District Attorney Paul Gallegos has come out with both guns blazing in a case filed against the Pacific Lumber Co. earlier this week.
In essence, the case alleges that the company and several of its subsidiaries hid scientific data that could have led to a curtailment of logging on its timberlands.
The DA's office is contending that the company lied in its representation of the severity of landslides in Jordan Creek, located upstream of Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The office also says the company suppressed the distribution of several key environmental documents.
Gallegos is seeking $250 million in restitution for the alleged violations.
Local environmentalists are ecstatic.
"I'm flying. This is the best thing that has ever happened," said Ken Miller, a member of the Humboldt Watershed Council, and a longtime opponent of PL, in a phone interview Tuesday. "My god, finally we have a champion who has some power."
When Gallegos came into office he sent out a letter to many of the local environmental and property rights groups, saying that he believed it was his duty, under California's constitution, to enforce certain environmental laws and asked for any input the groups thought would be helpful.
The DA's office declined to comment on the case, citing ethical rules that prevent them from biasing anyone against their opponents. Pacific Lumber could not be reached for comment.
Gallegos' action comes less than a week after he vowed to the Journal that his office would not sit idly by if environmental laws were being trampled (see "Fresh Air," Feb. 20).
Showing posts with label BACH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BACH. Show all posts
9.28.2007
3.25.2007
asje.org/houston.html
A virtual lineup of activistcash's favorite subjects - and lookit that - asje is after Maxxam...
http://www.asje.org/houston.html
Houston Principles
of the
Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment
Preamble
On May 19, 1999, environmental and labor leaders confronted CEO Charles Hurwitz in Houston to demand that his Maxxam Corporation, which owns Kaiser Aluminum and Pacific Lumber Company, be held accountable for its impact on working people, communities and the environment.
By clear cutting ancient redwoods in Northern California, and by locking out striking steelworkers in five cities, the Maxxam corporation and its subsidiaries, Pacific Lumber Company and Kaiser Aluminum Corporation, have become icons of corporate irresponsibility.
Recognizing that we have a common interest in making corporations more accountable for their behavior world wide, environmental and labor leaders have formed the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment and circulated the following statement, dubbed the "Houston Principles."
Whereas:
• The spectacular accumulation of wealth by corporations and America's most affluent during the past two decades has come with a huge price tag.
•
• Corporations have become more powerful than the government entities designed to regulate them.
•
• The goal of a giant, global corporation is to maximize wealth and to wield political power on its own behalf. Too often, corporate leaders regard working people, communities, and the natural world as resources to be used and thrown away.
•
• Recognizing the tremendous stakes, labor unions and environmental advocates are beginning to recognize our common ground. Together we can challenge illegitimate corporate authority over our country's and communities' governing decisions.
•
• While we may not agree on everything, we are determined to accelerate our efforts to make alliances as often as possible.
•
We believe that:
• A healthy future for the economy and the environment requires a dynamic alliance between labor, management, and environmental advocates.
•
• The same forces that threaten economic and biological sustainability undermine the democratic process.
•
• The drive for short-term profits without regard for long-term sustainability hurts working people, communities, and the earth.
•
• Labor, environmental and community groups need to take action to organize as a counter-balance to abusive corporate power.
•
The environmental and labor advocates who have signed these principles resolve to work together to:
• Remind the public that the original purpose behind the creation of corporations was to serve the public interest - namely working people, communities, and the earth.
•
• Seek stricter enforcement of labor laws and advocate for new laws to guarantee working people their right to form unions and their right to bargain collectively.
•
• Make workplaces, communities and the planet safer by reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
•
• Demand that global trade agreements include enforceable labor and environmental standards.
•
• Promote forward-thinking business models that allow for sustainability over the long term while protecting working people, communities, and the environment.
•
This ground-breaking alliance of labor and environmentalists invites all people to join with us in a spirit of creative cooperation. Together, we can forge a partnership that protects people and the planet.
Signed:
ENVIRONMENT
Bruce Hamilton
Conservation Director
Sierra Club
Paul Hawken
Author
David Brower
Brower Fund
John A. Knox
Executive Director
Earth Island Institute
John Cavanagh
Director
Institute for Policy Studies
Michael Renner
Senior Researcher
Worldwatch Institute
Richard Drury
Acting Executive Director
Commentates for a Better Environment
Juliette Majot
Executive Director
International Rivers Network
Brent Blackwelder
President
Friends of the Earth
Carl Anthony
Executive Director
Urban Habitat Program
Jonathan Parfrey, MDA
Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Suzanne Murphy
Managing Director
Redefining Progress
Paul Schwartz
National Campaign Director
Clean Water Action
Mark Ritchie
President
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Carol L. Wright
Executive Director
Klamath Forest Alliance
Kelly Quirke
Executive Director
Rainforest Action Network
Jim Jontz
Executive Director
American Lands Alliance
John Passacantando
Executive Director
Ozone Action
Lois Gibbs
Executive Director
Center for Health and Environmental Justice
Tom Turner
Director of Publications
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund
Peter Rosset
Executive Director
Food First/ Institute for Food and Development Policy
Paul Mason
Executive Director
Environment Protection Information Center (EPIC)
Hal Kane
Executive Director
Pacific Environment and Resource Center
Marguerite Young
California Director
Clean Water Action
Huey D. Johnson
President
Resource Renewal Institute
Diane Takvorian
Executive Director
Environmental Health Coalition
Paul Spitler
Executive Director
California Wilderness Coalition
Patricia M. Clary
Executive Director
Californians for Alternatives to Toxics
Samuel La Buddy
Executive Director
Endangered Species Project
Christine Stevens
President
Animal Welfare Institute
Paul Hughes
Executive Director
Forests Forever
Dr. Henry Clark
Executive Director
West County Toxics Coalition
Gary Cohen
Director
Environmental Health Fund
Greg Small
Executive Director
Pesticide Watch
David Korten
President
People Centered Development Forum
Ted Smith
Director
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
Franses F. Korten
Executive Director
The Positive Futures Network
Dave Henson
Executive Director
Occidental Arts and Ecology Center
Jay Letto
President
Central Cascades Alliance
David Cobb
Secretary
Green Party of Texas
Jill Ratner
President
Rose Foundation
Craig Thomas
Director
The Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation
Gina Giazzoni
State College Coordinator
Allegheny Defense Project
Adam Roberts
Research Associate
Society for Animal Protective Legislation
Sanford Lewis
Attorney
Strategic Counsel on Corporate Accountability
Karen Pickett
Coordinator
Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters
Luke Cole
Director
Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment
David E Ortman
President
Wise Use Movement
Thomas R. Lent
President
Association of Flight Attendants--Alaska Airlines
Wenonah Hauter
Director
Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project
Paula Palmer
Executive Director
Global Response
Cal Broomhead
Bureau of Energy Conservation
San Francisco, CA
Prof. Lee Altenberg
Information and Computer Sciences,
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Jim Puckett
Director
Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange (APEX)
David Wood
Senior Associate
Center on Wisconsin Strategy
Lisa Mastny
Staff Researcher
Worldwatch Institute
William A Shutkin
President
New Ecology Inc.
Chris Ford
Steering Committee Member
Southern Arizona Alliance for Economic Justice.
Charles M Miller, esq.
Attorney
Law Office of Charles M. Miller
Celia F. Alario
Communications Team
USWA and Amazon Watch
Thomas Ryan
Community Services Director
San Francisco Labor Council
Scott Tundermann
Sustainable Energy Choice Project
Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies
EMT O'Nan
Director
Protect All Children's Environment
Bill Welsch
President
Safe Alternative for our Forest Environment (SAFE)
Beth Burrows
President/Director
The Edmonds Institute
Harlin Savage
Director
Colorado Forest Program
Fredy Champagne
President
Veterans for Peace, Inc.
Julia Butterfly Hill
Alan Rose
Professor Emeritus
University of Idaho
Nancy Kubasek
Author
"Environmental Law"
Hugh M. Carola
Coordinator
Hackensack Meadowlands Preservation Alliance
Mary Bull
SF Coordinator
Boycott the Gap Campaign
John Grech
Public Officer
Earth Worker Inc., Canada
Steve Brooks
Coordinator
Virginia Forest Watch
Larry Weiss
Coordinator
Labor, Globalization and Human Rights Project
Resource Center of the Americas
Stephen Bezruchka, MD, MPH
Affiliate Assistant Professor
Department of Health Services
University of Washington
David Muhly
Chair
Virginia Forest Watch
Bill Devall
Chairman
Deep Ecology Resource Center
Shirley J Shelburn
Humbolt Watershed Council
Rt 1 Trinidad ,Ca 95570
Ken Miller
Salmon Forever
Mckinleyville, Ca 95519
Marianne DE Sobrino
Redwoods Chapter Sierra Club
Eureka, Ca 95503
Kyle Haines
Forest Protection Coordinator
Klamath Forest Alliance
John Sellers
Director
Rukus Society
Karen Litfin, Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Washington - Seattle
Bob Martel
Executive Director
Humboldt Watershed Council
Chad Hanson
Executive Director
John Muir Project
Christine Cooper, Ph.D
Faculty of Business
University of New Brunswick Saint John
Jacek Purat
School of Information Management and Systems
University of California at Berkeley
Steve Thompson
Natural Resource Consultant
Whitefish, MI
Cam Walker
Friends of the Earth Australia
Darryl Cherney, Executive Director
Environmentally Sound Promotions
Redway, CA
Stephen Graves
Land Use Consultant
Soquel, CA
Bryony Schwan, Exec. Director
Women's Voices for the Earth
Missoula, MT
Nancy Fesco
Boreal Forest Campaign Coordinator
Northern Alaska Environmental Center
Julian Powers
Co-Chair for Legislative Affiars
Spokane Transportation Choice Coalition
Kimberly Burkland
Director
Central Cascades Alliance
Robert Cramer
Co-founder
Taxpayers for Headwaters
Martha Bergotten
Campaign Coordinator
Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project
Lois Barber
International Coordinator
EarthAction
Tim Bristol
Organizer
Southeast Alaska Conservation Council
Larry Campbell
Executive Director
Friends of the Bitterroot
Bill Metzger
Publisher
Great Lakes Brewing News
Kurt Newick
Global Warming activist
Juliette Beck
Campaign Director, Global Exchange
LABOR
Elizabethe A. Brown
Assistant Administrative Officer
The Newspaper Guild Communications Workers of America
Emil Ramirez
Staff Representative
United Steelworkers of America
Carole Reed
Rapid Response Coordinator
USWA Local 9444
Joseph T. Lesh, Jr.
President, Local 1181
Washington Federation of State Employees AFSCME, AFL-CIO
Jeff Mansfield
President
Greater Seattle Area Local
American Postal Workers Union
Randy Berriochoa
Treasurer
Idaho Federation of Teachers, local #4582
Richard Warner
Staff Representative
USWA Local 300A
Jack Gilchrist
Executive Secretary
Seattle/King County Building and Construction Trades Council
George Holmes
President
SEIU Local 202
Sandy Sawyer
President L-3197
American Federation of Government Employees
Brian White
Chair SAOP Steward
Local 120 AFL-CIO
Jason Oringer
Communications Team
USWA
Marlene Myers
Secretary
Local 1066
Gene Achziger
President
TNG/CWA Local 37082
Paul F Glavin
Administration Officer
TNG/CWA Local 37082
Wayne B. Pretts
President
Wenatchee Aluminum Trades Council
Dan Buell
President
Cowlitz & Wahklakum Central Labor Council
Kenneth White
President
Idaho Association of Letter Carriers
Gary Sites
President
USWA Local 341
W C Beck
President, Local #338
United Steel Workers of America
Doug Godinho
President
USWA Local 703
Larry L Kenck
Business Representative
Teamsters Union Local 582
Rudy Hashberger
Secretary, Linn-Benton-Lincoln Labor Council
Oregon AFL/CIO
Douglas Baier
Secretary
Bremerton Fire Fighters, 1 AFF #437
Terry L Bonds
District Director
United Steelworkers of America District 12
Gil Hayes
Secretary-Treasurer
Mid Columbia Labor Council
James D Phillips
Chairman, L & E Committee
USWA 917
Robert N Woodson
Business Manager and Secretary-Treasurer
Laborers' International Union of North America, Local 901
William Bokovoy
Secretary-Treasurer
United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 381
Donald Goldberg
Senior Attorney
CIEL
Tony Micciche
President
USWA Local 8599
James Karr
Professor
University of Washington
John Morgan
Financial Secretary/Treasurer
UBC Local 1532
Shirley Kenck
State Committee Woman
Kootenai County Democrat Central Committee
Jean Patterson
Clerk, San Jose Friends Meeting
Friends Committee on Unity with Nature
Ronald Forest
Financial Secretary
Carpenters Local No. 131
Laura Huth
Urbana City Council Member
Ward 5
Normand Coen
Rec. Secretary
USWA Local 7263
Harold Withrow, President
AFSCME Local 120,
Tacoma, WA
Jan Conley
Lake Superior Greens
Superior, WI 54880
Shirley Haglund
USWA Local # 9444
Roseville,Mn
Michael Wodaszewski
USWA Local # 7263
Vadnais Ht, Mn 55109
Jean Frogner
USWA
Duluth, Mn 55805
Robert Hollenbach
USWA Local # 9444
Minnapolis, Mn 55411
Dennis A Gille
USWA Local # 7263
Lakeland, Mn 55043
Wilbur L Wilson
USWA Local # 310
DesMoines, Ia 50313
Charles R Cassatt
USWA Local 105a
Bettendorf, Ia 52722
Robert Marsden
USWA Local 7945
Tacoma, Wa 98421
Thomas Card
USWA Local # 460 g
Kassota, Mn 56050
Bradford Lynch
Mid Columbia Labor Council
The Dalles, Or 97058
Gilbert L Hayes
Mid Columbia Labor Council
The Dalles,Or 97058
T Jay Kelso
USWA Local 13214
Green River, Wy 82935
Albert Battisti
USWA Local 13214
Rock Springs, Wy 82901
Daniel Haanpaa
USWA Local # 13214
Green River Wy, 82935
Arthur Sumstine
USWA Local # 8907
Kansas City, Mo 64120
Robert Sprague
USWA Local 8907
Holden, Mo 69040-9460
Terry Bush
USWA Local 105
Bettendorf, Ia 52722
Carole J Reed
USWA Local # 9444
Chisago City, Mn 55013
Will Herold
USWA Local # 2175
Farmington, Mn 55024-9425
Gary Partlow
USWA Local 2175
Lakeville, Mn 55044
Keith Porter jr
USWA Local # 6803
Albert Lea, Mn 56007
Michael King
USWA Local # 216
Kansas City, Mo
Janice Vochoska
USWA Local # 9444
St Paul, Mn 55117
A. E Stattelman
USWA Local # 307
Topeka, Ks 66608
Sally Edwards
USWA Local # 286
Lincoln, Ne
Earl Ransom
USWA Local # 307L
Topeka, Ks 66608
Wil Leiker
USWA Local # 307
Topeka, Ks 66615
Randy L Hague
USWA Local # 307L
Topeka, Ks 66608
Don Grow
USWA Local # 286
Lincoln, Ne
Victor Hernandez
USWA Local # 2561
Kansas City, Ks 61106
Richard Warner
Staff Rep USWA
Vancouver, Wa 98683
Steve Powers
Staff Rep USWA
Minneapolis, Mn 55414
(612) 623-8840 Fax
Jacks Calvaresi
USWA
Bloomington, Mn 55420
Emil Ramirez
Staff Rep USWA
Independence, Mo 64555
Tereasa Gunderson
SMDC Ashland
Grandview, Wi 54839
Lynn Wedlund
SMDC Ashland
Ashland, Wi 54806
Kim Welty
SMDC Ashland
Ashland, Wi 54806
The Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment (ASJE)
1125 SE Madison, Portland, OR 97214 503 736-9777, 503-736-9776 (fax)
asje@asje.org
Please make any donation checks payable to ASJE and mail to the address above.
http://www.asje.org/houston.html
Houston Principles
of the
Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment
Preamble
On May 19, 1999, environmental and labor leaders confronted CEO Charles Hurwitz in Houston to demand that his Maxxam Corporation, which owns Kaiser Aluminum and Pacific Lumber Company, be held accountable for its impact on working people, communities and the environment.
