was able to identify 295 unprotected wilderness sub-areas. 98 or 33% are scheduled for logging in 1992 alone, and 194, or 66% will be cut by 1995/6. According to his report,

"a total of 215 or 73% of the remaining unprotected wilderness sub-areas ... were found to be either potentially threatened or definitely scheduled for logging between 1992 and 1995/6. Because road building usually precedes actual logging by one or two years, this fragmentation and loss of wilderness conservation options will occur within the next two or three years unless the logging plans are significantly changed in the very near future."

Counting cutblocks (clearcuts, and big ones: BC holds the world's record for clearcut size), Webb identified a total of 1050 planned cutblocks for Vancouver Island, 1201 forthe Cariboo-Chilcotin, and 1326 in the Kootenays. That's a total of 3577 major clearcuts planned for areas that are now wild, all to be completed by 1997/8.

It is difficult, but very important, to understand the implications of Webb's report He offers an analogy: "It's like a bathtub when you pull the plug. Itdrains slowly at first, but when you get near the bottom it flows out very quickly indeed." The bottom line is stark. In the next two or three years, BC will make choices about wilderness destruction that will not be open again for the next two or three thousand years.

The Rest of the Grim Picture

BC environmentalists don't have a lot left to work with. They've run public education campaigns envied the world over. They can't sue. Big Timber owns the conservative politicians and much of the media outright, and uses Big Labor to keep progressives on a tight leash. Peaceful blockades by desperate communities, including hundreds by forceful, committed bands of native people (known in Canada as First Nations), have been met with a ruthless, coordinated campaign of intimidation and suppression by industry and government. On Vancouver Island alone, 107 people have been prosecuted for interfering with logging operations. Many have been sentenced to hundreds of hours of community service, and given two years' probation while more than 20 others have spent up to 45 days in jail. Activists across the province face a wave of SLAPP suits as well.

The BC Forest Alliance has retained the services of the world's largest public relations firm, Burston-Marsteller Ltd. of New York. This company practices a highly sophisticated form of conflict management, and has previously represented the Argentinean government, Union Carbide after Bhopal; and Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Burston-Marsteller has apparently had quite a bit to do with shaping the provincial media's coverage of forest and other environmental issues.

Industry propagandists have been particularly successful in using a few pitiful instances of monkeywrenching to spread eco-terrorist hysteria across the province, helping to obscure industry's enormous crimes.

Taking Action

Road blockades will continue this summer on Vancouver Island both at the Walbran (see story next page) and at Clayoquot Sound, where Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) will again be coordinating protests in cooperation with local native peoples.

BC activists have begun to call for a worldwide boycott of BC's wood products industries. Garth Lenz of FOCS is one pressing for boycotts of Interfor and Macmillan Bloedel; he states simply, "consumers should not be supporting the destruction." Lenz and Valerie Langer of FOCS toured Europe with a slideshow presentation that cost $5000. In response, the industry bankrolled a $1.5 million tour by top officials of the provincial government.

Radicalization of BC's famously polite environmental movement may be the most lasting result of the NDP's sham reforms, but it is by no means easy to be a public radical in British Columbia. Environmental activists in BC are constrained both by Canada's civil culture and by the necessity of living and working in communities dominated by industrial interests. Many have horror stories of harassment, intimidation and violence. Canadian police agencies routinely monitor known activists. This is something to bear in mind if you plan to visit BC: you will be denied entry to the province if authorities learn you are an environmental activist—if, for example, you admit to having been arrested once on a logging road. Be discreet.

In addition to the ongoing tragedies of southern Vancouver Island, there are stories in this issue about the Kemano II dam project and the plight of the Grizzly in BC. What binds all these horrors together, beyond their common location, are links to the world outside BC. Were it not for the US, European, and Asian markets for timber, metals, power, water, and even pieces of dead bears, the multinationals and their minions could not afford to destroy BC. US activists must help save BC, in part because we may be the only ones who can.

Page 4 Earth First! Litha 1993

Clayoquot Arm Bridge Burned

Three Local Activists Jailed

—Terra Prim a!

On Sunday, May 16, at approximately 11 pm, the ^ iem ‘ ^ Few Y ears back,

Clayoquot Ann Brid

Three Local Activists

-TERRA PRIMA!

On Sunday, May 16, at approximately 11 pm, the Clayoquot Arm bridge 20 km out of Uduelet was set ablaze. It was the second bridge in the Clayoquot area burned in the last two years: the Kennedy Bridge was burned in 1991.

Sounds good so far-two bridges out. But the news is not good. The Kennedy Bridge was entirely destroyed-andrebuilt, in steel. By contrast, the Clayoquot Arm bridge was not badly damaged, with repairs estimated at $5000.

But the big difference is that in '91, nobody got arrested.

By thirty minutes after midnight, three local men had been arrested at a police roadblock. All are forest activists from the Tofino area. One was a chair of the ' Friends of Clayoquot Sound. "He had to resign his position from jail.

A security .guard for MacMillian-Bloedel had reported a diesel spill on the bridge. He drove onto the bridge and left the truck to investigate. Smoke began to appear from under the beams of the.bridge. The guard got the hell off the bridge and reported the fire.

Firebug fever has been gaining momentum in Clayoquot since '91. The toll now includes two bridges and two boats burned. But the damage is only a shadow of the rage and grief of the people who have struggled, mostly in vain, as the forests fall all around them. A few years back, they cut Herbert Inlet down to the ocean. It was obvious it would come to this; it had to.

The charges have been bumped up to attempted murder. The papers have been full of accounts in which the security guard rants about how "they must have known he was on the bridge when they lit it up," and how scary it was to be on a bridge engulfed in flames. It was obvious the RCMP would do this.

The papers have also been full of huge disclaimers from environmental leaders. No one gets quoted describing the desperation people feel all over the island. Share BC [ the province's rabid counterpart to the industrial front groups which call themselves Wise Use in the U􀀤d.] has used the events as an excuse to blame environmentalists for the state of things in BC. If people send letters for Mike, John and Jeanfrancois to Terra Prima!, we11 find a way to get them to Totino.

Resist the Invasion!

-M@c SM@CK ANoR@K

On June 21st, 1993, Terra Prima! will be opening a base camp on Qwa Ba Diwa First Nation's lands in the Walbran Valley. Acting on the public invitation of Qwa Ba Diwa spokesperson Peter Knighton (who offictally represents the chief, his brother) to anyone interested in stopping the destruction of Qwa Ba Diwa lands, Terra Prima! will be doing its bit this summer to help stop the colonialJnvasion of this native forest. Qwa Ba Diwa, situated on Southern Vancouver Island, consists of a large ecosystem known as the Five Valley ecosystem. Including the world famous Carmanah (a bastardization of the Qwa Ba Diwa narne), the W albran, Cullite, the Logan and Sandstone Rivers, this system contains most of the remaining three percent of southern Vancouver Island's original old growth Rainforest Home to the Marbled Murrelet, a spedes of flesh-eating trout found only in the W albran valley, and countless other endangered spedes, many of which have never even been inventoried, the Five Valley system will be further fragmented this summer by roadbuilding.

In the South Walbran, Fletcher Challenge may be granted permission anytime in June to build a road through an area temporarily protected from logging by a past blockade and on to a sensitive ridge dose to the source of Logan Creek. Fletcher Challenge, a New Zealand-based multinational, isn't even allowed to clearcut in that country. FC sends most of the forests it cuts off-island as -cants (logs squared off with only primary processing), barely processed lumber, chips, pulp and raw logs. FC is joined by in the Walbran by Megalith Macmillion Bloedel, a BC-based multinational famous for laying off workers in the name of competitiveness while saying that environmentalists are costing jobs!

MacMillan Blowdown is applying for permission to build roads through the deferral area and in towards Anderson Lake, a hitherto pristine lake in the heart of the Walbran. Further cutting over Sandstone Creek, and possibly around Carmanah, will also be happening this summer.

Terra Prima! however is, going to kick butt. Beginning on the two-year anniversary of the first W albran blockade, the base camp will be a focus for non-violent resistance such as treeclimbing and r􀂱d blocks. Past action in the Valley has included alliance building with the Qwa Ba Diwa, spectacular road blocks, and anonymous monkey wrenching.

Home of the Sitka Spruce, the Cougar, the Banana Slug, and the Qwa Ba Diwa people, this area must be defended! Join us for the Walbran Survival Gathering 1993: not just a breakfast cereal, not anymore! Walk, run, or drive (if necessary) to Victoria! When you get here; call (604) 595-4569. We'll put you up until the next ride up to the Walbran. Bring a tent, warm clothes, a little money and a good set of funky pajamas. We will be at the RRR, so talk to us there to get more details, or write us at the address at the article's end to get an information kit. If you can't make it (or even if you can) but want to help, we ,; need a video camera, money (mais oui?), camping gear, climbing gear, etc. So help us out!

Pu.AsENOTE:Our camp is attempting to be a space free of radsm, sexism, lesbophobia, homophobia, antisemitism, speciesism, ageism, aaledism, classism, and other forms of oppressive behaviour. Please try to respect this. Pu.AsE Also NOTE: We are extremely serious about our pajamas. ONE LAsr NOTE: This is an Earth First! campaign supported by theDirectAction Fund.

People Who Need To Hear From Us

Mike Harcourt, Premier
Parliament Bldgs
Victoria, BC V8V 1X4
phone: 604/387-5571
fax: 604/387-0087

John Cashore
Minister of Environment, Lands
and Parks
Same address as above
phone: 604/387-5002
fax: 604/387-1356

•Ray Halladay, Acting Director
Wildlife Branch
Ministry of Environment, Lands
and Parks
780 Blanchard St.
Victoria, BC V8V 1X4
phone: 604/387-9717

Dan Miller
BC Ministry of Forests
Victoria, BC
p(604) 387-6240
f(604) 387-1040

People Who Need Our Help

Terra Prima!
A-5 1720 Douglas St
Victoria BC V8W 2G 7
p(604) 595-4569

Vancouver EF!
Box 21521
1850 Commercial Dr
Vancouver BC V5N 4AI
Friends of Clayoquot Sc
Box 489, Tofino BC VOi
p(604) 725-4218
f(604) 725-3117

Cheslatta Band
PO Box 909
Bums Lake, BC VO] lEC
p(604) 694-3334
􀁡
604) 694-3632 , . -, .•.
',i/􀀉-::9i

Kemano II, Nechako O?

-TERRA PRIMA!

First off, Kemano is the name of the dam:Necliako is the river. Currently it flows into the Fraser River at Prince George. Check out a map of BC. The Fraser is the major river ofBC, and the Nechako is a major tributary of the Fraser.

Akan first damned the Nechako 40 years ago, 200 km upstream from Prince George, creating a big (90,000 ha) reservoir. At the western tip of this reservoir, Akan dug a tunnel through Mt. Du Bose to the Pacific. By dumping up to 70 percent of the Nechako's flow through the tunnel, Akan has been able to generate as much as 900 megawatts of electricty, which it mostly •u ses to power its aluminum smelter at Kitimat. The first dam flooded First Nations land and displaced an entire village. The Carrier Sekani nation have bee resisting Akan ever since.

Kemano II involves building another tunnel and a second, 540megawattpowerhouse. 87%ofthe Nechako will be diverted west instead of merging with the Fraser. This will definitely fuck up the salmon and the many native nations }Vho live off the Fraser River. Alcanisn't going to use the power. They're selling some . of it to BC Hydro [the provinc!al power monopoly---ed.] and exporting the rest to the US.

The Nechako is still the spawing ground for twenty percent of the Fraser's total run of sockeye salmon. Despite campaign promises to review the project, despite reports from the government's own fisheries scientists detailing the dangers to the salmon runs, despite the public hearings the BC Utilities Commission will be holding this summer, the NOP government insists that Kemano II will go ahead.

The Ultimate Disaster?

My name is Leonard Quaw. I am very pleased to be here today so that I can express my views on an environmental issue. I am from the Cheslatta'tan Nation. My life has been a direct result of an environmenral disaster. That disaster is called Alcan.

The home and land of my parents were destroyed by Alcan in 1952. They were tom from their ancestral home, uprooted with no notice, and forced to relocate to a strange place, which was inferior in every way.

I was born in the midst of the relocation process. My parents were devastated by the way they were treated. They were a proud, self-sufficient people, who looked after their land and their people. By the time I was born they were reduced to a hollow shell of humanity, their pride lost, their culture gone.

That was the past. Now, just as we are getting back on the road to recovery, the government is going to allow the completion of the destruction, the final Armageddon of our land.

Kemano II is the ultimate disaster for our people. It seems this project will go ahead the same as Phase 1. Have we learnt nothing? Are we destined to the same future? Will history repeat itself? I hope not.

Just as our people are about to recover from the flooding of our ancenstral home we are told the floodirig will be a thing of the past. But it is not the flooding we must now contend with. It is the total loss of our lake. Yes, C􀂲latta Lake will cease to exist ifK ema no II goes ahead as planned. Gone will be our water, our prosperity, and our way of life. How - much must our people endure? Think of this project in terms of the past. Now double the devastation. Project this image into the future. Incredible destruction! The grass will no longer grow, an ill wind will surely blow. The sun will rise upon a sick land. - .

Look at the consequences this project will have.not only on people but on the fish, wildlife, and the land. I implore you to resist this project, to stop the destruction, to learn from the past.

Please, help us.

THE GRIZZLY IN B.C.

Grizzly bears. Images and impressions flood to mind: powerful, beautiful, intelligent, deadly, wild. Perhaps more than any other animal the grizzly defines wilderness in the human mind, for a land is not truly wild unless it is home to the Great Bear.

But the grizzly has often been at odds with the goals of man, and has historically come out on the short end of the stick. In 1991 the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, which lists national species and their status, listed the grizzly as vulnerable, and the plains grizzly as extirpated; there are no more plains grizzlies in North America. They have been pushed farther and farther up and back into the mountains, in an ever more desperate effort to avoid the destructive hand of humans.

There are somewhere between 2,500 and 10,000 grizzlies in BC. About 6,000 is the most widely accepted figure. BC is one of the last places in the world where grizzly bears are hunted legally. In British Columbia we lose 8% to 25% of our grizzly population each year, with legal hunting the major cause of mortality. This is between two and six times the provincial guideline of no more than 4% mortality from all causes.

In 1989 at least 765 grizzlies were killed by humans in BC, an amount roughly equal to the entire grizzly population in the lower 48 states of the US. Of these, 337 were hunted legally, 85 were estimated to have been wounded by hunters and not recovered, 68 were killed as "nuisance bears"(mostly around logging and mineral exploration camps), 260 were poached, and 15 were killed in accidents with vehicles and machinery. No doubt many cubs were orphaned. All this in addition to the long-term impacts of habitat encroachment, destruction and fragmentation, especially through the roading of wilderness areas.

Road-building and the loss of wilderness areas are the biggest long-term threats to the grizzly. Roads, usually built to facilitate "resource" extraction, provide human access to wilderness backcountry, removing and fragmenting wildlife habitat, displacing bears, and opening up areas for human killing of grizzlies. Greg Mills, a carnivore specialist in Washington state, estimates that for each mile of road built, approximately four acres of habitat are destroyed. In the US the Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan (1985, revised 1992) of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee recommends closing roads that enter grizzly habitat. Yet here in BC, roads continue to expand into the most sensitive wilderness areas, and are seldom closed.

Anything that humans do in grizzly habitat affects the grizzly, mostly adversely. An old argument holds that clearcuts increase forage and are therefore good for the grizzly. This is only true for a few years after the cut; second growth forests provide poor habitat and little or no forage. Grizzlies carefully avoid humans and human-occupied places, and are thus driven back into ever-shrinking areas of refuge. Shrinking habitat can force bears to become more tolerant of humans (habituated) and dependent on human garbage dumps, compost piles, domestic animals and orchards for food. Such "conditioned" bears are at risk of being poached or shot as "nuisance" bears.

[image not archived]

art: Asant6 Riverwind

Human-bear "conflicts" usually lead to the death of the bear, and very seldom to the death of the human. Often people react to a perceived threat without being in real danger, the rationale being that if you can see it, it's a threat. For instance, a grizzly on your property is not necessarily an immediate threat to you. Bears can be relocated, not killed, but conservation officers are not always able or willing to do this, as it is dangerous for the human and can be extremely stressful and even fatal for the bear. People literally need to clean up their own backyards. Sources of bear attractants, such as garbage, compost heaps and windfall fruit need to be properly contained. Backcountry users need to understand and practice clean camp guidelines.

The growing traffic in bear parts, often for the Asian market (galls as aphrodisiacs, paws for soup, teeth and claws for jewelry, heads and hides as display "trophies") is responsible for highly organized, systematic poaching of both grizzly and black bears. In March 1992, the North American black bear was officially listed in Appendix n of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (upgraded from Appendix III) as a result of the incredible pressure being put on bears for this heinous trade.

In BC in 1991 at least 100 black bears and 15 grizzlies are known to have been poached for their body parts. The real figure is certainly many times that. Recently the BC government approved a ban on the commercial trade of bear galls, paws or genitalia separated from the carcass or hide. As of February 1,1993, possession, trafficking, import or export of these parts is illegal in BC (the only exception being the ceremonial use of bear paws by aboriginal people).

We can learn from the mistakes of the US, where there are now only 700-900 grizzlies left. The grizzly was listed as a threatened species in the US in 1975 and is "protected" by the Endangered Species Act. Millions are spent by government agencies and private organizations studying these few bears, educating the public, and working towards "recovery" of the species. The Americans have realized, perhaps too late, the value of the grizzly both as an indicator of the health of wilderness ecosystems, and as a spiritual symbol of all that is wild within us. Through public education and informed action, we in BC can choose a better future for the grizzly bear and for all of us. We can and must prevent the extinction of these beautiful mammals. ■

Trophy Hijnting and Grizzly Survival

Grizzly hunting is legal in British Columbia, as it is in Alberta, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Alaska. In 1989, 33 7 grizzlies were killed legally in BC. About one-third of the grizzlies killed in BC are killed by non-residents. American and European hunters pay $145 for a BC hunting license, $500 for a grizzly license fee, and thousands more in travel and guiding for the "privilege" of coming to BC to kill one of the last grizzlies on earth.

Between 20% and 30% of legal kills are breeding adult females ... The current BC griz mortality rate, estimated at 8 - 25%, is clearly disastrous.

Almost all grizzly hunting in British Columbia is done in the spring. There is controversy over spring hunts. One school of thought, that held by the BC Wildlife Branch, maintains that females are more visible in the spring because they have cubs with them. Another theory, popular among US grizzly researchers, holds that the bears are much more vulnerable in the spring, as they are weak and very hungry upon emerging from their dens, and the young cubs require all the mother's attention to protect them from predation. Another problem is that mothers may approach potential food sources (such as carrion and hunters' bait) alone. If cubs are not visible the hunter is unable to determine gender. When females are killed, orphaned cubs are left to die.

BC Hunting Regulations state: "There is no open season on any two year old or younger bear (grizzly or black) or any bear in its company." This is meant to protect family units and decrease cub mortality; the "bear in its company" is probably its mother. But grizzlies are the slowest-reproducing large carnivores in North America, and females may breed only every 3 - 5 years. There is nothing to distinguish a female from a male during years when they are without cubs.

Populations are most severely damaged by the deaths of mature females. In a particularly vulnerable subpopulation the death of a single female with cubs could signal the collapse of the entire subpopulation. Between 20% and 30% of legal kills are breeding adult females.

Biologists believe the crippling rate, that is, bears that are shot and not killed or recovered, to be about 25% of the death rate, with one-third to one-half of these being breeding females.

New studies show that trophy hunting interferes with the sexual dynamics within populations. University of British Columbia researcher Robert Wielgus recently found that: "trophy hunting for adult males... was actually depensatory for reproduction and contributed to population decline." Trophy hunting upsets the delicate balance which has allowed grizzlies to reproduce and survive for thousands of years.

Legal killing makes it easier for poachers to disguise their illegal take as legal. Al though the trade in bear parts has now been banned in BC, it is not illegal to be in possession of a legally obtained intact carcass. A dead griz in the back of a truck would arouse a lot more suspicion if there were no legal explanation available.

Current management does not reflect changing social values. People who live in BC and those who visit want to experience intact ecosystems, and intact ecosystems include grizzly bears. Trophy hunting "benefits" only a very few hunters; the majority of citizens are horrified. The revenues from license sales ($444,650 in the 1990/91 season—approximately $400 for each grizzly killed by resident hunters, $2500 for each non-resident kill) can never justify doubling the population estimates, as the Wildlife Branch has done to rationalize continued high permit numbers.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) stated in 1991 that "a 4% total harvest rate is the maximum sustainable harvest for grizzly bear populations." World Wildlife Canada has recommended 3%. These figures seem arbitrary at best, especially considering the many other threats to grizzly populations, the impacts of which are difficult or impossible to accurately measure. Many people feel we don't know enough about grizzlies to kill ANY of them safely. The current BC mortality rate (8% - 25%) is clearly disastrous.

The October 1990, issue of Outdoor Canada magazine, a publication aimed at sportsmen, asked in an editorial: "With all

the press that the grizzly has had lately-losing its home territory and dropping numbers—why don't hunters step right up to the podium and support a ban on grizzly hunting?" Why indeed. It will be a proud day when the hunting community takes the only principled stand and calls for an end to trophy hunting of the grizzly.

Help the Griz Survive

Write to the British Columbia government and let them know your views on grizzly hunting. Tell them a halt to the legal hunt, aside from stopping the killing of hundreds of bears annually, would make it impossible for poachers to disguise their victims as "legal kills."

If you live in British Columbia, get a hunting license, enter the draw for a grizzly bear Limited Entry Hunting Authorization, and if you get a tag, don't use it. This tactic has been widely used in other areas and can be quite successful. Contact the Grizzly Project for details. ■

REPRINTED FROM

Grizzly Times

A newsletter on BC grizzly issues, the first issue of which is now available from:

The Grizzly Project PO Box 957 Nelson, BC V1L 6A5

Pursuer Sr Pursued

—Lone Wolf Circles

Escape! Escape!

You felt this terror before , if only in the black sweat of your worst nightmares. Relentlessly pursued. Run! Run for your life! Fisted-heart pounding against your ribcage. Legs cramping and flailing like the frantic fins of beached fish.

You suffer the screaming lungs of someone unable to surface. Submerged—not underwater , but under too thin air. Staring up through watering eyes, searching for the orienting glow of sun or moon, any indication of north and south, up and down. The Earth spins beneath you. Every step is labored, as if running in deep sand. Your mind strains against all known reference, the way a tree strains at the inescapable approach of the chainsaw.

Stop to rest and you are finished. Somehow you've got to go on, and there's only one way to go. Listen carefully, over the rush of blood in your ears, over the brush breaking in staccato bursts beneath your swelling feet. Listen for the clamor, penetrating the silence like polished teeth. Listen for the maddened tones of baying dogs, ever louder, rolling in on you, suffocating you with sound, shoving you forward, slamming you down against ungiving ground. Fix their position in your panting mind, and run in the opposite direction. Away! Away!

You don't know who's chasing you, or why. But you know instinctively that it is you they pursue, single-mindedly, mechanically, with the determination of death itself. You've tried every trick—exiting the river a hundred yards below where you enter it. Racing along rimrock where your scent is less likely to adhere. Back-tracking and circling around them. Struggling up near-vertical cliffs as telltale rocks plummet noisily below. But nothing works! The frothing, bug-eyed pack is almost on you, and somewhere behind, the armed men who trained them. Killer man and killer dog—co-products ofMolloch, of the cultural paradigm, of the industrial Leviathan, of cold iron and the stiffened smiles of plastic. Man and dog, unified in common cause, obsessed with a single goal. And that goal is to kill you.

There's no other way they could catch you in this dense undergrowth. You could easily crawl under a canopy of boughs, climb a high tree, or squeeze into a rock crevice, pulling concealing brush in behind you. But there's no hiding from those determined canine noses, raised heads sniffing the winds, or lowered heads rooting and probing the leaf-strewn soil. Even if they were days behind instead of hot on your trail, they would still find you, homing in like flies to rotting flesh. They're coming to get you!

You break cover, leaping onto the sheer face of a sandstone spire, digging your trembling nails in as the toeholds give way to the weight of your body. You fall hard to the ground, as the pack comes abruptly into sight. You squint to see the sparkle of the setting sun bounce off their collars of chain and trailing spit.

What to do? Keep your back against the rock, strike out at the closest one with all your might, taking care not to expose yourself to the other harrying your sides, testing your steadily slowing reaction time. If they can, they will rip into your throat, disembowel you, pull bitefuls of your hair out, and then urinate on your lifeless body. If you fight back hard enough, you might survive to witness the clumsy approach of their handlers. You can then watch helplessly as one of them removes a revolver from its sheath, pulls the hammer back, and sends a one-hundred and fifty-eight grain lead and copper projectile at eleven hundred feet per second crashing through the front of your skull.

You are one of the last mountain lions. And you are dead.

Such is the fate of the Cougar. Panther. Puma. They are much too wily to be stalked, and difficult to trap, but they are vulnerable to the men with hounds. Dogs, the genetically manipulated and impoverished descendants of the wolf, turned against their wild brethren, accomplishing what "lord man" cannot do for himself: outmaneuver the great cats! They are the four-legged equivalent of the "good indians" once employed as scouts to search out the "hostiles" for an inept US Cavalry.

Through skill and practice, I have snuck up on the feeding black bear, and learned to walk the streambank without alerting the jewel trout swimming in its crystalline waters. I have spent years immersed in lion country, without ever seeing one. I followed a big female all day, returning homeward to find her tracks superimposed over mine. Al though I never saw her, she had watched me. How fortunate to ever glimpse them in the wilds, staring back at you before vanishing into the scrub.

Cougars once ranged from Canada to the southern tip of South America, but are now extinct in the eastern two-thirds of the United States. They are seriously threatened in the Pacific mountain states, and barely holding their own in the more sparsely populated Rockies. A distinct subspecies, the Florida panther, continues to decline in spite of being on the Endangered Species list since 1967, victim to speeding cars and encroaching development. The rest of the big cats were classified as "varmints" and shot, poisoned, trapped with no legal or ethical restraint

Although now listed as "big game" in many states, mountain lions have been steadily eliminated from most of their original range. They have been hounded from habitat as diverse as high desert, swamp, alpine, mesa, open prairie and glistening jungle.

One-to two-hundred pounds of lithe energy, they can swim, climb trees, and leap up to twenty-five feet onto their prey. A female's two to six cubs are fully four feet long by the end of their first year, and will stretch to eight feet from nose to tail by adulthood.

Slaughtered because they threaten livestock, they much prefer deer and rabbits. This has earned them the enmity of hunters, although lion predation actually guarantees the strength of the herd. Cougar kills of sick or weaker deer prevent the epidemics associated with overpopulation, and insure their genetic vitality.

But more than that! Wild turkey in lion country see farther and fly harder. The deer are swifter, more alert, more alive as the result of the lone cat's stalk, short-range msh, and decisive blow.

Somewhere in the Rockies, on a warm outcropping, mother puma is being mauled by her spotted young, her whiskers pulled and ears nipped as she gently pushes them back. She lays curled, but flowing, like a golden furred lake bordered by sandstone. When she moves, she embodies the physics of water, weighty liquid waves, one ripple after another beneath loose-hung skin. Always flowing.

She doesn't jump down the rocks, but cascades over them, hindquarters and tufted tail following the front half through some invisible river channel. She flows down the dry wash, the "arroyo seco", filling the mountain seeps and fissures.

To protect the lion is to guard a secret too special for the telling, save a spirit floating noiselessly somewhere outside the limits of your experience. It means protecting a poetic ensemble of fur and claw, a set of somber yellow orbs staring out of the pleistocene towards an uncertain future. They are the feel of water in the shape of a cat, an artistic subject of the greatest beauty, a vision of grace you will probably never lay eyes on. Art you will never see. Music you will never hear. With puma, we leam the medicine of appreciating that which is not there for us..

A man looks into a pool of water. He sees a reflection of himself, and apart from that, he sees a reflection of the world.

A lion looks into a pool of water, and sees the world.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Grass Valley, Calif. State game officials say they don't intend to track down a mountain lion that pounced on a hunter, then let him go.

Califonia Department of Fish and Game officials say they believe the cougar mistook the man for a turkey. "I think it was (a case of) mistaken identity," said Bill Clark, a DFG investigator in Sacramento. "Once the cat realized it wasn't a turkey, it took off... I think the cat was probably as scared as he was."

Arthur Eichele, 27, of Sacramento, was dressed in full camouflage, near a turkey decoy and blowing on a "turkey call" when the lion pounced.

TURKEY FIGHTS BACK

Potosi, Mo. A youth showing off a turkey he thought he had killed was shot in the leg when the bird-still barely alive-thrashed around in his trunk triggering his shotgun.

Larry Lands and his son Larry Jr. were hunting a week before the start of the turkey season, the sheriff said.

The accident occured after the two shot the turkey and put it in their car, along with a loaded shotgun. While the son was pulling the turkey out of the trunk, the bird's claw fired the gun: the shot went through the side panel of the car and into Land's leg.

— Action Line-Spring 1993

SEEING NOTHING

"When you see a deer, you shake, your adrenalin flows and you want to pull the trigger." Comment after a blonde man wearing a blue jogging suit on an open road in broad daylight was mistaken for a deer and killed.

Ecosystem Planning in Southern California

—by Craig Beneville

With the listing of the California Gnatcatcher as a threatened species last March, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt incorporated special rules to provide for a regional ecosystem approach to species preservation while still allowing some development. This process, known as Natural Communities Conservation Planning (NCCP), has won the favor of the Clinton administration. Babbitt has said he intends the Gnatcatcher listing to serve as a national model—the prototype for a new way of dealing with endangered species and their habitats which also seeks to "balance" the needs of the economy.

The benefit of the NCCP process is thus far unclear. Is the program mere environmental tokenism, or does it represent a move towards a biologically sound, big picture approach to species preservation? While it is still too early to come to definitive conclusions, and while there are positive aspects of a regional, ecosystems approach, it is likely that the powerful landed gentry will substantially usurp any real protections.

The beginning of the Gnatcatcher controversy can be marked by the September, 1990, petition of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to list the bird as endangered by the San Diego Biodiversity Project and Palomar Audubon. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and ornithologist Jonathan Atwood of the Manomet Bird Observatory also petitioned that December. Six months later, the NRDC and Atwood petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission to list the bird under the state endangered species act.

Ecosystems or Subdivisions?

The habitat of the Gnatcatcher, a tiny member of the thrush family, is coastal sage scrub. One of the least known, but most endangered habitats in the United States, coastal scrub is home to over one hundred species considered threatened or endangered, including the coastal race of the Cactus Wren, the Orange-throated Whiptail Lizard, and various locally endemic plant species. Some estimates put sage scrub loss at over 90%, with agricultural clearing, and more significantly, southern California's ubiquitous suburban sprawl the main culprits. There are probably 250-300,000 acres of sage scrub left, primarily in disconnected, island-like stands. Some ecologists have predicted that southern California will become the epicenter of extinction in the US, due to the massive habitat alterations of the last two hundred years.

With coastal sage scrub occupying some of the most expensive real estate in the nation (at upwards of $200,000 per acre), the economic and political pressure against a listing was bound to be intense.