By clear cutting ancient redwoods in Northern California, and by locking out striking steelworkers in five cities, the Maxxam corporation and its subsidiaries, Pacific Lumber Company and Kaiser Aluminum Corporation, have become icons of corporate irresponsibility.
Recognizing that we have a common interest in making corporations more accountable for their behavior world wide, environmental and labor leaders have formed the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment and circulated the following statement, dubbed the "Houston Principles."
Whereas:
• The spectacular accumulation of wealth by corporations and America's most affluent during the past two decades has come with a huge price tag.
•
• Corporations have become more powerful than the government entities designed to regulate them.
•
• The goal of a giant, global corporation is to maximize wealth and to wield political power on its own behalf. Too often, corporate leaders regard working people, communities, and the natural world as resources to be used and thrown away.
•
• Recognizing the tremendous stakes, labor unions and environmental advocates are beginning to recognize our common ground. Together we can challenge illegitimate corporate authority over our country's and communities' governing decisions.
•
• While we may not agree on everything, we are determined to accelerate our efforts to make alliances as often as possible.
•
We believe that:
• A healthy future for the economy and the environment requires a dynamic alliance between labor, management, and environmental advocates.
•
• The same forces that threaten economic and biological sustainability undermine the democratic process.
•
• The drive for short-term profits without regard for long-term sustainability hurts working people, communities, and the earth.
•
• Labor, environmental and community groups need to take action to organize as a counter-balance to abusive corporate power.
•
The environmental and labor advocates who have signed these principles resolve to work together to:
• Remind the public that the original purpose behind the creation of corporations was to serve the public interest - namely working people, communities, and the earth.
•
• Seek stricter enforcement of labor laws and advocate for new laws to guarantee working people their right to form unions and their right to bargain collectively.
•
• Make workplaces, communities and the planet safer by reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
•
• Demand that global trade agreements include enforceable labor and environmental standards.
•
• Promote forward-thinking business models that allow for sustainability over the long term while protecting working people, communities, and the environment.
•
This ground-breaking alliance of labor and environmentalists invites all people to join with us in a spirit of creative cooperation. Together, we can forge a partnership that protects people and the planet.
Signed:
ENVIRONMENT
Bruce Hamilton
Conservation Director
Sierra Club
Paul Hawken
Author
David Brower
Brower Fund
John A. Knox
Executive Director
Earth Island Institute
John Cavanagh
Director
Institute for Policy Studies
Michael Renner
Senior Researcher
Worldwatch Institute
Richard Drury
Acting Executive Director
Commentates for a Better Environment
Juliette Majot
Executive Director
International Rivers Network
Brent Blackwelder
President
Friends of the Earth
Carl Anthony
Executive Director
Urban Habitat Program
Jonathan Parfrey, MDA
Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Suzanne Murphy
Managing Director
Redefining Progress
Paul Schwartz
National Campaign Director
Clean Water Action
Mark Ritchie
President
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Carol L. Wright
Executive Director
Klamath Forest Alliance
Kelly Quirke
Executive Director
Rainforest Action Network
Jim Jontz
Executive Director
American Lands Alliance
John Passacantando
Executive Director
Ozone Action
Lois Gibbs
Executive Director
Center for Health and Environmental Justice
Tom Turner
Director of Publications
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund
Peter Rosset
Executive Director
Food First/ Institute for Food and Development Policy
Paul Mason
Executive Director
Environment Protection Information Center (EPIC)
Hal Kane
Executive Director
Pacific Environment and Resource Center
Marguerite Young
California Director
Clean Water Action
Huey D. Johnson
President
Resource Renewal Institute
Diane Takvorian
Executive Director
Environmental Health Coalition
Paul Spitler
Executive Director
California Wilderness Coalition
Patricia M. Clary
Executive Director
Californians for Alternatives to Toxics
Samuel La Buddy
Executive Director
Endangered Species Project
Christine Stevens
President
Animal Welfare Institute
Paul Hughes
Executive Director
Forests Forever
Dr. Henry Clark
Executive Director
West County Toxics Coalition
Gary Cohen
Director
Environmental Health Fund
Greg Small
Executive Director
Pesticide Watch
David Korten
President
People Centered Development Forum
Ted Smith
Director
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
Franses F. Korten
Executive Director
The Positive Futures Network
Dave Henson
Executive Director
Occidental Arts and Ecology Center
Jay Letto
President
Central Cascades Alliance
David Cobb
Secretary
Green Party of Texas
Jill Ratner
President
Rose Foundation
Craig Thomas
Director
The Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation
Gina Giazzoni
State College Coordinator
Allegheny Defense Project
Adam Roberts
Research Associate
Society for Animal Protective Legislation
Sanford Lewis
Attorney
Strategic Counsel on Corporate Accountability
Karen Pickett
Coordinator
Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters
Luke Cole
Director
Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment
David E Ortman
President
Wise Use Movement
Thomas R. Lent
President
Association of Flight Attendants--Alaska Airlines
Wenonah Hauter
Director
Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project
Paula Palmer
Executive Director
Global Response
Cal Broomhead
Bureau of Energy Conservation
San Francisco, CA
Prof. Lee Altenberg
Information and Computer Sciences,
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Jim Puckett
Director
Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange (APEX)
David Wood
Senior Associate
Center on Wisconsin Strategy
Lisa Mastny
Staff Researcher
Worldwatch Institute
William A Shutkin
President
New Ecology Inc.
Chris Ford
Steering Committee Member
Southern Arizona Alliance for Economic Justice.
Charles M Miller, esq.
Attorney
Law Office of Charles M. Miller
Celia F. Alario
Communications Team
USWA and Amazon Watch
Thomas Ryan
Community Services Director
San Francisco Labor Council
Scott Tundermann
Sustainable Energy Choice Project
Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies
EMT O'Nan
Director
Protect All Children's Environment
Bill Welsch
President
Safe Alternative for our Forest Environment (SAFE)
Beth Burrows
President/Director
The Edmonds Institute
Harlin Savage
Director
Colorado Forest Program
Fredy Champagne
President
Veterans for Peace, Inc.
Julia Butterfly Hill
Alan Rose
Professor Emeritus
University of Idaho
Nancy Kubasek
Author
"Environmental Law"
Hugh M. Carola
Coordinator
Hackensack Meadowlands Preservation Alliance
Mary Bull
SF Coordinator
Boycott the Gap Campaign
John Grech
Public Officer
Earth Worker Inc., Canada
Steve Brooks
Coordinator
Virginia Forest Watch
Larry Weiss
Coordinator
Labor, Globalization and Human Rights Project
Resource Center of the Americas
Stephen Bezruchka, MD, MPH
Affiliate Assistant Professor
Department of Health Services
University of Washington
David Muhly
Chair
Virginia Forest Watch
Bill Devall
Chairman
Deep Ecology Resource Center
Shirley J Shelburn
Humbolt Watershed Council
Rt 1 Trinidad ,Ca 95570
Ken Miller
Salmon Forever
Mckinleyville, Ca 95519
Marianne DE Sobrino
Redwoods Chapter Sierra Club
Eureka, Ca 95503
Kyle Haines
Forest Protection Coordinator
Klamath Forest Alliance
John Sellers
Director
Rukus Society
Karen Litfin, Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Washington - Seattle
Bob Martel
Executive Director
Humboldt Watershed Council
Chad Hanson
Executive Director
John Muir Project
Christine Cooper, Ph.D
Faculty of Business
University of New Brunswick Saint John
Jacek Purat
School of Information Management and Systems
University of California at Berkeley
Steve Thompson
Natural Resource Consultant
Whitefish, MI
Cam Walker
Friends of the Earth Australia
Darryl Cherney, Executive Director
Environmentally Sound Promotions
Redway, CA
Stephen Graves
Land Use Consultant
Soquel, CA
Bryony Schwan, Exec. Director
Women's Voices for the Earth
Missoula, MT
Nancy Fesco
Boreal Forest Campaign Coordinator
Northern Alaska Environmental Center
Julian Powers
Co-Chair for Legislative Affiars
Spokane Transportation Choice Coalition
Kimberly Burkland
Director
Central Cascades Alliance
Robert Cramer
Co-founder
Taxpayers for Headwaters
Martha Bergotten
Campaign Coordinator
Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project
Lois Barber
International Coordinator
EarthAction
Tim Bristol
Organizer
Southeast Alaska Conservation Council
Larry Campbell
Executive Director
Friends of the Bitterroot
Bill Metzger
Publisher
Great Lakes Brewing News
Kurt Newick
Global Warming activist
Juliette Beck
Campaign Director, Global Exchange
LABOR
Elizabethe A. Brown
Assistant Administrative Officer
The Newspaper Guild Communications Workers of America
Emil Ramirez
Staff Representative
United Steelworkers of America
Carole Reed
Rapid Response Coordinator
USWA Local 9444
Joseph T. Lesh, Jr.
President, Local 1181
Washington Federation of State Employees AFSCME, AFL-CIO
Jeff Mansfield
President
Greater Seattle Area Local
American Postal Workers Union
Randy Berriochoa
Treasurer
Idaho Federation of Teachers, local #4582
Richard Warner
Staff Representative
USWA Local 300A
Jack Gilchrist
Executive Secretary
Seattle/King County Building and Construction Trades Council
George Holmes
President
SEIU Local 202
Sandy Sawyer
President L-3197
American Federation of Government Employees
Brian White
Chair SAOP Steward
Local 120 AFL-CIO
Jason Oringer
Communications Team
USWA
Marlene Myers
Secretary
Local 1066
Gene Achziger
President
TNG/CWA Local 37082
Paul F Glavin
Administration Officer
TNG/CWA Local 37082
Wayne B. Pretts
President
Wenatchee Aluminum Trades Council
Dan Buell
President
Cowlitz & Wahklakum Central Labor Council
Kenneth White
President
Idaho Association of Letter Carriers
Gary Sites
President
USWA Local 341
W C Beck
President, Local #338
United Steel Workers of America
Doug Godinho
President
USWA Local 703
Larry L Kenck
Business Representative
Teamsters Union Local 582
Rudy Hashberger
Secretary, Linn-Benton-Lincoln Labor Council
Oregon AFL/CIO
Douglas Baier
Secretary
Bremerton Fire Fighters, 1 AFF #437
Terry L Bonds
District Director
United Steelworkers of America District 12
Gil Hayes
Secretary-Treasurer
Mid Columbia Labor Council
James D Phillips
Chairman, L & E Committee
USWA 917
Robert N Woodson
Business Manager and Secretary-Treasurer
Laborers' International Union of North America, Local 901
William Bokovoy
Secretary-Treasurer
United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 381
Donald Goldberg
Senior Attorney
CIEL
Tony Micciche
President
USWA Local 8599
James Karr
Professor
University of Washington
John Morgan
Financial Secretary/Treasurer
UBC Local 1532
Shirley Kenck
State Committee Woman
Kootenai County Democrat Central Committee
Jean Patterson
Clerk, San Jose Friends Meeting
Friends Committee on Unity with Nature
Ronald Forest
Financial Secretary
Carpenters Local No. 131
Laura Huth
Urbana City Council Member
Ward 5
Normand Coen
Rec. Secretary
USWA Local 7263
Harold Withrow, President
AFSCME Local 120,
Tacoma, WA
Jan Conley
Lake Superior Greens
Superior, WI 54880
Shirley Haglund
USWA Local # 9444
Roseville,Mn
Michael Wodaszewski
USWA Local # 7263
Vadnais Ht, Mn 55109
Jean Frogner
USWA
Duluth, Mn 55805
Robert Hollenbach
USWA Local # 9444
Minnapolis, Mn 55411
Dennis A Gille
USWA Local # 7263
Lakeland, Mn 55043
Wilbur L Wilson
USWA Local # 310
DesMoines, Ia 50313
Charles R Cassatt
USWA Local 105a
Bettendorf, Ia 52722
Robert Marsden
USWA Local 7945
Tacoma, Wa 98421
Thomas Card
USWA Local # 460 g
Kassota, Mn 56050
Bradford Lynch
Mid Columbia Labor Council
The Dalles, Or 97058
Gilbert L Hayes
Mid Columbia Labor Council
The Dalles,Or 97058
T Jay Kelso
USWA Local 13214
Green River, Wy 82935
Albert Battisti
USWA Local 13214
Rock Springs, Wy 82901
Daniel Haanpaa
USWA Local # 13214
Green River Wy, 82935
Arthur Sumstine
USWA Local # 8907
Kansas City, Mo 64120
Robert Sprague
USWA Local 8907
Holden, Mo 69040-9460
Terry Bush
USWA Local 105
Bettendorf, Ia 52722
Carole J Reed
USWA Local # 9444
Chisago City, Mn 55013
Will Herold
USWA Local # 2175
Farmington, Mn 55024-9425
Gary Partlow
USWA Local 2175
Lakeville, Mn 55044
Keith Porter jr
USWA Local # 6803
Albert Lea, Mn 56007
Michael King
USWA Local # 216
Kansas City, Mo
Janice Vochoska
USWA Local # 9444
St Paul, Mn 55117
A. E Stattelman
USWA Local # 307
Topeka, Ks 66608
Sally Edwards
USWA Local # 286
Lincoln, Ne
Earl Ransom
USWA Local # 307L
Topeka, Ks 66608
Wil Leiker
USWA Local # 307
Topeka, Ks 66615
Randy L Hague
USWA Local # 307L
Topeka, Ks 66608
Don Grow
USWA Local # 286
Lincoln, Ne
Victor Hernandez
USWA Local # 2561
Kansas City, Ks 61106
Richard Warner
Staff Rep USWA
Vancouver, Wa 98683
Steve Powers
Staff Rep USWA
Minneapolis, Mn 55414
(612) 623-8840 Fax
Jacks Calvaresi
USWA
Bloomington, Mn 55420
Emil Ramirez
Staff Rep USWA
Independence, Mo 64555
Tereasa Gunderson
SMDC Ashland
Grandview, Wi 54839
Lynn Wedlund
SMDC Ashland
Ashland, Wi 54806
Kim Welty
SMDC Ashland
Ashland, Wi 54806
The Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment (ASJE)
1125 SE Madison, Portland, OR 97214 503 736-9777, 503-736-9776 (fax)
asje@asje.org
Please make any donation checks payable to ASJE and mail to the address above.
3.24.2007
Mark Lovelace looking for warm bodies
Date:
Mon, 29 Aug 2005 19:39:24 -0700
To:
bach@lists.riseup.net
From:
"Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters" Add to Address Book
Subject:
[bach] Water Board's Sept. hearing in Fortuna
><::><::><::><::><::><::><::><
Hearing Notice
from the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters
August 29, 2005
><::><::><::><::><::><::><::><
>>Notice regarding the evidentiary hearing about the watershed-specific discharge requrirements being considered by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, taking place in Fortuna on Sept. 14
If you may be attending this hearing, read on. It will probably not be possible to sign up to speak at the hearing.
Any persons wishing to speak at the Regional Water Board's September 14th hearing on Palco's Watershed-wide Waste Discharge Requirements permits for Freshwater and Elk River need to contact the Regional Water Board as soon as possible to assure a time slot.
The Regional Water Board is making the final procedural arrangements for this evidentiary hearing, which will be held at the River Lodge in Fortuna. This hearing will likely last into the evening, if not into a second day. While there are still some details to be worked out, it is clear at this point that public comment or "policy statements" by the public will happen at the very beginning of the hearing. However, due to the large amount of persons believed to be planning to speak at the hearing, only two hours will be alloted, and the time will be granted first to persons making arrangements to speak in advance.
The concern here is of course that a 'pro-PL' contingent will monopolize the time, as has happened at other meetings. Therefore it is urgent that anyone who even thinks they might wish to speak as a member of the public at this hearing should call or e-mail the Regional Water Board as soon as possible, preferably by the end of the day on Tuesday, August 30th. Yes, it's that urgent, as we expect a campaign by Palco to fill up the public comment time.
These kinds of statements by the public need not be lengthy, detailed, or technical, but rather express the public's desire to see water quality protected, and the public interest served. Simple messages reminding the RWB that the public has been waiting 8 years for some action in these two damaged watersheds would be a good reminder, especially for the new members of the Board. Some Board members are likely to be swayed by PL's assertions that there really is no problem here, or that water quality and flooding are improving, or that the solution to flooding is raising the roads. The public needs to help keep the RWB focused and on task, so as not to get distracted by non-issues raised by the other side.
Again, if there is any possibility at all that you may wish to speak at this hearing (and I would urge our supporters to do so!), then please contact the RWB as soon as possible. Please e-mail the Regional Water Board at the 3 addresses below (use all 3, to be safe), and please also cc the Humboldt Watershed Council.
Contact:
Catherine Kuhlman Ckuhlman@waterboards.ca.gov
Sheryl Schaffner sschaffner@waterboards.ca.gov
Terri Korell TKorell@waterboards.ca.gov
Thank you for your support.
BACH is forwarding this message sent by Mark Lovelace, Humboldt Watershed Council
sheds@humboldt1.com
2. Interested Persons
Interested persons may participate in the hearings with certain limitations. Interested persons may present non-evidentiary policy statements which will be heard first, prior to the presentation of evidence by the parties. Interested persons are not subject to cross-examination and may not cross-examine other parties. Interested persons will receive 3 minutes to make their policy statements.
--
Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH)
2530 San Pablo Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94702
phone: 510 548 3113
email: bach@headwaterspreserve.org
http://www.HeadwatersPreserve.org
Mon, 29 Aug 2005 19:39:24 -0700
To:
bach@lists.riseup.net
From:
"Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters"
Subject:
[bach] Water Board's Sept. hearing in Fortuna
><::><::><::><::><::><::><::><
Hearing Notice
from the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters
August 29, 2005
><::><::><::><::><::><::><::><
>>Notice regarding the evidentiary hearing about the watershed-specific discharge requrirements being considered by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, taking place in Fortuna on Sept. 14
If you may be attending this hearing, read on. It will probably not be possible to sign up to speak at the hearing.
Any persons wishing to speak at the Regional Water Board's September 14th hearing on Palco's Watershed-wide Waste Discharge Requirements permits for Freshwater and Elk River need to contact the Regional Water Board as soon as possible to assure a time slot.
The Regional Water Board is making the final procedural arrangements for this evidentiary hearing, which will be held at the River Lodge in Fortuna. This hearing will likely last into the evening, if not into a second day. While there are still some details to be worked out, it is clear at this point that public comment or "policy statements" by the public will happen at the very beginning of the hearing. However, due to the large amount of persons believed to be planning to speak at the hearing, only two hours will be alloted, and the time will be granted first to persons making arrangements to speak in advance.
The concern here is of course that a 'pro-PL' contingent will monopolize the time, as has happened at other meetings. Therefore it is urgent that anyone who even thinks they might wish to speak as a member of the public at this hearing should call or e-mail the Regional Water Board as soon as possible, preferably by the end of the day on Tuesday, August 30th. Yes, it's that urgent, as we expect a campaign by Palco to fill up the public comment time.
These kinds of statements by the public need not be lengthy, detailed, or technical, but rather express the public's desire to see water quality protected, and the public interest served. Simple messages reminding the RWB that the public has been waiting 8 years for some action in these two damaged watersheds would be a good reminder, especially for the new members of the Board. Some Board members are likely to be swayed by PL's assertions that there really is no problem here, or that water quality and flooding are improving, or that the solution to flooding is raising the roads. The public needs to help keep the RWB focused and on task, so as not to get distracted by non-issues raised by the other side.
Again, if there is any possibility at all that you may wish to speak at this hearing (and I would urge our supporters to do so!), then please contact the RWB as soon as possible. Please e-mail the Regional Water Board at the 3 addresses below (use all 3, to be safe), and please also cc the Humboldt Watershed Council.
Contact:
Catherine Kuhlman Ckuhlman@waterboards.ca.gov
Sheryl Schaffner sschaffner@waterboards.ca.gov
Terri Korell TKorell@waterboards.ca.gov
Thank you for your support.
BACH is forwarding this message sent by Mark Lovelace, Humboldt Watershed Council
sheds@humboldt1.com
2. Interested Persons
Interested persons may participate in the hearings with certain limitations. Interested persons may present non-evidentiary policy statements which will be heard first, prior to the presentation of evidence by the parties. Interested persons are not subject to cross-examination and may not cross-examine other parties. Interested persons will receive 3 minutes to make their policy statements.
--
Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH)
2530 San Pablo Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94702
phone: 510 548 3113
email: bach@headwaterspreserve.org
http://www.HeadwatersPreserve.org
1.31.2007
Salmon Forever, HWC, EPIC and more
Salmon Forever
http://www.treesfoundation.org/publications/article_print_friendly-40
by Ken Miller of Salmon Forever
November 1, 2000
Measuring stream velocity with an orange peel and measuring tape
Photo: Clark Fenton
Salmon Forever was founded in 1996 to encourage enlightened, constructive public debate on issues related to forests, watersheds, and the beneficial uses of water. To fulfill this mission, we work with the scientific community, the public, and regulatory agencies. We also conduct scientific research using relatively low-tech methods accessible to community volunteers. A key part of our work is monitoring turbidity and suspended sediment. We also examine revegetation rates on logged-over lands, the extent of canopy cover, and the “batting average” of certified engineering geologists who provide consultation about timber harvesting–associated landslide risks. We are interested in the mechanisms by which impacts occur and methodologies for cumulative impact analysis.
Until their population crash twenty-five years ago, salmon were the mainstay of a $100 million fishing industry in California. Dr. Peter Moyle, renowned fisheries professor at UC-–Davis, calls watershed deterioration the principal cause of the coastal salmonid decline, with logging and road-building as major factors. Because approximately 50 percent of coho habitat is privately owned, and 100 percent runs through private property, salmon must pass through severely impacted areas before reaching presumably more protected, often public, stretches. Such impacts can destroy entire runs. By protecting private property from the effects of irresponsible management of watershed lands, we simultaneously promote biologically viable creeks, the integrity of objective science, and the potential recovery of native salmonid populations.
According to a 1996 National Research Council report on Pacific Northwest salmonids called “Upstream: Salmon and Society in the Pacific NW,” genetic diversity underlies the success of the species; healthy habitat sustains local variations. The report poignantly notes: “One important reason to protect local populations is that they are locally adapted to the streams that support them. In other words, evolution has made a local breeding population better able to survive and reproduce in its home stream than in other streams. Re-establishing new populations through introductions once the local populations have been lost has proved to be extremely difficult”.
This is where we come in—those of us invested in an ecological future that not only sustains us economically but also nourishes us spiritually. This is the vision of Salmon Forever.
Why turbidity?
The North Coast Water Quality Control Board uses “turbidity levels” as thresholds: the Basin Plan will not permit turbidity levels in streams to rise (due to sediment entry) more than 20 percent over naturally occurring background levels. Quantities of sediment that settle out and cause nuisance, such as aggradation causing flooding, are also prohibited. The Pacific Lumber (PL) Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) recognizes turbidity “as the single-most sensitive measure of the effects of land use on streams.”
Young salmonids are exquisitely sensitive to turbidity, which obscures their vision and hence decreases their ability to feed. They are also sensitive to suspended sediments, which cause injury in direct proportion to sediment levels and duration of exposure. Fine sediments smother the egg nests of salmonids and fill the interstices in which the young hide. Since smolt size is correlated with ocean survival of salmonids, if sediment-choked water results in smaller fish migrating to the ocean, the number of healthy adults returning to spawn likely will be reduced.
State agencies have identified increased flooding resulting from accelerated logging by PL as a major problem for Freshwater and Elk watersheds. In Freshwater last year, more than 4.5 million kilograms of suspended sediment went down the mainstem of Freshwater Creek past Salmon Forever’s sampling station equivalent to more than 220 truckloads of dry sediment. Each of the 6–7 square miles of logged watershed above the station probably contributed about 600–700 tons. Each of the three biggest storms moved more than a million kilograms past the sampling stations.
By monitoring watersheds with comparable geology, such as the Little South Fork Elk River in Headwaters Forest and Humboldt Redwoods State Park lands, we hope to be able to answer the question: how much sediment is natural? We are monitoring six watersheds in the Trinity, Eel, Van Duzen, and Humboldt Bay drainages. The information not only shows the impacts of ground-disturbing activities that have taken place but also provides an early warning system about upstream landslides, failing culverts, or other sediment sources posing threats to water quality, channel form, and in-stream habitat.
Samples are taken regularly during storms and measured in a portable turbidity monitor, and the filtered sediment is weighed in our Sunnybrae sediment lab. By measuring channel cross-sections, a 3-D picture of the channel can be used to calculate volumes. Correlations among turbidity, suspended sediment, and water discharge (volume or cubic meters/feet per second) characterize the turbidity “signature” of a stream. Comparing these signatures among similar watersheds undergoing different intensities of land use helps to reveal the effects of upstream management activities.
Since monitoring requires multiple samples taken 24-hours, seven days a week during rainstorms, the only economically feasible strategy might be local volunteers invested in the health of their creeks. (A side effect is watershed residents’ enthusiasm for turbidity monitoring as they learn the dynamics of their streams.) Alternative automatic sampling is available for remote sites and for more comprehensive data-gathering.
Salmon Forever has recruited and trained more than fifty volunteers in fifteen watersheds and analyzed more than 2,800 samples in our Sunny Brae Sediment Lab. The U.S. Forest Service Redwood Sciences Lab has provided technical assistance to analyze this data. We are developing a web site for this information. Public agencies contemplating large-scale monitoring programs are evaluating the protocols we have developed. The protocols are also undergoing final review by the U.S. EPA, and, when approved, qualify us to certify monitors under EPA standards.
Salmon Forever has joined with the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) to develop the THP Watch Program. This program provides citizens with access to our data and research library for their comments on timber harvest plans submitted to CDF. Our input has modified many THPs and helps establish a useful administrative record should THPs be litigated.
We made a video with Howard Russell which presents some of the scientific evidence for the logging-related flooding in Freshwater, and residents’ experiences. Our PL HCP/Sustained Yield Plan Watch program is integrated with community participation in watershed analysis, which will be coming to all of the watersheds in which PL has some ownership. In conjunction with esteemed Steelhead publisher Emelia Berol, we plan to publish a quarterly interview featuring local scientists’ work relevant to salmon and watershed issues.