Orange County's Irvine Company (the largest urban landowner in the US) had several projects which would be affected by a Gnatcatcher listing. The company approached the Wilson administration in April, 1991, with a program whereby landowners and local government; would voluntarily work with state and federal officials to complete coastal sage scrub habitat conservation plans (HCPs). The program entailed the establishment of a scientific advisory panel, composed of state-appointed conservation biologists, who would advise the landowners on regional standards and guidelines for the HCPs. The conditions set by the Irvine Co. for participation in such a program were that the state and federal governments would not list the bird, and if such a listing were to take place, no further mitigation than the HCPs already in place would be necessary for their projects. At the California Fish and Game Commission's hearing to list the bird that August, a top official from the Wilson administration intervened to urge the Commission to withhold protection so that this program, dubbed NCCP, could be installed. Despite the staff scientist's recommendations to list and the legal directive to consider only science and not economic or political issues, the Commission obliged the Wilson administration. They denied the Gnatcatcher protection, and the administration proceeded with implementation of the program.

Considering its origins, it is not surprising that the NCCP program, without the limitations of an endangered species listing, was soon termed "a recipe for delay and failure" by the Endangered Habitats League, a group intimately involved with the program. Strong interim limits on development, promised to entice the participation of conservation groups, soon fell to political pressure in favor of voluntary enrollment of lands in the program. Not only was participation in the program voluntary, but the developers were able to choose which of their lands would be enrolled in the program, and could withdraw their cooperation at almost any time. Even with this completely feeble protection program, the state was only able to protect 30% of the Gnatcatchers, and 15% of the remaining coastal sage scrub in Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties, by the time of the federal listing.

By March, 1993, it was clear that without any force of law behind it, the NCCP process was an ecological disaster.

Federal Listing

With Babbitt's listing of the bird in March, the NCCP process was incorporated in the framework of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), reinvigorating the program and providing it with a certain amount of legal backing.

A species afforded "threatened" status generally receives the same protection as one listed as endangered, except when a special rule applies. This rule, proposed in the Gnatcatcher listing under section 4(d) of the ESA, allows destruction of habitat "associated with land-use activities covered under an approved plan prepared under the NCCP." The rule also allows for interim take while the NCCP plans are being developed, provided such take occurs under guidelines developed by the Scientific Review Panel (SRP), a five-member panel created as part of the original NCCP process.

Landowners not participating in a NCCP plan are subject to the full restrictions of the ESA. This means they must complete individual habitat conservation plans in order to take Gnatcatchers (a process expected to be more tedious than NCCP participation). Thus, the Gnatcatcher ruling provides a practical incentive for the developer to participate in the regional planning process.

Babbitt's plan is significant not only in that it attempts to incorporate regional, ecosystem-based planning into the listing, but also because it defers federal authority to the local and regional levels responsible for implementing the NCCP process. Furthermore, the listing package marks the first time in the 20-year history of the ESA that the Interior Department has allowed development after a species has been listed—a clear compromise offered to "balance" the economy with the environment.

The effectiveness of this new approach to dealing with endangered species, and whether it represents a step forward or backward depends on both the vigor of the implementation program and the ultimate guidelines issued by the SRP (Dennis Murphy (chair), Reed Noss, Peter Brussard, Michael Gilpin, John O'Leary).

"The Plan"

At a March 31st workshop, Dennis Murphy presented a report outlining the SRP's guidelines. The "Draft Recommendation for Conservation Strategy" recognized the critical state of the coastal sage scrub ecosystem and called for a strategy of "no net loss" of habitat quality. The report recognized the transitional nature of coastal sage scrub (ecological factors may convert sage scrub into chaparral or grasslands and vice versa), and that successful conservation requires the conservation of a mosaic of intermingled habitats. The strategy suggests breaking the southern California region into about 13 subregions, each to lose no more than 5% of its habitat, concentrated in areas of low habitat quality (determined by patch size, presence of natural land, linkages to other habitat, proximity to high quality habitat and presence of species of concern). The paper suggests using mitigation for loss as a means to upgrade habitat elsewhere and better connect each subregion to the others. While there are some criticisms to be made, the general feeling is that the recommendations are ecologically sound and if enacted would be acceptable.

As far too many examples have shown us, however, where there is a clash between politics and science it is usually science which comes up the loser. It is on the long road from recommendations to actual implementation that political pressure is most likely to undermine the intent of the program.

Signs of Trouble

The NCCP program is still in an initial phase; the precise means of implementation are not yet clear. However the initial process guidelines suggest that decisions will be made "through a collaborative process centered on local government and meshing with the conventional land planning and California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) processes."

The effectiveness of this kind of arrangement is immediately called into question when one considers the type of local officials found in southern California. The dominance of development interests in local governments is overwhelming.

It is not unreasonable to suspect that local decisions will not take the interests of the land to heart.

Theoretically, state and federal wildlife agencies will prevent local officials from doing egregious harm. As a practical matter, this does not seem likely. These agencies have proven that they are susceptible to political influence in controversial projects, and there is also the simple matter of lack of staff and time. One agency ecologist has suggested that citizen pressure and lawsuits are the only way for them to start enforcing the existing laws.

The integration of the NCCP with the CEQA process also does not bode well. The CEQA environmental documentation system is known for some serious flaws: citizen participation is curtailed by stringent deadlines for comment and legal action, and the lead agency that prepares the document is often the one that approves it

The Tollroad Sellout

Compounding these doubts are recent events which cast serious doubts on the efforts to protect southern California's native ecosystems. Roughly a month before the listing of the Gnatcatcher, USFWS, in a stunning and calculated sellout, issued a "no jeopardy" ruling on the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, a tollroad which will bisect the largest remaining area of coastal sage scrub in Orange County. The ruling exempts the project from any restrictions of the ESA, including participation in an NCCP. In exchange, the Transportation Corridor Agency, in charge of building the road, has agreed to create 268 acres of coastal sage scrub for the 150 acres they will destroy.

The mere fact that the exemption took place is a sign that coastal sage scrub will not enjoy serious protection. The conditions of the exemption itself also signal that the SRP guidelines will not see the strict enforcement hoped for. Numerous SRP standards are ignored; high-quality patches (containing 30 pairs of Gnatcatchers and 44 pairs of cactus wrens) are traversed, and more significantly, the road severely fragments the habitat it traverses. An SRP report states that habitat fragmentation is the most serious threat to biological diversity and is the primary cause of the present extinction crisis.

Furthermore, the conditions of the tollroad mitigation project signal that mitigation will remain an easy out for developers wanting to destroy sage scrub. The restoration of coastal sage scrub is highly experimental; the creation of an ecosystem is even more problematic. In this case the mitigation is flatly absurd due to the siting of the mitigation on a recently closed landfill devoid of topsoil (150 acres), and on the banks of the road cuts for the tollroad itself (100 acres).

At the March 31st workshop in which the draft guidelines were presented, justification for the tollroad exemption were articulated. Because the subregion is isolated from other subregions, and the tollroad itself will decimate only 5% of the total sage scrub in the area, the exemption was allowed. The 5% figure is disputed, however; it ignores the growth-inducing impacts of any road. So although the exemption for the tollroad was ostensibly before the Babbitt listing of the Gnatcatcher, it was done in collusion with the SRP. The precedent set by the tollroad provides early indication that southern California is still more concerned with environmental tokenism than ecosystem protection.

On June 4th, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, in Orange County to solidify support for his Gnatcatcher plan, announced that the Department of the Interior would reaffirm the tollroad "no jeopardy" ruling. Babbitt said he would not reverse the agreement because it is important that developers trust the government to keep its word... The tollroad mitigation project is now underway; workers are busy covering the entire landfill area with plastic sheeting (to cap the dump and reduce emissions), upon which topsoil will be placed and "coastal sage scrub" planted.

Sage Rage

Excerpts from Feral Sage's Action

Notes.

Thursday May 20, 1993

7:15 am Perched on top of heavy equipment and nesting in the scoop the thirteen activists waited for the dozer operator to arrive.

7:40 am The dozer operator was told gently yet firmly by friendly activists that he should call the police because his employer was having him perform illegal acts of violence against nature.

8:00 am As expected Police have had no training in Laws concerning Nature and Creation.

9:30 am Phone contact with USFWS from on top of heavy equipment, informed again of violations, the present law enforcement problem and asked on how they would adequately proceed. Phone introductions made by Feral Sage between USFWS and County Sheriff by portable phone. USFWS informs Police that there could be a violation and will seek assistance for Feds to come to site of dispute.

10:30 am A final warning to Feral Sage by detectives "you've made your point, the feds returned your call and are coming at 3:00pm. Tell your people to go, you can protest on the road away from the equipment. If you hold this work up any longer I'll have to arrest you and I don't want to."

The activists decide to stay.

10:45 Again the activists are asked to leave. "We'll leave when the feds come or the developer agrees not to start the machines."

11:00am Developers compromise— no dozers.

4:00 pm Larren reads the Federal Endangered Species act and Migratory Bird Act to Watt Industries, Cucamonga water district and police.

Recommendation—Stop Project, hire qualified biologists. We must stop the technological machines munching over the earth's screams.

Holding Back Babylon

by Feral Sage

Dried sage stalks rustled and rattled, dancing before me, behind me, all around me—dancing white sage, singing, screaming, crying out, "Can you hear me?" Silver green divas stomping their feet, black-tailed jack rabbit hopping by stops, looks, listens,nose twitching, stands on hindquarters.

My acquaintance with the white sage began seven years ago. Meeting at Inipi Ceremonies and buying it in metaphysical bookstores, it was over a year before I was introduced to her in her home, southern California.

For over two years I've been a voice for the sage. She has consumed me as I once consumed her. I dance for her,

I sing for her, and shout for her in the faces of those who would destroy her.

"No more, no more room for compromise."

Every day and night the sage speaks, never letting up, never letting go. The divas keep stomping their feet, poking me, prodding me, exhausting me. I become angry and realize that she is angry. "Where are all the people who have used me? Used me up, used me in ceremony. Used me to cleanse ceremonial objects, bowls, baskets, bundles, bow and arrow. Who will replace me when I am gone? Priceless. How much will you sell me for? Am I your slave?"

It's hard not to feel her pain, her anguish, her embittered, her sweetness. 10% of coastal sage is remaining in the United States. Less than 3% remains of the alluvial sage along the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains, canyons and foothills. If all the various schemes are implemented, the Earth will be left with 2,000 fragmented acres of alluvial sage which will surely die along with all the

life forms dependent upon her.

So what can you do for the sage? I understand that wilderness warriors may not have what it takes to do battle in the city. Urban warriors have been living in the belly of the beast and daily cut through the smog, industrial muzak and cosmetic smiles. It's not pretty and all the grizzlies are gone but we are holding back Babylon. If you don't have the strength to join our battle in southern California then boycott White Sage. Tell every hippie, groovy gum, medicine man, medicine woman, healer and environmental activist to stop using the precious White Sage.

Sage Friends and Friends of the Foothills have been costing developers millions of dollars over the past two years. We are now working on a National Sage campaign for the fall. We could use help.

Friends of the Foothills, PO 0005, Altadena, CA, 91003. Phone 818/449-8702

Armed with Visions

SEND POEMS TO:

Warrior Poets Society Bancroft & Telegraph

Berkeley, CA 94720-1111

Clear as cut glass

& just as dangerous

JOSHUA TREE

Desert morning limps along Dry, heat waves across the plain Stillness catches hold and squeezes

Distant visage Spokes of green Trees? Here?

Closer now Splayed stalks of spiked fronds Trunks, bowed and twisted Bobbing snakeheads out reaching for what? Shall I even call them trees?

Thin shade, but deep To hide from the relentless one A breather to pause Letting the sweat dry Listening

To marvel at one forest Safe from the logger’s saw.

Walkin’ Jim Stoltz

from The Whisper Behind The Wind

A dream from the top of the Delaware Water Gap

Pohoqualine—water between mountains, what on the map is called Delaware Water Gap

Lenapewihittuck—River of the Lenape, or Delaware River

Sitting high on the Gap the muffled roar of commerce reaches even here

Rt. 80 twists along

the slow serpentine curves of the Delaware old moccasin foot paths covered under concrete

I imagine trees stretching down to the River’s shore silence except the call of Crow, the laughter of brown-skinned women carrying baskets heavy with Shad

Someday, centuries from now, the madness will be only a dream Elders will tell tales of steel beasts traveling paths of stone, belching poisons

The trees will burst through the concrete and those who make it will rename this place in the old names

Pohoqualine, Lenapewihittuck...

Home.

Stephen C. Strunk

OCCASIONALLY MUSIC

occasionally music is my voice a song slow and soft seducing secrets & wild winds a song for the trees, towering & strong a song no one will sing, for fear the animals will rise up and all living things, animate and inanimate will re-take these lands and once again the earth will sing

and our elders will dance the old songs

occasionally music makes me dream

touching the skies, bringing on the rain parting the clouds, so the sun may shine music is what makes the world turn in peace take away our voice, then war begins a lightning strike in the dark, eclipse at noon silence the drum and our singing, and we will fight back strong and determined to make the peace genocide and desecration have no place here

occasionally music makes me sing a blessing song, a song of hope a song for the younger ones, a song for the elders a song for the earth, a song for the sky a song for today, a song for tomorrow a song for ourselves, and a song for each other hands on hands in harmony, melody our never-ending joy

occasionally music makes me dance.

Victoria Lena Manyarrows

from Sacred River

SHRINE

Tucked in goose down behind a snow-varnished plank someone tore from the spring house

& that now serves as my kitchen I follow Hopi spruce & thousand-year-old

bristlecone pine

down from my camp on Nuvatikyaovi

(Snow-Piled-Up-On-Top) down past the Inner Basin

past Lockett Meadow Leaping Sugarloaf & O’Leary Peak out to Deadman Mesa

The Painted Desert

& beyond

watching kachinas in the cloudbank eyes twisting like the Colorado up

the BrightAngel Trail of dusk

Speciesism, Nazis &the New Resistance

—MlC WOMERSLEY

Armed with a different vision

[image not archived]

Hunt Saboteur nose-to-nose with John Law, somewhere in the UK.

photo by Black, White & Green, Brighton.

It seems appropriate that I am writing an article on "speciesism" the same week as the official anniversary of the Holocaust. The daily Missoulian reports that a majority of American high school children cannot correctly identify the holocaust as a historical event, nor do they show recognition of the word "holocaust." It is my biased belief that future generations will refer to the twentieth century as a combined holocaust of epic dimensions in both human and non-human terms. Not only did we humans accept multiple wars of mass destruction against other humans in this century, we accepted and perpetrated a gross and extreme global war of wanton mass destruction against other species. To me, it's all one catastrophe of human character.

I'd like to be able to write a nice, non-controversial article on this subject, approach it rationally, quote the quotes, state the statistics, attempt to establish on philosophical grounds the moral imperative to act with respect and care towards the rest of our planet's inhabitants, be reasonable about the whole thing. That would be proper and correct and would stop me from hurting everyone's bloody feelings on this matter.

I'm sorry, but I've had enough of all that.

Feelings need to be ruffled, jumped on, darn-well steamrollered until people pay some attention. The situation is simple and terrible. Almost every habitat, every species and every biome on this planet is directly threatened in some way by the greed and compulsiveness of humans. Every last living thing, every plant and animal that is of beauty or beautifully ugly, every landscape, every indigenous human tribe is in direct danger. There is not one living thing in the whole of creation that we are not directly threatening with our desire and our ignorance.

This is "speciesism;" a belief that logging and logger's livings are more important than Spotted Owls, rainforests, Siberian Tigers, or the cultural survival of the primitive Penan tribe; that the continued wealth of the American elite is more important than the air we breathe or the ozone layer; that our "right" to develop private lands is weighed up against the right of the Marbled Murrelet to exist.

I could approach it rationally, say that it's simply a matter of allocation of resources, that it can be fixed by the application of conservation principles. That loggers and their corporate controllers could be given incentives to properly manage the forests. But it's already beyond manageable.

I could quote the quotes, tell you that

Aldo Leopold said that the "first requirement in intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts," that Gary Snyder said, "There is no other life," that even the Christianbible says that god said to Noah that he should take "of clean beasts and of beasts that were not clean and of everything that creepeth upon the Earth" into the ark with him and his kin, that the bible grants humans only "dominion," not the right to rape and pillage. But it's beyond words now.

I could state the statistics, bore you with the fact that one hundred species a day become extinct; that the current rate of extinction is faster than the estimated rate of extinction at the end of the age of dinosaurs, when the Earth might have been hit by an asteroid; that our human population will exceed ten billion early next century. It's too late for numbers.

I could attempt to establish on philosophical grounds the moral imperative to act with respect and care towards the rest of our planet's inhabitants, talk about St Francis and Kant, and rational beings and the categorical imperative, and the rest, but I'm sick of all that.

For me, it's the Holocaust, continued. You're either a Nazi, or you're a spineless bystander, or you're in the resistance. If you're a Nazi, you intend to get what you can out of the dying biosphere and could not care less about the beauty of the world. If you're a spineless bystander you probably have some vague feelings about "your beach," "your forest," "your backyard," or "your Jews."

And the resistance? You're doing something, for Earth's sake! You are jumping up and down on street comers, screaming at passers-by, wearing a bear suit, or teaching grade-schoolers about "the envi-ronment," or growing organic gardens or raising goats. You're in Greenpeace or Earth First! or the Green Party, or leading wilderness programs or subverting the Forest Service or anything but accepting the status quo. Because at least you aren't so sick with work or alcohol or drugs or Christianity that you can't feel good when the cool waters of a creek flow over your toes, when you eat a dirty carrot from your own patch, when your best-beloved hugs you fair-and-square. Because you can understand that the value gained in a summer's day as a human animal is beyond anything you can earn in a whole summer working in a Nazi corporation. Because when you're old and grey and children turn and ask you what you did in the Holocaust, you will say with pride that you were in the resistance.

Mic Womersley is in the resistance.

BLM EXPOSED

—Flotsam

An Analysis, with Descriptions for the Benefit of the Public.

I have noticed that oftentimes when I visit my family or certain friends and they ask me about my environmental activism they are unfamiliar with the BLM, or Bureau of Land Management. Unlike the Forest Service, which presents a very public image, the BLM is somewhat secretive.

But the BLM, which manages more public land than any other agency, is responsible for more butchery, more land-rape, and more mangled habitat than any other force in the nation. They richly need to be exposed as the bungling, lame, murderous people they are.

Just who are these bleary-eyed, lumbering morons, anyway? Why do they continually propose, in their bulky, laborious manifestoes these sundry base, lost and malevolent management plans? What blank and ludicrous mumbo-jumbo do they put forth as land management, what botched and lackluster mitigation plan will they not try? How much more bilge, libel and moralizing must we endure from these balding, lethargic mealworms who dare to call themselves public servants? Why must we endure so much bullshit and lawless muck from these blithering lazy mutants? What butt-laxative mastications will they feed us next?

The BLM, run almost exclusively by boring little men with a big layer of machismo, has been from the start a bulging lavatory of misfits, an agency whose sole purpose is to cater to those blastomycetic leg-of-mutton monopolists, the welfare ranchers. These bucktoothed, lobotomized moralists, these billowing, lidless miscreants, these bicuspid, leguminous melonheads, these bloated lard maggots are responsible for more bubonic, lubricious mistakes than can ever be cataloged.

Through the bulbous, loopy manipulations of those bathmat lily-livered

monotones, the BLM, the welfare rancher claims "his" land. These buggering, lecherous masturbators then carry on their business of lacerating and massacring the land and its rightful inhabitants. Like the buckbean lapdog muck-rakers they are, the BLM and its battalion of limp minions, its bryophytic, laconic mycophagists, its bigamous, limnetic mental deficients, its bums, liars and maladapts approve and even pay for all the work those banausic laryngitic monomaniacs want done. Streams dammed, wells drilled, springs dug and plundered all for cattle. Then these bovines, these lathrytic metamorphs, proceed to run amok across the land. All for a babbling, left-over minority.

Meanwhile these belligerent, loathsome misfits and their bucket-brigade of lilting, maladjusted bird-brained laissez-faire melancholists, these bewildered laughingstock mendicants carry on as if nothing was the matter at all. They even elect bluerribboned legislatingmilitants to guide their management, but for naught.

Instead these barely-living milquetoasts and the bothersome lowlife monarchists who run the agency continue on their idiotic course. They are a bruise, a liability, a miscarriage; they are brainless, life-soaking and malodorous. Brucellosis, leprosy, mange would be too good for these brown-nosing lackey malcontents and the inept brigade of listing managers that leads them.

These bungling, ludicrous morons clearly need to be stopped before their blathering, lolloping myopia botches the land mercilessly and permanently. To end this blatant scourge of largesse and mischief, the public must be made aware, as I have endeavored here to do.

—From The Wild Rockies Review, special Summer, Fall, Winter Issue 1992/3.

Weyerhaeuser Out of Siberia!

Earth First! St the Native Forest Network Pay a Visit to Corporate HQ

-Jake Jagoff

The Native Forest Network (NFN), in conjunction with several Pacific Northwest Earth First! groups, kicked off its campaign against Weyerhaeuser's Siberian logging concessions on May 20 at the corporation's headquarters outside of Tacoma, Washington. The protest focused on Weyerhaeuser's plans to clearcut large tracts of temperate forest in the Botcha and Koppi river basins. Over one million acres of native forest will be affected, along with a host of species including reindeer, brown bear, sable, salmon and the rare Siberian tiger, of which only an estimated 200 to 500 survive.

The NFN has deemed the Botcha the newest and hottest temperate forest battleground! NFN is also working to stop encroachment into another important drainage, the Bikin river, where Hyundai wants to log. More and more activists, conservation biologists fl and even the public recognize the biological significance of the Botcha's forest community. We need to establish immediate resistance, both in Siberia and abroad where Weyerhaeuser's and Hyundai's corporate offices, auto dealerships and other subsidiaries W* reside. Our action will provide our Siberian comrades with additional determination and spawn a series of protests, demos, direct actions, boycotts, and pa-monkeywrenching around the world.

The Weyerhaeuser action was intended to be so simple that I felt like a member of the Mild Lackies Action Team. However, Weyerhaeuser sure that our action would not enter the Milquetoast Action An-While activists were gathering in the parking lot, a squadron of twenty state highway patrol of-ficers on motorcycles ar-rived in military forma-tion and pulled into the public entrance, effec-tivelyblockingus from as-sembling. Guards with binoculars were posted on the roof. Clearly, Weyerhaeuser was taking no chances. I explained to Weyerhaeuser's security and public rela-tions officials that our intention was not to trespass but have a peaceful demonstration, hold a short press conference, and present the company with some peti-tions opposing the project. Clean and simple! Not Weyerhaeuser refused to allow the dem-onstration near their concrete corporate lair lest we occupy their prized "earth-friendly" building.

In the end, Weyerhaeuser'sheavy-handedresponse sparkedmore media interest and gave our press conference more weight Wegenerated a substantial amount of publicity about Weyerhaeuser's plans to bring inper dustrial forestry to Siberia, a timely issue given Weyerhaeuser's ongoing negotiations with Russian and Siberian parties.

After the press conference, activists chanted the words of our stunning (thanks toJournal staffers) tiger banner, "Save the Siberian Tiger — Boycott Weyerhaeuser," along with "Weyerhaeuser—The Tree Killing Company," and others. Snaggletooth, our demade voted minstrel, led us in an inspired version of Restless' "For the Forests." Suzanne Pardee and I were asked inside to present our petitions and express our connals. cems. Suzanne did an excellent job of explaining NFN's opposition to Weyerhaeuser's proposed logging concession. In particular, she stressed the importance of keeping Weyerhaeuser's tree farms and roads out of the pristine Botcha river basin which is loaded critters inhabiting a thriving forest filledwith large coniferous trees.

The meeting was something of a joke given the Weyerhaeuserlackey'signorance.Theywereveryproud of the seedlings which they had sent over to their recently adopted sister city in Siberia. They claimed the trees were native to Siberia and had been grown in nurseries in the Northwest and returned for experito mental reforestation. Wepointed out this didn't make sense cuz it takes years (literally) to gauge regeneration rates and every site contains different growing condisuprisingly, tions.

The media who accompaniedus inside sensed that Suzanne and I knew heaps more about the issue and pickedup onthefactthatopposition toWeyerhaeuser's project is increasing. They also were surprised to learn, first, that the NFN had met with Valaria Vogras of Soviet Gavan, a Siberian forest activist Weyerhaeuser hadflown to the US for aweek and, second, thathewas n°t convinced of the company's good intentions. Afterasickeningdisplayofnicenesswefiguredoutthat this meeting had outlived its usefulness. On our way out, I mutteredto one reporter, "Nexttimewewon'tbe so nice about it!" He smiled, handed me his card and murmured, "Call me next time."

This action was partially funded by the Earth First! directAction Fundandthe NFN. To donate orformore £ information contact: Randall Restless, PO Box 6151, I Bozeman, MT 59715, (406) 585-9211, (E-Mail en:nfn) or Suzanne Pardee, PO Box 60271, Seattle, WA 98160 (206) 542-1356 or Fax (206) 632-6122.

NAFTA Is A Disasta — A Perspective

—by John Green

In the past few years, there has been a lot of talk about the environmental conditions along the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border, which have steadily deteriorated since the US and Mexican governments initiated incentives for corporations (the so-called maquiladoras) to locate there. It is generally accepted that conditions will further worsen if the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is approved by the US. But these problems are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to NAFTA's effect on the environment.

NAFTA was written by representatives of the multinationals, for the multinationals. Any treaty with these credentials must be a disaster for the planet and all its life.

NAFTA is basically a wet dream for the wealthy: in order to raise our profits to even more astronomic levels and make ourselves even more grossly rich and powerful, how can we eliminate any environmental, health, worker safety, etc., laws and regulations; lower labor costs worldwide; and make any action by the grassroots completely irrelevant? This is precisely what NAFTA will do. It is the North American counterpart to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), a wider treaty.

In the name of putting all countries on an equal footing with regardsto trade, NAFTA and GATT aim to "harmonize" trade standards (laws, regulations, etc.) on tariffs, the environment, food, etc.

In other words, they will create international standards by which all treaty members will be bound.

The problem is that this "harmonization" will be to the weakest level; the least common denominator.

NAFTA standards follow the those set in the Codex Alimentarius—an arm of the UN, pretty much controlled by the chemical industry and agribusiness. As you can imagine, the standards are weak, to say the least. The Codex sets, for instance, allowable levels of DDT and other toxins in food. Any country with standards higher than those set in the treaties can have those laws or regulations challenged as unfair barriers to trade (referred to in NAFTA as "non-tariff barriers") .

The country with the higher standards must then lower them, compensate the challenging country, or face retaliation in the form of sanctions. This is how international standards will be reduced to the least common denominator.

This is not some far-off future possibility; it is here now. Several countries have had to lower environmental standards as a result of challenges already. For example, Canadian pesticide standards have been relaxed duetoa challengeby theUSunder NAFTA. The Canadian standards allowed less pesticide residue in food than US laws. This was deemed a barrier to free trade (the movement of US-grown produce into Canada), and the Canadian government (somewhat

willingly) lowered its standards to match those of the US.

An international trade panel ruled in 1991 that sections of the Marine Mammal Protection Act banning the importation of tuna caught using methods which kill dolphins constitute an illegal trade barrier and must be eliminated. Mexico (which has no equivalent law) had challenged the Act under GATT.

In addition, Canadian paper manufacturers have asked their government to challenge US laws which require a certain percentage of recycled fiber in newspaper. Under NAFTA, these laws could also be found to be illegal trade barriers and thrown out.

Governments are completely complidt in all of this. Trade treaties will become the excuse for not enacting tougher environmental laws; for politicians' sucking up to their corporate sponsors. They will say, "we can't make stronger laws because they'll just be thrown out by challenges under GATT and NAFTA." The same tired jobs versus the environment arguments will be used to scare the public: strong environmental laws are barriers to trade; trade barriers lead to trade sanctions; trade sanctions cost jobs. Even state and local laws passed by citizen initiative will be weakened or thrown out as they are challenged as trade barriers.

Some Environmental Consequences

If the NAFTA and GATT treaties are approved, the environmental consequences could be far worse than anyone has foreseen. Here are just a few examples.

NAFTA defines water as a commodity—something which can be traded internationally. So any law which obstructs its free movement across international borders can be considered a barrier to trade. This definition is already leading to the construction of parts of the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA), a nightmare scheme to dam almost every major river in Canada and export the water (and the hydropower the dams produce), via a series of aqueducts and canals, to the US. The James Bay Project is a part of NAWAPA. The fact that multinationals are already working on major parts of this plan is a good indication of their feelings on NAFTA's passage. And if NAFTA goes into effect, no federal, state or local law will stop NAWAPA from becoming reality.

Recent studies estimate that 13 million Mexicans will be pushed off communal land holdings by agribusiness multinationals who (without laws to protect local farmers) can compete better because of their size and resources. They will then introduce chemical-and fossil fuel-dependent agriculture—tons of pesticides, etc. The mass exodus of people from the countryside will increase environmental problems around Mexico City, lead to increased emigration, and have a major impact on the remaining rainforests of Central America.

In the US, laws are being considered which would ban the export of raw logs. In some cases, these laws are already in place. Such laws are necessary to protect both jobs and forests. Uh-uh, says NAFTA. These laws impede free trade. The same would be the case with a ban on the importation of tropical hardwoods.

Politics, Politics

The US, Canada and Mexico have all already signed NAFTA. The treaty must now be approved by the US Congress. The so-called side agreements (on the environment, labor, etc.) which have received so much publicity of late, are a scam—Clinton and Congress are

trying to mollify an increasingly nervous public. Any side agreement would be directly at odds with NAFTA and GATT; the two can't coexist If a group of countries negotiates a side agreement with higher standards than those in either treaty, they could presumably be challenged on it by other countries not party to the side agreement (this is already happening as the US is challenging the European Community's ban on hormone-tainted beef under GATT). The only way the two trade treaties can coexist with side agreements is if NAFTA and GATT require the highest possible standards for environmental protection; this would make the side agreements moot This will not happen—one of the main reasons NAFTA and GATT came about was so that multinationals could do whatever they want without having to worry about those annoying local laws and grassroots groups.

Any politician who claims that NAFTA will be good for either the environment or the people is either an idiot or a liar. Clinton is pushing for passage of NAFTA (if he's not in favor of it himself) at least partly because the business "community" is holding a gun to his head. The economy is completely controlled by the multinational corporate scum who do business here. They are talking about how NAFTA not passing would "panic business." Their "loss of confidence" would mean that the recovery, so to speak, of the US economywouldnothappen. They are holding the economy hostage and Clinton knows he will be blamed if the US goes deeper into recession.

Many mainstream environmental groups are so anxious to obtain influence with the Clinton administration that they are supporting the side agreements as a means of pursuing their own political agendas. They are selling out.

What to do?

International trade means, simply, exploitation. Exploitation of the planet and its life. Borders should be removed; international trade should be abolished. But in working toward those goals, we cannot ignore the reality of the system which exists now. As a first step, the trade agreements must be fought and junked entirely. Second, stronger environmental laws must be enacted which will extend to anyone doing business in the US. International laws on ecosystem and species protection must then be drawn up and vigorously enforced.

If NAFTA and GATT are defeated entirely, and nothing is done to strengthen environmental laws internationally, the multinationals will continue to do piecemeal what the trade agreements would do all at once.

—John Green is a Journal staffer and not a trade expert.