Salmon Forever has worked closely with local groups to emphasize the vulnerability of the North Fork Mattole River to sediment impacts, where more than 3,000 acres of virgin old-growth Douglas fir are proposed to be clearcut—1,000 within the next ten years. (The Mattole, which means “clear water” to the Mattole Indians, is known as “the other Headwaters” by local residents and is treasured for its beauty and wild native salmon.) We also serve as a scientific consultant to Voices of Humboldt County, a monthly publication of the Humboldt Watershed Council. The publication’s name comes from a video Salmon Forever and Humboldt Watershed Council co-produced in 1997.
Salmon Forever helps those who want to better understand the mechanisms by which impacts occur so that they can protect their home watersheds more effectively. We invite you to join our efforts. If we can help with your monitoring, watershed analysis, or THP comment needs, let us know.
This article can be found online at www.treesfoundation.org/publications/article-40
Branching Out is produced by Trees Foundation. For more information contact:
Salmon Forever
P.O. Box 3014
McKinleyville, CA 95519
Phone: (707) 839-7444 Fax: (707) 839-7447
***
Check out the cross-pollinization of these supposedly separate groups:
Salmon Forever
Home / Publications / Branching Out / Fall 2000 / Salmon Forever. by Ken Miller of Salmon Forever November 1, 2000. Measuring stream velocity with an orange ...
www.treesfoundation.org/publications/article-40 - 27k - Cached - Similar pages (Trees Foundation, that's Earth First)
Groups Demand Water Board Curtail Excessive Logging: Independent ...
Michael Shellenberger, Salmon Forever, 510-525-9900 Ken Miller, Humboldt Watershed Council, 707-839-7444 Jesse Noell, Salmon Forever, 707-443-7433 ...
www.wildcalifornia.org/pressreleases/number-29 - 10k - Cached - Similar pages (wildcalifornia, that's EPIC)
Deep-Water, Industrial Port Development vs. Sustainable Future
Dr. Ken Miller President, Salmon Forever /s/ Tim McKay Executive Director, Northcoast Environmental Center /s/ Ruth Jameson Eureka Homeowners Committee ...
www.wildcalifornia.org/pages/page-168 - 28k - Cached - Similar pages
Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters - The Bay Area Coalition for ...
It's hard to believe, but the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters is 10 years old! ... Senator Barbara Boxer's office with one of BACH's founders, Ken Miller ...
www.treesfoundation.org/affiliates/update-77 - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
http://www.treesfoundation.org/publications/article_print_friendly-40
by Ken Miller of Salmon Forever
November 1, 2000
Measuring stream velocity with an orange peel and measuring tape
Photo: Clark Fenton
Salmon Forever was founded in 1996 to encourage enlightened, constructive public debate on issues related to forests, watersheds, and the beneficial uses of water. To fulfill this mission, we work with the scientific community, the public, and regulatory agencies. We also conduct scientific research using relatively low-tech methods accessible to community volunteers. A key part of our work is monitoring turbidity and suspended sediment. We also examine revegetation rates on logged-over lands, the extent of canopy cover, and the “batting average” of certified engineering geologists who provide consultation about timber harvesting–associated landslide risks. We are interested in the mechanisms by which impacts occur and methodologies for cumulative impact analysis.
Until their population crash twenty-five years ago, salmon were the mainstay of a $100 million fishing industry in California. Dr. Peter Moyle, renowned fisheries professor at UC-–Davis, calls watershed deterioration the principal cause of the coastal salmonid decline, with logging and road-building as major factors. Because approximately 50 percent of coho habitat is privately owned, and 100 percent runs through private property, salmon must pass through severely impacted areas before reaching presumably more protected, often public, stretches. Such impacts can destroy entire runs. By protecting private property from the effects of irresponsible management of watershed lands, we simultaneously promote biologically viable creeks, the integrity of objective science, and the potential recovery of native salmonid populations.
According to a 1996 National Research Council report on Pacific Northwest salmonids called “Upstream: Salmon and Society in the Pacific NW,” genetic diversity underlies the success of the species; healthy habitat sustains local variations. The report poignantly notes: “One important reason to protect local populations is that they are locally adapted to the streams that support them. In other words, evolution has made a local breeding population better able to survive and reproduce in its home stream than in other streams. Re-establishing new populations through introductions once the local populations have been lost has proved to be extremely difficult”.
This is where we come in—those of us invested in an ecological future that not only sustains us economically but also nourishes us spiritually. This is the vision of Salmon Forever.
Why turbidity?
The North Coast Water Quality Control Board uses “turbidity levels” as thresholds: the Basin Plan will not permit turbidity levels in streams to rise (due to sediment entry) more than 20 percent over naturally occurring background levels. Quantities of sediment that settle out and cause nuisance, such as aggradation causing flooding, are also prohibited. The Pacific Lumber (PL) Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) recognizes turbidity “as the single-most sensitive measure of the effects of land use on streams.”
Young salmonids are exquisitely sensitive to turbidity, which obscures their vision and hence decreases their ability to feed. They are also sensitive to suspended sediments, which cause injury in direct proportion to sediment levels and duration of exposure. Fine sediments smother the egg nests of salmonids and fill the interstices in which the young hide. Since smolt size is correlated with ocean survival of salmonids, if sediment-choked water results in smaller fish migrating to the ocean, the number of healthy adults returning to spawn likely will be reduced.
State agencies have identified increased flooding resulting from accelerated logging by PL as a major problem for Freshwater and Elk watersheds. In Freshwater last year, more than 4.5 million kilograms of suspended sediment went down the mainstem of Freshwater Creek past Salmon Forever’s sampling station equivalent to more than 220 truckloads of dry sediment. Each of the 6–7 square miles of logged watershed above the station probably contributed about 600–700 tons. Each of the three biggest storms moved more than a million kilograms past the sampling stations.
By monitoring watersheds with comparable geology, such as the Little South Fork Elk River in Headwaters Forest and Humboldt Redwoods State Park lands, we hope to be able to answer the question: how much sediment is natural? We are monitoring six watersheds in the Trinity, Eel, Van Duzen, and Humboldt Bay drainages. The information not only shows the impacts of ground-disturbing activities that have taken place but also provides an early warning system about upstream landslides, failing culverts, or other sediment sources posing threats to water quality, channel form, and in-stream habitat.
Samples are taken regularly during storms and measured in a portable turbidity monitor, and the filtered sediment is weighed in our Sunnybrae sediment lab. By measuring channel cross-sections, a 3-D picture of the channel can be used to calculate volumes. Correlations among turbidity, suspended sediment, and water discharge (volume or cubic meters/feet per second) characterize the turbidity “signature” of a stream. Comparing these signatures among similar watersheds undergoing different intensities of land use helps to reveal the effects of upstream management activities.
Since monitoring requires multiple samples taken 24-hours, seven days a week during rainstorms, the only economically feasible strategy might be local volunteers invested in the health of their creeks. (A side effect is watershed residents’ enthusiasm for turbidity monitoring as they learn the dynamics of their streams.) Alternative automatic sampling is available for remote sites and for more comprehensive data-gathering.
Salmon Forever has recruited and trained more than fifty volunteers in fifteen watersheds and analyzed more than 2,800 samples in our Sunny Brae Sediment Lab. The U.S. Forest Service Redwood Sciences Lab has provided technical assistance to analyze this data. We are developing a web site for this information. Public agencies contemplating large-scale monitoring programs are evaluating the protocols we have developed. The protocols are also undergoing final review by the U.S. EPA, and, when approved, qualify us to certify monitors under EPA standards.
Salmon Forever has joined with the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) to develop the THP Watch Program. This program provides citizens with access to our data and research library for their comments on timber harvest plans submitted to CDF. Our input has modified many THPs and helps establish a useful administrative record should THPs be litigated.
We made a video with Howard Russell which presents some of the scientific evidence for the logging-related flooding in Freshwater, and residents’ experiences. Our PL HCP/Sustained Yield Plan Watch program is integrated with community participation in watershed analysis, which will be coming to all of the watersheds in which PL has some ownership. In conjunction with esteemed Steelhead publisher Emelia Berol, we plan to publish a quarterly interview featuring local scientists’ work relevant to salmon and watershed issues.
Salmon Forever has worked closely with local groups to emphasize the vulnerability of the North Fork Mattole River to sediment impacts, where more than 3,000 acres of virgin old-growth Douglas fir are proposed to be clearcut—1,000 within the next ten years. (The Mattole, which means “clear water” to the Mattole Indians, is known as “the other Headwaters” by local residents and is treasured for its beauty and wild native salmon.) We also serve as a scientific consultant to Voices of Humboldt County, a monthly publication of the Humboldt Watershed Council. The publication’s name comes from a video Salmon Forever and Humboldt Watershed Council co-produced in 1997.
Salmon Forever helps those who want to better understand the mechanisms by which impacts occur so that they can protect their home watersheds more effectively. We invite you to join our efforts. If we can help with your monitoring, watershed analysis, or THP comment needs, let us know.
This article can be found online at www.treesfoundation.org/publications/article-40
Branching Out is produced by Trees Foundation. For more information contact:
Salmon Forever
P.O. Box 3014
McKinleyville, CA 95519
Phone: (707) 839-7444 Fax: (707) 839-7447
***
Check out the cross-pollinization of these supposedly separate groups:
Salmon Forever
Home / Publications / Branching Out / Fall 2000 / Salmon Forever. by Ken Miller of Salmon Forever November 1, 2000. Measuring stream velocity with an orange ...
www.treesfoundation.org/publications/article-40 - 27k - Cached - Similar pages (Trees Foundation, that's Earth First)
Groups Demand Water Board Curtail Excessive Logging: Independent ...
Michael Shellenberger, Salmon Forever, 510-525-9900 Ken Miller, Humboldt Watershed Council, 707-839-7444 Jesse Noell, Salmon Forever, 707-443-7433 ...
www.wildcalifornia.org/pressreleases/number-29 - 10k - Cached - Similar pages (wildcalifornia, that's EPIC)
Deep-Water, Industrial Port Development vs. Sustainable Future
Dr. Ken Miller President, Salmon Forever /s/ Tim McKay Executive Director, Northcoast Environmental Center /s/ Ruth Jameson Eureka Homeowners Committee ...
www.wildcalifornia.org/pages/page-168 - 28k - Cached - Similar pages
Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters - The Bay Area Coalition for ...
It's hard to believe, but the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters is 10 years old! ... Senator Barbara Boxer's office with one of BACH's founders, Ken Miller ...
www.treesfoundation.org/affiliates/update-77 - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
1.29.2007
Earth First Profile from activistcash.com
HOLY SMOKES!!!!
Earth First!
Earth First! Journal, PO Box 3023, Tucson, AZ 85702
Phone 520-620-6900 | Fax 4132540057 | Email collective@earthfirstjournal.org
"It could have killed someone," said San Diego fire captain Jeff Carle. Three workers sleeping at a construction site were able to escape after the terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF) set fire to an unfinished, 200-unit condominium development late one night in August, 2003.
A newspaper reported: "Flames leapt 200 feet into the air and could be seen for miles. Grapefruit-sized fireballs landed in courtyards and patios of adjacent buildings, and burning embers swirled in the night." Nearby residents were evacuated and returned home to find their window blinds had melted from the heat. A 500-gallon fuel tank exploded. Damages were estimated at $50 million.
One local resident described the event for San Diego's NBC affiliate: "Smoke was just coming straight at you. The flames were just all over. It was just terror." A construction worker remarked: "I'm out of work now. Thank you, arsonist."
A twelve-foot sign next to the arson site read: "If you build it -- we will burn it -- the E.L.F.'s are mad." The Earth Liberation Front, along with its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), have taken responsibility for more than 600 crimes since 1996, totaling more than $100 million in damages.
The Earth Liberation Front sprung from -- and in many ways is still an arm of -- Earth First!.
Earth First! (EF!) is a "warrior society" that takes a "by any means necessary" approach to "defending mother earth." The group declines to participate in the democratic process, preferring instead to damage, disable, and destroy the property of its ever-growing list of enemies. EF! targets include, but are by no means limited to, loggers, ranchers, and farmers -- especially those who grow genetically modified crops. Earth First!ers' crimes include assault, arson, and untold acts of sabotage.
Before he quit in the late 1980s, the driving force behind EF! was a man named Dave Foreman. His book Ecodefense: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching is a how-to for environmental saboteurs. It includes nine chapters of instructions on subjects ranging from tree spiking to destroying roads, from disabling equipment to making smoke bombs. Rodney Coronado, an Earth First! zealot who was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison following a string of arsons, calls the book "our bible."
A "Mainstream" Spin-off?
The legend of EF!'s founding involves five friends hanging out in the desert, drunk and high. They were inspired by Edward Abbey's book The Monkeywrench Gang, which chronicles a gang of environmental zealots who sabotage oil, mining, and farming interests. A different story, one that doesn't get told as often or as gleefully, was outlined by author Ron Arnold in Trashing the Economy:
Defectors from the environmental movement have told us that Earth First! founder Dave Foreman was approached by the Sierra Club and his employer, the Wilderness Society, in 1979 with an offer to fund a new extremist point group for the movement. It would serve the function of making their own demands look more reasonable … Defectors say that Foreman made the deal by himself in a comfortable Wilderness Society office, and accepted the offer on the condition that funding would be steady and adequate, and that his participation was a limited 10-year deal.
While this story is almost impossible to confirm, there is evidence for its veracity. Dave Foreman did quit EF! after about ten years. And comments from Foreman himself are revealing. Smithsonian magazine writes:
"We thought it would have been useful to have a group to take a tougher position than the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society," Foreman remembers. "It could be sort of secretly controlled by the mainstream and trotted out at hearings to make the Sierra Club or Wilderness Society look moderate."
In his own book, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Foreman brags: "A major accomplishment of Earth First! … has been to expand the environmental spectrum to where the Sierra Club and other groups are perceived as moderates." Foreman made the same point to Audubon magazine in 1982: "When I call the Sierra Club 'namby pamby,' that is done consciously to negate what [Secretary of the Interior James] Watt says when he calls them extremists."
In the same Audubon article, long-time Sierra Club executive director and Foreman mentor David Brower argued: "The people that are easily named extreme make the people who were extreme seem suddenly reasonable." Brower told E magazine:
The Sierra Club made the Nature Conservancy look reasonable. I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We're still waiting for someone else to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable.
The Earth First! Journal
Every industry has its trade rags, and the leading magazine for the environmental fringe is the Earth First! Journal. Unsuspecting magazine browsers in mainstream bookstores might stumble across the Journal, which provides tactical information and motivation to saboteurs -- while singing the praises of Earth First!ers who destroy fishing boats, genetically modified crops, and logging equipment.
The Journal features articles by some of America's most violent eco-terrorists. One issue, for example, included an essay by convicted arsonist Jeffrey Luers about "Why I set a fire at [Eugene, Oregon's] Romania Chevrolet." The same issue included a treatise titled "The Non-violent Use of Gunpowder."
"By every means necessary we will bring this and every other empire down! Mutiny and sabotage in defense of Mother Earth!" screamed another recent article condemning the war in Iraq. Elsewhere in that same issue: "A snitch is no longer entitled to basic expectations of safety. As such, it is righteous to hurt them, burn down their house or do similarly naughty things to them."
In 2000, the 20th Anniversary issue of the Earth First! Journal bragged: "The simple idea of putting the earth first had drawn expanding crowds of hippies, anarchists, animal rights activists and all sorts of riffraff." The kind of people who "riff" alphabet songs like this one:
I is incendiary, like burning 'dozers
J is for jail time, and other enclosures
K is for kill, what they'll do if they catch you.
In 2002, the Earth First! Journal published a two-page spread called "Most-Wanted Eco-terrorists: the Biotechnology Industry." Claiming that "everyone at Monsanto is an eco-terrorist," it opened with a line that has become emblematic of green radicals everywhere: "The Earth is not dying, it is being killed by corporations such as the biotechnology industries, and the people who are killing it have names and addresses." The article then went on to list names and addresses.
"The Earth First! Journal Collective" wrote an open letter appearing in the Spring 2003 issue of the rag for Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). One of the most violent groups of animal-rights zealots, SHAC has incubated the technique of harassing, threatening, and in some cases physically harming people who happen to work for a company they don't like. The open letter read:
SHAC's tactics and strategies need to be analyzed and implemented by the environmental movement. The results generated by SHAC's actions are awe-inspiring, and the environmental movement needs to start paying attention.
The letter went on to describe how Earth First!ers have begun harassing "an ecoterrorist in our eyes" whose job it is to remove tree sitters safely from their perch:
In recent months, activists haven't waited for Climber Eric to show up in the forest. They have visited his home, business and insurance company. At home, Climber Eric was not the same confident, controlled person that he is in the woods, where he is usually protected by his crew and local police. In fact, he was visibly distraught. For Climber Eric, this is just the beginning.
Several newspapers reported Rodney Coronado boasting that he "was no pacifist hippie, my actions speak louder than my words." What the papers didn't report was that those words were directed at "Climber Eric," and, according to his employer, Coronado continued: "I'm coming to your door. Hey, do you got any food in your house? Don't worry, I'll go to your house and ask your wife."
"Earth First! is a verb, not a noun."
EF! works very hard to convince the public that its activities are not governed by any formal institution. "Earth First! is not an organization, but a movement" is the constant refrain. "There are no members of Earth First!, only Earth First!ers."
There are practical as well as romantic reasons to downplay any organizational structure. According to the Earth First! Journal: "To avoid co-option, we feel it is necessary to avoid the corporate organizational structure so readily embraced by many environmental groups." Of course, most green groups engage in legal activities -- and therefore don't fear "co-option."
While there is no primary EF! office, there are numerous incorporated Earth First! organizations, each with its own specific function. These include Daily Planet Publishing (which publishes the Earth First! Journal), the Fund for Wild Nature (formerly the Earth First! Foundation), the Trees Foundation, and the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.
For the benefit of anyone who doubts that these are genuine, legal "organizations," consider that the website of the Fund for Wild Nature once read: "The Fund relies on invididual [sic] contributors like yourself, and your friends. We accept donations of cash, stock or other financial assets." Here is a tax-exempt foundation making a plea for corporate securities, on behalf of a group that claims to exist without any structure.
This non-organization, which preaches "no compromise in defense of mother earth," is very much aware of who pays the bills. The Washington Times reports that Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner, who has personally contributed to radical environmental groups, gets a free pass from EF! militants:
While a timber-cutting operation was under way on one of his [Turner's] ranches in 1998, members of the radical environmental group Earth First! instead protested timber cutting on a nearby ranch owned by Zachary Taylor, said private investigator Barry R. Clausen, who spent a year undercover at EarthFirst.
He asked a protester why the group did not include take on [sic] Mr. Turner, Mr. Clausen said, and was told: "We cannot. That's where our money comes from."
Mr. Clausen, author of "Burning Rage," an investigation of domestic terrorism, said environmental groups' nickname for Mr. Turner is "Daddy Greenbucks."
"Ted Turner has canned hunts where you can shoot a buffalo ... and drilling ... in New Mexico and clear-cutting trees and he never gets protested. And when you ask why, it's because he is one of the biggest contributors to extremist groups," Mr. Clausen said.
Interlocking, Interrelated Radicals
If you want to contribute money to EF! and get a tax break on your donation, send your check to the Fund for Wild Nature (FWN). Formerly named the Earth First! Foundation, FWN serves as a tax-exempt pass-through for money to reach Earth First!ers. It has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to EF! organizations.
FWN has doled out money to the Earth First! Journal, Mendocino Earth First! and North Coast Earth First! (California), Elaho Earth First! (Canada), Wild Rockies Earth First!, Arizona Earth First!, and many others. More often, though, the Fund gives to EF! groups that don't have the words "Earth First!" in their names -- like the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH). BACH's leader is Karen Pickett, whose arrest record hasn't prevented her from holding the purse strings for the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.
Another FWN beneficiary is the Cascadia Forest Alliance (CFA). According to Bear Deluxe magazine, "Former Earth First! members conceived the CFA as a fresh organization for combating Salvage Rider cutting in Oregon. Since then, hundreds of people -- including Portland's Tre Arrow, who gained local fame when he spent 11 days protesting the sale from a second story ledge at the Forest Service headquarters in Portland -- have occupied the tree-sits at Eagle Creek."
"Tre Arrow," whose real name is Michael Scarpitti, graces the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in October, 2002 for a string of arsons, including the torching of three cement trucks. The government has offered $25,000 for information leading to his arrest. Although Scarpitti is still on the loose, law enforcement officers spotted him in 2003 near Arcadia, California -- accompanied by none other than Rodney Coronado.
Coronado argues that EF! is part of one big happy family, along with the FBI's most feared domestic terrorist groups, the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front: "Whether a member of a Headwaters nonviolent affinity group, Cascadia Forest Defenders or the Earth Liberation Front," Coronado wrote in a 2001 essay, "all Earth First!ers should recognize the positive value of each other's contributions and exploit the leverage they create against our common opponent."
FWN provided the initial support for EF! spin-offs like the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the Ruckus Society, both of which were started by Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle. Indeed, FWN thinks of itself as the venture capitalist of radical environmental groups.
The Fund for Wild Nature is by no means Earth First!'s only source of revenue. For example, the Dogwood Alliance, which claims to believe in "peaceful" tactics, has funneled money to Katuah Earth First! and other groups that work with Earth First!.
Earth First! founders Dave Foreman, Bart Koehler, and Howie Wolke are now board members, officers and/or founders of other environmental organizations. Those include: the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (Wolke); the Ecology Center, Inc. (Wolke); the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (Foreman); the Wilderness Society's Wilderness Support Center (Koehler); and the Wildlands Project, a.k.a. North American Wilderness Recovery, which recently merged with the Cenozoic Society (Foreman).
"Direct Action" on Your Dinner Plate
In 1999 FWN began to bankroll "direct action" against biotech crops (although Earth First!ers began targeting them as early as 1987). The now defunct Bioengineering Action Network (BAN) received FWN money. When it was functioning, BAN served as a press-outreach service for the FBI-certified domestic-terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF), another Earth First! spin-off. BAN's website featured a how-to guide for tearing out biotech crops (they call it "nighttime gardening") and instructed saboteurs on how to "research your target."
1999 was also the year that Al H. Jacobson, founder of the avowedly anti-biotech crops organic food line Garden of Eatin', gave FWN $54,500. Jacobson's Naturganic Foundation kicked in $200,000 to FWN for 2000. In those years, Jacobson was by far FWN's biggest donor.
Earth First! makes your dinner more expensive by practicing economic sabotage on cattle ranchers as well as farmers who raise genetically enhanced crops. The EF!-founded and FWN-funded Buffalo Field Campaign, for example, uses "direct action" to block government officials from keeping buffalo in and around Yellowstone Park from passing on the contagious disease brucellosis to nearby cattle. As of December 2002, at least 21 Buffalo Field Campaign activists have been arrested -- quite a rap sheet for a tax-exempt group.
But even EF! draws a line between the kind of illegal activities that can be funded with tax-exempt money, and those that are too violent for the Fund for Wild Nature to touch. Cash for these endeavors comes from the Earth First! Direct Action Fund. Bragging that "thousands of EF!ers have been arrested around the world," the EF! Direct Action Fund's website appeals for donations:
Direct action requires courage, commitment, training and the ability to focus on an urgent issue. Unfortunately, it also requires money. Since 1985, The Earth First! Direct Action Fund (DAF) has assisted in planning, coordinating, and funding activists on the front lines. These people are the backbone, indeed the heart and soul, of the Earth First! movement.
Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle registered the Earth First! Action Fund as a California business in 1990, with the Action Fund's address listed as "C/O Rainforest Action Network," another Roselle creation. He lost control of the checkbook in settling his divorce from fellow Earth First!er Karen Pickett. But that hasn't stopped Rainforest Action Network from supporting Earth First! groups. On one occasion, RAN donated "$10,000 of general support to Luna Media in their work with North Coast Earth First!."
Yet another Roselle group, the Ecology Center in Montana, is also active in funding Earth First! activities. In the 1990s the Ecology Center poured more than $20,000 into Earth First!'s Cove Mallard anti-logging campaign in Idaho. The Ecology Center also supports the Buffalo Field Campaign, the Earth First! Journal, and the legal defenses of Rodney Coronado and something called the Buffalo Action Project, or BAP!
BAP! appears to be little more than a support system for a woman named Delyla Wilson. Wilson gained fame in 1997 after she dumped a five-gallon bucket of rotting bison innards on a panel of senior government officials who were discussing how best to manage Yellowstone Park's buffalo herd. Her victims included Dan Glickman, then President Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture, Marc Racicot, then Governor of Montana, and Montana Senators Max Baucus and Conrad Burns.
Another Fund for Wild Nature grantee is New West Research, a New Mexico anti-ranching group that produced the "Animal Damage Control Hall of Shame." A more appropriate name would have been the "New Mexico Hit List."
New West Research sued the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the names and addresses of all New Mexicans who had petitioned the Wildlife Service to help control predators on their property. New West proceeded to post this information -- 25 pages in all -- on its website. At the top of this "Hall of Shame" was the familiar line: "The earth is not dying -- it is being killed. And the people killing it have names and addresses."
When criticized for inciting violence against ranchers and farmers, New West responded: "That's the same kind of whining we hear from pedophiles and crack dealers who don't want their identities known to the public."
The Earth First! Octopus
There are several hundred Earth First! organizations in America, and at least 50 in other nations. Most of them use the words "Earth First" in their title, but a cheat-sheet might be helpful for those Earth First! entities that go by other names. Bear in mind that many Earth First! organizations rapidly form around a cause, and then disappear. As a result, a complete list of Earth First! organizations is impossible to compile. However, when you see the following names, think Earth First!
Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project
Cascadia Forest Defenders
Coastwatch
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers
Cove Mallard Coalition
Daily Planet Publishing, Inc.
Direct Action Fund
Earth Defense Education Project
End Corporate Dominance
Environmentally Sound Promotions
Friends of the Wolf
League of Wilderness Defenders
Redwood Action Team
Warrior Poets Society
Zero Xtract from Public Lands
The Earth First! Journal includes a section called "EF! Campaigns and Projects." The following organizations have graced that list in recent years:
Bioengineering Action Network
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers Video Project
Earth Liberation Prisoners
EF! Action Update
North American ALF Press Office
ELF Press Office
Earth Liberation Front
North American Earth Liberation Support Network
The Earth First! Journal has listed the following groups as "contacts":
Arizona Wildlands Museum
Autonomous Zone
Biodiversity Liberation Front
Blue Mtns. Biodiversity Project
Boxcar Books and Community Center
The Brokedowns/Elgin Food Not Bombs
Cascadia Forest Alliance
Cascadia Forest Defenders
Church of Deep Ecology
Confluence/St. Louis IMC
Direct Action Network
Environmental Resource Center
Fairfax Action Team
Flagstaff Activist Network
Foghorn
Forest Ecosystems Action Group
Green Vigilance
Lawrence Grassroots Initiative
Liberated Zone Infoshop
Lost Cause Collective
Mass Direct Action
Mountain Eco-Collective
New Mexico Direct Action
Oceandream Media Foundation
Pink Planarians
Popular Power
Project Harmony
Rustic Revolt
Shuksan Direct Action
Slingshot
Solidarity Books
Stone Soup Collective
Tornado Alley Resistance
Unci Maka Uonihanpo (Honor Mother Earth)
Wild Wasatch Front
Wilderness Defense
The following EF!-named groups have been listed by the Earth First! Journal as contacts:
Alachua EF!
Allegheny EF!
Bay Area EF!
Big Bend EF!
Boundary Waters EF!
Buffalo Trace EF!
Croatan EF!
Dallas EF!
East Texas EF!
EF! Austin
French Broad EF!
Gainesville/Ichetucknee EF!
Houston EF!
Kalmiopsis EF!
Katúah EF!/River Faction
Katúah EF!/Tennessee Valley Faction
Katúah Foothills EF!
Kekionga EF!
Lake Erie EF!
Lake Worthless EF!
Loon Antics EF!
Love Canal EF!
Madison EF!
Maine EF!
OFF!
Olympia EF!/Cascadia Defense Network
Peninsular Ranges EF!
Phoenix EF!
Red Gate EF!
San Juan EF!
Santa Cruz EF!/EF! Radio
Seattle EF!
Shawnee EF!
Sonoma County EF!
Teewinot EF!
Tucson EF!
Two Rivers EF!
Uwharrie Earth First!
Wild Rockies EF!/Wild Rockies Review
Yellowstone EF!