Wheel of Misfortune

—Chris Schwaderer

The Medicine Wheel, located at 9680 feet in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, is a sacred site for Native tribes including Arapaho, Northern and Southern Cheyenne, Crow, Northern and Southern Shoshone, Navajo, Salish-Kootenai, Southern Ute and Sioux. It is also a sacred site for the US Forest Service, whose religion involves ritualistically selling out to multiple use interests. Strict management of the Medicine Wheel for "multiple use" has turned the site into a circus, involving the Bighorn National Forest, the town of Lovell, and the State of Wyoming. It seems the Freddies consider sacred sites to be worthy of little concern. They have actively undermined all Native efforts to maintain the cultural integrity of the Medicine Wheel by trying to turn it into a tourist attraction. The Wheel has long attracted public interest, and tourist numbers have been growing at a high rate.

In 1989, the Medicine Wheel attracted 14,000 visitors, but last summer, after a campaign by the Lovell, Wyoming, tourism industry to exploit the Wheel, visitor numbers jumped to more than 70,000. Factor in a couple of proposed timber sales, myriad mining claims, token grazing allotments, and a herd of snowmobilers and the Medicine Wheel becomes another classic example of the Freddies' malevolent disdain for tribal religious practices. The result is that the integrity of the Medicine Wheel as a sacred site is being severely compromised. Presently a chain link fence is in place to prevent visitors from further desecrating the Medicine Wheel. Recent tourist seasons have - subjected the Wheel to sickening erosion, theft, and vandalism, offending the sensibilities of native practitioners who have made pilgrimages to the Wheel dating back to 4200 BC.

In an effort to mitigate the damaging effects of maladroit Forest Circus management policy, Native American activists have been asking the Bighorn National Forest to provide a tiny 2.5-mile buffer

The Forest Circus allowed the road to remain open to traffic as long as motorists remained inside their vehicles. Now motorists can simply drive up to the Wheel, do a lap or two, and get back on the highway.

-0 -

zone around the Medicine Wheel which would be completely excluded from the damaging effects of multiple use. Then practitioners of traditional native religions could peacefully journey to the Wheel for rituals and ceremonies, which in Freddyspeak is undoubtedly the "highest and best use" of the Wheel and its surroundings.

Ideally, Native Americans would like to see the closing of the two-mile FS Road 12, which connects Highway 14-A with the Medicine Wheel. The road closure would likely solve much of the visitor

problem, but you know how the Freddies feel about their roads. At a February meeting in Billings,

Montana, Bighorn NF District Supervisor Larry Keown got all red in the face when Native Americans asked him if he could close the road in order to protect the site from further destruction. He said he could close the road, but instead chose to stay consistent with a 1991 Draft EIS which eliminated a "no action" alternative from the list of alternatives, claiming that a road closure would compromise multiple use interests. Although the entire 2.5 mile zone comprises a diminutive 0.04% of the Bighorn - National Forest, Keown, the Great White Father, can't find it in his heart to exempt the area from multiple use.

The Forest Circus lived up to its name when it - tried to reach an acceptable short term management plan for the Summer of 1993. Instead of closing the road to motorized vehicles altogether, which would achieve the desired goal of reduced pedestrian traffic around the Wheel, the Forest Circus allowed the road to remain open to traffic as long as motorists remained inside their vehicles. Now motorists can simply drive up to the Wheel, do a lap or two, and get back on the highway. This kind of policy making is clearly an attempt to belittle the Native American religious freedom movement by refusing to give respectful consideration to tribes when sacred sites and Federal lands overlap.

The Medicine Wheel Alliance in Huntley, Montana has been doing good work, but all attempts to make substantive policy changes or initiate meaningful dialogue with the BNF have been silenced. Any kind of assistance would be greatly appreciated by the MW A, and they can be contacted at Box 37, Huntley, Montana 59037. Phone: (406) 348-2079.

Chris Schwaderer is an unemployed post-historic primitivist who makes his home in the Greater Missoula Ecosystem.

Lena pe Chief Speaks to the Developers

J 1 —Sauts Netamux'we

(In the last issue of the Journal an article entitled The Original Humans Speak Out described the hisory and culture of the lena'pe people. For 10,000years they have lived in a region of [what is now called] Eastern Pennsylvania. The hea f their land was recently threatened by developers offering townhouses and sewers.)

The following letter was read before the officials and citizens of Marlborogh Township d ^ t he l°n g fi^it 'vith developers. It was in answer to a question asked of Chief Sauts as to "how the Lena pe Wolf-Clan Sakima and his people view the potential development of the Unami Creek and surrounding areas.

Dear Katu'ha He'

The wapsi 'ni (invaders) have never been able to lay the exploitive hand upon the Sacred Heart of LunapahoTdng (Lena 'pe Country) along the Unami Creek where my Wolf-Clan people of my Un ^ l Ba " d °'^ - 'pewuk came up from Inner Earth through the mighty rock outcropping and caves to the surface, led by the Wolf who was directed by the Creator-Father to bring my people out into our surface Homeland This is why many winters ago, I brought Aunt Touching Leaves, an elder visionary of our Wolf-Unamrs to this Powerful Sacred place to do a Sunrise Ceremony to the directions and the Spirits-Of-Place who inhabit the geographical formations, the cree, and the woods here, protecting it from invasion. .

This place is to be kept pure in preparation for the coming New Earth, when it will expand on and into all directions engulfing all the artificial works and structures of the wapsi’ni until the whole earth surface is again a seamless whole. It is here, (along Unami Creek), that we still go to do our Sunrise prayers, and to commune vn those of our ancestors who remained behind when the rest of us came to the surface anciently, )ust after Creator-Father made the world. These powerful ancestors continue to help us, as angels, to protect this place of our Unami Lena'pes as this cycle ends and the beautiful New Earth prepares to come. There are others whohave been called become apart of our people by adoption, and to help us see that no harm comes to this Sacred Place where our people have lived for countless ages; where our winter-lodge places are, and the ancient trade-paths cnss-cross toward distant destinations; where travelers stopped in the established sheltertoverhangs for some bean and venison stew and a night's rest, and ceremonies were done as they still are, and fish were and are netted, and rarely seen species of woods creatures live protected by Meesing'

("Keeper Spirit of woods creatures"), and sacred stone circles for calling animals continue to stand ready.

Wapsi'ni has destroyed the body of Lena'pe country from western Connecticut and Manhattan to Maryland; from Lancaster to Ocean City, but have not been, and will not be, able to destroy the Heart. It is the place of miracles both ancient and new and of miracles still to happen as the New Earth of our Unami Lena'pe Prophets begins.

My own Sacred Name is in the dialect of my Unami Band

Sauts Netamux'we Wolf-Clan Sakima (Chief) Unami Kacile'su (Prophet) Artist

FBI Lies!!! New Evidence in Bombing Case

—Chris Clarke

A stunning series of photographs and police reports, which show that the FBI lied about the position of the bomb that nearly killed Judi Bari, have been released to Earth First! activists by the Oakland Police Department.

Bari and Darryl Chemey were driving in Oakland on May 24,1990, on an organizing tour for Redwood Summer, when a bomb exploded under Bari's seat, maiming her and injuring Chemey. Within minutes of the blast the FBI and OPD moved in to arrest the two activists, thereafter claiming that they were the only suspects in the bombing, and were knowingly carrying the bomb.

The two agencies based their claims on their assertion that the bomb was on

the back seat floorboard of the car when .it exploded, and that Bari and Chemey must therefore have been aware of its presence. The photos released by the OPD clearly show, however, that the damage is centered under the seat, and the rear passenger seat is relatively undamaged; some photos show OPD technicians holding a mock-up of the bomb in the one place it could have been to cause the damage it caused: directly under Bari's seat.

Bari and Chemey have filed a lawsuit against the FBI and OPD for their mishandling of the bombing, charging them with false arrest and other civil rights violations. The photos and police reports were released due to this lawsuit.

Lawyers for the two activists are also asking for a court order to protect all the remaining evidence in the case, after discovering that the only known copies of a key document had been lost or destroyed. A motion filed May 28 in the US District Court in San Francisco asks for sanctions against the agencies and individuals responsible for the destruction of the document The document in question, a Bail Enhancement Declaration, was filed at the time of the bombing to justify Bari's and Chemey's bail being set at $100,000. The activists contend that the Declaration must have contained falsehoods, given the lack of evidence against them, or the high bail would not have been approved.

In a related development on May 21, the FBI told reporters that they had closed their case on the attempted murder of Bari and Chemey, though the guilty party has not been found and the statute of limitations has not yet expired. Both the FBI and OPD claim that they have no more leads to follow in the investigation.

"That's just another big lie," said Judi Bari. "There are plenty of leads. The problem is that they point to police and big timber."

Bari says the FBI was publicly handed a police informant letter written about her in 1989, which is typed on the same typewriter and in a matching style to one of the death threats she received right before the bombing. "I have publicly stated that I believe I know who wrote these documents. Yet the FBI and police have failed to investigate."

There are serious indications that big timber interests including Louisiana-Pacific, Pacific Lumber and the so-called Wise-Use Movement spread false documents and information to create a climate of violence leading up to the bombing. "Apparently the FBI and OPD would rather be caught in a cover-up than reveal whatever it is they are covering up," said Bari.

In light of these new developments, Bari and Chemey are calling for a Congressional investigation of the bombing and police cover-up. "Clearly the FBI and OPD are too compromised by their involvement in the cover-up to conduct a reasonable invesrigation of the bombing," said Bari.

Bari and Chemey are also seeking a Congressional investigation of FBI Special Agent Richard W. Held, who announced his early retirement in May. Held was a principle proponent of the FBI's COINTELPRO program to "disrupt, discredit, and neutralize" social change movements in the US. Held was in charge of the FBI's investigation of the 1990 bombing.

On May 24,1993, the third anniversary of the bombing, Earth First! held a demonstration at the FBI headquarters in San Francisco. In spite of the hard rain, a healthy crowd turned out to see the unveiling of the photos proving the FBI and OPD have been lying about the incident.

Chris Clarke is the editor of Terrain, the newsletter of the Berkeley Ecology Center.

Political Prisoners

A Step Towards Home!

—by Karen Pickett

Peg Millett has moved from the federal prison in Phoenix she has called home for the last twenty months, moving to a halfway house in Tucson. Peg was sentenced to three years in September, 1991 for monkeywrenching activities in. She was transferred on May 26, and as soon she was outside the prison walls she let loose with a long, echoing howl, celebrating a body being out in the desert air without barbed wire around her. Maybe you heard it.

Peg is still incarcerated, and will be until the end of August before her sentence is up. But the halfway house digs will afford her a degree more of freedom. She will be able to work a job outside and receive furloughs for other activities outside which will hopefully include visits with friends outside the halfway house walls. The move means getting used to a whole new set of rules, living conditions, staff people and roommates, but Peg is feeling like she can see the light at the end of what has been a long arduous tunnel. Two more months. You can write to Peg at: New Beginning Treatment Center,

2445 Oracle Rd., Tucson AZ 85705

Support Mark Davis!

Mark Davis, who was sentenced at the same time as Peg on similar charges is still in federal prison in Boron, California. He received a six-year sentence, has been denied parole, and so is serving his entire sentence, minus statutory good time.

He is appealing his parole denial, which of course requires a good deal of time, money, energy, and hope. (See Mark's appeal for support for his case in the Beltane '93 EF! Journal.) He needs your support now more than ever. Send money donations for his legal defense (checks made out to Legal Defense Fund, send c/o John Riorden, HC 29 Box 424, Prescott AZ 86301) and write to him (Mark Davis, #23106-008, FPC, PO Box 1000, Boron, CA 93516). Mark is a brave and effective eco-warrior facing a long road. He needs and deserves all the support we all can give him.

"I am Strong, I am Angiy"

A Letter from Darren Thurston

Greetings from within the machine. I've been accused of participating in the June 1,1992, Animal Liberation Front action at the University of Alberta's Ellerslie Research Station, where 29 cats were liberated and $100,000 damage was done to the facility. After being charged with the U of A liberation, I was also charged with nine additional counts related to five previous ALF actions in Edmonton during 1991 and 1992. Grant Horwood was also arrested and charged with the U of A liberation. He had his charges stayed at his preliminary trial on November 12,1992, due to lack of evidence. At my preliminary trial, January 11-14,1993, Grant refused to take the stand and testify. The judge has ordered him to appear at my trial. If Grant refuses he may face jail time himself. At the end of my preliminary trial I had three of my charges dropped and was ordered to stand trial on the remaining charges.

Our so-called "just-us" system has kept me caged much like my animal sisters and brothers for the last three hundred and thirty-six days. Denied bail now six times on the grounds that I am a "threat to society"! Oblivious to the fact that I have no previous criminal record, and whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? Although the real issue here is not whether I am "guilty" of the charges, the important question is: why is non-violent action in defense of living beings that are imprisoned and scheduled to be tortured and killed a crime? Why are the vivisectors allowed to roam free while activists working for those that cannot help themselves are jailed? What are the real crimes here?

My beliefs were strong before and now they're even stronger. Stronger than the concrete and steel cages where they try to break us. My tears have dried up. I am strong, I am angry. Sisters and brothers this is a plea, one that you have heard others speak lately. Now is the time to rejoin the wild. Go forth and find your roots, be at one with the eagle, cougar and black bear. Forget your placards, signatures and speeches. For the few that have the strength, the time is here... direct action in defense of Mother Earth. Run free, move fast Life underground. Be silent, be strong.

Fighting the good fight,

Darren Thurston

Support Jailed Activists

Darren's trial is now scheduled for September 20th. Letters of support can be sent to: Darren Thruston, ERC, 9660-104 Ave., Edmonton, Alberta, T5H 4B5, Canada.

Donations for his defense, payable to ALFSG-Canada, can be sent to: ALFSG, POB 75029, Ritchie PO, Edmonton, Alberta, T6E 6K1, Canada.

Some Charges Dropped in First Spiking Trial

Off Idaho route 12, where Post Office creek flows into the Lochsa River, is a 187-acre clearcut. Back in March, 1989, when there was still a forest there, someone tried to save it. With gloves and hammer someone pounded 500 pounds of eight inch spikes into the trees in a vain attempt to preserve the pristine forest

In March, 1993, five men (John "Spicer" Blount, Jeff Fairchild, Dan LaCrosse, Arvid Hartley, and Neil McLain) were charged in this action.

In early June, Hartley and McLain agreed to testify against the other three in return for reduced sentences. Both admitted to spiking trees with the intent to hinder the Post Office Creek timber sale, a misdemeanor. The maximum sentence is one year in jail.

Blount and Fairchild were originally accused of two counts each of conspiracy, tree spiking, and willfully injuring and committing depredation against property. LaCrosse was charged with two counts of conspiracy. All three had been charged under the 1988 "war on drugs" crime bill. Tlie bill contained provisions introduced by then-Senator James McClure of Idaho which called for severe penalties for tree-spiking if the damage was valued at over $10,000.

On Friday, June 4, Blount decided not to contest the charges. In the face of overwhelming evidence against him, he decided to make a political statement of the trial. He would admit to buying spikes and paint, and making one of two trips to the site. He would not deny spiking trees in Post Office Creek.

At this point, however, the government's case began to unravel.

On June 9, the third day of the trial, all charges against LaCrosse, and all charges against Blount and Fairchild related to the McClure legislation, were dropped. The prosecution was unable to prove that the spiking had caused over $10,000 damage.

Perhaps more significantly, the government failed utterly in its attempt to link the EF! Direct Action Fund to the spiking.

Blount and Fairchild still face charges of willful and malicious damage to government property and conspiracy. Blount considers himself a political prisoner, persecuted for his environmental views. He has entered a plea of no contest. Fairchild has pleaded innocent.

They Jail Authors, Too.

—by Rik Scarce

In a warped way, I should probably feel complimented that the government has jailed me. They went to all kinds of trouble and waited more than a year to see if I would testify about what they think I know. They spent tens of thousands of dollars in pursuit of me ... Thanks, folks, but I'd have preferred that you'd paid me directly.

On May 14,1 was sentenced for contempt of court by a federal judge in Spokane, Washington. I refused to fully cooperate with a federal grand jury investigating a 1991 ALF break-in at Washington State University, where I am a PhD candidate in sociology. I answered dozens of questions, but I've declined to answer a total of 37.

The feds are tired of going after activists—tired, frustrated, and finding it fruitless. So now they figure they'll go after me—someone who has written a book on the environmental movement ( Ecowarriors ) and who has been continually researching the movement since 1989.

A week before they jailed me, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that I had to testify. More than two weeks later, they still haven't issued a

written ruling, so we don't know what their logic is. Grand jury secrecy is bad enough, but when the courts start acting like prosecutors, we're all in big trouble.

It looks like I will be appealing the circuit court's decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that I am a researcher/writer and therefore I'm protected from grand jury testimony. In order to pursue the Supreme Court case I'll have to stay in jail, which I'm prepared to do. I don't have anything to say to the grand jury.

The judge who put me in here said it was coercive—time in jail is meant to coax me into talking— not punitive—punishment for not talking. How many people do you know who are in jail to coax them into anything? I've heard of legal fictions, but this one is as good as "clearcuts help the forest."

Now than I'm in, jail isn't such a bad place. My big complaints are the food and the cigarette smoke. But the guys are alright. In fact, thanks to Jonathan Paul's groundbreaking work in the same jail, I've been treated like a conquering hero. Somebody told me 90 percent of all federal cases involve informants, so anyone who refuses to kowtow to the government's wishes is given a lot of respect.

And how could I cooperate? If I testified I could never talk to an activist again—or at least no one would talk to me. And how would people in academia treat me? I would violate my professional code of ethics if I answered those questions. Who would hire someone known for his unethical behavior?

So I'll be here for a while. I guess it's obvious that my spirits are high. Something about resisting the state's efforts to turn me into one of their agents has emboldened me. A lot about America needs changing, but nobody—especially the federal government—has a right to fool with the First Amendment. When that goes there'll be no stopping them.

What you can do:

Send letters to Attorney General Janet Reno requesting that the federal government release me immediately. Let her know that the First Amendment has "don't tread on me" written all over it. Reno's address is: Attorney General, US Department of Justice, Washington DC 20530.

I also need money for my defense and letters for my spirits. Send them to: James Richard Scarce, Inmate, Spokane County Jail, 1100 Mallon, Spokane, WA 99260

Beating Them at Their Own Game

—by Jonathan Paul

Jonathan Paul has been released from jail after 158 days behind bars for refusing to cooperate with a so-called "federal investigation" of environmental/animal rights activists. This is his story, but it is also a story which could happen to any dedicated Earth activist. Read it carefully. This could happen to you.

My gut told me I was going to jail.

It was around five o'clock on October 12th, 1992. I had just finished a day in a private investigator's office in Eugene, Oregon. I was working toward my own P.I. license and an investigation business of my own, which I hoped to focus on environmental and animal issues. I left the office and walked quickly to the parking lot across the street, climbing the stairs to the fifth floor, where my car was parked. The wind and the rain refreshed me after a long day indoors learning the ropes of the P.I. trade. I reached my car and had just put the keys in the lock when two figures came up behind me. At first, I was quite startled, because I was cornered in a dead-end parking lot.

But I realized who they were from their trench coats and wool hats: FBI.

The tall, skinny one showed me his badge and the short, fat one apologized for startling me. "Yeah, right," I thought, as I tried not to comment on their stereotypical, made-for-TV image. "We are not here to arrest you," the tall one said, "we have a subpoena to hand to you." The short one broke in, "You are Jonathan Paul, aren't you?" I replied, "Yes I am.

It's obvious from my license plate, isn't it? How did you find me here, anyway?" The tall one smiled and said, "We have eyes everywhere," and handed me the subpoena, to appear before the Spokane Federal Grand Jury on November 3rd. They asked me if I would like to answer some questions. I told them no way, and got into my car. They walked back to their standard issue white Chevy Caprice.

The rain poured down the windshield as I read the subpoena. I noticed that it had been issued at 4:30 pm in Spokane. I looked at the clock on the dash. It read 5:09 pm. In half an hour, a subpoena was issued and I was located 100 miles from my home in a five-story parking lot.

Big Brother is watching. It became a cold reality. It wasn't until I got home that I heard the whole story.

Apparently, while I was being subpoenaed in the parking lot, two other fibbers had gone into my workplace. When they found I wasn't there, they left, and the P.I. I was working with called my house to tell me I'd had visitors. Big T got the call. He watched a police helicopter circle our Portland house as he was being told that the FBI was looking for me.

Although I knew, somehow, that I was going to jail, most everyone I talked to told me not to worry, because no one had gone in yet. But I was worried, and I told everyone to watch it happen and that this situation was different.

I prepared myself to go to jail. A week before I was to appear, I drove down to California to my partner's house to spend some time with her and have a place to leave my dog, Libby, in case I went to jail. Libby sensed something was wrong. She would not leave my side, and was peeing in her sleep. On Election Day, I reluctantly voted early, then my sisters and I flew to Spokane to the grand jury. I didn't feel nervous anymore. I was prepared to go into the clink. I was going to fight the grand jury to the end. What I didn't know was that the "end" wouldn't come for 158 days.

After virtually every right guaranteed under the Bill of Rights was denied me— as they are everyone who goes before a not-so-grand jury—federal Judge Fremming Nielsen found me in contempt of court and ordered me taken away.

My sis Caroline was very angry when the judge announced he was putting me in jail. She gave three US Marshals a 30-second workout They were able to handcuff her, but only after she had them straddled all over the courtroom benches. Assistant US Attorney Frank Wilson could not wipe the smirk off his face.

The Government had won their first round, but that was as far as they would ever get.

My first night in jail was difficult. I felt very helpless, and sleeping in a lit-up cell was not easy. The next morning, a US Marshall asked if I would like to testify. He told me that if I did not, I would have to wait another 30 days for the grand jury to reconvene. I shot back: "the day I die is the day I will testify." I was led back up to my cell knowing it was going to be a long road to freedom. I hired a local attorney and my friends and family scrambled to set up a support network. My attorney felt my due process rights were violated because I was refused legal counsel and ten minutes was not adequate to prepare my defense. Surprise of surprises, the judge denied the motion and I went back to jail. We appealed, but the appeal was denied, too.

I accepted—as all political prisoners must—that I was looking at a long time in jail. But I also knew that I would never compromise my beliefs. I would be released on my own terms even if it took 18 months, which is how long someone can be held for civil contempt for not talking to a grand jury. I kept my strength up, knowing other political prisoners have spent and will spend more time in jail than I ever would. The first two months were the most difficult. After that I got used to the time, read many books, and caught up on my writing. During my third month in jail, after being hassled and threatened because of my "environmental views" by some other inmates, I tried to get transferred to a minimum security prison, but the judge, still Fremming Nielsen, denied the request.

The US attorney tried to make me out to be a threat by claiming that I had bought a Beretta 9mm in 1987. This was a total lie. We checked Justice Department records and there was no record of me ever owning a 9mm.

Finally, after nearly five months, my attorney filed a "Grumbles" motion .

[ed. note: This type of motion compels the government to release a prisoner because his/her incarceration is no longer to coerce, but has become punitive, without trial or conviction.] Ironically, the very thing that got me jailed—not talking—could result in my release.

At about the same time, my attorney told me that the media were calling him and interviews were being set up. My friends from Last Chance for Animals set up ' f B a press conference with both of my sisters present.

This was our chance to get the issue out to the public and show the true colors of the grand jury process, and how it was being used to oppress the environmental/animal rights movement.

My sisters told the media, and the public, what all of us in the movement must know: that the government has used the grand jury to attack and disrupt the anti-war, civil rights, Native American and other movements. They get us to talk about each other, and to distrust each other.

The only way to beat them, and to stop such witch hunts, is to not cooperate. To refuse to support the system that attacks us, and the planet.

As a result of our offensive, the national media (including A Current Affair, People magazine, Entertainment Tonight, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, etc.) ran stories about the grand jury and my environmental views. Ironically, in jailing me, the government had given all of us a platform to talk about the threat to the planet

So we were hitting back at the government—and hard. National media, legal motions—and on the morning of April 9th, I was called down and released.

When I walked out of the jail the press asked me how I felt. I just smiled and said, "I won. I beat them at their own game."

Activist Legal Network Set Up

An "Activist Legal Defense Project" has been started to provide legal and other assistance to environmental and animal rights activists threatened by grand jury harassment. The project is sponsored by Last Chance for Animals, but acts independently and is designed to help independent, grassroots activists.

If you are hassled by federal authorities and/or grand juries, or you know someone who is, don't ignore it. Don't clam up and not share with other activists. Call the Project. Ask for information to empower yourself and our movement. The number is 916/452-7179.

Jonathan Paul has three copies of The Maltese Falcon.

What Is Ecosystems Management

A science-based management approach that conserves species and genetic diversity, and maintains the structural and functional integrity of an ecosystem, while providing economic benefits at a level that the ecosystem can sustain.
Another incarnation of New Perspectives with pseudo-scientific jargon.
An historic change in forest management policy.
An attempt to head off legislation from the Forest Summit.
A rational alternative to species-by-species management
An attempt to shed responsibility for endangered species by shifting the focus to ecosystems instead.
An opportunity to stem the loss of biodiversity.
An opportunity to substitute unquantifiable and vague ecosystem concepts in planning direction.
An approach that recognizes the need for cooperative management among landowners to provide the land area necessary to sustain ecosystems.
A warm, fuzzy feeling.
Contributing to rural economies at levels which are sustainable , in compliance with legal mandates and within the capacity of the natural ecosystem.
Catering to the demands of rural communities in the name of public participation and involvement.
Implementing the National Forest Management Act, finally.
The best defense is a good offense.
Aldo Leopold vindicated.
Gifford Pinchot regrouping.

Ecosystems management is what you want it to be.

—Nigel Blakley, Black Hills Audubon, WA

Same As it Ever Was

—Scott Greacen

The Forest Service has long been cast as the federal government's flagship natural resource agency. While we might point to the agency's hideous record of abuses rather than its mythic history of competence, environmentalists would generally agree that the direction of the Forest Service is a good indicator for the whole alphabet-soup network of environmental bureaucracies. A hard look at recent Forest Service antics should, therefore, snuff out any lingering hopes that the new boys in DC can fix what's wrong with the way we treat the planet.

What with political offensives by the timber junta in control of the Forest Service itself, purges of resource specialists and honest managers inside the agency 7 , the Clinton administration's inability to pursue even a failed liberal vision of environmental reform, cutthroat manueverings by Western politicians defending porkbarrel destruction, and the hapless flounderings of the national environmental groups, an activist could almost lose sight of the continuing crimes against nature at the heart of all the intrigue. Almost.

But every day the political nightmare drags on is another chunk tom from the wounded land, a thousand stumps more left screaming on the mountainside, another river filled bank-to-bank with silt, cowshit, and endless reports detailing in exquisite obtusity the damage to be done according to the Plan. The politics matter because they control the fate of the forests.

The Timber Junta Takes the Offensive

The timber bureaucrats who run the Forest Service are old hands at Washington politics. The agency's recent policy initiatives, including its adoption of Interior Secretary Babbit's enthusiasm for "ecosystem management" and a preemptive strike against efforts to end subsidized clearcuts, show that USFS managers remain masters first and foremost of the management of perceptions.

Nigel Blakle/s neat summary of "Ecosystems Management" (see above) can scarcely be improved upon. His first comparison, of "Ecosystem Management" with "New Perspectives, " is particularly revealing, for the New Perspectades program used overkill technical analysis, totalitarian con flict-management techniques and All-American marketing sleaze to bathe the same old bulldozers, chainsaws andcows in a soft green light.

Cooptation is the classic political response to demands that won't go away. But sometimes a truly Machievellian strategist will take up a cause not to divert its followers, but to discredit them. That was almost certainly the case in the Forest Service's announcement this May of a new plan to end below-cost timber sales by 1998.

Below-Cost Timber Sales: The Big Setup

Forest activists have been hammering away for more than a decade at the Forest Service's practice of selling timber for a lot less than it costs to prepare, offer, monitor and mitigate the sales. With the federal deficit and environmental outrage both rising rapidly, the so-called below-cost timber sales have become a huge embarassment for the USFS. With the coming of the "environmentally enlighted" but "fiscally cautious" Clinton administration, reforms seemed inevitable.

But the USFS needs below-cost timber sales. Under accountingrules reminiscentofthe Medellin Cartel'smoneylaundering schemes, the Forest Service makes money by spending yours. In addition, a lot of the agency's support on Capitol Hill comes from the lobbyists and politicians who represent the interests that make big bucks on cheap federal trees.

So, before the new administration or the national environmental groups could get around to a serious attack on below-cost sales, the Forest Service announced its own proposal to end belowcost sales, one carefully calculated and orchestrated to provoke the biggest backlash. Enviros who caught wind of the plan were denied copies of the draft, even after a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. Not long after, one inquisitive activist was leaked a letterfroma southerntimber industry association which showedthat industry not only knew the details of the plan well in advance, but was working with the agency to shape a response.

The national environmental groups were caught with their pants down. Probably without seeing it, a Wilderness Society rep praised the plan on the front page of the New York Times in an article which proclaimed the new Forest Service proposal a stunning victory for environmentalists. In the rest of the concountry, regional and local papers ran stories foretelling the min of timber-dependent economies. The timber industry loosed a propaganda blitzkrieg. Proponents were stuck defending a lousy proposal they never made.

Net result: real below-cost timber sale reforms lost a lot of political ground.

The USFS never intended implementing the below-cost sales plan. In a series of memos down the chain of command, on-the-ground personnel were advised of ways to alter timber programs to avoid the proposed changes. No one began to plan for sharply reduced cuts: rather, District Rangers and Forest Supervisors kept planning for roading and logging in years when the plan being released to the press would have had entire forests shut down.

Suppression of Science & Dissent

Most of the changes that have been made in Forest Service policies have been imposed by advocates who force the agencyto live up to itsown specialists' findings about the impacts ofroading, grazing, and loggingprogramsonnative biodiversity.

Rather than change the policies causing all the conflict, USFS managers have done their best to undermine the laws—and the people producing the embarassing reports. Independent and agency researchers alike have faced severe attack by National Forest managers. In the desert southwest, a 20-year researcher was thrown off Forest Service land for failure to secure a permit no one else had ever had, critically interrupting his unique study of Mexican Spotted Owl reproduction. In the Northern Rockies, a USFS hydrologist finally resigned ratherthan accept continued suppression of studies which showed dearcutting was wrecking water quality and harming endangered stocks of wild salmon and trout. In Alaska, a report on the habitat needs of old growth dependent forest species produced by an entire group of USFS and other sdentists was shelved, and a road engineer wrote a document dismissing the biological effects of dearcutting whole islands of temperate rainforest.

Reform-minded, or just marginally honest line officers—the District Rangers, Forest Supervisors, and Regional Foresters who actually make policy—have been sanctioned and purged as well. In late May of 1993, maverick Forest Supervisors in the Northern Rockies were removed under pretext ofa procurement scandal. (USFS proceduralmanuals are so tight no one can actually operate by the letter of the regulations, giving higher-ups an easy way to discipline dissidents and managers who don't make their timber quotas.)

To Save the Forests, We Must Destroy the Forest Service

Serious advocates for forest ecosystems largely agree that to secure changes in policy adequate to protect biodiversity, the Forest Service must be destroyed. Though you won't read it in Sierra or National Wildlife, even Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation people privately agree the Forest Service has to be taken down from the top. The timber junta has to be crushed, purged, sent packing to retirement in some nice medium-security federal prison. They are criminals, after all.

Bubba and the Tar Baby

Bill Clinton stepped smackinto the stickiest, most highprofile part of the national war over forest policy when he convened his Forest Conference in Portland this April 2. The situation will certainly have changed again by the time you read this, but indications in earlyJune are both murky and dear. Murky, because no one knows what Clinton will do with the "options" handed him by three policy task forces which aren’t talking to each other. Clear, becauseJackWard Thomas' third bigwhack at the question ofwhat it'll take to protect forest ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest has produced—by rumor, now—choices ranging from 300 to 900 million boardfeet in annual timber cuts from Washington and Oregon national forests. That's down from more than five billion boardfeet only four years ago.

Clinton faces squarely the tough choice politidans have skirted for generations. It looks likely he'll punt, tossing the choice back to the Northwest congressional delegation. Given Clinton's plummeting public approval, his advisors are reluctant to risk any move which could cost him votes in the West—or Western votes in Congress.

The Timber Junta Takes the Offensive II

That means no real forest protection, period. The country's second-most powerful elected official, Speaker of the House Tom Foley, has built a long career on close connections to the timber interests of Eastern Washington, and played a key role in killing a decent Northwest forests bill last year. Across the Northwest, "progressive" Democrats are similarly tied to timber—or timber unions, which are practically the same thing. Former Democratic Rep. Les AuCoin of Oregon, now a timber lobbyist, could have been speaking from his old office when he recently laid down industry'sdemandsfor the White House: 2.5 billion boardfeet or bust. We can't live with less.

Across the rest of the West, the story's the same. Democrats like Senator Max Baucus of Montana have taken up the role of industry enforcer that conservative Republicans played over the last twelve years. Bill Clinton needs those Democratic votes, and those Democrats don't want real change.

Those Lame Bastards in DC

Now that there's an administration in place that will actually hire some of their number, the national environmental corporations—the "GreenGroup"—can'tbringthemselves to demand actual environmental protection. Forests are nice, and they dobring in pretty good direct-mail dollars, but there's political reality to consider, after all. If you go in demanding unreasonable things like the destruction of the FS, you're just going to alienate people. People towhomyou need access, if you're going to keep your job as a lobbyist.

Making Real Change

Fixing the Forest Service is only a special case of saving the world. It's up to us, and people like us. It's going to be a longer, harder fight than we had hoped. But every time we reveal abuses, every time we showthe Forest Service up as the criminal gang they collectively are, we move closer to real change. What choice do we have, after all? If we don’t stop them, no one will.

Scott Greacen is a semi-professional malcontent.

Cove Mallard Action

Information for Direct Defense of the Heart of the Big \$lderness

What’s going on here?

Briefly: two wild and roadless areas adjoining the biggestwildemess in the continental United States are being roaded and logged by the USDA Forest Service. We are determined to stop them. The rest of this primerwill tell you about the Cove and Mallard roadless areas and why so many species need them to remain untrammeled. So here I’ll just introduce who we are.

Earth First! It simply means that in any situation we prioritize the well-being of the planet and all of its ecological communities. It’s a condensation of Aldo Leopold’s famous land ethic: A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community; it is wrong when it tends otherwise.

This ethic of putting the earth first has been taken up by the wide array of people who constitute our movement. We have no official membership or national organization. The only other thing we all share in common is a basic strategic agreement which is our second motto: No compromise in the defense of Mother Earth!

The No Compromise position means two things. First, that we will not compromise one part of the wilds to save another. Because our industrial civilization has already gone way too far, imperiling the very survival of thousands of species on this continent alone, we demand absolute protection of all existing wilderness; then we’d like to see restoration of the land we have already razed. In Idaho, for instance, we’d like to start with the decommissioning and replanting of the Magruder Corridor, a dirt road which alone separates the Selway-Bitterroot from the River of No Return Wilderness.

The other part of No Compromise refers to our actions. We are not content to simply voice protest and then weep as wilderness and biodiversity go under the axe. We belong to the wilds and cannot live long if they die, so we take direct, physical action to stop the ecological holocaust that will destroy every one of us on the planet. We adhere to non-violent principles, respecting all forms of life, and within these we do whatever is necessary to protect the diversity of life which is daily more endangered.

The problem, and the strength, of this No Compromise position is that we can’t be satisfied by the kind of mealy political wilderness sell-outs that tend to come more often than real victories. We have to admit that the odds are against us. And because of this, we need help.

We’re not asking for your money, we’re asking for your body, and your mind, and your soul. The purpose of this primer is to light a fire under your ass so you’ll jump up already running towards central Idaho.

We will be using whatever means of direct action we can come up with that looks like it has any chance of stopping or slowing the Forest Service’s roadblazing and clearcutting. There are also lawsuits pending which may stop them; it’s vital that we minimize the damage done before these suits come to court, and that we’re prepared to keep the roads and saws out of the wilds indefinitely if the lawsuits lose. There’s only a chance that we’ll be able to do it, but it’s a chance that many wild things may depend on.

This primer should give you some idea of what’s at stake here. The middle sheet of paper has maps you can take into the woods. The campaign will be going through the end of summer and beyond, unless we can shut them down for good before then — and if we can, we’ll have a hell of a party and probably all move on together to another part of the besieged wilds. So try to get on out here.

The land was wild,

and the animals andpeople on it, and much abounded.

The seasons ran up and down the rivers with the salmon and poured from the mountains to the plains and back with the bison. Both salmon and buffalo ran in hordes and died in droves. Huge bears wandered across the prairie valleys and gorged themselves on these. Others crept through the tangled woods and denned in deep thickets. Beaver gentled the wild streams and made deep pools for bull trout. Cranes and crossbills flew over this all without seeing a line out of place. Snakes and frogs moved across a land unfettered by ribbons of slaughter.

Alright: then, we know, the men came from England and N ew England, and Appalachia and France, and they killed most of the original people and animals, and they cast a net over the land and caught it and tried to tame it. But the land is still wild underneath, so every year the Euroamericans weave tighter their net of roads, and it becomes harder and harder for the wilds to survive.

The land is caught in a net of roads, they run along every coast and most rivers, they cross every low mountain pass; they are placed at all the easiest points of travel, and they catch millions of critters every year. Millions alone are flattened by the new dominant creature on the continent —the car— many others are shot by slobs who would never have bothered walking half a mile to find them, many more simply cannot survive in a habitat so divided, so full of roaring machines and foul exhausts.

In some places the net of roads is so tight that the big creatures of the wild — bears, panthers, great old trees — have been strangled out, and the smaller ones face daily decimation. Roadkill is a major cause of death for a number of federally-listed threatened and endangered species. Reptiles and amphibians, which move across the land rather slowly, are particularly vulnerable to roads and are among the most imperilled classes of critters. P oadways are not only a theater of death for the many animals who fall beneath the wheel; they also exacerbate many of the other problems which threaten wild things— overhunting and overtrapping, both legal and illegal, exotic species invasions, pollution, habitat destruction — as well as essentially defining habitat fragmentation.

Even in the Northwest the roads have spread across the mountains and deserts and once-forested land and driven many wild species from their former homes.

But in the Northern Rockies there are some great holes in the net. Here the terrain has been so rugged and so remote that it has not been worth the while of the land tamers to spend the great effort it would take to road it and raze it. Until now. Now that the timber companies have stripped the huge coastal forests and are still hungry for profit; and now that the federal government, run by industry lobbyists, is willing to spend millions of dollars to chauffer them to the trees; now the last wild places are increasingly in danger.

The largest of these places left in the Wild Rockies, and in the continental US as a whole for that matter, is a huge area in the middle of Idaho which is so remote that it has no popular name, as do the High Sierras and the North Cascades. For years it has rather technically been called The Central Idaho Wilderness Complex, and now some are beginning to call it the Greater Salmon-Selway Ecosystem. What it urgently needs, more than a name, is protection.

The Greater Salmon-Selway stretches across the middle of the state of Idaho, and includes parts ofwestern Montana and eastern Oregon. A few roads slice though this area, separating off the Hell’s Canyon, the Sawtooths, and other wilderness areas. But at the heart lies the largest protected wildland in the contiguous States, the Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness, flanked by the adjoining Gospel Hump Wilderness and the adjacent Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Together these areas far exceed the size of any other wild place we have left.

The ecosystem lies in a geologic area known as the Idaho batholith, a granitic formation which produces steep topography along the river canyons in the area. Hell’s Canyon on the Snake River at the western edge of the region is the deepest canyon in the country, over 7,000 feet from rim to bottom in places. The Salmon River is, next to the Colorado in its run through the Grand Canyon, the largest unroaded length of wild water in the lower forty-eight, and in so forboding a canyon that Lewis and Clark turned back and named it the

The Land Caught in a Net of Roads

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Continued from first page

River of No Return. All in all, it’s superlative country.

The Salmon-Selway is rather unusual among unroaded areas in that it is not primarily “rock-and-ice” land of the sort often left alone because of its low economic value, land which is rather spectacular but which provides a limited habitat. There are some high gorgeous peaks in a few ranges — the Bitterroots, the Sawtooths — but most of the land is subal-pine and forested, a rich habitat for a diversity of species. The terrain is rugged and can be extremely steep in places. Due to the extensive forest cover and the subtle variations of the ridgetops, it’s fairly easy country to get lost if one lacks a map, compass and a basic orientation of the drainage patterns, contours, trail systems and the existing road network.

Above the deep canyons of the major rivers, most of the land is high enough to make for long, protracted winters with heavy snowpacks and fairly wet summers, hosting an exceptionally rich mid-elevation temperate forest ecosystem of Lodgepole Pine, Sub-alpine Fir and Douglas Fir on the ridgelines, Western Larch and Engelmann Spruce in the wetter draws and, as you descend down into the Salmon Breaks, huge, ancient Ponderosa Pine. These montane forest communities contain an array of habitats ranging from wet meadow complexes to grassy parklands to densely forested

summits. Here the Idaho Rockies are truly a wildlife paradise and harbor the last strongholds of Wolverine, Fisher, Pine Marten, Lynx, Mountain Lion, Black Bear, Harlequin Duck, Boreal and Flammulated owls, Goshawk, Chinook Salmon, Steelhead, and Bull Trout.

In the heart of this wild land lie the Cove and Mallard Roadless Areas. They are immediately to the northwest of the River of No Return Wilderness and to the east of the Gospel Hump Wilderness, and ten to twenty miles south and west of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. These adjoining areas encompass several large drainages that flow into the River-of-No-Return Wilderness and Salmon River. Although the river has been designated Wild and Scenic and its southern drainages protected by Wilderness designation, protectection was not quite extended north to the top of the watershed.

This corridor between the Gospel Hump and River of No Return Wildernesses is prime habitat. Unexiting perhaps to recreationalists and lobbyists who seek the spectacular, the Cove Mallard area is comprised of the kind of midaltitude forest that animals find so homey. Documented reports of Gray Wolf make the areas essential wolf recovery

habitat and this roadless corridor is important to grizzly recovery in the Greater Salmon/Selway ecosystem.

Here the Forest Service is planning one of the largest timber sales it has ever offered. All told, the Red River Ranger District plans to build 145 miles of new road and clearcut 81 milli on board feet of timber. Never before has the Northern Region undertaken such a massive project. Despite the fact that this sale is set to lose over six million dollars of the taxpayers’ money, the Freddies are hellbent on driving roads and clearcuts right through the forests, meadows and creeks until they reach the wilderness boundries.

In the winter of 1991, the Forest Service began their massive road-building and logging project. So far they have completed two roads, Noble and Grouse, that have amounted to over 20 miles of new roads, although alot of it washed into the rivers this last winter and spring. Like their roads, the Freddies’ biological justifications have been all washed out — not that every Forest in the country doesn’t flaunt the law routinely when it comes to causing species numbers to decline. With a whole lotta luck, this evil plot to finish off one of the last great unprotected roadless areas in the Greater Salmon/Selway could collapse under the weight of its own grotesquery Maybe all they need is a little push.

Defending Home Turf

We have an advantage. We are the “home team;” we are defending this area whilst the forces of progress are besieging it. This means they have to set up a complicated system for their attack, a system that has inevitable weak points. As Rhubarb says: Cut the Supply Lines. •

In order to build new roads and cut and haul trees, the Freddies etal have to rely on existing roads, on the infrastructure of road construction and timber milling, and their complicated bureaucracy. Interrupting them at any of these places could forstall the destruction of the wilds.

The Red River Ranger Station

is the office of the Forest Service most immediately responsible for this assault on the wilds. If you’ve got questions about the sales they’re the people to ask, unless you want information. They’re out in this remote location and are probably looking forward with great excitement to our company this summer.

The mill in Elk City

Well, that’s where dead trees turn into lumber. No-one has voiced any ideas for here yet. So put your fertile little minds to work.

The road

into the Cove and Mallard sales area is a long and fairly narrow one. The pile of “detour” signs leaning against the Highway Department building between Golden and Elk City suggests that rockslides or washouts periodically close it down. It might be possible for activists who are looking for a good site for civil disobedience to find some place along the road to do a sit in. This could have the effect, particularily if the stretch of road chosen is that between Elk City and Dixie, of keeping most workers out of the sales for a while and consequently halting or at least delaying the progress of destruction.

Anyone considering actions on the roadways needs to be extremely careful of the safety of both activists and potential drivers. Few places along the roadway offer very great visibilty. If activists are blockading the road, make sure to have support people down the road in either direction flagging cars down; if the barricade is inert, make sure signs give adequate warning.

The Magruder Corridor is one of the most despicable roads in the country, dividing the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness to the north from the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness to the south. There is no reason why this road should be there, and no reason why it should not be closed, removed and revegetated. The Freddies show no sign of doing this, so we may have to. If you have any ideas of how to do it, keeping safety in mind, don t hold back.

And, of course, the sales

will be where we focus most of our attention throughout the campaign. Here people might think of cementing themselves into the planned roadway, or simply sitting down in it; of locking themselves to the machinery of destruction or to the living trees, at ground level or further up; of running about in the woods to prevent cutting; of playing drums and bagpipes and singing eerie songs; of building barricades; and, hopefully, of something no-one else has thought of before.

It may be hard to find some of the sales, as apparently many of the survey stakes have been removed, but we should be able to tell where they’re working, and to stop them, stop them, stop them.

Ambling about in the forrest

The next few pages show in fair detail the proposed sales and the area we'll be working in. Because of the scope of the sale area we can't here provide finely detailed topo maps of everywhere we might be, but we should have some at base camp or you can pick some up at an outdoors store. But this center page should be an adequate map for going into the woods. It's easy to get a little bit lost in this area, but it’s hard to get very lost, because downhill ends up south at the river and uphill ends up north at the ridge.

Our general strategy is to try to occupy the areas of the proposed roads and sales, to keep informed about their progress, and to stop the road construction and cutting through non-violent direct action. Obviously this strategy runs counter to that of the Freddies, who would like to get all the roads in and the trees cut as

fast as they can, hopefully without having to deal with us at all. And although these sales are in violation of a number of federal laws, as well as being ecologically reprehensible, the Freddies do have the various machineries of the law on their side.

The first legal move they will probably pull is to "close" the area in an attempt to keep us out of there entirely. This would mean that anyone found within the area could be and probably would be arrested— if caught. But there's an awful lot of country there, and the Freddies don't like to walk as much as we do. It is likely that many backcountry teams will continue to do reconnaissance and action no matter the legal status of the area.

The Law is also required to warn people to leave a closed area before arresting them, and although they may try to claim they have

done this by announcing it at basecamp, we should be able to argue that groups already in the backcountry are not in violation of an order they don't know about.

The one exception to the closure order is for hunting, the only open season being on rabbits. Because we do not wish to have guns around we will be passing up rabbit season, but we would welcome any information about the sales from any hunters in the area unassociated with the Cove/Mallard campaigns.

The Freddies have the advantage of money and numbers; however, we have the advantages of passion, endurance and patience. With them, we should be able to do whatever we want in the woods.

The Cove/Mallard Campaign: What to Expect

N. Varmint:

Well, you can nevertell ahead of time exactly how an EF! campaign is going to run, and organizers who try to often come to grief over it. But we can tell you what we’re trying to set up, what we’re expecting, what we’re getting ready for. Hopefully some of this will fit in with what you might be interested in doing, and you can come add your own strategies to the pot. The earlier we find out about your ideas the more chance we have to prepare for backing them up logistically, so if you’ve got something you want support for, let us know , soon.

What we’re envisioning is a series of federated, loosely-coordinated actions. We’ve got a lot of area to cover, so we’ll probably set up several different bases from which activists can work. The types of action—blockades, lock-downs, barricades, cat & mouse, tree-hugging—will be as varied as they need to be to stop this roading and cutting, so there should be some type of thing tor everyone. We’re hoping for a big turnout, but we’re setting it up so every small group and individual should be able to have an impact even if the big plans don’t come off.

Because there will be a lot of small group actions, it would be ideal if people come in affinity groups, but if you don’t have one, don’t worry; we’ll be forming them when folks get here as well. As new people arrive, some of the people familiar with the area will take small groups out hiking to familiarize them with the region, to talk about the local ecology and the campaign, about affinity groups and woods skills. We’ll show new folks how to use a map and compass and how to move around in the woods. These walks will also be a good time for affinity groups to form and for people to discuss possible tactics and issues such as non-violence.

We’re taking non-violence pretty seriously this campaign, since we’re going to be pretty far out in the woods. We could encounter some dangerous situations and need to be prepared for them, remembering that using non-violence does not keep us safe. At the same time, direct encounters with loggers and locals without the interfering presence of police offers the greatest possibility of non-violence making a difference in the way local people think about us and about the issue. So its a situation of risk and possibility. We’ll be providing non-violence trainings once people get here, and we’d like everyone to go though them; they’ll tie in to woodsskills and the local situation, so they’ll be worth going to even if you have done a training before.

At the same time, we recognize that each affinity group is going to have its own interpretation of non-violence; some may allow for mischief and monkeywrenching, some may eschew property damage and sneakery. This may make the situation a little stickier for those of us doing straight CD, but we’re going to need all the help we can get. There are people to whom this area matters immensely, and if we told folks not to monkeywrench they’d probably do it anyway and with hard feelings all around. The important thing is that people don’t come under false pretenses; and if you can’t work on such a campaign we’ll miss you. This campaign is going to be intense; it could become one of the greatest things we’ve done.*

So what do you need ? Lots of experience, high-tech gear, a summer’s worth of food? Nah, none of that. We’re ready for everybody. What you need is a map (which you have already), the willingness, some basic gear (listed on opposite page), a bit oftime. Wewill feed you. We will teach you what you need to know. We will give you some ideas for actions. But what we need from you is some more creativity and passion; because we need to finally stop this road-building crap and protect one of the last big wild places, and we haven’t done it yet. We’re hoping we can come up with something really good and do it this summer.

In terms of the gear, take the list fairly seriously. The most important things are water bottles and clothing for all weather. Last September it was 16* (Fahrenheit!) one morning, and it gets toasty in the daytime. Bring wool or polypropylene; bring camping stuff and hiking shoes; in short, bring what you need but not too much. If you’re new at this and have any questions, get in touch with us ahead of time.

This campaign is about keeping machines and despoliation out of a defacto wilderness, an area that provides some of the last habitat for a wide variety of critters. We may be working with the Nez Perce to push restoring stewardship of the land to them. We are nor working towards sustainable logging, because logging is simply not sustainable for fishers, wolves and bears. There aren’t really a lot oflocals that for out there, and the ones that are should either be able to live with the wilds or move, because it is wild land out there. It is one of the wildest places you will ever go. We hope you do.

There’s a chance that the whole Freddy road & raze scam is going to get stopped in court. We’re not going to count on that until it happens, so we’re setting up the strongest and wildest campaign we can. So what if they call it off? We’re considering alternative campaigns anywhere between the Blue Mountains and the Badger Two Medicine. We can move the whole shebang. Come when you can, bring friends if you can, and be prepared to shut them down. Let the wilds come back!

* A Conundrum in Context:

These paragraphs, you may well notice, contradict each other. Obviously this represents a difference of opinion within Wild Rockies. While Wild Rockies Earth First! cannot speak for the Bus Brigade (which happens to own the land), no one individual can speak for Wild Rockies Earth First! when the individuals involved are themselves not in agreement. So there you have it: an internal contradiction. The reader may want to regard both statements (and this one as well) with a healthy portion of skeptism, and live as freely as she sees fit.

Jake Jagoff

The nature of the Cove/Mallard roadless campaign requires forest activists to literally be in more than one place at one time. Given the scale of the backcountry (over 130,000 acres) and the amount of road-building (145 miles) and timber sales (over 200 clearcuts) planned in the project area, the only way to be effective is to mobilize activists into small to medium sized affinity groups. These affinity groups must be flexible, disciplined, physically fit, and, most importantly, non-violent. Non-violent forest defense takes on many forms and there are certainly gray areas. Perspectives on non-violent direct action vary widely and it is certain that affinity groups will use different tactics.

For the purposes of Cove/Mallard, non-violent direct action will include tactics ranging from road blockades, lock-downs, barricades, tripods, cat & mouse, tree sits, tree hugging and office occupations. Wild Rockies EF! and the Ancient Forest Bus Brigade would respectfully ask individuals to refrain from monkeywrenching this summer in deference to^ the many activists who will be committing civil disobedience.

More than anything else, we want to stress that the campaign needs focused activists capable of spending the majority of their time in the field.

This is not to say that activists who are unable to participate in backcountry actions will not be welcome in the base camp. Obviously, there are many other roles, tasks and approaches which will be essential to keeping Cove/Mallard roadless. However, the Ancient Forest Bus Brigade and Wild Rockies Earth First! want to ensure that folks who come to support our campaign do just that — Provide support!

Erik Ryberg.

Cove/Mallard is just about as far from what is called the “civilized” world as one can get in this country. Missoula is the nearest “city,” and it’s six hours away by car. Kooskia, ID is the nearest town with groceries, a full service post office, etc., and it’s nearly 3 hours away. This distance makes some of the details of running a full-time campaign and forest occupation a little tricky, but we are fortunate to have been given a 20 acre piece of private land right in the middle of the timber sale area from which to operate. This makes planning a big campaign a whole lot easier.

This property will be one base for activists. We anticipate that a number of camps will be located throughout Cove and Mallard, and will be resupplied via a larger, coordinating camp on the property. Activists may check in at the main camp (or not, as they desire) and receive current information, non-violence training, supplies, etc. The semi-mobile “satellite” camps, however, will be where activists will gather when not out in the forest sightseeing or causing mischief. Food will be provided at these camps. Many of you are planning to come for extended periods; don’t worry about hauling around a month’s meals. You need only bring basic camping gear and high spirits. Money isn’t of much use, either, out there, although there is a bar in Dixie and everyone should have something tucked away in case of an unexpected arrest.

Which brings me to the next topic. The Forest “Service” is taking this very seriously. It spent $260,000 last summer on surveillance and harassment of protesters at Cove/Mallard, and there were rarely more than a dozen of us around. This year there will be many, many more of us and they will escalate accordingly. Should you be arrested for, say, “addressing an offensive comment to an officer lawfully present,” (this actually happened to me) you will be driven or flown to Boise and held there probably for the night. You will then, (again, probably) be released the next morning and

given a court date. Voila, you’re many miles from your gear, you’re in a real bad mood, and you’re stuck on some highway by the 7-11, next to the “Don’t Pick up Hitch-Hikers” sign. Fortunately for you, we have contacts in Boise and you’ll be given a bed and a shower and a hot meal, and somebody will figure out a way to get you back to camp.

Alternatively, you will be taken to the Idaho County Jail in Grangeville, which is a lot closer (three hours or so) and all your friends will show up for your arraignment and buy you a big pizza at Bob & Edna’s Chat ’n’ Chew, or whatever it is.

Anyway, I want to emphasize that anyone in the area is at all times at risk of arrest, even if he or she is not participating in an “action.” Mike Merkley, the man in charge of law enforcement on the Nez Perce NF, takes an Ed Meese approach toward forest activism: if you weren’t guilty of something, he reasons, you wouldn’t be at Cove/Mallard. Though something of a dullard in other endeavors, he is a very creative man when it comes to dreaming up law violations. The flip side of all this is that the courts get a little tired of seeing shackled activists standing before them in orange jumpsuits pleading “not guilty” and demanding public defenders for the equivalent of parking violations.

When you arrive at Cove/Mallard we would like you to stop by the main camp so we can help direct you where your skills and desires will most likely be fruitful. At this camp we will ensure you have a good map, a place to leave your car if you brought one, and directions to the satellite camps. We also will provide non-violence trainings and workshops on the area. We are encouraging people to take a short trip, two or three days, into Cove/Mallard before they move into a camp and actively participate in the campaign. A number of women and men who are experienced activists and familiar with Cove/Mallard’s politics, ecology, and landscape will be on hand to guide these trips. These trips will be tailored to each group’s experience in activism and backcountry skills, and they will be designed to instill a working understanding of the area and the problems at hand. Even if you only have a few days to spend at Cove/Mallard, we hope you will allow us to guide you across the area. We think that after you take a dip in Noble Creek, after you howl with the wolves on the Salmon River Breaks, and after you ponder for a while the horrible possibility of bulldozers bringing it all to a ruin, you’ll come back to defend this giant piece of the Big Outside.

Wild Rockies Earth First! Box 9286

Missoula, MT 59807

Bulk Rate US Postage

PAID

Permit #250 Missoula, MT

Address Correction Requested Please Forward

To Lewiston

Gening to the Cove and Mallard areas isn’t hard; it just takes a long time. You can find Grangeville and probably Kooskia (pronounced “Kooskie”) in any atlas, and from there follow along the route this map shows, up route 14 next to the Clearwater almost to Elk City, turning off (right) along Red River on road 222, taking that through Dixie and turning south (left) on 222D and following that to the Comstock Mine where the Bus Brigade owns land and will be setting up base camp. There are other Forest Service roads not shown on this map, so if you get yer kicks by recreating on yer public backroads you should pick up a Nez Perce National Forest map at any Region One office.

j Key to Sale Map:

Proposed Cutting Unit Exisdng Cut Existing Road Proposed Road

-Trail

Each Square

Represents One Square Mile

Contour Intervals: 50 m

Action Resource Information: for direct defense of & in the the wilds!

Things to remember in the woods

•The ecological community you are in has seen centuries. Take your time.

•We belong to the woods, and we can feel safe in them. If you get unsetded by whatever is coming down, stop a minute, crawl into the bush, and pay attention to plants & bugs.

♦Take hints from the ways other people (deer, badgers, et at) live and move in the woods.

•Motion is visible; the best way to hide is to keep still, face covered.

•Darkness can help us and hold us safe.

•Its usually easier to deal with tough situations when you’re with a buddy, or a tight affinity group.

•Take care of each other.

•Be ready for the unexpected; imagine possible scenarios and stay alert and responsive to whatever situations occur.

Distinguish logistical strategies like these from non-violence principals. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of saying stuff like, “But drinking isn’t non-violent...” While sobriety may be prudent, it is not a measure of pacifism.

Some principles of non-violence

(each affinity group should consense on their own)

•We listen to others and acknowledge our differences.

•We endeavor to respect all living things we encounter. (Even cops, though not too much)

•We will not return the hostility or anger of others.

•We will take personal responsibility for being in a clear state of mind.

•We will not retreat from conflict if it occurs, but will act in ways to resolve it peacefully. (We will not leave others in the lurch.)

•We realize that there may be people at the actions

(including workers or police) who do not share the same principles we do.

Caution: Non-violent direct action may be hazardous to your health, and in some cases has led to injury and even death. Self-preservation is not a wise reason to use non-violence. We use it to try to stop the cycle of destruction, but that sometimes means it stops after us. Be careful and brave.

Affinity Groups (AGs) and Support

The easiest way to organize decentralized actions is through affinity groups. Each activist belongs to a group which can make its own plans and coordinate them with the whole. If you don’t have a group to start with you can join an existing one or start a new one. While local organizers can provide alot of ideas and resources, each group is ultimately responsible for itself.

When you plan an action, make sure you include support roles: emergency contact people, drivers for drop ofife and pick ups, media spokesfolks, etc. Remember these things are as important as the “star roles” of the action.

Discuss with your AG your preferences in sticky situations. Do you want search & rescue sent after you if you are lost, or would you rather die in the wilderness? Do you want others to be with you if you get nabbed? Discuss jail solidarity before you get arrested.

Always have suppoit phone numbers with you, preferably written on you so they can’t be taken away in jail, and money for a phone call. If you’re going to use an alternative name or story, get it together beforehand and have a support person who knows it.

The support numbers for this action are:

Security and evaluation: Two of the most important parts of an action are talking about it afterwards and not talking about it afterwards.

Always get together with your affinity group after any action and discuss what went well and what could have been done better. This is useful for meetings as well.

Don’t talk about anything illegal you or others have done to anyone who doesn’t need to know .

Assume that others may have more need of your security habits than you do, and be tight about them.

Gear List

Clothes: for full range of possible weather!

get camo or drab clothes, or use black, drab, and khaki paint to camouflage your gear

V hat, gloves (for warmth & security), socks, bandannas

V throwaway shoes

for situations in which you don’t want prints matched

V non-camo jogging underclothes

for leaving a place without looking like a guerrilla

V raingear Sustenance

V water bottle(s): full when you start out

V food: compact, high energy Orientation

V flashlight/headlamp

(be careful about pointing headlamp at people)

V extra batteries, extra bulb

V red lens or cellophane to mask lens

V compass & map(s)

Emergency stuff

v space blanket

V matches/lighter

>/ first aid kit: bandaids, tape & gauze, anti-bacterial cream, ace bandage, butterfly bandages, splinter kit (needle, tweezers, razor), snakebite kit.

V whisde

V mirror/ something bright to attract attention

V water purification tablets This and that

V pocketknife

V duct tape (wrap around pencil stub)

V cord or webbing

V watch (synchronized with AG)

V cayenne (for warm toes & safe trails)

V sleeping bag & shelter (tarp or tent) for long trips

V moneyand phone numbers for a phone call

Keep emergency stuff, some food (& water), & orientation stuff in fanny pack, which you do not take off. Extra clothes and food can go in backpack which can be ditched. Make sure you have all you need in your backpack; its a drag if your AG splits up and you don’t have food or raingear with you.

If you’re picking up stuff, its always nice to grab some extra batteries, compasses, etc. because there will always be folks who don’t have them.

Critter checklist

When you are out in the woods, keep an eye out for these sensitive plants and animals, as a positive I.D. may help shut the sales down:

Piliated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)

Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis)

Townsend’s Big-Eared Bat (.Plecotus townsendii townsendii) Wolverine (Gulo gulo)

Pine Marten (Martes americana)

Fisher (Martes pennanti Erxleben 1777)

Selway Snow Pig (Niveoporcus merklecidus Barnes 1991) Grizz (Ursus arctos horribilis)

Flammulated Owl (Otusflammeolus)

Candystick (Allotropa virgata)

Bull Trout (Salvelinus confluentus)

Steelhead (Oncorhynchus my kiss)

Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tschawytscha)

Harlequin Duck (Histrionicus histrionicus)

Ferruginous Hawk (Buteo regalis)

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus )

Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)

Boreal Owl (Aegolius funereus)

Ringneck Snake (Diadophispunctatus)

Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)

NATIONAL rOREST(S):

Clearwater, Ne* Perea; possibly occurring on th# Kanlksu, Coeur d'Alene, St.