Bomb-throwers have a funny way of making even the most radical spokespersons seem reasonable, and one of Earth First!'s main goals is to make green groups like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth appear mainstream by comparison. Mission accomplished.
EF! also claims some success at its other practical goal: inflicting economic damage on the industries that it opposes. In Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman brags that "ecotage [economic sabotage] in the National Forests alone in the United States is costing industry and government $20-25 million annually." Putting companies out of business through sabotage, Earth First!ers believe, will ultimately protect the earth from human beings.
Which is really the point. Earth First!ers seek to destroy industrial civilization, if not humanity itself. Writing in the May 1987 issue of the Earth First! Journal under the pseudonym "Miss Ann Thropy," Earth First! theorist Christopher Manes suggested that "if radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to ecological sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS."
The author of an article in the November-December 2001 Earth First! Journal proclaimed that he was jealous of Osama bin Laden, and that the al Queda mastermind "is riding an unstoppable current of history." A speaker at Earth First!'s annual "Rendezvous" meeting once said that the "optimal human population" is zero.
Dave Foreman describes the philosophy that motivates Earth First! in Confessions of an Eco-Warrior:
"An individual human life has no more intrinsic value than does an individual Grizzly Bear life. Human suffering resulting from drought and famine in Ethiopia is tragic, yes, but the destruction there of other creatures and habitat is even more tragic."
"Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as 'disease' (e.g., malaria) and 'pests' (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere."
"An antipathy to 'progress' and 'technology.' We can accept the pejoratives of 'Luddite' and 'Neanderthal' with pride."
"There is no hope for reform of industrial empire."
"We humans have become a disease -- the Humanpox."
These are not just Foreman's own idiosyncratic views, but the first principles of the EF! movement. The National Chamber of Commerce quotes John Davis, then editor of the Earth First! Journal, summing it up: "Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." And Earth First!ers reportedly sit around a camp fire, chanting, trancelike, for hours: "Billions are living that should be dead. Billions are living that should be dead. Billions are living that should be dead."
The Washington Post describes the Earth First! approach to earth worship:
In another clearing, a different group sat in a circle seeking other forms of magic. It was an exercise called a Council of All Beings, originated by Australian activist John Seed. At a Council of All Beings, you choose a nonhuman form of life and meditate upon that form -- mouse or tree or stem of grass -- until you seem to be that stem or mouse and then you tell the others in the circle about lawn mowers or traps and how it feels to be oppressed by humans.
The Council of All Beings reminded me of a form of religious worship that had taken place at the [Earth First!] Montana rendezvous I had also visited. There, the worshipers had evoked the presence of Gaia, a name for Earth as a being or a goddess, which is taken from the more scientific theory known as the Gaia hypothesis, in which Earth is described as an organism. The ceremony had been self-consciously pagan. "If you're going to talk about Christianity," a Montana worshiper had said, "please leave."
When I asked Dave Foreman, still in vest and camouflage hat, what the Council of All Beings and Gaia-worship role was in Earth First!, he grinned. "That's the woo-woo stuff," he said. "It's beyond me. But the diversity's good."
Earth First!ers, like their hero Dave Foreman, generally believe that "Mother Earth" is in some sense spiritual, and that monkey-wrenching is (in his words) "very much a sacrament."
Theodore "the Unabomber" Kaczynski is the radical environmental movement's biggest black eye. Conventional wisdom dictates that Kaczynski was merely an intellectual serial-killer, but his connection to Earth First! and the broader eco-terror movement is undeniable.
When FBI agents raided Kaczynski's Montana cabin in April 1996, they found copies of the Earth First! Journal, as well as an Earth First! affiliated publication called Live Wild or Die. This broadsheet, funded by Mike Roselle, included a now-famous "Eco-F*cker Hit List."
At the top of the Hit List was the California Forestry Association. In the middle was a prominent cartoon about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Kaczynski sent dozens of mail bombs; three were fatal. He killed an employee of the California Forestry Association, and a Burson-Marsteller PR executive named Thomas Mosser. Kaczynski (mistakenly) believed that Burson-Marsteller was responsible for rehabilitating Exxon's public image after the 1989 Valdez oil spill.
The source of that mistake? An essay in the Earth First! Journal, which the FBI says was one of Kaczynski's "favorite" periodicals. A letter found in Kaczynski's cabin -- titled "Suggestion for Earth First!ers from FC" ["FC" was the Unabomber's pseudonym] -- read in part: "As for the Mosser bombing, our attention was called to Burston-Marsteller [sic] by an article that appeared in the Earth First! Litha." The reference to "Litha" is in keeping with the Journal's habit of naming its issues after (pagan) lunar-calendar months.
According to ABC News and other media outlets, the FBI also believes that Kaczynski attended an Earth First! gathering just one month before murdering Mosser.
Ted Kaczynski did little more than follow what Earth First! openly advocates. The September 1989 Journal included an article instructing:
While Eco defenders are quick to point out that life is sacred and is not a target of Eco-Defense, many doubt that multinational takeover artists who liquidate old growth forests to pay off junk bonds qualify as Life-forms. Such Robotoids, they aver, should be classed with damns, dozers and drillers. A "Hit List" is available upon discreet inquiry.
For Earth First!, this kind of advice is (sadly) not a one-time thing. A cartoon in the 20th Anniversary issue of the Journal noted: "Trees are for hanging. Kill a developer." And the Unabomber could easily have read Dave Foreman's words: "The blood of timber executives is my natural drink, and the wail of dying forest supervisors is music to my ears."
Less Than Lethal, but Still Illegal
Aside from the Unabomber's victims, we know of no one else who has died at the hands of Earth First!ers. But these zealots have come awfully close. The following is from an interview with Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle in the April 1993 issue of Playboy:
When I asked Mike Roselle to tell me about his favorite action, or ecodefense, he didn't hesitate.
A band of desert saboteurs from Earth First! resolved in 1989 to put an end to the desert motorcycle race called the Barstow to Vegas, which ran through the East Mojave scenic area, a prospective national park and habitat of the desert tortoise, kangaroo rat and other creatures.
"The night before the race, we took a trailerload of railroad ties and four-by-eights down to the track," remembers Roselle, a former oil- field roughneck and one of the five men who cooked up the idea for Earth First! on a camping trip to Mexico's Sonora Desert in 1980. "See they had to go under Interstate Fifteen. There was this tunnel about six feet wide, eight feet high and one hundred fifty feet long that was made for water to go through. We built this cube to the size of the culvert, and at night we set it up in the middle of the tunnel."
I want you to picture this," snaps Rick Sieman, senior editor of Dirt Bike magazine and head of the Sahara Club, a race sponsor. "Here are top expert riders going a hundred and ten miles per hour down a sand wash at eleven o'clock, sun directly overhead, coalblack shadows, dust on their goggles, and they're going to dart through this shadow, assumedly, and go to the other side. If our people hadn't spotted that, they would have killed a half-dozen riders."
"Though illegal, this strategic monkeywrenching can be safe, easy, and fun," Foreman quips. Is this what he meant?
In 1987, a 23-year-old mill worker was severely injured when his saw blade shattered after hitting a redwood tree that had been "spiked" with a long steel nail, following the standard Earth First! recipe. In 1990, Earth First!er Lyn Georges Dessaux was convicted of assault after stabbing two men with a ski pole in a save-the-buffaloes protest. Earth First!ers have set fire to a livestock auction. They've also torched logging equipment.
Dave Foreman himself pled guilty in 1991 to conspiring to blow up electrical lines leading to an Arizona nuclear power plant (he wrote a check to pay for 50 grenades). While Foreman somehow got off with probation, his four co-conspirators landed in jail. And hundreds of other Earth First!ers have spent time behind bars.
ALF and ELF
"Earth First! has provided a vehicle for establishing a new generation of environmental leadership in this country," EF! activist Darryl Cherney told interviewer Lori Rizzo. "Many Earth First!ers have actually gone on to start new organizations with much stronger 'no compromise' positions."
The FBI considers the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and its sister group the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) to be America's most prolific and dangerous domestic terrorist organizations. And the ELF, it turns out, is just another Earth First! spin-off. The Earth First! Journal notes that "ELF solidified in 1992 at the first UK Earth First! gathering." In 1994, Earth First! activist Judi Bari wrote:
England Earth First! has been taking some necessary steps to separate above ground and clandestine activities. Earth First!, the public group, has a non-violence code and does civil disobedience blockades. Monkeywrenching is done by Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Although Earth First! may sympathize with the activities of ELF, they do not engage in them.
If we are serious about our movement in the US, we will do the same. Earth First! is already an above ground group. We have above-ground publications, public events, and a yearly Rendezvous with open attendance. Civil disobedience and sabotage are both powerful tactics in our movement. For the survival of both, it's time to leave the night work to the elves in the woods.
When longtime Journal editor Jim Flynn was asked by the Medford, Oregon Mail Tribune for his thoughts on ELF claiming credit for a 2001 fire that caused $400,000 in damage, Flynn responded: "I hope they aren't caught. I applaud them for standing up and taking action." Asked if he knew who belongs to ELF, Flynn said "I am clueless. It could be the person sitting next to me." Flynn, it should be noted, is no stranger to criminal behavior. His rap sheet winds from New York to Oregon.
In October 1998, ELF torched a Vail, Colorado ski resort, causing an estimated $12 million in damage. Predictably, the "above ground" counterpart to this arson consisted of an Earth First!-run "Coalition to Stop Vail Expansion."
After the Vail construction was burned to the ground, the London Times reported:
When members of the Earth Liberation Front burnt down $12 million-worth of mountaintop property belonging to the Vail ski resort in Colorado, ["Unabomber" Ted] Kaczynski applauded from prison -- as did Theresa Kintz, the editor of the widely read Earth First! Journal. "It's war," she wrote.
Kintz knows Kaczynski well. As of March she was still the editor of Earth First! but when I tried to contact her the magazine claimed to be unable to reach her. This is unsurprising: like al-Qaeda, America's hardcore environmentalists mistrust the mainstream press and operate in cells to evade detection.
The Journal regularly publishes articles by Earth Liberation Front criminals, and makes common cause with the Animal Liberation Front as well. In 1994 it ran a letter from ALF "spokesman" David Barbarash, who wrote from prison after being denied bail in connection with an "animal liberation" action. Addressed to "fellow Earth First!ers," it read: "Prison sucks, no doubt about it, but you can live through it. The thought of spending time in a pit like this should not deter anyone from taking the action that this planet needs for its survival."
A 1999 Journal article was headlined "Feds Escalate Hunt For ALF." It was written by Rodney Coronado, a convicted ALF/Earth First! criminal who knows a thing or two about being hunted by federal law enforcement. Coronado wrote:
Whether a member of a Headwaters nonviolent affinity group, Cascadia Forest Defenders or the Earth Liberation Front, all Earth First!ers should recognize the positive value of each other's contributions and exploit the leverage they create against our common opponent.
In other words: EF!, ALF and ELF are all part of the same clan of violent vandals.
Rodney Coronado
Committed Earth First!er and Earth First! Journal editor Rodney Coronado has replaced Dave Foreman as the radical environmental and animal-rights movement's most sought-after speaker. A convicted arsonist who has caused millions in damage to fishing ships, farms, and medical research labs, Coronado instructs his listeners on the fine points of firebombing.
Celebrating "the sixty-eighth raid on fur farms since 1995," in the 20th anniversary issue of the Earth First! Journal, Coronado wrote: "There have been nearly that many raids on genetically-engineered crops. All the federal agents in the United States will not stop more actions of this sort."
"No tactic that prevents environmental destruction -- without loss of life -- should be ruled out. Be it fire or an action at the homes of a corporate ecoterrorist," Coronado wrote in a September, 2003 article for the Earth First! Journal. "Monkeywrenching is more than a tactic or strategy," another Coronado article reads. "It's the way of warriors. A way of life." Coronado would know about that. He began spiking trees with Earth First! as early as 1987. And Earth First! has held him up as an example ever since.
In Confessions of an Eco Warrior, Dave Foreman praised Coronado's sabotage of the Icelandic whaling fleet as an example of effective property destruction. Paul Watson, who gave the young radical his blessing for the Iceland raid, described in lurid details Coronado's handiwork for the Journal. Coronado himself wrote:
Co-founder Dave Foreman hoisted Icelandic saboteur David Howitt and myself up on stage to salute our [Iceland] raid, welcoming the new generation of eco-warrior, the young anarchistic animal liberationists who also embraced Deep Ecology.
In the spring and early summer of 1999, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) made three payments to the Earth First! Journal ($2,616.64 on March 23; $2,970.24 on May 18; and $1,485.12 on June 22). PETA records show no previous or subsequent grants to the Journal. So what piqued PETA's sudden interest in radical environmental journalism?
The Journal itself gave a plausible answer in its May-June 2001 issue:
Those familiar with our movement’s history will know that convicted monkeywrencher Rod Coronado was a catalyst, once released from prison, in getting the Journal moved to Arizona. Within days of his release from federal prison, Coronado became a short-term editor in Oregon, where he spent the spring and summer of 1999 ... Following his return to Arizona, Coronado became active once again with Arizona Earth First!, while also traveling and lecturing about direct action in defense of the Earth and sharing stories of life in the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
As recently as the spring of 2003, Coronado was working with Earth First! organizers Darryl Cherney and Karen Pickett to prevent logging in Northern California. The press reported Coronado threatening that he "was no pacifist hippie, my actions speak louder than my words." Around the same time, Coronado was seen in Northern California with Michael Scarpitti, who is on the FBI's most wanted list.
Breakin' the Law
Law enforcement has always kept a careful watch on Earth First! and the violent groups surrounding it. A Department of Homeland Security panel, chaired by former Virginia governor James Gilmore, took special notice of this threat in early 2003. Agence France Presse reported that the "most dangerous" domestic groups mentioned in the report are "Earth First, the Animal Liberation Front, and the Earth Liberation Front."
The report notes (page 36):
The loose confederacy created is comprised of coalitions between socialists, environmentalists and anarchists. Earth First! -- the radical environmental group founded by David Broder [sic] -- has been particularly active collaborating with anti-globalists. Similar concerns emanate from other environmentalist special interest groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), who have committed over 600 criminal acts in the United States since 1996 ...