HABITATt

Candystick grows on dsap huaus and partially decoapoaed logs In grand fir, and waatarn red cedar forests. It Is also associated with lodgepole pine and subalplne fir.

Candystick la a saprophytic perennial, froa 1 to A da (A to 16 In) tall.

Leaves are scale-like and yellowish-brown. The flowers are elongate teralnal clusters. Each flower Is subtended by a bract such longer than the flower. Thera are no petals, and the 5 sepals are about 5 aa long. Flowers froa Hay through August.

Use this Action Resource information sheet for any campaign. Copy a topo map of your area on the reverse side.

Enough Already! Organizing Against Overpopulation

Marching Against Maternity. Kelpie explains that the woman in front of the parade wanted a baby and a dog, but got a plastic dolly and puppy instead, "because they can survive."

In these twisted times, fatherhood threatens to become a responsibility, and unwanted children can ruin important vacation plans. This all-natural method, soon to be endorsed by the Pope, will protect you, your lifestyle, your finances, and your reputation. Directions included (optional reading for the real man).

Parts:

1 - paleolithic flint scalpel with authentic caveman cutting edge

1 - section of willow ( salix alba), containing the all-natural painkiller salicylic acid (can be reused as a soak for sweaty feet).

10 - little black ants ( monomorium minimum) for all-natural suturing. As shown on TV.

Wash affected area with soap and water. Place willow stick firmly between teeth.

Use the flint scalpel to make the incisions shown

Locate the vas deferens just behind the fan belt and below the warp drive adjustor

deferens Note: this process is NOT reversible

On one testicle, hold incision shut with fingers Place ants so that pincers securely grip both edges of closed wound

Gently twist ant bodies from ant heads, leaving head and pincers as temporary sutures. Repeat on other testicle Note: because these authentic monomorium minimum ants are made of plastic, some adjustment may be necessary

—Kelpie Wilson

The Animal Doctor opened the glass doors to the pub on the Sacramento State University Campus. It was St. Patrick's day. Green beer, not weighty issues like the Irish potato famine and overpopulation, were on students' minds. The Animal Doctor yelled, projecting in her best theatrical manner: "All you humans of reproductive age, please come outside for a few minutes. I have a very important message for you." Olivia Egg, Sammy Sperm, and a host of endangered critters were already cavorting outside the windows in front of the pub. Green beer or no, students could not suppress their curiosity about a six-foot long, shiny blue sperm and a four foot diameter plump pink egg. They came streaming out to see the show.

What they saw was the Animal Doctor, telling them that an overpopulation of humans was driving the wild animals up into the hills in isolated wilderness areas where they were dying out The animals had asked the Animal Doctor to take all the humans to the clinic and get them fixed since their breeding was out of control, but it was too big a task. Instead, the Animal Doctor brought out a huge condom and a huge diaphragm. With the help of Olivia Egg and Sammy Sperm, these contraceptives were demonstrated to the college audience. "We know you have birth control—please use it!" exhorted the Animal Doctor. And don't forget that using condoms can help prevent AIDS." After a final demonstration of RU 486 (when other methods fail), the Enough Already! crew (Debbie Lucas as Sammy Sperm, Kevin Browning as Olivia Egg and Kelpie Wilson as the Animal Doctor) passed out free condoms to the throng of students. Perhaps we could be instrumental in preventing conception at the Bacchanalian romps that would inevitably occur that evening in the name of the Shamrock. Students were also invited to come hear more about overpopulation at the slideshow later that afternoon.

Enough Already! presented the skit and the slideshow at six college campuses and five evening community events in Oregon and California between March 6 and March 20. We also presented a special version of the skit to two elementary school classes. We did a longer, slower version of the skit and then answered questions and tried to explain things like exponential growth to the kids (what would happen if every one in this class had five kids and then those kids had five kids each?). These presentations were the most fun and also felt the most effective. This is the audience we need to reach. One classroom was at an alternative school and

had ages from 7 to 15. The other was a combined 5th and 6th grade class in a public school with a very sympathetic teacher. Fifth and sixth graders were thinking about these issues already, so it seems like the right time to get them to think about the environmental consequences of reproduction.

Once people's interest was piqued by the skit, the slideshow allowed us to present some of the deeper ramifications of the complex topic of human overpopulation. The slideshow begins with an introduction to forest ecology and then ties the proliferation ofclearcuts to the proliferation of people and their consumption. A comparison of the numbers of forest dependent species to the numbers of people in California is instructive—humans outnumber the spotted owls by 7500 to 1, and even the salmon by 75 to 1. We are quite literally displacing the animals. The slideshow goes on to explain the frightening consequences of exponential growth and the grim outlook for the survival of even the human species given our rate of resource consumption and destruction of vital environmental components like the ozone layer.

Then the slideshow begins to explore new territory by asking the question: "Is it not a form of child abuse to bring a child into a world where there is so little hope for the future? The graphic image of a fair-skinned infant exposed to the UV hazards of an ozone-depleted atmosphere is presented, along with images of children spending their time in front of video terminals (in the "virtual reality" that they increasingly live in as the natural environment degrades). Modem humans are so disconnected from the natural environment that we are no longer capable of making sensible choices about reproduction. This is in contrast to both animals and people in a wild, natural setting.

Contrary to popular opinion, wild creatures don't always rely on predators to keep their numbers down. Instead, many animals take steps to regulate their own populations. For example, the classic textbook case of predator/prey relations, tire population cycles of the lynx and the snowshoe hare, turns out to occur not because overhunting by the lynx causes a crash in the rabbit population, but because general reproductive failure by the rabbits curtails the food supply of the lynx , which then experiences a population crash. The rabbits experience reproductive failure because

of the stress due to the overcrowding. The slideshow gives several more examples: Overcrowded tree shrews eat their young. Wolves use dominance relations to ensure that only one female in the pack breeds when food is scarce. Humans from nomadic, hunting and gathering cultures relied on prolonged nursing and a low fat diet to limit ovulation, with infanticide as a backup.

As human cultures became more agricultural and more sedentary, biological population controls were less effective, and cultural population controls became more necessary. These included late marriage, polygamy, celibacy, abortion and infanticide (especially female infanticide). The problem of human fertility control, in fact, has had a profound effect on the development of culture. This effect is especially easy to discern when one looks at the status of women. The Catholic Church and other patriarchal institutions have built entire power structures upon the regulation of sex and the exploitation of women. These expansionist cultures are always in need of new territory, so the ultimate expression of the patriarchal thrust is the space program. Yet, according to Helen Caldicott, NASA's space shuttle program alone will deplete the ozone layer by 10% in the next ten years. It is obvious that the patriarchal, expansionist phase of human history is coming to an end.

The slide show ends with a call to join in a pregnancy strike, after the example of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Flynn was a IWW organizer early in this century who distributed birth control information to women because, as she said, "the large family system rivets the chains of slavery upon labor more securely. It crushes the parents, starves the children, and provides cheap fodder for machines and cannons." Americans are asked to join in the strike for the additional reason that our consumption habits are eating the planet alive—on that basis the USA is the world's most overpopulated country—and because it is not fair to children to bring them into our dysfunctional society and environmentally depleted world.

Besides "Enough Already!" our slogans for the tour were, "More Wilderness, Not More People," and "Join the Ozone Hole Pregnancy Strike."

Kelpie Wilson is a rocket scientist, but since she works for the Siskiyou Regional Education Project in Southwest Oregon, we don't hold it against her.

[image not archived]

Complimentary Mini - Sample

Kunstwaffen is Artweapons in German

photo by Kelpie Wilson

Two Interviews with Dave Foreman

Todd Schuman and Lee Dcsseanx talked with Foreman in Santa Cruz, California in February of 1993.

T&L: Dave, do you still follow the Earth First! movement, read the Journal, follow the debates and keep abreast of campaigns?

DF: I look at the Journal, I talk to groups of Earth Firstlers all over the country ... last year!visited with Earth Firstlers in Vermont, Florida, and Austin, Texas ... essentially whenever I speak I see folks and talk to them, and keep up to date more or less.

T&L: Is there anything that you would like to say in general to the movement of which you have been such an integral part?

DF: I guess if I could offer any kind of advice at all, it's just that as lobbyists for the Sierra Club can become trapped by their world view of Potomac fever, of being trapped by being reasonable, it is also easy to become trapped in having to be overtly "radical," whatever that means, and I would just gently suggest that we should be guided by what works and not get trapped into doing something because it is a style that we think is proper.

Certain things work in certain places, and I think as a generalist species, human beings are best when they are very flexible, and can move very fast, and that one of the things that we have in our advantage is that the "mega machine," in Lewis Mumford's terminology, is not very flexible, it is very ossified, it is very slow to move and react.

All of us in the ecocentric movement have to be very fast on our feet. We are smarter than they are, we are faster than they are. They are a lot bigger and more powerful than we are, so let's stay flexible, let's not get trapped into doing certain things because it is how we have done them or because there is a certain cachet about being "radical."

T&L: Would you be willing to share your thoughts about strategy in this post-Bush period? More specifically, what roles and under what circumstances should direct action and monkeywrenching per se plan in such a strategy?

DF: The first thing to remember is that it was not reaction to Ronald Reagan that caused the launching of the Earth First! movement. It was reaction to Jimmy Carter. I was New Mexico Chairman of Conservationists for Carter and out of my frustration and the frustration of other folks seeing the Administration co-opt conservation groups we started Earth First! The entire conservation movement needs to learn from the Carter experience.

We had members of the Carter Administration who had worked for conservation groups—people like Cedi Andrus as Secretary of the Interior— telling us "don't worry, we will take care of it," and we let them take care of it, and we got shafted....

It is our job to make Bill Clinton and A1 Gore live up to their campaign promises. It is our job to push them even further. We are really fortunate that with A1 Gore we have a V-P who can even spell biodiversity, and knows what it means. But that does not mean that A1 Gore is going to do what is right on his own. His heart is in the right place, he generally knows what he is talking about, but there needs to be massive political pressure across the whole spectrum, from the National Wildlife Federation on the one hand to Earth First! and the Sea Shepherds on the other.

T&L: So you would concur that direct action will remain an important tool and technique for generating pressure on the Administration?

DF: Sure, like the Nature Conservancy buying land remains an important tool. We need the whole gamut, and we have to figure out where each one of those things works best... which time, which place, how to do it.

T&L: What do you think about the recent "ecoflavored" Animal Liberation Front actions concerning factory fur farming and ADC?

DF: I personally think that there are some fundamental philosophical differences in the world view between ecocentric conservation and animal liberation. That does not mean there has to be any conflict at all about working together on certain issues or cooperating. I wrote one place that while we have philosophical debates about animal rights and ecocentrism in Environmental Ethics or other publications, those debates don't take place on the ground where activists from those two camps work together on specific issues. While I might disagree on certain things, and I might even get upset if somebody started throwing rocks in the stream in which I was flyfishing [laughter], I think that there are a lot of areas where cooperation can be had. I think, for example, your (Lee's) incredibly courageous actions in Yellowstone with the bison is a very good example of that. I personally would like to see bison being killed in Yellowstone National Park—I would just like to see wolves doing it instead of fat Montana Bubbas.

T&L: Well said ... I think we are starting to see more and more of a blending. I see the animal community moving toward the eco-community and vice versa. It is very refreshing.

DF: Well, it is. It is very encouraging, and I am very glad that animal liberation folks are focusing on wild species as well as domestic species. I think that as there is a focus on wild species, and wild ecosystems, there will be more of an ecological sensitivity developed.

T&L: Do you have any advice for activists doing "underground" actions?

DF: To keep a very pure mind about what you are doing. And that applies for all of us no matter what arena you are in, whether you are a lobbyist or a lawyer, or a night-time maintenance person, is to keep a pure mind about you, and to never lose sight of just how important the work that we are doing really is ... what a spiritual activity you are engaged in. You are doing sacred work and you should have to live up to that responsibility, to that sacredness. We should operate so that our actions help us grow, become better people as we do it.

Now I am not a New Age person, I am not a religious person, I am not somebody who is into human potential or anything, but I do believe that we have to be the best people we can be, and that what we do has to help us move in that direction, and so act with grace, act with care, act with concern for all life, and respect for everything. It is not easy to do it — it is very difficult to do, and none of us are ever going to live up to that, but we can move in that direction.... Keep a pure heart and mind about what you are doing. You are a religious warrior for the Earth, g

In late May of 1993, Dave came to Redfish Lake, Idaho, hard against the high Sawtooths, to speak at the annual conference of the Idaho Conservation League. Scott Greacen asked a few more questions for the Journal.

SG: Rik Scarce is being held in the Spokane County jail for refusing to divulge certain of his contacts with activists to a federal grand jury.

DF: The Gulag is alive and well in America. People need to write Janet Reno and tell her that the Palmer Raids must stop.

SG: What do you mean when you use the phrase "the Palmer Raids?"

DF: Mitchell Palmer was the Attorney General in the last administration of Woodrow Wilson. A young Assistant Attorney General named J. Edgar Hoover cooked up a plan under the Alien Act to round up and deport resident aliens suspected of radical and anarchist tendencies. That was the origin of the FBI, and the greatest assault on free speech and dissent in this country's history. It destroyed the IWW [the International Workers of the World, or Wobblies — ed.].

The mentality that put Rik Scarce in jail for refusing to identify his sources

is the same that launched the Palmer Raids after World War I. Rik Scarce is a much a hero as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and he's a helluva lot nicer person.

To protect ecosystems which span national borders, and to respond to corporate initiatives like GATT and NAFTA, it seems to me one of the most pressing tasks for Earth activists is to work effectively across national borders. How do we do that?

That's going to be a very good thing for us to learn how to do. Central America is way ahead of us now with the Paseo Pantera. When we go down there, we go to educate people about wildlands protection, but also to learn. That's something Americans need to do.

Do you support a boycott of B.C.?

Oh, yeah, and not just B.C. I recently refused to attend the International Whitewater Championships in Norway, where I'd been asked to speak at an wilderness conference associated with the championships, because of Norway's plans to resume whaling. International boycotts are one of our most effective tools.

But it is racist and patronizing for us to think people outside the U.S., Australia and Canada can't appreciate wilderness for its own sake. We have to be concerned about social justice, but we don't have to water down our concern for wild places and life.

In the first few months of the Clinton Administration, Western members of Congress have strongly resisted even minor reforms in natural resource policies. Max Baucus, Democratic Senator from Montana, led a successful effort to pressure the Clinton White House into withdrawing grazing, mining, and logging reforms from the budget proposal. Now Baucus has forced Rep. Joe Kennedy not to introduce the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act by threatening funding for the "cleanup" of Boston Harbor. Are we in for bitter disappointment from Clinton?

11 think it's a little too early to gauge. There are always different ways to accomplish the same ends. I've been disappointed by the way Clinton backed down, but somehow we've got to break the power of the Western Senators. We did it with ANILCA [the Alaska Native Land Claims Act — ed], but the Sierra Club developed an assumption it could be done but once. This assumption is belied by the Forest Summit. Even if it doesn't come out the way we want it to, we're still steamrolling the Northwest congressional delegation.

The whole question raises a historical problem. Buying into a state-by-state approach with RARE II was a mistake. In the seventies, we didn't do that. We passed bills which protected National Wildlife Refuges and Primitive Areas all over the country.

Moving away from that approach, accepting the agencies' state-by-state approach, was one of the biggest strategic mistakes the movement has made. We need to build on what the Northwest Ancient Forest movement has been doing in breaking down state delegations' control. NREPA is the perfect vehicle for that.

How does the campaign to protect the Cove-Mallard area fit in with changing the politics of the Northern Rockies?

It's crucial. You're dealing with the largest wildlands complex in the Northern temperate world. You're also redressing a compromise a few conservationists made over 15 years ago in the Jersey-Jack negotiations. It is an absolutely urgent and appropriate place to draw the line. And we have to look at what created the Ancient Forest issue in the Pacific Northwest — mass civil disobedience.

If it's done well, if people learn from and improve on previous campaigns, it can make the Northern Rockies a national issue. But it's important to keep in mind that the issue is the most important thing, not statements about lifestyle. [The question is] how do you appeal to the hearts and minds of America and the mral residents of Northern Idaho? If it's possible, how do we avoid unnecessarily alienating them? ■

ADC Shut Down? The Killing Continues

by Chris Schwaderer

In the last issue of the Journal , a front page story described a Humane Society lawsuit which shut down offices of the Animal Damage Control (ADC) in most Western states. It seems we should not be quite so optimistic about the ADC's demise. ADC offices throughout the West were stalled because they failed to comply with National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations, but large loopholes still exist for predator-killers to ply their trade.

So, in the spirit of NEPA, a feeble and toothless procedural law, ADC offices throughout the West are frantically working to establish minimum compliance. Five districts in Utah, a state proud of its predator-killing campaigns, have already begun working on Environmental Assesments, so they can resume the killing soon. Wyoming is not wasting any time, either.

It is clear that the ADC was not shut down in order to abate the slaughter of wild predators, but to ensure that the ADC killed within legal boundaries established by the Feds. So, once the ADC becomes current on predator control plans the poison will flow once again.

According to Tom Skeele of the Predator Project, it is still possible for ranchers bent on predator control to circumvent the present restrictions on ADC sanctioned killing by filin g a plea for "emergency control" measures. If a rancher has an implacable urge to destroy troublesome predators and feels that it is an emergency, he must only submit "loss data" paired with a "request to control" to the ADC. The ADC, on a case by case basis, will then

take it upon itself to determine if "action is waranted to control" predator uprisings. There is obviously a problem with this arrangement. Are we expecting a corrupt agency to police itself when it has been violating its own policies for years—and getting away with it?

It is time to pull the plug on ADC death squads throughout the West. ADC programs are required to file environmental assessments prior to taking any predator control actions. ADC is now in the scoping stages of the NEPA process, so it is necessary to submit comments immediately if we are going to force government trappers off more than 168 million acres in thirteen Western states. Express your concerns, however creatively to your favorite BLM district offices now!

Chris Schwaderer is a nascent EF! joumalistwho is rumored to have lost his way several years ago. He acknowledges Sehor Escalante as a source of inspiration.

"Deep Ecology Cults"

—New Mexico Earth First!

While we like to make light of our philosophers and yuk it up over Woo-Woo, government agencies and private land-raping interests find passion and deep ecological "spirituality" threatening. Wise Use goons have distributed posters decrying the naked heathen spectacle of the Rendezvous Tribal Unity Dance, while the Natural Resource Defense Council's Amicus Journal runs articles on the dangers of "black magic" and Earth worship.

References to environmentalist "cults" are particularly disturbing. The system has continually used the term to demonize groups it then destroys, from the violent destruction of MOVE in Philadelphia to Randy Weaver in Idaho. Too many of our friends applauded the destruction of David Koresh and his followers. Whether we have any affinity with the group is irrelevant. Before each of the attacks, the media was fed a steady diet of "leaks" pushing the public's morality

buttons, with accusations of cult spirituality, immoral sexuality, and a danger to the fabric of society. Each time public sentiment is enlisted using the same vocabulary now being laid on animal rights, deep ecology, and Earth First! Laughable attacks—and potentially deadly.

"Did you know that modem environmentalism is rooted in pagan worship?" Thus begins one of dozens of radio ads recently blanketing the airwaves of rural New Mexico. Ads written by EF! Journal subscriber Howard Hutchinson, and paid for by the NM Cattle Grower's Association, the NM Mining Association, People For The West Inc., and a Who's who of anti-wildemess denizens.

The radio ads assault the timber sale process, wolf reintroduction (describing finding human babies in the stomachs of wolves!), and the recent upsurge in public participation in the Forest Services review of grazing allotments. Many times, however, we

would listen to the "Minute Man" ads and realize we could not have said it better ourselves:

"From their paganistic viewpoint, the Earth is being destroyed and this justifies any tactic necessary to stop it. Many of these environmental leaders aren't just demanding better conservation practices, they are seeking a total transformation of society, one that seeks to destroy or totally restructure our current economic system and replace it with mystic hope..."

"The sun is going to bum us through the ozone holes! Global warming is destroying the environment! Cattle are mining the range-lands! Farmers are causing the erosion of our top soils and fouling our water! Miners are polluting our streams and laying waste to the land! Harvesting timber kills owls and fish! All of us have heard these ridiculous warnings of gloom and doom. Yet, no scientific evidence exists to back these claims..." (Look outside, foolish souls.)

"Have you heard of the web of life, intrinsic value or animal rights? If they succeed in assigning humans the same worth as all other life, they will be that much closer to their real goal—the dismantling of technology and civilization..." (Hear! Hear!)

Howard would love to hear your compliments on his prose, if not his sentiments. Hell, give him a call at home in Glenwood. At 3:00 AM.

Howard Hutchinson, (505)539-2692. POB 125, Glenwood, NM 88039

Minute Man Media, POB 7182, Albuquerque, NM 87194., (505)888-7366

"Did you know that modem environmentalism is rooted in pagan worship ?”

"Have you heard of the web of life, intrinsic value or animal rights? ...If they succeed in assigning humans the same worth as all other life, they will be that much closer to their real goal—the dismantling of technology and civilization..."

—among dozens of anti r environmental radio ads recently broadcast in rural New Mexico.

No Trouble Atabl

A Grizzly Bear has reintroduced herself to the Kalmiopsis region of Southwestern Oregon. The last known Griz in Oregon was shot in 1939. Nicknamed "Trouble," she escaped from a rehabilitation center near Grants Pass on May 4th.

The bear is from the South Fork of the Flathead River near Kalispell, MT. She was originally relocated to the Eastern Front of the Rockies for dumpster diving, but returned to her home range. Later she was sent to a Washington State University research facility and then, as a result of a Humane Society lawsuit, to Wildlife Images, an animal rehabilitation center which borders the Kalmicosis Wilderness Area of the Siskiyou National Forest.

To escape, Trouble climbed seven feet up a chain-link fence, clamped her teeth onto an overhanging tree limb and pulled herself through a small hole she made in the fence. Wildlife specialists, Oregon State Troopers, Oregon Dept, of Fish and Wildlife and an "ace-number-one indian tracker" have been unable to locate her. To get home, she would have to cross the Cascade Mountain Range, a 1000 mile journey.

Shawnee Timber Sale Mania!!!

by Jan Wilder-Thomas

The new brand of Eastern National Forest canopy destruction is particularly gruesome, as evidenced by the destruction of Whoopie Cat Mountain Wildlife Area in Southeast Illinois' Shawnee National Forest.

Gaping holes were tom in the magnificent forest canopy, eliminating critical interior forest habitat. The forest was chewed up and spit out as shipping pallets and raw log exports.

The Shawnee Defense Fund maintained a 43-day vigil on site.

Our vigil attracted the attention of our elected official in the House of Representatives. Rep. Sid Yates pushed through language in the 1992 Appropriations Bill eliminating Shawnee timber sale funding for 1993. This language, however, was removed by none other than Senator Robert Byrd and his fellow criminals on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee. Fearing the language would set a precedent, they threw out the Shawnee protection measure and replaced it with an endorsement of "Gap Phase Dynamics" cutting.

The Shawnee battlefields for 1993 represent the last forest islands of old growth in Illinois. They include: Hayes Bay, Cripps Bend, Burner Hill,

Quarrel Creek and Whoopie Cat 2.

In March, I traveled to Washington, DC with Dr. Joe Glisson, public relations director for Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists (RACE), to testify in front of Rep. Yates' House Appropriations Subcommittee regarding the Shawnee. Dr. Glisson submitted testimony concerning the illegal aspects of the Shawnee timber sales and described a federal lawsuit to protect the Pine Warbler. On viewing photographs of the Whoopie Cat massacre, Rep. Yates was visibly aggravated, muttering, "We've got to get this stopped."

Pressure is being applied to Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons for an investigation into the cutting plans of the Shawnee's Harrisburg District Supervisor. Since the Clinton administration plans to halt all below-cost timber sales in 1994, it would be insane to allow five more such sales to fall between the bureaucratic cracks in 1993.

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A celebration of science and genetics in Burlington. Photo by Orin Langelle.

Of Scientists and Six-legged Cows

—Northeast Earth First!

For 4 billion years the Earth has evolved in its own style. The planet has developed its own system of evolution and eradication of species. Humans, feeling the need to understand and manipulate the planet, have spent ever-increasing amounts of time and money exploring the depths of existence at its most basic.

We have divided and defined the vastness of life rather than exploring the extravagant diversity and ever-expanding symbiosis of biosystems. People have invested billions of dollars to try to cure ills that could easily have been prevented by exploring the larger cause. Millions of animals have been tortured to better understand and alter the irrelevant. Lifetimes are spent dissecting the cell in order to manipulate and control life as we define it. With the new construction and opening of the Stafford building at the University of Vermont, scientific manipulation has been pushed a step further.

On May 17,1993 Northeastern Earth Firstlers said NO. About 40 Northeastern activists, clad in rad-suits and lugging banners, signs, eight-legged cows and a dancing square tomato, gathered at UVM to protest the grand opening of a new biotech lab. A science complex built to continue research on bovine growth hormones and fluffier snow at a University notorious for its eugenics experiments in the 1920's and 30's. Besides creating 6-legged, big-headed dead cows, one of the center's goals is to entice bio-geeks, and the industry they spawn, to the state of Vermont

The demonstration, which began queitly exploded into a raucous display of disgust. At one point the president of UVM, Tom Salmon (sic), became so agitated that he hit a protester prompting others to sound a fire alarm through the sterile halls of science. Being thrown out of the actual ribbon-cutting ceremony did nothing to pacify the mob. They lobbed a paint bomb into a hall, splashing bystanders, walls and carpets. Relegated to the outside lobby, protesters chanted and danced, disturbing the mad scientists' bio-gathering.

At the end of the day protesters and scientists returned home leaving behind a building full of anti-biotech messages and lingering questions about the validity of a science bent on manipulating random chunks of the life-force.

Southwestern Fish Suit

by Kieran Suckling wjSf fiC

Matthew Kenna, a Durango, CO, lawyer, has filed a formal 60-day notice of intent to sue the US Fish m

and Wildlife Service on behalf of the Greater Gila

Biodiversity Project and the Southwest Center for art; Dr. Seuss

Biological Diversity. The Service is in violation of the Endangered Species Act for not designating critical habitat for the Loach Minnow and the Spikedace, two critically imperiled southwestern fish. The lawsuit will be filed in mid-July of 1993 if critical habitat has not been designated by then.

The Loach minnow and the Spikedace were listed as threatened in 1985 and 1986. A poor critical habitat package was proposed for both in 1985, but was never finalized due to intense political pressure from the cattle industry, the mining industry and several county governments. In the intervening years, the species' habitat has continued to be degraded by overgrazing, dewatering, logging and human-exacerbated flooding. The Fish and Wildlife Service, meanwhile, has done little to protect either fish. Immediate, formal designation of critical habitat is essential if these species are to survive.

Suits to protect the Loach Minnow and Spikedace mark the beginnings of a campaign by the Greater Gila Biodiversity Project and the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity to preserve the native fishes of the Greater Gila Ecosystem and the Southwest. Ninety percent of the Southwest's native fishes are now biologically endangered due to habitat loss and introduction of exotic fishes and amphibians. Their protection is an absolute priority for those seeking to maintain naturally diverse native ecosystems.

NFN Targets Australian Consulates in Defense of Tasmania's Great Western Tiere

In solidarity with activists in Tasmania working to save the forests of the Great Western Tiers, simultaneous demonstrations were held at the Australian Consulates in San Francisco and New York City.

New York

The Native Forest Network (NFN) called for this demonstration and was joined in NYC by Earth First!, Amanaka'a Amazon Network, Wetlands Rainforest Action Group, Federal Land Action Group, Worldview, Ltd., and local anarchists. These groups converged on the Australian Consulate in Rockefeller Center on May 27 to protest the Tasmanian Forestry Commission's plans to allow clearcut logging in the proposed Great Western Tiers National Park. (For details, see the related story on page 28.)

The demonstration began peacefully, with more than 20 activists converging on Rockefeller Center, hanging banners and handing out leaflets to rush-hour pedestrians. It turned into a confrontation when cops and security forced activists to move off of private property or be arrested. Activists vowed not to endanger the public safety with their leaflets and were allowed to continue distributing information. As the demo progressed, numerous Australian tourists stopped to thank the participants for holding the protest and getting the word out about these Tasmanian travesties.

The day before, Northern Hemisphere NFN Representative Orin Langelle and New York EF!er James Hansen met with Tony Miller, Australian Public Affairs Consul. NFN and EF! demanded that the 68,666 acre Great Western Tiers become a National Park. Langelle and Hansen gave Miller a bag of woodchips symbolizing the woodchipping of the Tiers for export to Japan.

San Francisco

In San Francisco, Earth First! ers turned out at the Australian consulate simultaneous with the New York demo. With signs like WOOD CHIPS OR POTEROOS? and HEY AUSTRALIA! NO LOGGING IN TASMANIA!, we attracted quite a few of the lunchtime downtown SF crowd (jeez, they sure dress funny...). We collected about a hundred signatures on our petitions calling for a halt to logging plans, at least until fauna surveys are complete, and a move in the direction of the National Park proposal. We also met with Howard Wilson, the Australian Consul General, who, in his polite Aussie way told us he was a greenie, too, as he put it When confronted with our admonitions that loss of biodiversity is a worldwide problem that we all must be concerned with, and our concern that the locals were being railroaded (they were told that half of the area would be protected, and that what would be cut would be selectively cut; the current plan is to clearcut the whole shebang), he AGREED and said the railroading part sounded like a familiar scenario. He then proceeded to engage us in a discussion of the killing of kangaroos in Tasmania and the decimation of the indigenous people on that same island, his point being the connection between the two. He contends it is essentially the same kind of people (rednecks, as he called them) using the same kind of tactics (just going out and shooting them without any concern at all), and he lamented the tragedy of the emptying of the island of any indigenous people at all.

Wilson promised he would-get our petitions and our message (that NO old growth native forest should be cut anywhere in the world, and we ARE paying attention here several thousand miles away and we DO care) to the Ambassador and to those in Australia who should hear it. He added that he felt our activities in San Francisco and New York were particularly important because (he felt) our voices would be heard at a higher decibel level than those of the Australian forest activists. As he left, he wished us good luck and (get this) RAISED HIS FIST IN THE AIR! Earth First! outreach kicks in, in all comers of the planet.

These actions were partially funded by the Earth First! Direct Action Fund and are only the beginning of the NFN's international campaign to save the Great Western Tiers.

Orin Langelle and Karen Pickett conspired , so to speak, on this story.

Headwaters Alert!

—Ecotopia Earth First!

Earth First! is calling an action alert this summer for Headwaters Forest While the newspapers talk about legislative proposals to save this incredible grove of 2000-year old red-j

woods, both Maxxam and Elk River Tim-A

ber Co. (a subsidiary of Sierra Pacific) are ^

quietly filing timber harvest plans (THPs) *4

to clearcut around it. The most urgent is Elk River's plan for a 180-acre clearcut right up to the edge of the ancient forest.

This plan is nearly through the California Department of Forestry's review process, ^

and cutting is expected to begin this sum-mer. ^

The targeted area borders the north side of the Headwaters old growth. It is mature second-growth redwood begin-A

ning to recover old growth characteristics, and is a connecting corridor to another 1500 acres of mature trees which needs to be preserved as a buffer if the already isolated Headwaters Forest is to survive.

You would think that a clearcut right up to the edge of such a precious ecological preserve as Headwaters Forest would violate some environmental law. Headwaters is home to a dense population of Marbled Murrelets, who have taken ref-{

uge in a shrinking area of ancient forest as the surrounding old growth has been cut. The California murrelet population once ranged all along the redwood coast and numbered about 60,000. Now there are less than 2,000 left in California and they live in three isolated areas, one of which is Headwaters. But nevermind, says California Fish and Game, whose job it is to enforce the Endangered Species Act. Clearcutting this migration corridor and potential future habitat area will have "no impact from a murrelet's standpoint."

Maxxam has been clearcutting around the edges of the Headwaters ancient forest core for years, and has just filed several more timber harvest plans in the area. Two of them are in the Elkhead Springs area, just east of the piece Elk River Timber wants to slaughter.

Elkhead Springs is a grove of ancient forest, second growth, and residual old growth, which has already been separated from Headwaters by past logging operations. Right now the plans are held up— k waiting for Fish and Game to come up with

more information on the murrelets. Murrelets have been observedflying through g* the second growth in Elkhead Springs to get

to their old growth nesting areas, but once again Fish and Game thinks it's okay to clearcut. They propose leaving a 300-foot buffer zone next to the old growth during breeding season only (April-August), after which it could all be cut. They apparently have no clue as to what the murrelets are supposed to do next year.

tev This summer we are preparing to be out

in the woods again as Maxxam makes a v final grab before legislation can be passed to

protect Headwaters. We demand a total moratorium on loggingin the entire 72,000-acre Headwaters Complex, as defined in the Headwaters Legislative Action Team's proposal.

We will probably have to defend this land with our bodies again when the timber companies act to take down as many trees 1 as they can before a court restraining order

^ can be issued. So be prepared to quit your

job on short notice this summer. Headwaters is the best of what little is left of the ancient forest. We can't let them slice it to pieces.

If you can come to Northern California to help defend Headwaters Forest this summer, call 707/468-1660 for more information. We also (as usual) need cash to finance this effort, and donations will be gladly accepted. Send them to: Earth First!, c/o MEC, 106 W. Standley, Ukiah, CA 95482. For current status reports on the Headwaters timber harvest plans, call Jamie Romeo, at 707/822-6918.

At this printing, Congressmen Dan Hamburg and Pete Stark are preparing to introduce a bill in the US House of Representatives which would create a 45,000-acre Headwaters Preserve. Your letters of support are greatly appreciated.

Wally Weally Wants Wolves Wasted

BY Michael Lewis Men in Juneau must learn, once and for all, that wolves

Now that the furor has died down and the tourists 111 Alaska are NOT theirs to toy with as they choose! are on their way, Governor Wally Hickel and the Alaska Here ar e the names and addresses of the people

State Board of Game are again pushing a plan to kill "responsible:": wolves in Alaska. The Board of Game will meet in June

to consider more than 90 wolf control plans, including Carl Rosier, Commissioner, ADF&G, 1255 West

proposals for aerial shooting. This action comes de-8th Street, Juneau, AK 99802, phone: (907)465-4100, spite promises by the Hickel administration that no fax: 907-465-2332

wolf kills would be undertaken in 1993. State officials Paul Fu hs, Acting Commissioner, Dept, of Comare weaseling (apologies to all weasels) out of their merce and Economic Development, POB 110800, Ju-promises by claiming that FISCAL year 1993 ends on neau , AK 99811-0800, ph: (907)465-2500, fax: 907-July 1! 463-3841

The promise came as a result of a worldwide Governor Wally Hickel, POB 110001, Juneau, AK boycott of Alaska tourism. The boycott was a response 99811-0001, ph: (907)465-3500, fax: 907-463-3454 to plans by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Alaska Division of Tourism, Tourism Marketing (ADF&G) to kill some 400 wolves in Alaska in an Council, POB E, Juneau, AK 99811, ph: (907)563-2289 attempt to increase caribou numbers in those caribou David Kelleyhouse, Director, Dept, of Wildlife hunting regions most favored by the state's urban Conservation, POB 25526, Juneau, hunters. Governor Wally held a "Wolf Summit" in AK 998 02, ph: (907)465-4190 Fairbanks in February of this year, after which state officials vowed that no wolf control measures would be undertaken in 1993.

Pressure from Alaska's hunters, hunting guides and related "business(mostly)men" have encouraged officials to reconsider their promises and open negotiations to reinstate aerial wolf shooting as a legal means of "wolf control." Independent studies are being conducted to counter ADF&G claims that wolf control is necessary to increase caribou populations in the state. The proposed reconsideration of wolf control by the Board of Game is an obvious attempt to change state policy before studies can be completed.

Once again it's time to turn on the boycott machine. Since this year's tourist season is well underway, it is necessary to extend the boycott to ALL Alaska products, including salmon and all Alaskan fish. Wally and his Gang of Old White

art: Agneta Amesson-Westerdahl

Has the Deforestation of Sarawak Destroyed a Cure for AIDS?

Starting with twigs from a Malaysian gum tree, researchers isolated a compound in 1991 that blocked the spread of the HIV-1 virus in human immune cells, according to a paper made public by Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA). Citing AIDS research as he intoduced legislation to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act, Studds stressed the importance of species diversity.

The tree is a member of the guttiferae family of gum-producing trees. The type, known as calophyllum lanigerum, was found in a swamp in the Malyasian island of Sarawak. Researchers originally collected a little more than two pounds of twigs, bark and fruit from the tree. At the National Cancer Institute's center in Maryland, they reduced saplike material in the tree to a compound, “calanolide A ." They tested it against the HIV-1 virus, the most common virus form in known AIDS cases. The new compound was found to be "100 percent effective" in blocking human cell mortality.

"We have very good data. It's very promising," said Dr. John Cardellina II, coauthor of the study. "To say it's definitely going to be a cure is jumping way ahead of the game." Cardellina indicated that the compound could more than control the disease.

The team sent biologists back to Malaysia for more samples from the tree. When they arrived at the swamp, the tree was gone. Despite an extensive search, scientists have not yet succeeded in finding another tree that yields the anti-HIV extract.

Parts of this story were excerpted from an Associated Press/Boston Globe article of 5/7/93

The new compound was "100 percent effective" in blocking human cell mortality.

"We may never know if a single tree in the forests of Malaysia held the secret of a cure for AIDS/'

—Rep. Gerry Studds

International Campaign Wins Temporary Reprieve for Threatened Tasmanian Forests

Residents of Jackeys Marsh, Tasmania, have succeeded in staving off operations in the dry sclerophyll eucalypt forests of Warners Sugarloaf. The Premier and Minister for Forests, Ray Groom, granted a temporary stay of execution on May 6. This is by no means a long-term victory. In four weeks the area will again be targeted for logging. (See related story, page 27.)

Warners Sugarloaf is part of a 28,000 hectare mainly eucalypt forest, the most poorly protected forest type in Southeastern Australia. The area contains extensive stands of old growth, and is prime habitat for many of Australia's rare and endangered species. The unique Great Western Tiers forest region has been recommended for national park status by the Tasmanian World Heritage Management Committee, the Tasmanian Parks, Wildlife and Heritage Department and the International Temperate Forest Conference. No fauna surveys have been conducted, despite the presence of the Tasmanian Bettong and the Long-footed Potoroo, both recognized endangered species. The understorey is dominated Banksia Marginata, the main food source of the Tasmanian Lorikeet.

Current plans call for clearfelling for woodchips, broadcast burning and the laying of 1080 wildlife poison.

Jackeys Marsh is being targeted by the timber industry in an attempt to break down opposition to the Great Western Tiers NP, despite the wishes of residents in Deloraine and District, the nearest population centres, who favour the formation of a national park. The Tasmanian government recently shut off a comment period three weeks early due to the overwhelmingly pro-preservation response.

"Stop recycling! Recycling just legitimizes and supports another industry." — Helen Caldicott. 1991

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:

Organize a demonstration outside your nearest Australian Embassy to express your outrage at the destruction of part of the Great Western Tiers NP. Send in a letter of objection and demand a response.

Demand a halt of all logging of the Great Western Tiers. Recognize the wishes of conservationists, local residents and the international community who support the National Park proposal.

Send letters and faxes to the Tasmanian Department of the Premier and Cabinet calling for the logging to stop. Write:

Ray Groom, Premier and Minister for Forests, Dept, of Premier and Cabinet, Executive Big., Franklin Sq.,

Hobart, 7000, Ph: +61-02-333464, Fax: +61-02-341572

Contact the Native Forest Network if you wish to take action:

NFN Southern Hemisphere, 112 Emu Bay Rd, Deloraine, Tasmania 7304, Ph:

+61-03-622713 (W), 0+61-03-622985 (H), Fax: +6103623056, E-mail: pegxadwood.

NFN Northern Hemisphere, PO Box 6151,

Bozeman, MT USA 59715, Ph: (406)

585-9211, Fax:

406-728-8160, E-mail: en:earthfirst Page 28 Earth First! Litha 1993

Watch Out/Kazakhstan: Chevron is on the Way

Chevron has cut a deal with the Republic of Kazakhstan to spend $20 billion over the next 40 years drilling for oil in the Tengiz region on the northeast shore of the Caspian Sea. The venture, called Tengizchevroil, is the largest of its kind thus far between a large Western oil company and a republic of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Kazakhstan is dominated by desert and plateau. The Kazakhs, of Mongol descent, are largely nomadic, although due to programs introduced in the 1950s, have become agrarian.

The Tengizchevroil project, similar to one in Papua, New Guinea, is expected to draw other ventures involving such despoilers as BP, Amoco, and good ol' Exxon. This venture is part of Chevron's ongoing strategy of pursuing foreign oil operations

Two years ago, pumping operations began at Tengiz, and the current output is 65,000 barrels daily. Chevron is plans to pump 700,000 barrels a day by the year 2010. The outlook is grim.

—Dave Collins

RECYCLE NO MORE!

Plastics recycling is a sham. Greenpeace activists in Long Beach, CA recently blockaded a shipment of "recycled" plastic waste bound for Southeast Asia, exposing one of the plastic industry's dirty secrets; Most plastic collected for recycling is actually dumped abroad. The US alone exported 7,200 tons of plastic waste Asian, South American and European countries in the month of January, 1993.

Not surprisingly, plastic recycling advocates also fail to mention the original, highly toxic manufacturing process.

The obvious solution is to STOP BUYING PLASTIC IN ANY FORM. This includes Styrofoam, of course, but also nylon, polyester, neoprene, soda bottles, pens, new cars, computers (dare I say music?) and all that plastic shit

—Jim Flynn

Thai Druids Fight for Forests

"...Many of us have heard the Buddha's teachings and understood, here, in our minds ... but not in our hearts.

It's the same with the environment. We hear of its importance. We know that it is a home for the animals and trees, which also gives us fresh, cool water. But the problem is that we persist in talking as if there's a difference between the environment and ourselves.

"Meditation, the process of self-examination, teaches us the natural law of impermanence (paticca samupadda). It teaches us about the inter-relatedness of all things. And when we truly see and understand in our hearts, we see the forest as something which needs to be protected or something useful. The forest is life itself. It is us and we are it. When we destroy or harm the forest, we are doing the same thing to ourselves. And without the forest, it would not be possible for us to ever fully understand our proper place in the world. We simply will not survive."

— Phra Prachat

Dong Yai, Buriram Province, Thailand

Dear Earth First! Friends,

This letter was written in northeast Thailand on the last day of a "Buddhism and Deep Ecology Forest Walk" organized by the International Network of Engaged Buddhism. The walk was led by the venerable Phra Prachat of Hu Nam Phood Forest Monastery, who is well known in Thailand for his work in the defense of the remaining Thai forests. He is especially known for his unique method of forest protection by ordaining trees.

This forest is in grave danger of extinction. Unless the illegal logging is stopped very soon, there will be no natural forest left in Thailand. Presently, various corrupt vested interest groups encourage desperately poor villagers to cut big trees, sell the wood to middlemen (often for furniture for export), and then plow and plant the land with eucalyptus for use in commercial pulp making. This is occurring at an alarming rate. Logged areas are rapidly converted to eucalyptus plantations, and these plantations quickly degrade the soil through nutrient removal and erosion.

Tree plantations do not replace the natural, wild forests in any way. In addition to the rainwater retention of the forest, the habitat of numerous animals and birds is rapidly disappearing. During our trip we were visited by elephants, tiger, bear and many other animals and birds. Villagers showed us a photo of one of the remaining bears, killed by a hunter's land-mine trap. This in a Natural Park! We cannot allow these beings to become extinct due to the loss of their habitat or to poaching by thoughtless, greedy humans.

The laws of Thailand are being broken as well. Logging was banned in Thailand in 1988, but it has not been stopped at all. Parts of the forest are in the Thaplan National Forest Park, where logging has been illegal for decades. Yet, in that National Park we saw many of the forest's tallest trees felled and most of the wood was left to rot by villagers desperate for the pittance they received for only the prime wood. This must stop!

Help us to save this forest by sending two important letters: one to the king, and one to the Prime Minister of Thailand, urging them to undertake measures to stop logging. We are certain international pressure will help enormously. Finally, we encourage you to spread the word as much as you are able. If you can, please send any size donation to Phra Prachak to help him in his campaign to save this forest. He has excellent plans for helping the villagers build a forest and near-forest community based on sustainable agriculture and village handicrafts, and for forest protection patrols of forest monks and villagers.

Thailand is Destroying Burma’s Teak Forests, too.

The government of Thailand has approved the reopening of seventeen border checkpoints to assist Thai companies in the logging of Burmese Teak. The border crossings were closed last year after criticism that the Thais were helping Burma's military government destroy its forests.

Logging was banned in Thailand in 1988 after hundreds were killed in severe flooding which was the result of deforestation. Thai loggers were forced to look for elsewhere to supply the 8 million cubic meters of teak the industry consumes annually. Burma has become Thailand's major supplier of teak, followed by Cambodia. The Thai Deputy Minister of Agriculture has justified this action, stating that if Thailand did not buy Burma's teak, "other countries would."

Burma has a serious deforestation problem. According to a 1990 report, Burma is losing 800,000 hectares of forest annually. But teak is a major source of foreign exchange for the government of Burma. This has resulted in a furious rate of logging and the smuggling of raw logs into Thailand.

Thailand's Interior Minister asked that 14 checkpoints on Thailand's border with Cambodia be reopened. Thailand's Interior Minister has said that opening the border to allow easy access to the forest for logging would not encourage deforestation. But Prime Minister Chuan has denied this request because of UN sanctions against the Khmer Rouge.

Write: to the Prime Minister of Thailand and demand that Thailand not assist the Burmese military government in the destruction of its forests. His address is: Honorable Chuan Leekpai, Prime Minister of Thailand, Government House, Pathom Rd., Bangkok 10300, Thailand. Fax: 66-2-280-1443

Make sure letters include the following points:

Stop all logging in National Parks in Thailand, and severely curtail all logging in remaining natural forests.
Provide appropriate agricultural support and income alternatives for the impoverished villages in and around the forests.
Bring to justice those officials and businessmen who are destroying the tropical forests.
Restrict eucalyptus plantations.
Support co-operation between forest monks (like Phra Prachak) and villagers.
Stop construction of the road through Thaplan National Park. Not only does it cut a large gap into the least spoiled parts of the forest, but it also invites further road building, logging and destruction.

Address letters to: His Majesty, King Bumiphol Adulyadej, Chitlada Palace Bangkok 10200,Thailand; and—Honorable Chuan Leekpai, Prime Minister of Thailand, Government House, Pathom Rd., Bangkok 10300, Thailand, Fax: 66-2-280-1443

For more information contact: Phra Prachak, c/o INEB, 127 Soi Santipap, Nares Road, Bangkok 10500, Thailand

Norwegian Whaling Update

In December of 1992, a group of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society crew, with the help of local Norwegians, stalked and attacked the Nybrena, a Lofoten Island ship used exclusively for whaling (See Brigid, 1993). A seacock was broken and the ship was partially sunk, which attracted international attention and created quite a stir in Norwegian waters.

In addition to the initial damage costs, Sea Shepherd's scuttling of the Nybrena has cost Norway millions. Although the Nybrena has been recovered, the responsible insurance company will not reimburse the owners for the extensive damages because it is being claimed as an "act of war." According to ORCA force agent #13, insurance premiums for whalers have now soared in Norway and whaling ships are protected twenty-four hours a day. The tourist industry, a mainstay of the island economy, has also been adversely affected. The islanders, known for their hospitality, now distrust all foreigners, creating an uncomfortable situation for most visitors who quickly leave, taking their cash with them.

On another front, the Humane Society's boycott of Norwegian products has been quite successful. Fish, cheese, oil and other Norwegian exports are beginning to fail in the US and European markets. A German trade company, Beeck Feincost, has just canceled a 3000-ton order of herring and a 400-ton order of salmon. Many companies are being forced to close their doors and are beginning to openly protest the government's continued pro-whaling policies. Over forty Norwegian organizations have now come out against whaling.

Norway is saying they will kill 136 whales for "scientific research" and 160 whales for commercial purposes regardless of Intemation •! Whaling Commission approval. Last year whalers killed 95 for "scientific research." Trade sanctions imposed by the United States would probably stop the slaughter this year. Norway is a staunch pro-whaling country that has sworn it will fight any threats to its right to slaughter marine animals.

—Kris Maenz

Stone Container Plans Massive Chip Mill in Costa Rica

Stone Container Corporation is preparing to build Central America's largest chip mill on the Osa Peninsula, an area often called the "jewel" of Costa Rica.

The Osa Peninsula contains rainforests with trees and plants found nowhere else in Central America, including at least 50 endangered or threatened plant species, as well as the only ecologically viable populations of jaguars, tapirs and spider monkeys. It is also home to Corcovado National Park, one of the last remaining protected Central American Pacific rainforests. Because of its unique characteristics, the Osa has been nominated to become a United Nations World Heritage Site and a Biosphere Reserve.

The chip mill Stone proposes will operate 24 hours a day, causing excessive amounts of noise pollution and dramatically increasing truck traffic. Noise pollution affects animal and bird behavior, disrupts the fishing industry and degrades the quality of life for local community members.

Stone's plan also poses a threat to the Golfo Dulce: a deep tropical basin on the Osa Peninsula with restricted water circulation, which increases susceptibity to chemical pollutants and sediment runoff from road construction, agriculture, oil spills and wood chips. Because of its anoxic (lack of oxygen) condition, it may be one of the only marine ecosystems of its kind in the tropics. River estuaries, mangroves and coral reefs make this aquatic system the breeding ground for whales, dolphins and many species of fish.

Stone's Costa Rica subsidiary, Ston Forestal, has planted over 25,000 acres of a non-native tree species called gmelina, which grow from seed to harvest in six years. With construction of the chip mill, this plantation will increase to 60,000 acres. Secondary forest, wetlands and some old growth trees will be threatened. Seeds dispersed from Stone's 30 million trees into existing forest will displace native species, changing the ecosystem of the surrounding forest. The fruit of the gmelina attracts birds and mammals from nearby forest habitats, creating abnormal migration patterns with unknown consequences to the ecosystem. When these trees are dearcut, the spedes that have migrated to this new habitat will be out of a home.

In order to protect the Golfo Dulce and the surrounding ecosystems from the type of development that Stone proposes, the Rainforest Action Network has joined the Puerto Jimenez Comite de Pro-Defensa de Recursos Natural, a coalition of environmental, indigenous and community organizations in requesting that Costa Rican government make the Golfo Dulce a national aquatic park. Please write to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy (MIRENEM). Write: Sr. Orlando Morales, MIRENEM, APDO> 10104-1000, San Jose, Costa Rica

Page 29 Earth First! Litha 1993

DEAR NED LUDD

DEAR NED LUDD has returned as a regular feature in the Earth First! Journal for discussion of creative means of effective defense against the forces of industrial totalitarianism.

Neither the Earth First! movement nor the Earth First! Journal necessarily encourage anyone to do any of the things discussed in DEAR NED LUDD.

Iron & Glass

Dear Ned,

Should we take our political advice from that engineer in the last issue who assured us that "Iron oxide has no magnetic properties?" As for proton procession magnetometers, portable and sensitive instruments can be homebrewed fairly cheaply, as the Amateur Scientist column of Scientific American once described (in about 1960, give or take a few years).

But on to the technical properties of glass. The best way to do the job to meet the specs is to use a tungsten carbide wheel glass cutter to scribe a large wheel with spokes radiating toward the center. Put tape on the segments and then use a miniature butane torch like they sell at Radio Shack to make the glass crack along the lines. Practice, if you tap the glass to get it to crack along the lines, you have to do it from the inside, but because of expansion, cracking it with a hot needle flame works best from the outside. Or you can use the torch flame alone to make it crack in some uncontrolled direction.

Hydrofluoric acid is worthless because you would have to let a deep puddle of this stuff, about the nastiest to use of all liquids, react a long time on a horizontal glass surface. Forget it. The proper use of hydrofluoric acid is in diluted form in toothpaste kind of tubes they sell at stained-glass craft shops to frost glass. If some impetuous rebel were to use a tube of this stuff to write a politcal slogan on the side of the big plate glass window of a bank while they were waiting for the late night bus some night, then the bankers would have a pretty hard time removing the message without removing the whole window, right?

Yours,

—Tex

Night Maintenance - A Hobby for the Nineties

—Arizona Earth First!

It is very hard to unbuild a freeway, dam, clearcut, or other such atrocity. Concrete or asphalt can be destroyed, but the sheer size of most civil engineering puts a huge burden on the environmentalist, cramping his/her lifestyle. The burden should be on the land rapist; the environmentalist should enjoy the joyful, fun free lifestyle that s/he deserves.

In the process of destruction, there are "bottlenecks" where a small effort by the activist can have an enormous effect in hindering or stopping the process (environmental jujitsu). Your job is to find and exploit these pressure points.

One such point is heavy equipment (bulldozers, scrapers, cranes, trucks, etc.). One such vehicle can do a huge amount of damage in a day. On the other hand, an ounce of night maintenance can prevent a ton of damage.

F amiliari ze yourself with the movements of the sun and moon. At the new moon, the sun and moon are close together in the sky, and both set at the same time, creating the darkest possible sky .Friday night, all over the uncivilized world, big yellow vehicles will be parked in destruction sites unattended, and usually unlocked, for the weekend, with big "kick me" signs on their behinds that are only visible to the righteous. Daylight hours must be used to locate all of them, particularly those whose location makes them most vulnerable (for example, behind a hill), or where enough of them congregate to make it worth your while. They may be very hard to find in the dark (which is to your advantage!).

Work completely alone. This is the only way you can achieve the necessary level of security for this dangerous (but thrilling) hobby. Resist the urge to brag.

It is very tempting to slash all tires, leaving a very clear message. It will cost the rapist dearly, but not dearly enough. It will create headlines, but give the opposition the psychological and political advantage to spare no expense in tracking you (or some suitable scapegoat) via the evidence trail you inevitably laid down. And the added security instituted will hinder further adventures. Unless you can cause a huge, crippling expense instantly (for example, by burning a great number of vehicles irreparably), it is far better to initiate a damaging process that won't get noticed until the evidence trail is obliterated.

A possible candidate is putting the finest (smallest-grained) aluminum oxide (see "abrasives" in the Yellow Pages) you can afford in the oil filler hole, washing it down with a quart or so of salt water. Ideally, the engine will be operated until it is destroyed, without any problem being noticed. Your footprints will be long since obliterated. The only tools you need are gloves, a small flashlight or penlight, and a small plastic container that can be squeezed to form a pouring spout.

This is a hobby the whole family can enjoy! Everyone can keep their eyes peeled for yellow vehicles, and report the sightings in their neighborhood newsletters. Kids can ask the rapists and their elected representatives embarrassing questions, like, "Why are you destroying our neighborhood? Why are you cutting down trees? Why are you destroying animals' homes?" Grandma and Grandpa can research who is profiting from the project and organize the appropriate boycotts and picket fines. Joe Boy Scout and Suzie Girl Scout can earn merit badges learning about the species endangered by the projects or lobbying the city council (or the city councal's children!) against them. Fun unlimited!

Tigers Face Extinction

—Jake Jagoff

Journal readers have read in recent issues of the plight of the Siberian Tiger, (see stories, page 12 and last issue — ed.) The situation is equally dire for the other four remaining subspecies of tiger—the Sumatran, South China, Indo-Chinese, and Royal Bengal (the Caspian, Javan, and Bali Tigers are now extinct). The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the US-based EarthTrust, have declared that plummeting populations of all remaining tigers points to extinction by the year 2000.

These adaptable predators thrived for millennia with humans and, until 1900, their numbers ranged above 100,000. The human race has now reduced the world's wild tigers to fewer than 5000. Like bears, tigers have suffered from the cumulative impacts of hunting, habitat loss and commercial poaching rings tunneling tiger parts to lucrative Asian markets.

According to Sam LaBudde, writing in the spring 1993 issue of the Earth Island

Journal, "A single tiger can fetch up to $65,000. Almost every part—flesh, eyes, blood, claws, fat, stomach, testes, intestines, bile, nose, whiskers and even feces—is prescribed for some sort of medicinal, emotional, sexual, or metaphysical application..."

With millions of consumers in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore more than willing to pay so much money to ensure erections, provide painkillers and medicate everything from poor blood circulation to rheumatism, it's no wonder tiger populations are on the brink of extinction. The IUCN's Cat Specialist Group concluded last November in New Delhi, "The demand for bones for Chinese medicine, rather than furs, [is] now the driving force for poaching."

Aside from intensive education programs focusing on eliminating the demand for tiger parts among Asian peoples and efforts to enforce provisions in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the best hope for tigers is a

boycott of Taiwan. We must also organize campaigns to defend the tiger's wilderness strongholds. This means keeping Weyerhaeuser and Hyundai from pillaging Siberian forests, keeping the World Bank and its rancid Tropical Forestry Action Plan out of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and creating teams of poaching saboteurs to keep poachers out of areas where wild tigers still lurk.

For more information: Contact the Endangered Species Project: E-205 Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA 94123, (415) 921-3140; Wendy Johnson, EarthTrust's Tiger Program Manager at (808) 254-2866or Keith Highley, Taiwan Field Manager, at (011) 886-2-636-2374; Peter Jackson, IUCN Cat Specialist Group Chairman, at (011) 41-21-808-6012.

Proposed Spanish Dam Endangers Brown Bear

Environmental organizations in Spain are mounting an international campaign against the proposed Vidrieros Dam, which threatens one of the last populations of the European Brown Bear and a host of other sensitive birds and mammals.

The Carrion River flows through the Valle de Pineda in Fuentas Carrionas, a mountainous area in NW Spain. The valley's relatively undisturbed vegetation shelters many species of birds now rare elsewhere. Among 21 species of birds of prey found in Fuentas Carrionas are Bonelfi's Eagle, Golden Eagle, and Peregrine Falcon—all officially threatened in Europe. Many other sensitive birds also nest there, including Eagle Owl, Middle Spotted Woodpecker, Capercaillie, Nightjar, Bluethroat, Raven, and Chough.

The area shelters at least 32 mamafian species, including the Brown Bear, Wolf, Otter, and ten kinds of bats. There are also ten amphibian, 15 reptile, and a multitude of insect species.

The Brown Bear is one the biggest reasons to stop the dam. Due to intensive hunting, the Spanish population of the Brown Bear was almost extirpated around 1950. The government established some Brown Bear reserves and, in 1973, the Brown Bear was officially protected. But today, the Brown Bear remains only in two isolated populations. The larger, in the Cantabrian Mountains, was estimated at 80-130 individuals in 1986. A much smaller group remains in the Pyrenees along the French border. Habitat destruction, poaching, inadequate forestry practices and farming are now serious threats to the Brown Bear, and the population is again declining.

There are two nuclei of bears in the Cantabrian Mountains. Fuentas Carrionas is the core of the smaller, eastern group, estimated at 13-20 individuals, which is particularly threatened by genetic isolation. Valle de Pineda is a vital corridor for this population, and there is evidence of female bears with cubs using the valley and surrounding areas in the winter. Flooding of the valley would further fragment the habitat, posing a severe threat to the survival of the eastern Cantabrian bears. Further disturbance due to new access roads, tourism, sports activities and a flooded valley would magnify the negative impacts of the dam.

An independent commission which reviewed the proposed dam concluded the impact on the Brown Bear would not be significant and may be mitigated under the Brown Bear Protection Plan. However, this study neglected advice from the Council of Europe, scientists from the University of Leon and environmental organizations.

Obviously, the dam will affect many species other than

the Brown Bear. BirdLife has designated the area an Important Bird Area. The World Wildlife Fund has proposed Fuentas Carrionas for protection under the Habitat Directive of the European Community. The Secretariat of the Bern Convention (on the conservation of European wildlife and natural habitats) has recently expressed doubt about the dam project.

You Can Help!

Buy a square meter of land. Spanish environmental organizations have bought some farmland to further legal action and to strengthen local farmers' resistance in the land expropriation process prior to dam construction. They are selling patches of land to complicate and block the process. The price is symbolic (1000 pesetas for a square meter), and the land is sold under the condition that, when the project is cancelled, the right of use reverts to the old owners.

Contact: Isabel Bermejo, CODA/Cantabria, Association deNaturalistas Av. La Castanera 42, Palentinos39500Vemejo, Fabrica Nacional n. 10 SPAIN; Palencia Fax: 34 42 70 22 93; Spain Tel: 34 42 70 22 94

Please write a letter in opposition to the Vidrieros Dam project. Letters should be sent to: Excmo. Sr. Jose Borell, Minesterio de Obras Publicas y Medio Ambiente, Pasea Castellana 67, Madrid, SPAIN and Ilmo. Sr. D. Santiago Marraco, Director de ICONA, Gran Via de San Francisco, Madrid, SPAIN.

Regional Rendezvous Reports

Wild Rockies EF! Rendezvous

"Earth First! Don't Stop" was the greeting offered to rendezvouses in Dixie, Idaho when we arrived for the 1993 Wild Rockies Rendezvous and kickoff of the summer occupation of the Cove/Mallard roadless area. It seems relations with the townsfolk in Dixie have deteriorated over the winter. Defenders of Cove/Mallard have not been around Dixie much since last autumn when the relationship between the townspeople and members of the Ancient Forest Bus Brigade were somewhat more amicable. It must have been a long hard winter for Dixieites as they nestled down for the big snows with the Freddies and industry heavies who diligently courted support for a joint massacre of, Idaho's roadless areas. When the. snows melted, we were not wel-, come in the land of Dixie, the road building had nearly^ resumed, and the Freddies had blood in their eyes.

Notwithstanding the local reception, the Rendezvous was a good, productive time with plenty of base camp preparations, engaging dialogue, great beer, and general merriment on the Ancient Forest Bus Brigade's twenty-acre Cove/ Mallardhome. Goodinformational talks were given by the likes of Jake Jagoff, Eric Ryberg, and Howie Wolke regarding the Freddies' road construction efforts, non-violent strategies for the summer actions, and the character of the Greater Salmon-Selway-BitteiToot ecosystem.

We also had a surprise speaker who came from Dixie or thereabouts and suggested that his fellow townsfolk were not as hostile as we would gather from looking at their long faces when we drove through town. In fact, he felt folks would not be nearly so contentious if it weren't for the Freddies, who paid frequent educational visits to Dixie during the winter. Now, that ain't right.