Speculating on who vandalized 65 sport-utility vehicles in April 2003, Santa Cruz Police Lieutenant Joe Haebe told the San Francisco Chronicle:
It may have been ELF, but then, I sometimes get them confused with ALF, the Animal Liberation Front. And then there's Earth First! and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). There's a lot of cross-pollination between them, and some people here are probably members of two of those groups, or more.
If the Gilmore commission observations seem extreme, and Lt. Haebe sounds uninformed, remember that the Earth First! Journal includes convicted cop-killer Leonard Peltier among its list of prisoners who deserve "support" (they insist he was framed). Until recently, the Journal also included Unabomber Ted Kazcynski on the same list. "They are in there for us," the Journal notes.
On September 6, 2003 the Chronicle quoted Earth First!er Tim Ream saying: "There is every indication that we will see more political violence."
Profile:
Earth First!
Copyright © 2007 Center for Consumer Freedom. All rights reserved.
Earth First!
Earth First! Journal, PO Box 3023, Tucson, AZ 85702
Phone 520-620-6900 | Fax 4132540057 | Email collective@earthfirstjournal.org
"It could have killed someone," said San Diego fire captain Jeff Carle. Three workers sleeping at a construction site were able to escape after the terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF) set fire to an unfinished, 200-unit condominium development late one night in August, 2003.
A newspaper reported: "Flames leapt 200 feet into the air and could be seen for miles. Grapefruit-sized fireballs landed in courtyards and patios of adjacent buildings, and burning embers swirled in the night." Nearby residents were evacuated and returned home to find their window blinds had melted from the heat. A 500-gallon fuel tank exploded. Damages were estimated at $50 million.
One local resident described the event for San Diego's NBC affiliate: "Smoke was just coming straight at you. The flames were just all over. It was just terror." A construction worker remarked: "I'm out of work now. Thank you, arsonist."
A twelve-foot sign next to the arson site read: "If you build it -- we will burn it -- the E.L.F.'s are mad." The Earth Liberation Front, along with its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), have taken responsibility for more than 600 crimes since 1996, totaling more than $100 million in damages.
The Earth Liberation Front sprung from -- and in many ways is still an arm of -- Earth First!.
Earth First! (EF!) is a "warrior society" that takes a "by any means necessary" approach to "defending mother earth." The group declines to participate in the democratic process, preferring instead to damage, disable, and destroy the property of its ever-growing list of enemies. EF! targets include, but are by no means limited to, loggers, ranchers, and farmers -- especially those who grow genetically modified crops. Earth First!ers' crimes include assault, arson, and untold acts of sabotage.
Before he quit in the late 1980s, the driving force behind EF! was a man named Dave Foreman. His book Ecodefense: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching is a how-to for environmental saboteurs. It includes nine chapters of instructions on subjects ranging from tree spiking to destroying roads, from disabling equipment to making smoke bombs. Rodney Coronado, an Earth First! zealot who was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison following a string of arsons, calls the book "our bible."
A "Mainstream" Spin-off?
The legend of EF!'s founding involves five friends hanging out in the desert, drunk and high. They were inspired by Edward Abbey's book The Monkeywrench Gang, which chronicles a gang of environmental zealots who sabotage oil, mining, and farming interests. A different story, one that doesn't get told as often or as gleefully, was outlined by author Ron Arnold in Trashing the Economy:
Defectors from the environmental movement have told us that Earth First! founder Dave Foreman was approached by the Sierra Club and his employer, the Wilderness Society, in 1979 with an offer to fund a new extremist point group for the movement. It would serve the function of making their own demands look more reasonable … Defectors say that Foreman made the deal by himself in a comfortable Wilderness Society office, and accepted the offer on the condition that funding would be steady and adequate, and that his participation was a limited 10-year deal.
While this story is almost impossible to confirm, there is evidence for its veracity. Dave Foreman did quit EF! after about ten years. And comments from Foreman himself are revealing. Smithsonian magazine writes:
"We thought it would have been useful to have a group to take a tougher position than the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society," Foreman remembers. "It could be sort of secretly controlled by the mainstream and trotted out at hearings to make the Sierra Club or Wilderness Society look moderate."
In his own book, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Foreman brags: "A major accomplishment of Earth First! … has been to expand the environmental spectrum to where the Sierra Club and other groups are perceived as moderates." Foreman made the same point to Audubon magazine in 1982: "When I call the Sierra Club 'namby pamby,' that is done consciously to negate what [Secretary of the Interior James] Watt says when he calls them extremists."
In the same Audubon article, long-time Sierra Club executive director and Foreman mentor David Brower argued: "The people that are easily named extreme make the people who were extreme seem suddenly reasonable." Brower told E magazine:
The Sierra Club made the Nature Conservancy look reasonable. I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We're still waiting for someone else to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable.
The Earth First! Journal
Every industry has its trade rags, and the leading magazine for the environmental fringe is the Earth First! Journal. Unsuspecting magazine browsers in mainstream bookstores might stumble across the Journal, which provides tactical information and motivation to saboteurs -- while singing the praises of Earth First!ers who destroy fishing boats, genetically modified crops, and logging equipment.
The Journal features articles by some of America's most violent eco-terrorists. One issue, for example, included an essay by convicted arsonist Jeffrey Luers about "Why I set a fire at [Eugene, Oregon's] Romania Chevrolet." The same issue included a treatise titled "The Non-violent Use of Gunpowder."
"By every means necessary we will bring this and every other empire down! Mutiny and sabotage in defense of Mother Earth!" screamed another recent article condemning the war in Iraq. Elsewhere in that same issue: "A snitch is no longer entitled to basic expectations of safety. As such, it is righteous to hurt them, burn down their house or do similarly naughty things to them."
In 2000, the 20th Anniversary issue of the Earth First! Journal bragged: "The simple idea of putting the earth first had drawn expanding crowds of hippies, anarchists, animal rights activists and all sorts of riffraff." The kind of people who "riff" alphabet songs like this one:
I is incendiary, like burning 'dozers
J is for jail time, and other enclosures
K is for kill, what they'll do if they catch you.
In 2002, the Earth First! Journal published a two-page spread called "Most-Wanted Eco-terrorists: the Biotechnology Industry." Claiming that "everyone at Monsanto is an eco-terrorist," it opened with a line that has become emblematic of green radicals everywhere: "The Earth is not dying, it is being killed by corporations such as the biotechnology industries, and the people who are killing it have names and addresses." The article then went on to list names and addresses.
"The Earth First! Journal Collective" wrote an open letter appearing in the Spring 2003 issue of the rag for Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). One of the most violent groups of animal-rights zealots, SHAC has incubated the technique of harassing, threatening, and in some cases physically harming people who happen to work for a company they don't like. The open letter read:
SHAC's tactics and strategies need to be analyzed and implemented by the environmental movement. The results generated by SHAC's actions are awe-inspiring, and the environmental movement needs to start paying attention.
The letter went on to describe how Earth First!ers have begun harassing "an ecoterrorist in our eyes" whose job it is to remove tree sitters safely from their perch:
In recent months, activists haven't waited for Climber Eric to show up in the forest. They have visited his home, business and insurance company. At home, Climber Eric was not the same confident, controlled person that he is in the woods, where he is usually protected by his crew and local police. In fact, he was visibly distraught. For Climber Eric, this is just the beginning.
Several newspapers reported Rodney Coronado boasting that he "was no pacifist hippie, my actions speak louder than my words." What the papers didn't report was that those words were directed at "Climber Eric," and, according to his employer, Coronado continued: "I'm coming to your door. Hey, do you got any food in your house? Don't worry, I'll go to your house and ask your wife."
"Earth First! is a verb, not a noun."
EF! works very hard to convince the public that its activities are not governed by any formal institution. "Earth First! is not an organization, but a movement" is the constant refrain. "There are no members of Earth First!, only Earth First!ers."
There are practical as well as romantic reasons to downplay any organizational structure. According to the Earth First! Journal: "To avoid co-option, we feel it is necessary to avoid the corporate organizational structure so readily embraced by many environmental groups." Of course, most green groups engage in legal activities -- and therefore don't fear "co-option."
While there is no primary EF! office, there are numerous incorporated Earth First! organizations, each with its own specific function. These include Daily Planet Publishing (which publishes the Earth First! Journal), the Fund for Wild Nature (formerly the Earth First! Foundation), the Trees Foundation, and the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.
For the benefit of anyone who doubts that these are genuine, legal "organizations," consider that the website of the Fund for Wild Nature once read: "The Fund relies on invididual [sic] contributors like yourself, and your friends. We accept donations of cash, stock or other financial assets." Here is a tax-exempt foundation making a plea for corporate securities, on behalf of a group that claims to exist without any structure.
This non-organization, which preaches "no compromise in defense of mother earth," is very much aware of who pays the bills. The Washington Times reports that Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner, who has personally contributed to radical environmental groups, gets a free pass from EF! militants:
While a timber-cutting operation was under way on one of his [Turner's] ranches in 1998, members of the radical environmental group Earth First! instead protested timber cutting on a nearby ranch owned by Zachary Taylor, said private investigator Barry R. Clausen, who spent a year undercover at EarthFirst.
He asked a protester why the group did not include take on [sic] Mr. Turner, Mr. Clausen said, and was told: "We cannot. That's where our money comes from."
Mr. Clausen, author of "Burning Rage," an investigation of domestic terrorism, said environmental groups' nickname for Mr. Turner is "Daddy Greenbucks."
"Ted Turner has canned hunts where you can shoot a buffalo ... and drilling ... in New Mexico and clear-cutting trees and he never gets protested. And when you ask why, it's because he is one of the biggest contributors to extremist groups," Mr. Clausen said.
Interlocking, Interrelated Radicals
If you want to contribute money to EF! and get a tax break on your donation, send your check to the Fund for Wild Nature (FWN). Formerly named the Earth First! Foundation, FWN serves as a tax-exempt pass-through for money to reach Earth First!ers. It has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to EF! organizations.
FWN has doled out money to the Earth First! Journal, Mendocino Earth First! and North Coast Earth First! (California), Elaho Earth First! (Canada), Wild Rockies Earth First!, Arizona Earth First!, and many others. More often, though, the Fund gives to EF! groups that don't have the words "Earth First!" in their names -- like the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH). BACH's leader is Karen Pickett, whose arrest record hasn't prevented her from holding the purse strings for the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.
Another FWN beneficiary is the Cascadia Forest Alliance (CFA). According to Bear Deluxe magazine, "Former Earth First! members conceived the CFA as a fresh organization for combating Salvage Rider cutting in Oregon. Since then, hundreds of people -- including Portland's Tre Arrow, who gained local fame when he spent 11 days protesting the sale from a second story ledge at the Forest Service headquarters in Portland -- have occupied the tree-sits at Eagle Creek."
"Tre Arrow," whose real name is Michael Scarpitti, graces the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in October, 2002 for a string of arsons, including the torching of three cement trucks. The government has offered $25,000 for information leading to his arrest. Although Scarpitti is still on the loose, law enforcement officers spotted him in 2003 near Arcadia, California -- accompanied by none other than Rodney Coronado.
Coronado argues that EF! is part of one big happy family, along with the FBI's most feared domestic terrorist groups, the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front: "Whether a member of a Headwaters nonviolent affinity group, Cascadia Forest Defenders or the Earth Liberation Front," Coronado wrote in a 2001 essay, "all Earth First!ers should recognize the positive value of each other's contributions and exploit the leverage they create against our common opponent."
FWN provided the initial support for EF! spin-offs like the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the Ruckus Society, both of which were started by Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle. Indeed, FWN thinks of itself as the venture capitalist of radical environmental groups.
The Fund for Wild Nature is by no means Earth First!'s only source of revenue. For example, the Dogwood Alliance, which claims to believe in "peaceful" tactics, has funneled money to Katuah Earth First! and other groups that work with Earth First!.
Earth First! founders Dave Foreman, Bart Koehler, and Howie Wolke are now board members, officers and/or founders of other environmental organizations. Those include: the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (Wolke); the Ecology Center, Inc. (Wolke); the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (Foreman); the Wilderness Society's Wilderness Support Center (Koehler); and the Wildlands Project, a.k.a. North American Wilderness Recovery, which recently merged with the Cenozoic Society (Foreman).
"Direct Action" on Your Dinner Plate
In 1999 FWN began to bankroll "direct action" against biotech crops (although Earth First!ers began targeting them as early as 1987). The now defunct Bioengineering Action Network (BAN) received FWN money. When it was functioning, BAN served as a press-outreach service for the FBI-certified domestic-terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF), another Earth First! spin-off. BAN's website featured a how-to guide for tearing out biotech crops (they call it "nighttime gardening") and instructed saboteurs on how to "research your target."
1999 was also the year that Al H. Jacobson, founder of the avowedly anti-biotech crops organic food line Garden of Eatin', gave FWN $54,500. Jacobson's Naturganic Foundation kicked in $200,000 to FWN for 2000. In those years, Jacobson was by far FWN's biggest donor.
Earth First! makes your dinner more expensive by practicing economic sabotage on cattle ranchers as well as farmers who raise genetically enhanced crops. The EF!-founded and FWN-funded Buffalo Field Campaign, for example, uses "direct action" to block government officials from keeping buffalo in and around Yellowstone Park from passing on the contagious disease brucellosis to nearby cattle. As of December 2002, at least 21 Buffalo Field Campaign activists have been arrested -- quite a rap sheet for a tax-exempt group.
But even EF! draws a line between the kind of illegal activities that can be funded with tax-exempt money, and those that are too violent for the Fund for Wild Nature to touch. Cash for these endeavors comes from the Earth First! Direct Action Fund. Bragging that "thousands of EF!ers have been arrested around the world," the EF! Direct Action Fund's website appeals for donations:
Direct action requires courage, commitment, training and the ability to focus on an urgent issue. Unfortunately, it also requires money. Since 1985, The Earth First! Direct Action Fund (DAF) has assisted in planning, coordinating, and funding activists on the front lines. These people are the backbone, indeed the heart and soul, of the Earth First! movement.
Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle registered the Earth First! Action Fund as a California business in 1990, with the Action Fund's address listed as "C/O Rainforest Action Network," another Roselle creation. He lost control of the checkbook in settling his divorce from fellow Earth First!er Karen Pickett. But that hasn't stopped Rainforest Action Network from supporting Earth First! groups. On one occasion, RAN donated "$10,000 of general support to Luna Media in their work with North Coast Earth First!."