Freddy cops were not much of a presence considering that Earth First! has lately been bulldozed by the media forour incendiary rants about road building, drillin', and countless Forest Circus blunders throughout the Wild Rockies

Bioregion. Mild security measures were taken, however, to guard against any four wheelin' yahoos and common malcontents who might want to spoil the fun.

The Rendezvous ended with a media action in Moscow, ID, organized by Idaho Non-violence Wilderness Area Rescue and Defense (INWARD) involving the unveiling of a poignant billboard on one of the main thoroughfares. Over the last month, the billboard—designed by Muscovite artists ^Jrian Myers andjennifer Douglas—has been transformed, panel by panel, .from an ancient for-. est to a clearcut. k Motorists were finally treated to bill-

EARTH FIRST! DONT STOP.

board with a caption reading, "Coming soon, Cove/Mallard Roadless Areas." The support in Moscow has been great, but hopefully ell Idahoans will get the message.

The Rendezvous was a good way to ignite what looks to be a long, hot summer. Big wilderness is going to succumb in Idaho if the roads don't die, and the folks with the Ancient Forest Bus Brigade are expecting lots of bodies to help this summer. Make plans to get to Cove/Mallard. There is plenty of room for anyone who's interested in stopping further encroachment into Cove/Mallard.

Chris Schwaderergot stuck on a logging road with BillBob after the Rendezvous. The rest of us ran out of gas in the middle of hostile territory. We're all going back for the actions, though.

Le Blue Plateau Rendezvous

by Jim Flynn

This year's Oregon Rendezvous, held atop the Potumas Creek Canyon of the Blue Mountains, was beautiful. The site was in a wooded area, part of the "Blue Plateau." The canyon contains primeval Grand Fir/Ponderosa Pine forests. Steep canyon walls have prevented the hooved locusts from defiling the pristine riparian areas. Home to Elk, Mule Deer, Coyote, Great Homed Owl, Pine Marten, Porcupine, Wolverine, Bear, Raven, Pileated Woodpecker, Goshawk and a host of others, this area is wilderness.

All is not well, however, in the forests of NE Oregon. There are a myriad of roads, clearcuts and proposed "salvage" sales being offered by the Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests. The

plans call for opening more roads to vehicles and grazing permits. This area is truly slated for destruction.

Next on the chopping block is the proposed "Camas" timber sale in the North Fork John Day RD of the Umatilla NF. This sale alone would srtip 28.2 mmbf from 6202 acres (including 297 acres of old growth), scrape in 40 miles of new roads, and open 23 miles of new "off-highway vehicle trails" to anyone with an engine (comment deadline: July 23). At the same time, the National Aububon Society recently completed an old growth survey which forced the Forest Service to admit that half of the designated old growth in Eastern Washington and Oregon has already been logged.

Carmageddon / Stomper Abatement

Why Earth First! activists should not be driven by their cars .

The Ecotopia Regional Rendezvous in the Sinkyone Wilderness was relocated due to rain. It's really not as wimpy as it sounds. Ya see, it poured the entire week before, and turned the Usal Road into mush. Trucks got stuck, and with the grey coastal clouds about to break, we decided to move the event to Westport, the site of the annual Logger-EF! party. Sorry to anyone who got stuck waiting for directions in the rain.

In spite of the last-minute switcheroo, about 80 of us managed to gather for the weekend. There were several workshops including, "The Wise Use Movement," "Saving the Headwaters Forest," "Eco-Feminism," and "Native American History of the Sinkyone." One of the highlights of the Rendezvous was the "How to Talk to Loggers" workshop by Ernie Pardini (5th generation logger-gone EF!er), where we learned some humbling advice about how not to piss off fallers wielding large chainsaws during woods actions. The focus was on how to dialogue with workers and being clear that we got a problem with the corporadoes, try not to take it personally. On the north coast, there are some genuine and groundbreaking efforts to build alliances with disgruntled timber workers and create alternatives to the liquidation logging practiced by MAXXAM corporation. They are raiding forests, the S&L's, the workers' pension funds and the integrity of the rural forest communities. Two specific alternative projects are the Mendocino Real Wood Co-op and the restoration jobs component of the Headwaters legislative proposal.

It would have been useful to have had a workshop, "How Not to Piss Off the Town of Scotia." Scotia is the last company-owned town in the West. Governor Pete Wilson made a rare appearance in Humboldt County to visit to the Pacific Lumber mill and congratulate his partner in crime, MAXXAM CEO Charles Hurwitz, for making a financial and environmental killing in the redwood forest.

Earth First! demonstrators crashed the reception and were greeted by schoolkids and their parents yelling, "Get a job, go home!" to which we responded, "We live here and this is our job." We were singin' (to the tune of Drunken Sailor), "What can you do with Governor Wilson, Ear-li in the morning, Put him in a cell with Charlie Hurwitz!" and having friendly, productive conversations with the unindoctrinated young people of Scotia.

Meanwhile some vandals smashed out nine of our windshields, removed the valve stems from most of the driver's-side tires, poked out about fifteen headlights, and for good measure, egged the vehicles. Guess they didn't slash the tires cuz they didn't want us to stick around for too long. Darryl Chemey is checking footprints to see if they match the Governor's loafers. Moral of the story: don't be driven by your car.

Donations to replace windows can be sent to the Stomper Abatement Fund, c/o Mendocino Environmental Center, 106 W. Standley St., Ukiah, CA 95482.

Salvage sales are a HOAX! Salvage logging, as it has been practiced so far, is nothing more than a push of eastside logs into the market at reduced cost (as "cull" with green and old growth trees included) to make up for the Westside deficit The volume of board feet proposed in these salvage sales exceeds the total volume that used to be cut over the whole district!

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO:

CaH Jeff Hammes (503) 427-3231, or write to North Fork John Day RD, Camas Salvage & Restoration Planning, PO. Box 158, Ukiah, OR 97880 for copies of the demolition plans.

Write the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project at the address listed in the back of this Journal.

NE EFlers. We don't know what to make of it.

Northeast Regional Rendezvous

by Billi Barker

Oh what fun it is to play!

The NE Regional Rendezvous was a great turnout this year—over 40 new and old faces came to the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont to strategize, learn, share, laugh and play.

Workshops, hikes, swims, good food and yes, our very own EF! Olympics filled our weekend. The three winners of the EF! Olympics were Orin, getting best camo; Ann, finishing the whole race first; and John, hitting the head off the camo goon GI Joe doll with a wrist rocket after only two tries!

The black flies weren't as bad as last year—a true blessing— and music filled our moonlit nights.

more letters

[Ed. note: The following letter was originally printed in the EF!f in 1988, but LWC resubmitted it Guess that makes it metashit, or somethin'...]

Dear John,

OK—we didn't print my criticisms of national borders and IWW loggers, or the deliberate confusing of sexuality with sexism. We've kept this column free of the controversy surrounding the decision to move the rendezvous out of the Gila and left out any clarification of the difference between environmental anarchists and the dogmatic left, thereby encouraging exclusivity and arrogance. "Radical" means taking chances, otherwise we'd call our periodical "the un compromised environmental journal." An expanded, unedited letters column would be well worth the extra page. Controversy (even the pitiful Alien Nation attack) is the spirited heart of resistance. Movements, like species, do not evolve without challenge and opposition.

"How to replant damaged lands" is certainly not the only valuable debate. Wilderness and human freedom are simultaneously murdered by organizational systems. Oppression is the nature of stratification. Avoiding analysis of organization versus tribal anarchy legitimizes the j.

structural systems we are fighting

against. Our journal .

shouldn't turn into a :

cool version of Brower's academic Earth Island Journal. We're militant. While avoiding the nauseating comparisons to People magazine, let's also avoid their rigid editorial limits and hierarchy as well. Radical environmentalism is more than just wilderness, and the Journal is its forum.

I can't believe every faction needs top go off and start their own newsletter. I have great respect for your remarkable talents and pure intent, and I remember pacifist EF! editor Pete Dustrud being removed, yet I am still moved to recommend rotating or guest editorships. Both this excellent journal and tribal movement need to implement innovative ways of guaranteeing, not homogeneity and membership cards, but the diversity and adaptability of the "Nature" we seek to protect.

—El Lobo Solo

[And the original reply ...ed.]

Wolf, we do intend to expand our letters column. As with our last issue, it unll henceforth consist of pages 3 and 4 plus spillage. As for rotating editors, we've instituted that change, too; we use sivivel chairs.

Dear ShitFerBrains:

Earth Firstlers are known as the activists among environmental activists, the ones who don't compromise. While others content themselves with composting and recycling, EF is out there taking direct action. Actually, we need every one of those composters and recyclers, and every tree spiker is my idol. Any level of awareness and action is better than apathy, or despair.

But, being part of this society demands endless and constant compromises with my environmental ethics. Every time I use electricity, flush the toilet, get in the car, I am knowingly contributing to the degradation. Looking around my room, I see the resources of an entire planet going to support my one body. Foods grown in South and Central America, and all across the US. Clothing

processed in Asia, petrochemical components from the mid-east in a dozen forms, and I wonder where all the electrical wires were mined ... To keep our sanity, we all make the compromises while we do what we can to live right. But...

But I want to stop compromising. So I wish to propose an experiment in living authentically "in place," as humans did for 99.99% of our history. I want to form a small hunter-gatherer tribe which will use only the resources of it's range. Is American land still able to support a small population of omnivores as large as humans? Have we so domesticated ourselves that, like chickens, we can no longer survive "in the wild"? These are legitimate questions. There are no more wild indians in North America, and the surviving tribal peoples of the world are among the most endangered of all this planet's life. Yet stone age technology supported human life for 2,000,000 years, and industrial technology is killing off all life in mere centuries.

The ideal experimental group will be between 10 and 20 men and women, of various backgrounds and ages. Some will be knowledgeable in primitive technology, some in plants and animals, some perhaps in healing. I'd suggest we have a shaman; we seem to need an earth-based spirituality to keep from degenerating into earth-rapers. The experiment should run for at least two years. That will give us four seasons of trial and error learning, and then a second chance to do better. We may also need a year of prep . time, to replace our manufactured tools and clothes with made-in-our-place ones.

Our primary experiment will be survival with stone-age technology. However, in forming a small tribe, we will also be experimenting in social living. With this in mind, I'd hope for a mix of racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds among members. Diversity is strength.

The biggest barrier to starting this experiment will be getting a land use / permit. I do not know the range I needed to support 20 people. Is it. \ d

40 acres, or 200 acres? Is there a \. private organization that could offer the use of the land? If we

were under the aegis of a govern-_ J)

mental or academic sponsor, S could we use public land? And can we find wilderness which is not a nuclear test site, a toxic waste disposal site, or downstream from a plutonium mine?

I would be happy to seek official sponsorship in exchange for a site. We could provide data on how the common man will fare, to counterbalance the scientists living in Biosphere II, seeing if the select few might survive the destruction of the biosphere! But regardless of all the official and legitimate reasons we may generate to justify the experiment, my Real Why is that I need to live ethically, if only for a few years. This experiment may not contribute more to saving the planet than staying home and writing to my congressmen about the issues. But at least a small group of us wifi be freed for a while from the constant compromises.

This letter is the first step in arranging this experiment. If you are interested in joining the "tribe," please write to me. If you have any advice or knowledge concerning land availability or govemment/academic backing, let me know. I am;

—Linda Palter, 14 Payeur Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48108.

Take the Next Step

Folks in defense of the earth have myriad background and reasons for their own actions. All are welcomed to progress beyond what they're currently doing and do some direct action in the forests.

Coming from a history of working for the "very large corporations of America," it's easy to see why I told my water polluting company to take their job and shove it.

Moving into the mainstream of activism,

I took up door-to-door canvassing (fundraising) for i "very large environmental organization of America." Being nonprofit, it has a goodness that your labors are not going to Mr. Corporate Bigshot. Tough work, everyone should canvass for a while to get in touch with suburban American people. The results of this group were attained through passing legislation. A noble means of addressing our problem in this so-^ called democratic society. Of course, you're inherently still tied in to big money buying votes from supposedly honest politicians. Needless to say, ^ the work is good and a means of income for even the most hard-line activist during the winter months.

I'm utilizing direct action for the first time at Cove/Mallard, and encourage all you who have been touched by mainstream environmental groups to do the same.

Days pass by in which mainstream activists' hearts ache.

Compromising politicians leave our hard work in their wake.

Take the next step, give your shorts a needed shake.

Direct Action today, before the next dawn breaks.

—Dave Pacheco

Dear fer,

Seeing as the great tree spiking debate has reared its ugly head in the west again, I feel this is the time to put in my two cents.

\ The main arguments advanced

j by the anti-spiking faction are

k j that spiking is dangerous to the fly workers, and ineffective in stop-

ping cuts.

Anyone who places a single ) \ spike has the responsibility to

i spread the word as widely as I possible. A communique of some

j sort must be sent to local media,

' forest agencies, the mill which was to handle the timber, the millworkers' union, the loggers or logging companies, etc. A spiking which is not publicized does nothing to stop logging; it is a reckless and pointless gesture (and definitely not a course of action advocated by any earth first !er I know). If any who have been warned then choose to go ahead with the cutting and milling of the timber, they must accept the consequences of their actions. At that point I have little sympathy for the workers. All workers have the choice of working or not, and it's the logger who has the final decision on whether a tree is cut. Get some backbone and use no-compromise tactics on labor issues. I don't give a shit whether a timber worker, or any worker for that matter, can afford that box of donuts or that second big mac or second car or microwave oven or big-screen TV. Let them become wards of the state and drag it down instead of the forest. The future of life on this planet is more important.

The second argument is that spiking is ineffective as a tactic. Contrary to the claims of the anti-spiking faction, spiking has saved areas from the chainsaw; witness Meares Island, BC, and Bowen Gulch, CO., to name

a couple. And hell, if we're going to eliminate every tactic which is ever ineffective, why don't we just shit-can all our tactics and all become lawyers. Demos, woods actions, worker solidarity, the dreaded scourge of electoral politics, every tactic we use—they all fail to some degree. Even lawsuits fail (gasp!), amazing though it may seem. A delay in cutting, or installation and use of metal detectors due to spikes is at least a partial victory. If the eco-fuckers are going to try to cut, we should try to make it as expensive as possible for them. I don't care if they pass the cost on to the consumer— the consumer is the problem, too. Maybe higher wood prices are needed to get people to use less, recycle, etc.; eliminate the throwaway society. So I consider the "spiking is ineffective" argument to be completely specious.

At a time when the destruction of the i planet is accelerating like never before, it

is just plain stupid to discard any tactic or weapon (from spiking and ecotage to legislation and lawsuits) which will slow the machine. Put the earth first!

Kindest regards,

—WOODHEAD

Dear Shitty Brains

To the one who claims to speak for the Mother. This is from a Pagan High Priestess feminist warrior who advocates "pregnancy: Another deadly sexually transmitted disease and love your mother, don't become one.

Lots of rationalizing for having overproduced with four humans, the "Huge Joy" of our species Collective Pregnancy is not too Joyfull for all other life forms that we are squeezing into extinction.

It takes two to create a baby but do as I did, get sterilized and end our spreading our Goodies to the four comers.

As much as we try to live enlightened lifestyles we still cause damage by just being here. Basically everything we touch, turns to shit. It's not a matter of being a womyns issue or your bloody right to do anything you like, it's a matter of ecocide. Fucking is great but it mustn’t lead to reproduction, AND you assume your children when they are adults will also live in the cave as you choose, no electricity etc... not likely.

As any aware person knows, many scientists like Jeremy Rifkin and Norman Myers and activists like Dr. Caldicott, say we only have ten years left to reverse the Greenhouse effect, ozone depletion and the extermination of species. After that the life support system will die. Any person who reproduces is either in denial, Magical thinking or a selfish fool, not showing concern for the earth nor their children. I lived in Africa, I know what it's like to see mass starvation. Babies are cute but who's got the time because how many times have I seen when people have babies all their time is consumed by the child, the child becomes the cause. "Sorry got no time anymore, got a family." Yo out there, we are going down fast and where are the warriors? Sucklin. Contemplate less on vaginas, babies, fucking and think more about the fact that our species is raping the Mother or Gaia to death. Our species is waging war on all life on earth. We need warriors to fight for those who cant protect themselves. Dont let the Mothering instinct have such a blind pull on your sentimentality.

And Paul Watson. Please your Huevos (balls) have gotten so big that I cant see past them to the real worthy cause, therefore I dropped my subscription. I love the Seashepards, if they could only lose Watson at sea, they’d have a better chance of getting a broader base of support, then alienating themselves from foes. Rank you with the baby machine, grow up, were all in the shit together, lets try harder to wake up on all levels including my own character. Best thing I ever did was to get sterilized when I was 18.

I think I heard a universal sigh from life. 5 Billion and counting, what a terrifying reality.

—Mouse that roars.

Earth First!

A hearty US Marine "Thanks" for fighting on the truest front, Multi-Death Corporation Greed vs. Our Mother. My knowledge of your organization is limited to "basic" fundamentals, "Saying Mother Earth at all Costs." As a Marine, sacrifice is not new to me, and I'm glad to see others taking a stand for that which they feel deeply! With set plans to join the Peace Corps in June of 1994, I too share some of the burden for fighting some of the world's "wrongs." As a tactically and technically proficient marine, it is my wish to aid in the preservation of our Mother! I was lucky enough to secure your address from a squad member's book; I hope I will be as lucky to receive information back from your noble organization and how i can get involved, either financially or actively. Please take this letter seriously, as I am serious. Semper Fi.

Respectfully,

—Jusun B. Barrow, USMC Cpl.

Dear Editor,

I wish to engage in a little comradely debate with Greg Gordon, who stated his conviction in the May Journal that Malthus was fundamentally wrong. Malthus believed that overpopulation was going to be a primary cause of the worldwide problems we now often associate with overpopulation rather than the result, as Gordon believes. Gordon believes that the key underlying factor is a "a cultural cancer that is spreading over the planet" that caused the population explosion that coincided with the industrial revolution.

Gordon's observations hold true in many regards, but they are likewise consistent with the ideas of neo-Malthusian historians like Paul Kennedy. Kennedy is a clear-minded scholar who gives a detailed analysis of the historical roots of the current technology related population crisis and its probable effect when projected into the future. This is the topic of his recent book "Preparing for the 21st Century"; Random House, $25. His previous major work, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" is a richly documented analysis of the syndrome of empires, like the United States after WWII, that get themselves overextended militarily in die course of trying to maintain by force a system that generates wealth.

Gordon observes and explains historical trends, but I explain them somewhat differently. Because of the fairly universal tendency of humans to pass along useful information, technology has continually evolved in the direction of greater complexity and refinement. This gradual accumulation of useful technique has enabled mankind to pass through three great stages of development. There are the hunting and gathering stage, for the last million years or so, during when our be-havioral traits as a species of ape largely ^4 evolved. Second there is the agricultural revolution of the last^SS^S' ten thousand years or so. Finally there is the industrial revolution lasting for only the last century and a half in the United States.

(See "The Economics of World Population," a classic and wonderfully insightful little book by Antonio Cicippio).

Each of these three stages is associated with a sharp increase in population and also the complexity of soda! organization over the preceding stage. Each human population and stage of technology tends to have a fitting social organization and culture. Meanwhile, human numbers have usually ratcheted upwards to exploit fruitful advances in technology within generations, not counting setbacks caused by plagues, natural disasters revolutions, etc.

The greed of imperialism operating on a global scale is no stronger than the greed of Columbus, but the side-effects of such mindless acquisitiveness on the environment have increased since his time by orders of magnitude. This is true because of the power of modem technology multiplied by the increased population itself made possible by technology. The third world as well as the industrialized world is being rapidly transformed by technology. The resulting cultural turmoil is in itself contributing to the population explosion.

What Gordon seems to me to leave out is a discussion of what it is about the new culture that is causing it to spread so rapidly. I think that Gordon should focus more on the underlying technol-\ ogy that is introducing cheap beer, refrigerators, telephones, television and automobiles, into the third world. Until the present time, the tentacles of consumer desire introduced by communications technology have overpowered tribalism pretty much everywhere.

What Gordon wants to see is a spiritual rebirth in our culture evolving in reaction to capitalism and then catching on to spread worldwide. Who could disagree with this vision? This point of view offers hope that a religious or cultural rebirth to "get tribal" could save the planet from a hellish population crisis.

The test of this philosophy is to be able to see examples of cultures that have willingly and successfully rejected materially wealth. A lack of such groups does not mean that anti-materialist rebellions are impossible. In fact Kennedy believes they are increasingly likely, given the increasing inability to deliver the goods shown on television. Perhaps Moslem fundamentalism and religious cults in the United States are a harbinger of the times to come. But maybe not.

I believe it is very possible that the moral bankruptcy of world capitalism driven by technology may eventually destabilize the world economic system through overpopulation, followed by a great die-off. This could cause something like the dark ages that followed the economic collapse of the Roman Empire. As an old radical turned environmentalist, and one who still thinks Marx was largely on target, I think we have a moral obligation to minimize the disaster. I think a first class way to decide how to expend political effort effectively is by studying the works of the best neo-Malthusian scholars like Kennedy.

Sincerely,

—Roger Baker

Dear shitty brains,

As to the tactic of pouring gas on the forest floor to save some Ancient Trees, the Nuremburg Principles apply. A lesser crime to prevent a greater one. My impression from subsequent discussions with eyewitnesses is that the action was * more consensual than I previously thought.

40 Not the preferred tactic of course, but a reflection of the corporate mind " that is making Earth die. Now as to the tactical letters to 5 this column to a vm' vent frustration I must admit a lesson has been * * wrought. My letter of two issues ago helped to clarify the passive e 3 aggressive side in I.

Even though the letter mentioned no names, the reaction it caused in one who was involved showed me the negative affect in-fighting has on this movement. If a public discussion is to take place all involved parties must first be approached. The fear and distrust created by my last letter used up energy that coulda gone to breaking the corporate mind. Now the frustration created by watching Ancient Trees die should never have blinded my eye to dealing with issues that involve our collective mind. But it did. It won't again. I'm dedicated to getting the in-fighting out of this movement so we can focus on bringing longterm solutions about.

In Solidarity,

—Elk

P.S. please print this for generating a harmonious Ecotopian state.

Dear SFB

The repercussions can still be felt, Thank you. I'm sayin'; for all the efforts to disgrace the fur coat wearers.

Listening to my friends, the ones with feathers and fly. I began to realize how the noise and air pollution from big cars is driving natural life out. Hearding all into (sancion?) with less and fewer.

I made a promise to find a way to make things better for all. People think 30 mpg is good. I say not when 57 mpg is available. I consider any car getting less than 40 mpg is a gas hog at today's standard. And want to propose this campaign called: Flip Off a Gas Hog. Once the message is out and realized, flippin' off can be fun.

I believe the new car buyers should be targeted. 1990 to date. Not to leave out anyone else who could afford to get a newer economy model. ^

So I'm hoping that somebody can safely make national news with the message. So /V the job will become easy (fun). /

From, ■

Breathing is not a choice, Vandals for awareness, and the Let the birds sing coalition.

This is canary sayin'

listen and breathe.

—Nick C. Dateanis

Hey There!

Just a couple of comments regarding OpEd by Karen Pickett, in the Beltain issue.

First, I wholeheartedly agree with her as to the point that The Journal is, indeed , an invaluable tool in the national network. But, once again, I believe it's vital to carry that a step further by emphasizing the fact that the Environmental struggle is an international, as well as a national one, that we are "everywhere." It was the West German Greens, in the early seventies, who were among those in the forefront of the then-burgeoning Environmental movement, pointing out the ramifications of nuclear dumpsites, etc., in addition to the overall destruction of the Earth.

We most assuredly need to keep thejoumal alive and moving. Personally speaking, (if I may), I've enjoyed every issue I've ever gotten, and have kept every one, (a library is growing here).

Although I have been submitting articles frequently, I would like to accomplish more. Distance and lack of monetary resources, (yes, I'm low-income), are at times, a burden, but if there is anything additional, please let me know. Meanwhile, take care and CARRY ON!

For the Whole Thing,

—Dave Collins

Dear Good Peoples,

This is a confession. I read the Earth First! Journal. I've read these thought-provoking pages for going on 5 years now. I've liked every issue! However, I've never paid for one. Not even one. I figure I owe over $100 by now.

Currently, I'm working at the Journal office and have become aware of the tenuous financial situation our bank account is in. We have only about 2200 subscribers. That ain't shit! If each and every EF!er were to sell 1 subscription, hell we could multiply the subscribers, pay the staff a decent wage, and have money left over for ACTIONS! Imagine that.

As an organizer and activist I just figured it was OK to take an issue every time the box of issues came for Stumptown EF! Well that ain't gonna work. "Free" Journals are meant to be sold for the funding of the local groups. We all need to buy a subscription to the Journal. If not for you, how about buying a sub for someone else? $25 a year is only about $2 a month. Heck, most of us spend more than that on beer every day! So, how about it? SUBSCRIBE.

I have another confession. Since I'm working at the Journal, I don't plan on buying a sub anytime soon. I have, however, solicited a few.

—Jim Flynn, Unrepentant No-Wing Thug

Oith Foist!-

Recently I dialed 1-800-BillBob to place an order (merchandise is everything in the environmental game) for the "Back to the Pleistocene" bumpersticker and was told that EF! no longer has the rights to that logo or slogan. Well, why not, I asked. The nice people in Mizoola informed me that Dave Foreman, in his ceremonious departure from EF!dom, had taken that sticker for himself and his merry band of New Conservationists. That seemed unfortunate for me, but all well and dandy on the surface. Now that I've thought about it for a little longer, it has begun to gnaw at me. I want Foreman, et al, to give us the Pleistocene Era bumpersticker back. Dave is not a caveman anymore! Sure, the New Conservation movement is still doing what Gary Snyder termed, "the real work," but a laptop in Vermont or a facsimile from Tucson hardly merits the naked brutality of a hairy-assed, flint axe wielding Cro-magnon strikingout. Sitting on a phone and discussing theory produce more i recipes for right living, but J the simple act of filing a Forest Service appeal actually stops the bastards. Foreman and the other wild earthlings should take a cue from that Bader fellow and start pushing legislation designed to re-create, to rewild serious chunks of our fair land. Or take lessons from those Bus Brigade crackpots in Idaho—get the fuck back on your feet Dave and get them wet again. I don't want to slight Wild Earth or even science-based biocentrism, but the cavemen are embodied in the men and womyn of Earth First! and not some pipe-smoking, suited scientist from academia, even if that guy occasionally strips naked and bays at the moon. Well, I guess if he d oes occasionally strip naked and howl like a wolf, he can keep the damn sticker.

Another little tidbit: I was leafing through some Northern California rag and came across a blurb about Mike Roselle terming the Mizoolians he had worked with at the Journal a bunch of noserings. Shoo-boy howdy, that Roselle has got a way with words. Then I thought, wouldn't Paul Watson appreciate that? Jodphur-wearing, canon-firing Paul should picture us all in flouncy, buccaneer shirts with patches over oiy eyes and big, gold hoops hanging from our snoots. I'm sure it would help enforce the UN ban on drift-netting, and that is what he ought to be concerning himself with.

This little diatribe is not meant to tease the "big guns" we have had the pleasure to work with, it merely serves to let them know that it would be appreciated if they would start concentrating on the goals we all share and stop dissecting Earth First! as some faceless cadaver. We all have real work to do, we all have something to contribute, and the meaningless crap only serves to sap energy from folks already stretched too thin.

So Foreman, give us our caveman back and let the pagans be pagan; Roselle, get the hell back into the raft where you belong and where you are appreciated, and Watson, get the fuck back onto the high seas and litter the bottom with strategic boat parts. ML remains god and I remain, for those pesky falling trees and those tenacious struggling salmon, \

\ —Steve Maher

\ Bristol Bay, Alaska

Rendezvous Rumor Control

—RRR Committee, Tucson

Each year around this time, rumors bounce around EF! tircles about the upcoming RRR: local roughnecks are planning an armed attack: the Forest Service won't give us a permit; people with dogs cannot attend; the Grateful Dead will make a surprise appearance at the rally; whatever. Maybe due in part to the unique nature of this year's Rendezvous on Mt. Graham, some of this year's rumors are especially interesting. Your ever-vigilant and hardworking 1993 RRR committee would like to correct some of these misunderstandings.

Before spuming the Rendezvous because you heard this or that, why not personally communicate with one of the RRR committee members and get the real story?

RRR committee contacts:

RRR msg hotline (602) 795-2527 after June 21

Jean Crawford (505) 256-9184

Rumor: The Rendezvous will be held on a pristine mountaintop near the summit of Mt Graham, in the middle of endangered Mt. Graham Red Squirrel habitat— a place so super-sensitive that any large gathering of people could not help but wreak environmental havoc.

Reality: The Rendezvous will be held near the top of Grant Hill, which is 1000' lower, several miles away, and across the road from Mt. Graham's high peaks. A variant of this rumor runs that we'll be camping in a sensitive riparian area: the nearest stream is half a mile away and over 500' below the site. Grant Hill has been thoroughly logged, and several old logging roads traverse the area. It does have a nice tree cover now and is beautiful, but it is not pristine and, relatively speaking, is not very environmentally^en-sitive.

Most of Mt. Graham's Red Squirrels are on the high peaks, but there are lesser numbers scattered throughout the mountain range's upper elevations, including right near some of the most popular campgrounds and other developments. There are also a few Red Squirrel middens on the north side of Grant Hill, but the Rendezvous site is located on the south side, and we will only minimally disturb the squirrels anH tVipir hahitat

Rumor: The Rendezvous site is within the Apache's Dzil nchaa si an (Mt. Graham) traditional sacred site.

Reality: The entire mountain range is a sacred site. This includes not only the RRR site but also the Forest Service campgrounds, reservoir, and roads—all of which the Apache use, for camping, fishing, and to reach the high peaks for ceremonies. The amount of damage being done and the attitude of the visitors matter most. The Rendezvous committee has carefully considered Native American concerns and is in contact with local Apaches. We have worked with local Native Americans in arranging the Rendezvous and have received no indication that they are opposed to our use of Grant Hill for the Rendezvous.

Rumor: There will be "designated drinking" days and areas at the Rendezvous.

Realtiy: Say what?! We have only asked (relative to drinking) that everyone try to respect everyone else's wants and needs. This Rendezvous is part of the burgeoning alliances between EF! and Native activists. Alcohol is a survival issue for Native peoples. Out of respect for their struggles, you may wish to refrain from alcohol this RRR.

Mount Graham Updates

The University of Arizona and the Vatican, partners in the Mt. Graham International Observatory, have announced they will rename the so-called Columbus project, in a show of sensitivity to Native peoples. Of course, the newly-christened Large Binocular Telescope is still planned for the top of Mt. Graham, a site sacred to Apache people. Members of the Apache Survival Coalition, an alliance of traditional Apaches, have welcomed the name change, but still oppose the project on religious grounds.

"They can name it Sally or John or whatever name they want, but we still don't want it," said Coalition member Ola Cassadore Davis. "That mountain is our church, it's a temple, so they should leave it alone, leave it the way it is." "It's not right for them to build anything on top of that mountain," said Frank Stanley, a tribal spiritual leader, "I don't care what they call it."

Reaffirming the tribe's opposition to the project, the San Carlos Apache Tribal Council unanimously approved a resolution condemning the Observatory as a desecration of a religious site: "the San Carlos Apache Tribe states its firm and total opposition to the construction of a telescope project on the top of Mt. Graham and ... stands ready to defend its constitutional rights if this project is allowed to be continued." This is the fourth such statement in as many years.

Mt. Graham (Dzil Nchaa Si An) is a sacred mountain to the San Carlos Apaches, and any permanent modification of the present form of the mountain constitutes a display of profound disrespect for a revered feature of the San Carlos Apache's original homeland as well as a violation of traditional religious beliefs.

Apache activists are planning a 50-mile sacred run on July 3 from San Carlos to Mt. Graham, where they will join Earth First! for a protest against the telescope project

In addition to conflicts over sacred land, opponents of the observatory have leveled charges its construction could harm the Mexican Spotted Owl, an imperiled species now finally listed as Threatened after years of delay by the Bush and Reagan administrations.

Robin Silver, a Phoenix doctor and Mt. Graham activist, has filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Forest Service and Department of Agriculture for failure to consult with the US Fish and Wildlife

Service as required under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act. In his letter to Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, Silver charges that the observatory, "continues to negatively and cumulatively impact the habitat of the owls' prey base in the Pinalerio Mountains." Silver noted the need to notify the Secretary directly, as "the Forest Service, at the highest levels, has established that it will not attend professionally to the situation on Mt. Graham. This fact was established on May 7, 1990 when the US General Accounting Office (GAO) discovered and documented that USFS Chief Dale Robertson has an illegal, previously secret 'understanding' with Arizona Senator John McCain to 'facilitate the Mt. Graham project.'"

Silver is also pursuing a $1 million false arrest lawsuit against the University of Arizona for his arrest on Columbus Day 1992 his lawyer says was "wrongful, without probable cause, and motivated and designed to harm Dr. Silver and deprive him of his constitutional rights." In the suit, Silver is charging the arrest was to intended to punish Silver for uncovering information (in still another lawsuit, natch) which shows University of Arizona officials knew state advisors had criticized a funding scheme for the project as "risky, and possibly illegal."

"The San Carlos Apache Tribe states its firm and total opposition to the construction of a telescope project on the top of Mt, Graham."

As we also noted in the last Journal, the RRR committee will not be furnishing beer this year. Any special arrangements about alcohol can be made by Rendezvous-goers when they get there.

Rumor: Access to the Rendezvous is via a steep, rocky, rugged, brutal, two-mile trail; you'd have to be a world-class athlete just to get there!

Realtiy: The walk from the staging area (next to the parking area) to the Rendezvous site is less than 3/4 of a mile on a gently sloping old logging road. There are a few moderate stretches, but it's generally quite easy. With time and effort, someone in a wheelchair could probably make it.

Rumor: Absolutely no dogs are permitted at the Rendezvous, and those who do manage to smuggle in their domesticated friends will be treated like dog shit.

Realtiy: For reasons detailed in the last Journal , we strongly discourage people bringing dogs, but we would not presume to tell anyone not to bring dogs. Our request that you leave your dog at home is based not on an anti-dog bias, but on our strong commitment to protect the endangered Mt. Graham Red Squirrel. This squirrel spends most of its time on the ground, making it very vulnerable to dogs. One dog accidentally off its leash could cause a tragedy. Please help protect the squirrel, and choose to leave your dog at home.

Rumor: Hundreds of wild-eyed eco-terrorists will be running amok, defecating everywhere. (This is mostly an Arizona rumor spread by our opponents and their media friends.)

Reality: Deep, narrow-trench latrines will be strategically located throughout the Rendezvous site; they will afford some degree of privacy, pose no more health danger than porta-potties, and be environmentally friendly and biodegradable.

Rumor: No wearing of boots will be allowed at the Rendezvous.

Realtiy: We kindly request that people use soft-soled footwear or bare feet rather than waffle-stompers. This is merely to minimize environmental damage and bring people closer to the Earth, not because the site itself is incredibly sensitive or because the Rendezvous committee is a bunch of fascists.

Rumor: The 1993 RRR committee is controlled by the resurrected, infamous "Tucson Junta" of the 1980s.

Realtiy: None of the committee members were ever part of the so-called "Tucson Junta," (if there ever really was such a thing), though some of us do happen to live in Tucson.

We of the RRR committee feel good about this year's site, and planning for the RRR is going smoothly so far (with the usual minor hassles). We're excited, and we think this will be one of the best yet. So come to Mt. Graham June 27-July 4!!! Form affinity groups ahead of time. Bring tarps, twine, buckets, packs, food, and whatever else we'll need to make it happen. See you there!__

Earth First! Mount Graham Video Available

Uprising on Mt. Graham

Shot by Andy Caffrey

Features Interviews & the history of the struggle.

Tons of action footage

$17 includes Postage to Andy Caffrey POB 2182

Berkeley, CA - 94702

Pan 34 Earth First! Lidia 1993

Announcements

Native Forest Network North American Roadshow & Conference

Jake and friends are at it again with a fall roadshow from coast to coast. The tour is intended to increase coordintaion between activists and groups working on temperate forest campaigns and provide an overview of current international forest hotspots. Featured on the roadshow will be two Australian activists, Tim Cadman and Beth Gibbings who wil report on current threats to Australia's native forests. Earth First's best musicians will be taking turns on the show to make this an evening the whole family can enjoy! Warning— these dates are tentative. You or your group can help by hosting a show or by just showing up for the fun!

PACIFIC NORTHWEST
San Francisco-Mon., Sept 13
Davis, CA-Tue., Sept 14
Ukiah, CA-Wed., Sept IS
Chico, CA-Thur. 16
Garberville-Fit, Sept 17
Areata, CA-Sat., Sept 18
Ashland, OR-Tue., Sept 21
Eugene, OR-Wed., Sept 22
Opal Creek, OR-Thur., Sept 23
Portland, OR-Fri., Sept 24
Olympia, WA-Sat, Sept 25
Seattle, WA-Mon., Sept 27
Lopez Island, WA-Tue., Sept 28
Poer Angeles-Thur., Sept 29
Bellingham-Thur., Sept 30
Vancouver, BC-Sat, October 1

WILD ROCKIES
Republic, WA-Mon., Oct. 3
Spokane, WA-Wed., Oct 5
Sandpoint, ID-Thur., Oct 6
Moscow, ID-Fri., Oct 7
Boise, ID-Sat, Oct. 8
Ketchum, ID-Mon., Oct 9
Hamilton, MT-Tue., Oct 11
Missoula, MT-Thur., Oct 13
Whitefish/KalispeU-Fit, Oct. 14
Bozeman, MT-Sat, Oct 15
Jackson, WY-Mon., Oct. 17

MIDWEST/EAST
Omaha/Lincoln-Wed., Oct. 19
Lawrence, KS-Fri., Oct 21
Kansas City, KS-Sat., Oct 22
Columbia, MO-Sun., Oct. 23
St. Louis, MO-Mon., Oct 24
Carbondale, Hr Tue., Oct. 25
Bloomington, IN-Wed., Oct. 26
Nashville, TN-Thur., Oct. 28
Knoxville, TN-Fri., Oct. 29
Asheville, NC-Sat., Oct 30
Atlanta, GA-Tue., November. 2
Charlotte, NC.-Wed., Nov. 3
Charlottesville, VA-Thur., Nov. 4
Washington, DC.-Fri., Nov. 5
New York, NY-Mon., Nov. 7
Boston, MA-Tue., Nov. 8

NFN NORTH AMERICAN FOREST CONFERENCE
Burlington, VT - Thur., Nov. 11 - Sun., Nov. 14
Keynote speakers: David Suzuki & Winona LaDuke
Strategy Session - Mon., Nov. 15 - Wed., Nov. 17
Open to all forest activists & campaigners
For more information contact:
NATIVE FOREST NETWORK,c/o EF! P.O. Box 5176,
Missoula, MT 59806
Ph: (406)728-8114; Fax: 406-728-8160; E-Mail
en:earthfirst

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Wild Walk For The Wolves

Two activists set out from Yellowstone National Park on June 4 for a four-month, 1100-mile trek to southern Colorado. Jeff Rottler andjames Carpenter of Durango, CO, hope to draw attention to the plight of the endangered Grey Wolf and raise money for groups supporting Wolf restoration in the Rocky Mountains. They planned their route near the Wolf's original range, traveling through some of the wildest parts of Wyoming and Colorado.

The hikers are asking for pledges of a penny a mile or more for their walk. The money will be split equally between four groups: Mission: Wolf, educating for wild Wolf recovery and against the ownership of Wolves; Wolf Recovery Foundation, supporting Idaho's tenuous population of Wolves; Predator Project, a national group based in Bozeman, MT advocating for protection and restoration of wild predators; and SINAPU (Ute for Wolves), working to reestablish a population of Grey Wolves in Colorado.

The hikers will stop along their route to educate about Wolves. Colorado stops are tentatively planned for Steamboat Springs, Aug. 4; Boulder, Aug. 18; Breckenridge, Aug. 27; Buena Vista, Sept. 11; and

Gunnison, Sept. 16. They will conclude at the Mission: Wolf facility in the Wet Mountains, Oct 4, andlaterthatmonth travel to Washington, DC to educate legislators about Wolf recovery.

Pledges can be sent to SINAPU, POB 79,

Silver Cliff, CO 81249.

—SlNAPU

Black-Footed Ferret Alert!

USFWS Proposes "Experimental" Status for Reintroduction

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has proposed "nonessential" status for reintroduction of the Endangered Black-footed Ferret (Mustela nigripes) to sites in north-central Montana and southwestern South Dakota. The proposals, intended to be models for planned reintroduction efforts in Arizona, Colorado, and Utah set a very disturbing precedent.

Instead of seeking to recover wild ferrets as required by law, the USFWS is planning "intensive ferret management" in direct response to a small, vocal group of locals opposed to ferret recovery. The only ferret colony in the wild, located in Wyoming, is already designated "non-essential" to the survival of the species in the wild.

Predator Project contends that the "experimental, nonessential" designation is totally inappropriate for biological, legal, social and moral reasons. USFWS should instead designate both experimental populations as "essential," thus retaining full protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). USFWS is seeking to relax legal standards for the management of Montana and South Dakota ferret populations to accomodate "human activities:" including grazing, prairie dog control,trapping, ORV use, and oil and gas development, all of which disturb the habitat of the prairie dog colonies upon which the Black-footed Ferret depends for food. These are the same practices which have reduced prairie dog habitat to 2% of its original extent and driven the ferret, an indicator species for prairie ecosystems, to within a whisker of extinction.

—Predator Project

What you can do:

Write to the USFWS. The comment period for Montana is already closed, but write anyway. USFWS is accepting comments in South Dakota through July 19th. Write letter to the editor of the newspapers in your region.

USFWS: MT: Dennis Christopherson, 1501 14th st
W; Billings, MT 59102.

USFWS: SD: Stan Zscholmer; 420 S Garfield Ave,
ste 400; Pierre, SD 57501
Predator Project: POB 6733, Bozeman MT, 59771,
(406) 587-3389.

Anti-Chevron Action Planned for Bridger-Teton

Willow Creek in the Bridger-Teton National Forest will be a hot spot on July 1 when Chevron comes to town with assorted oil drillin' equipment. Seems Chevron don't have no respect for the critters that make their homes in this roadless tract of forest thirty miles south of Jackson, Wyoming. Willow Creek harbors prime griz habitat, elk calving grounds, and a shrinking population of bald eagles.

Chevron ain't planning to build no roads, which is awful nice of them, but they do plan to create a disturbance when they invade the skies above Willow Creek with their helicopters.

You can get to Willow Creek by taking Hwy. 189-191 to Hoback Canyon, which is just south of Camp Creek. For more information please contact:

Diane Rimers (307) 733-2619

Russian Quarry Occupation

Dear friends !

We are writing to interest Earth First! in the action that will take place in Samarskaya Luka National Park. We value all support and if, as a result of the action, we attract the attention of the public to this problem at home and abroad, it would be a tremendous accomplishment (though we aim for bigger achievements).

The Samarskaya Luka National Park is located 1000 km east of Moscow. It occupies the area within the "U-bend" of the Volga around Samara, Syzran, Togliatti and Zhigulevsk cities.

Historically, the construction firms of the Samara region were using the National Park as their source of raw materials. This is still going on. The park territory has several quarry pits where they extract stone for the construction industry. The Zhigulevsk Hills are severely damaged as a result of the quarries. The landscapes and ecosystems of the hills are severely eroded. Due to worsening economic conditions in Russia, the extraction of construction materials in the national park is increasing. There is no law to regulate the process. All the calls of environmentalists, workers and scientists to protect this National Park have been ignored.

That is why we consider it necessary to carry out a radical action against the decision makers. We are planning to set up a constant vigil in protest of the mining at Mogutova mountain, directly in the blasting zone.

When making plans for arrival, It would be better to arrive in one group. This is especially important for those who do not speak Russian. It is advisable, but not mandatory, to bring a tent, sleeping bag, some food and money. Due to inadequate funding, our resources are rather limited. Communicate with us preferably by E-mail or Phone the Socio-Ecological Union in advance.

We warn you; Russia differs slightly from the rest of Europe and here you could be with a very high degree of probability cheated during the first minutes of stay. Suggestions: 1. Do not be in a hurry to exchange your hard currency for rubles after leaving the plane. 2. Do not be hasty to buy things or pay for services in the airport.

If you cannot join us on the front lines, contact the Socio-Ecological Union and we will keep you informed throughout the action.

Sergey Fomichov, E-mail: soceco@glas.apc.org (subject: For Fomochov), Phone: (8312) 34-32-80; Address, Tereshkovay 28a - 49, Dzerzhinsk 606029, RUSSIA

Socio-Ecological Union, Phone: (206-88-94, 206-82-73, 206-97-90, or 928-76-08)

Book Reviews

The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-Environmental Organizations, by Carl Deal, Odonian Press, Berkeley, 1993.

Reviewed by Chris Roth

The Sea lion Defense Fund sounds like a worthy cause, doesn't it? I might even have considered giving them money (once that $10 million phone call comes from Ed McMahon), had I not read about them in this book. They are, you guessed it, effectively an anti-sea lion society, a fishing industry-funded group which lobbies for raising fishing quotas on this threatened species' main food. Likewise, the BC Forest Alliance, the California Desert Coalition, the Global Climate Coalition, and the National Wetlands Coalition advocate, respectively, increased timber harvests, mining-grazing-ORV use of the deserts, the debunking of the global warming "myth", and the destruction of wetlands. Accuracy in Media, the Alliance for a Responsible CFC Policy, the Environmental Conservation Organization, and the Society for Environmental Truth, are each, according to Greenpeace, for anything but. Oregonians for Food and Shelter's main mission is to convince the public that chemical pesticides are safe.

The gem of wisdom to be gleaned from the Abundant Wildlife Society of North America is that wolves "regularly attack people in India" because that country "has a philosophy of environmentalism". But without wolves (which the Abundant Wildlife Society would exterminate) who will be left to attack the environmentalists? The groups in this guide, including "greenwashing" public relations firms, corporate front groups, right-wing think

tanks, industry-funded "public interest" legal foundations, ultra-conservative endowments and charities, and "wise use" and "share" groups, all seem to be vying for the honor. "Preservationists are like a new religion—a new paganism," according to one group. "They worship trees and sacrifice people." Even the Humane Society is finally unmasked as a "radical animal-rights cult... a front for a neo-pagan cult that is attacking science, health and reason."

This directory is proof that environmental ignorance and doublespeak did not die with the Watt-Reagan-Bush-Quayle years, nor did the incredibly inane "witticisms" accompanying ecological myopia. "Parks are like aspirin," the National Inholders Association's executive director believes. "Two can be helpful, but a hundred will put you in the hospital." For most of us, this guide will be not a list of groups to avoid giving money to, but a list of corporate anti-environmental sponsors (many of the groups' known funding sources publicly cultivate a "green" image) to boycott, and a reminder of the mixture of deception and stupidity we dangerous anti-American neo-pagan cultists are up against.

Shocking Fish Tales: Fish, Romance and Death in Pictures, by Ray Troll and Brad Matsen, Alaska Northwest Books, Anchorage, 1991.

Reviewed by Twilly Cannon

Artist Ray Troll and writer BradMatsen, two Northwest pan-icthyists, have teamed up to produce "Shocking Fish Tales" — a twisted coffee-table book promising "deep, deep thought with full-scale illustrations."

Ray offers dreamtime, colored pencil illustrations of the fish world encountering ratfish, lumpsuckers and even "business men at twenty fathoms." He asks us "Fish worship — is it wrong?" Besides being an artist, Ray is a committed activist, having worked in the old "Crabshell Alliance," [the Pacific Northwest antinuclear movement that shut down five nuclearpower plants in the 70's and 80's — ed] and, more recently, fighting the nuclear sub base being built near Ketchikan.

Brad Matsen, when not submerged in marine mysticism, writes for National Fisherman — a publication which is becoming increasingly vocal on environmental matters from witnessing the collapse of fishery* after fishery. In Deep, Deep Thoughts he writes:

"The possibility that we humans are fouling up the old globe beyond our ability to repair seems to be on everybody's mind these days, probably because a decrepit version of creation theory has expired, wheezing and gasping in the comer of the shack where we store our collective wisdom."

And later:

"One thing is for sure: water makes earth the paradise it is. Fish are our canaries, and a lot of them are missing a few notes or hacking between verses. So do a good turn for a Pacific spiny lumpsucker today."

Amen. Buy this book.

Chris Roth writes regularly for Talking Leaves, a journal of deep ecology and spiritual activism—a front for the Humane Society and other radical neo-pagan cults. Subscriptions are $ 18/year from 1430 Willamette Suite 367, Eugene, OR, 97401 Phone: 503/342-2974)

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Twilly Cannon is a longtime Greenpeace activist who was hanging around the office one day and did this review.

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"Once I dreamed I was an insect talking to insects and telling them I dreamed I was human."

Thomas Eisner, entomologist & father of chemical ecology.

Earth First! Activist Directory

Alaska

Alaska EF! Wally World
Michael Lewis

POB 670647, Chugiak, AK 99567

Arizona

Phoenix EF!

Mike or Terri

POB 8795, Phoenix, AZ 85066
(602) 276-2849
Arizona Wildlands
Environmental Museum
Steve Lesjak

POB 24988, Tempe, AZ 85722
Tucson EF! AZEF! Newsletter
POB 3412, Tucson, AZ 85722
California
Northcoast EF!

Randy Ghent

POB 4796, Areata, Ecotopia 95521
(707) 839-5847
Sonoma County EF!

Mark

POB 8103, Santa Rosa, CA 95401
(707) 546-6706
Bay Area EF!

Karen Pickett

POB 83, Canyon, CA 94515
San Francisco EF!

POB 411233, San Francisco,CA
94145

Bay Area Hotline (415) 949-0575
Hunt Saboteurs...BWAP!

POB 136, Solana Beach, CA 92075
Lifeweb

POB 20803, San Jose, CA 95160
(408) 289-1646
Volcano EF!

J. Sten Layman

POB 1475, Sutter Creek, CA 95685
(209) 223-2965
Riparian Action Faction
Box 1142, Lotus, CA 95651
Lake Tahoe EF!

Bill Peterson

POB 8934, S. Lake Tahoe, CA 96158
Santa Cruz EF!

Dennis Davie

POB 344, Santa Cruz, CA 95061
(408) 427-4436
Western Wolves Infbletter
Mike Saltz, Jr.

18032-C Lemon Dr #127
Yorba Linda, CA 92686
Dave Wheeler

POB 1398, Sugarloaf, CA 92386
Coyote Creek Greens
POB 1521, Cypress, CA 90630
Orange County EF!

POB 4960-593, Irvine, CA 92716
Los Angeles EF!

POB 4381, N. Hollywood, CA 91617
(818) 906-6833
Alluvial EF!

#102, POB 77027
Pasadena, CA 01107-6921
(818) 449-8702
Baja Ecotopia EF!

POB 33663

San Diego, CA 92163

Colorado

Walkabout

POB 1166, Boulder, CO 80306
Gunnison EF!

Gretchen Ulrich/Dewey Groover
POB 5916 WSC, Gunnison, CO
81231 (303)943-2354
San Juan EF!

DanJohnson

POB 3204, Durango, CO 81302
Wilderness Defense!

POB 460101, Smoky Hills Station
Aurora, CO 80046
The Wild Ranch Review
Tim Haugen, POB 81
Gulnare, CO 81042
Kirsten Atkins

POB 592, Crested Butte, CO 81224

Delaware

SEACret (Rad Eco-Tribe)

POB 1175, Newark, DE 19715
(302) 368-3736
Florida
Big Bend EF!

Mary Allgire, POB 20582
Tallahassee, FL 32316
(904) 421-1559
Pan

c/o 1507 Edgevale Road
Ft. Pierce, FL 34982
Big Cypress EF!

1938 Hollywood Blvd, 2nd FI
Hollywood, FL 33020
Georg ia

Students for Environmental Awareness

Tate Student Center, Univ. of GA.

Athens, GA 30602

Kids for Konservation

POB 885, Athens, GA 30601

Paul Beck

3654 Old Ferry Road

Martinez, GA 30907

(404) 855-6426

Hawaii

Christopher Hope-Cowing
POB 1031, Makawao, HI 96768
(808) 572-2546

Illinois

Chicago EF!

POB 6424, Evanston, IL 60204
Great Lakes EF!

Don Luebbert, 4435 Highland
Downers Grove, IL 60515
(708) 969-2361
Shawnee EF!

913 S. Illinois, Carbondale, IL 62034

(618) 549-7387

Indiana

John Hanson

2062 Ridgewood Lane

Madison, IN 47250

(812) 265-6393

Mike McKinney

10587 Oak Knoll Dr. E

Rome City, IN 46784

Iowa

Tallgrass Prairie EF!

Hal Rowe

POB 305, Iowa City, IA 52244 (319) 354-6674

Kentucky

Erik Dellahousay
455 Ed Howe Rd
Munfordville, KY 42765
(502) 531-6703
Maine
Maine EF!

Billi Barker, POB 507
N. Waterboro, ME 04061
(207) 247-4112
Solon EF!

Michael Vernon
RFD 1, Box 4025
Solon, ME 04979
(207) 643-2732
Maryland
Anacostia EF!

3912 Longfellow Street
Hyattsville, MD 20781
(301) 270-0857
Westminster EF!

217 Kirkhoff Rd
Westminster, MD 21158
(410) 857-1029
Massachusetts
Connecticutt Valley EF!

POB 298,

Shelburne Falls, MA 01370
Alan (Atticus Finch) Goldblatt
66 Wendell St
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 876-1750

Michig an

Michigan EF!

Biodiversity Project
POB 4255

Ann Arbor, MI 48106
Minnesota
Minnesota EF!

POB 7448

Minneapolis, MN 55407

Missouri
Annie Magill

POB 5905, Kansas City, MO 64111
Ray O McCall
Rt. 1, Box 89

Mountain Grove, MO 65711
Missouri Transition Zone
/Pink Planarians (MTZ/PPEF!)

POB 484, Columbia, MO 62505

Montana

Keep It WQd!

POB 1121, Whitefish, MT 59937
Wild Rockies EF!

POB 9286, Missoula, MT 59807
(406) 728-5733
Yellowstone EF!

Randall Restless,

Box 6151, Bozeman, MT 59715
(406) 585-9211
Nebraska
Buffalo Bruce

HC 74, Box 76, Chadron, NE 69337
(308) 432-3458

Nevada

Sierra Nevada EF!

POB 5504, Reno, NV 89503
(702) 746-3351
Great Basin EF!

Jonas Prida

POB 48, Yerington, NV 89447
(702) 463-2954

New lersev
New Jersey EF!

POB 506, Bloomfield, NJ 07003
(201) 748-4322
Dave Marquis
57 Jones Ave

New Brunswick, NJ 08901
New Mexico
Northern NMEF!

Ginger Quinn, POB 5170
Taos, NM 87571
(505) 758-5550

Hawk L

POB 661, Angel Fire, NM 87710
New Mexico EF!

Act Like An Earthquake
POB 12552, Albuquerque, NM
87195

(505) 873-0299
Greater Gila Biodiversity Project
POB 12835

Albuquerque, NM 87195

New York
Suburban EF!

Eco-boy, 126 Purchase Street
Purchase, NY 10577
(914) 253-9319
EF! Twin Rivers Bioregion
The Bear, 224 Bevier Street
Binghampton, NY 13904
(607) 724-0348

Greater Adirondack Bioregion
1125 Phoenix Avenue
Schenectady, NY 12308
Wetlands Preserve
161 Hudson St, NY, NY 10013
(212) 966-5244
Long Island EF!

POB 812, Huntington, NY 11743
(516) 424-6499

North Carolina

South PAW
Rodney Webb

POB 3141, Asheville, NC 28802
(704) 258-2667

Ohio

Black Swamp EF!

Michael & Margery Downs 1117 1/2 N. Erie Street Toledo, OH 43604 Ohio Valley EF!

Brian Hagemann

POB 21017, Univ. of Cincinnatti

Cincinnati, OH 45221

Clint Holley III

28410 South Bridge Circle

Westlake, OH 44145

(216) 892-7891

Hocking River EF!

Whaley Mander/Vince Packard
571/2 Nourth Court Street
Athens, OH 45701
(614)5 9-GREEN
Oklahoma
Tallgrass Prairie EF!

2127 W. Jasper—B
Broken Arrow, OK 74011
(800) 484-9477x1044
Oregon
Stumptown EF!

POB 13765, Portland, OR 97213
Reed College EF!

Karen Lizars

Reed Box 25, Portland, OR 97202

International EF! Directory

Australia

Rainforest Information Centre
John Seed

POB 368, Lismore, NSW 2480

066-21-85-05

EF! Australia

Canopy and Noemi

POB 1738a GPO,

Melbourne, Victoria

03-554-7972

Canada

Wild Alberta EF!

Box 61245

Brentwood Postal NW
Calgary, AB T2L 2K6
Boreal Owl
Box 1053,

Kamloops, BC V2C 6H2
Terra Prima/W. Canada EF!

A-5 1720 Douglas St.

Victoria, BC V8W2G7
Vancouver EF!

Box 21521,1850 Commercial Dr

Vancouver, BC V5N 4AO

EF! Ottawa

Box 4612 Station E

Ottawa, ONT K1S 5H8

EF! Montreal

BP 42048 CPJ-Mance

Montreal, Quebec H2W 2T3

Denmark

EF! Denmark

c/o Troels Floe 5th

43 Absalonsgade 1658

Copenhagen V

Germany

EF! Germany Jan Ebert Blumenrode 11/13, 96215 Lichtnefels

India

Anand Skaria

PB #14, Cochin 682001, Kerala

009-484-25435 SAVE

Bander Bagicha

Near Maurya LokPATNA-800 001

Bihar, Post Box 229

Poland

A. Janusz Korbel

ul. Magi 21/3 43-300 Bielsko, Biala

EF!UK

London EF!

Cooltan Bldg.

372 Coldharboui Ln.

Brixton, London, SW9 071 737-0100

Lea Valley EF! Jason Torrance
POB 2573, London N16 6HN
tel & fax: (44) 081 8061561
Manchester EF!

Paul Williamson
Dept. 29,1 Newton St.

Piccadilly, Manchester Ml 1HW
061 225-7128
Oxford EF! Kate Geary
Box E, 111

Magdalen, Oxford OX4 IRQ
tel: 0865-201706, fax:0865-201705
South Downs EF!
c/o Prior House
6 Tilbury Place

Brighton/East Sussex BN2 2GY
Cambridge EF! Des Keane
605 Kings College
Cambridge CB2 1ST
Scotland

Scottish Tree Trust
30 Edgemont Street
Glascow G41 3EL
Slovakia
Earth First!

A. Hlinku 11
96001 Zvolen
SLOVAKIA!

For changes to the Directory,
please contact:

Earth First! Directory Contact
POB 34, Garberville, CA 95542
(707) 943-3788

Southern Willamette EF!

POB 10384, Eugene, OR 97213
(503) 343-7305

Kalmiopsis EF!

POB 1846, Cave Junction, OR 97523
Blue Mts. Biodiversity Project
HCR 82, Fossil, OR 97830
Pennsylvania
Allemong Bioregion EF!

POB 1689, Greensburg, PA 15601
Antoinette Dwinga
842 Library Ave, Carnegie, PA
15106

Scott Thiele
RD #4, 237-A Elk Lane
Montrose, PA 18801
Eastern Wildlife Project
Box 1631, Muhlenberg College
Allentown, PA 18104
Tennesee

Forest Protection Biodiversity
Project (PAW)

POB 1101, Knoxville, TN 37901
(615) 524-4771

Texas
EF! Austin

POB 7292, University Station
Austin, TX 77327
William Larson
9122 Oak Downs Road
San Antonio, TX 78230
(512) 342-2520 ,

East Texas EF! ^

Rt. 3, Box 114, Cleveland, TX 77327
Utah J

Wild Utah EF! (WOOF!) J

POB 510442 I

Salt Lake City, UT 84151 I

Vermont 1

Preserve Appalachian }

Wilderness (PAW)

Buck Young, Box 52A
Bondville, VT 05340
(802) 297-1022
Two Rivers EF!

POB 85, Sharon, VT 05065 j

Biodiversity Liberation Front /

Anne Petermann, POB 804 M

Burlington, VT 05402 (802) 658-2403 $

Virginia 1

Virginia/DC EF! £

Robert Mueller, Rt. 1, Box 250 F

Staunton, VA 22401 /'

(703) 885-6983

Appalachian EF! /

Appalachian Econnectlon fjjM

Ernie Reed, POB 309 xSf'

Nellysford, VA 22958 (804) 361-9036

Washington

Shuskan EF!

Tony Van Gessel

POB 773, Bellingham, WA 98227
Seattle EF! Earth First! Bulletin
POB 60164, Seattle, WA 98160
(206) 521-3691
Cheetwood EF!

POB 10147, Olympia, WA 98502
Okanogan Highlands EF!

POB 361, Republic, WA 99166

West Virginia

National Sacrifice Zone

Vince Packard

POB 65, Myra, WV 25544

Wisconsin

Madison EF!

Midwest Headwaters EF! News
Bob Kaspar

POB 14691, Madison, WI 53714

(608) 241-9426

H. Bruse

235 Travis Drive

Wisconsin Rapids, WI 54494

(715) 423-5636

Earth First! Campaigns & Projects

Carmageddon c/o EF!UK EF! River Defense Task 1

9 Cazenove Rd POB 60164

London N16 6PA UK Seattle, WA 98160

EF! Direct Action Fund (206) 521-3691

POB 210, Canyon, CA 94516 Fund for Wild Nature

(510) 376-7329, FAX 631-7958 POB 42496

EF! Eco-Videographe Tucson, AZ 97339

/EGR & EF! Genetic Alert (704) 258-2667

POB 2182 Oceans Task Force

Berkeley, CA 94702 c/o Ridley

Canadian Grizzly Bear 300 Broadway STE-28

Task Force San Francisco, CA 94133

Box 61245 Predator Project

Brentwood Postal NW POB 6733

Calgary, AB T2L 2K6 CANADA Bozeman, MT 59771

Earth First! Journal (406) 587-3389

POB 5176, Missoula, MT 59806

(406) 728-8114

EF! Ranching Task Force

POB 5784, Tucson, AZ 85703

(602) 758-3173

Back Cover

Non-Profit Organization
Bulk Rate
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PAID

Permit # 250

Missoula, Montana

Earth First! Journal
PO Box 5176
Missoula, MT 59806
USA

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