Yet another Roselle group, the Ecology Center in Montana, is also active in funding Earth First! activities. In the 1990s the Ecology Center poured more than $20,000 into Earth First!'s Cove Mallard anti-logging campaign in Idaho. The Ecology Center also supports the Buffalo Field Campaign, the Earth First! Journal, and the legal defenses of Rodney Coronado and something called the Buffalo Action Project, or BAP!
BAP! appears to be little more than a support system for a woman named Delyla Wilson. Wilson gained fame in 1997 after she dumped a five-gallon bucket of rotting bison innards on a panel of senior government officials who were discussing how best to manage Yellowstone Park's buffalo herd. Her victims included Dan Glickman, then President Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture, Marc Racicot, then Governor of Montana, and Montana Senators Max Baucus and Conrad Burns.
Another Fund for Wild Nature grantee is New West Research, a New Mexico anti-ranching group that produced the "Animal Damage Control Hall of Shame." A more appropriate name would have been the "New Mexico Hit List."
New West Research sued the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the names and addresses of all New Mexicans who had petitioned the Wildlife Service to help control predators on their property. New West proceeded to post this information -- 25 pages in all -- on its website. At the top of this "Hall of Shame" was the familiar line: "The earth is not dying -- it is being killed. And the people killing it have names and addresses."
When criticized for inciting violence against ranchers and farmers, New West responded: "That's the same kind of whining we hear from pedophiles and crack dealers who don't want their identities known to the public."
The Earth First! Octopus
There are several hundred Earth First! organizations in America, and at least 50 in other nations. Most of them use the words "Earth First" in their title, but a cheat-sheet might be helpful for those Earth First! entities that go by other names. Bear in mind that many Earth First! organizations rapidly form around a cause, and then disappear. As a result, a complete list of Earth First! organizations is impossible to compile. However, when you see the following names, think Earth First!
Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project
Cascadia Forest Defenders
Coastwatch
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers
Cove Mallard Coalition
Daily Planet Publishing, Inc.
Direct Action Fund
Earth Defense Education Project
End Corporate Dominance
Environmentally Sound Promotions
Friends of the Wolf
League of Wilderness Defenders
Redwood Action Team
Warrior Poets Society
Zero Xtract from Public Lands
The Earth First! Journal includes a section called "EF! Campaigns and Projects." The following organizations have graced that list in recent years:
Bioengineering Action Network
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers Video Project
Earth Liberation Prisoners
EF! Action Update
North American ALF Press Office
ELF Press Office
Earth Liberation Front
North American Earth Liberation Support Network
The Earth First! Journal has listed the following groups as "contacts":
Arizona Wildlands Museum
Autonomous Zone
Biodiversity Liberation Front
Blue Mtns. Biodiversity Project
Boxcar Books and Community Center
The Brokedowns/Elgin Food Not Bombs
Cascadia Forest Alliance
Cascadia Forest Defenders
Church of Deep Ecology
Confluence/St. Louis IMC
Direct Action Network
Environmental Resource Center
Fairfax Action Team
Flagstaff Activist Network
Foghorn
Forest Ecosystems Action Group
Green Vigilance
Lawrence Grassroots Initiative
Liberated Zone Infoshop
Lost Cause Collective
Mass Direct Action
Mountain Eco-Collective
New Mexico Direct Action
Oceandream Media Foundation
Pink Planarians
Popular Power
Project Harmony
Rustic Revolt
Shuksan Direct Action
Slingshot
Solidarity Books
Stone Soup Collective
Tornado Alley Resistance
Unci Maka Uonihanpo (Honor Mother Earth)
Wild Wasatch Front
Wilderness Defense
The following EF!-named groups have been listed by the Earth First! Journal as contacts:
Alachua EF!
Allegheny EF!
Bay Area EF!
Big Bend EF!
Boundary Waters EF!
Buffalo Trace EF!
Croatan EF!
Dallas EF!
East Texas EF!
EF! Austin
French Broad EF!
Gainesville/Ichetucknee EF!
Houston EF!
Kalmiopsis EF!
Katúah EF!/River Faction
Katúah EF!/Tennessee Valley Faction
Katúah Foothills EF!
Kekionga EF!
Lake Erie EF!
Lake Worthless EF!
Loon Antics EF!
Love Canal EF!
Madison EF!
Maine EF!
OFF!
Olympia EF!/Cascadia Defense Network
Peninsular Ranges EF!
Phoenix EF!
Red Gate EF!
San Juan EF!
Santa Cruz EF!/EF! Radio
Seattle EF!
Shawnee EF!
Sonoma County EF!
Teewinot EF!
Tucson EF!
Two Rivers EF!
Uwharrie Earth First!
Wild Rockies EF!/Wild Rockies Review
Yellowstone EF!
Bomb-throwers have a funny way of making even the most radical spokespersons seem reasonable, and one of Earth First!'s main goals is to make green groups like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth appear mainstream by comparison. Mission accomplished.
EF! also claims some success at its other practical goal: inflicting economic damage on the industries that it opposes. In Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman brags that "ecotage [economic sabotage] in the National Forests alone in the United States is costing industry and government $20-25 million annually." Putting companies out of business through sabotage, Earth First!ers believe, will ultimately protect the earth from human beings.
Which is really the point. Earth First!ers seek to destroy industrial civilization, if not humanity itself. Writing in the May 1987 issue of the Earth First! Journal under the pseudonym "Miss Ann Thropy," Earth First! theorist Christopher Manes suggested that "if radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to ecological sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS."
The author of an article in the November-December 2001 Earth First! Journal proclaimed that he was jealous of Osama bin Laden, and that the al Queda mastermind "is riding an unstoppable current of history." A speaker at Earth First!'s annual "Rendezvous" meeting once said that the "optimal human population" is zero.
Dave Foreman describes the philosophy that motivates Earth First! in Confessions of an Eco-Warrior:
"An individual human life has no more intrinsic value than does an individual Grizzly Bear life. Human suffering resulting from drought and famine in Ethiopia is tragic, yes, but the destruction there of other creatures and habitat is even more tragic."
"Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as 'disease' (e.g., malaria) and 'pests' (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere."
"An antipathy to 'progress' and 'technology.' We can accept the pejoratives of 'Luddite' and 'Neanderthal' with pride."
"There is no hope for reform of industrial empire."
"We humans have become a disease -- the Humanpox."
These are not just Foreman's own idiosyncratic views, but the first principles of the EF! movement. The National Chamber of Commerce quotes John Davis, then editor of the Earth First! Journal, summing it up: "Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." And Earth First!ers reportedly sit around a camp fire, chanting, trancelike, for hours: "Billions are living that should be dead. Billions are living that should be dead. Billions are living that should be dead."
The Washington Post describes the Earth First! approach to earth worship:
In another clearing, a different group sat in a circle seeking other forms of magic. It was an exercise called a Council of All Beings, originated by Australian activist John Seed. At a Council of All Beings, you choose a nonhuman form of life and meditate upon that form -- mouse or tree or stem of grass -- until you seem to be that stem or mouse and then you tell the others in the circle about lawn mowers or traps and how it feels to be oppressed by humans.
The Council of All Beings reminded me of a form of religious worship that had taken place at the [Earth First!] Montana rendezvous I had also visited. There, the worshipers had evoked the presence of Gaia, a name for Earth as a being or a goddess, which is taken from the more scientific theory known as the Gaia hypothesis, in which Earth is described as an organism. The ceremony had been self-consciously pagan. "If you're going to talk about Christianity," a Montana worshiper had said, "please leave."
When I asked Dave Foreman, still in vest and camouflage hat, what the Council of All Beings and Gaia-worship role was in Earth First!, he grinned. "That's the woo-woo stuff," he said. "It's beyond me. But the diversity's good."
Earth First!ers, like their hero Dave Foreman, generally believe that "Mother Earth" is in some sense spiritual, and that monkey-wrenching is (in his words) "very much a sacrament."
Theodore "the Unabomber" Kaczynski is the radical environmental movement's biggest black eye. Conventional wisdom dictates that Kaczynski was merely an intellectual serial-killer, but his connection to Earth First! and the broader eco-terror movement is undeniable.
When FBI agents raided Kaczynski's Montana cabin in April 1996, they found copies of the Earth First! Journal, as well as an Earth First! affiliated publication called Live Wild or Die. This broadsheet, funded by Mike Roselle, included a now-famous "Eco-F*cker Hit List."
At the top of the Hit List was the California Forestry Association. In the middle was a prominent cartoon about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Kaczynski sent dozens of mail bombs; three were fatal. He killed an employee of the California Forestry Association, and a Burson-Marsteller PR executive named Thomas Mosser. Kaczynski (mistakenly) believed that Burson-Marsteller was responsible for rehabilitating Exxon's public image after the 1989 Valdez oil spill.
The source of that mistake? An essay in the Earth First! Journal, which the FBI says was one of Kaczynski's "favorite" periodicals. A letter found in Kaczynski's cabin -- titled "Suggestion for Earth First!ers from FC" ["FC" was the Unabomber's pseudonym] -- read in part: "As for the Mosser bombing, our attention was called to Burston-Marsteller [sic] by an article that appeared in the Earth First! Litha." The reference to "Litha" is in keeping with the Journal's habit of naming its issues after (pagan) lunar-calendar months.
According to ABC News and other media outlets, the FBI also believes that Kaczynski attended an Earth First! gathering just one month before murdering Mosser.
Ted Kaczynski did little more than follow what Earth First! openly advocates. The September 1989 Journal included an article instructing:
While Eco defenders are quick to point out that life is sacred and is not a target of Eco-Defense, many doubt that multinational takeover artists who liquidate old growth forests to pay off junk bonds qualify as Life-forms. Such Robotoids, they aver, should be classed with damns, dozers and drillers. A "Hit List" is available upon discreet inquiry.
For Earth First!, this kind of advice is (sadly) not a one-time thing. A cartoon in the 20th Anniversary issue of the Journal noted: "Trees are for hanging. Kill a developer." And the Unabomber could easily have read Dave Foreman's words: "The blood of timber executives is my natural drink, and the wail of dying forest supervisors is music to my ears."
Less Than Lethal, but Still Illegal
Aside from the Unabomber's victims, we know of no one else who has died at the hands of Earth First!ers. But these zealots have come awfully close. The following is from an interview with Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle in the April 1993 issue of Playboy:
When I asked Mike Roselle to tell me about his favorite action, or ecodefense, he didn't hesitate.
A band of desert saboteurs from Earth First! resolved in 1989 to put an end to the desert motorcycle race called the Barstow to Vegas, which ran through the East Mojave scenic area, a prospective national park and habitat of the desert tortoise, kangaroo rat and other creatures.
"The night before the race, we took a trailerload of railroad ties and four-by-eights down to the track," remembers Roselle, a former oil- field roughneck and one of the five men who cooked up the idea for Earth First! on a camping trip to Mexico's Sonora Desert in 1980. "See they had to go under Interstate Fifteen. There was this tunnel about six feet wide, eight feet high and one hundred fifty feet long that was made for water to go through. We built this cube to the size of the culvert, and at night we set it up in the middle of the tunnel."
I want you to picture this," snaps Rick Sieman, senior editor of Dirt Bike magazine and head of the Sahara Club, a race sponsor. "Here are top expert riders going a hundred and ten miles per hour down a sand wash at eleven o'clock, sun directly overhead, coalblack shadows, dust on their goggles, and they're going to dart through this shadow, assumedly, and go to the other side. If our people hadn't spotted that, they would have killed a half-dozen riders."
"Though illegal, this strategic monkeywrenching can be safe, easy, and fun," Foreman quips. Is this what he meant?
In 1987, a 23-year-old mill worker was severely injured when his saw blade shattered after hitting a redwood tree that had been "spiked" with a long steel nail, following the standard Earth First! recipe. In 1990, Earth First!er Lyn Georges Dessaux was convicted of assault after stabbing two men with a ski pole in a save-the-buffaloes protest. Earth First!ers have set fire to a livestock auction. They've also torched logging equipment.
Dave Foreman himself pled guilty in 1991 to conspiring to blow up electrical lines leading to an Arizona nuclear power plant (he wrote a check to pay for 50 grenades). While Foreman somehow got off with probation, his four co-conspirators landed in jail. And hundreds of other Earth First!ers have spent time behind bars.
ALF and ELF
"Earth First! has provided a vehicle for establishing a new generation of environmental leadership in this country," EF! activist Darryl Cherney told interviewer Lori Rizzo. "Many Earth First!ers have actually gone on to start new organizations with much stronger 'no compromise' positions."
The FBI considers the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and its sister group the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) to be America's most prolific and dangerous domestic terrorist organizations. And the ELF, it turns out, is just another Earth First! spin-off. The Earth First! Journal notes that "ELF solidified in 1992 at the first UK Earth First! gathering." In 1994, Earth First! activist Judi Bari wrote:
England Earth First! has been taking some necessary steps to separate above ground and clandestine activities. Earth First!, the public group, has a non-violence code and does civil disobedience blockades. Monkeywrenching is done by Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Although Earth First! may sympathize with the activities of ELF, they do not engage in them.
If we are serious about our movement in the US, we will do the same. Earth First! is already an above ground group. We have above-ground publications, public events, and a yearly Rendezvous with open attendance. Civil disobedience and sabotage are both powerful tactics in our movement. For the survival of both, it's time to leave the night work to the elves in the woods.
When longtime Journal editor Jim Flynn was asked by the Medford, Oregon Mail Tribune for his thoughts on ELF claiming credit for a 2001 fire that caused $400,000 in damage, Flynn responded: "I hope they aren't caught. I applaud them for standing up and taking action." Asked if he knew who belongs to ELF, Flynn said "I am clueless. It could be the person sitting next to me." Flynn, it should be noted, is no stranger to criminal behavior. His rap sheet winds from New York to Oregon.
In October 1998, ELF torched a Vail, Colorado ski resort, causing an estimated $12 million in damage. Predictably, the "above ground" counterpart to this arson consisted of an Earth First!-run "Coalition to Stop Vail Expansion."
After the Vail construction was burned to the ground, the London Times reported:
When members of the Earth Liberation Front burnt down $12 million-worth of mountaintop property belonging to the Vail ski resort in Colorado, ["Unabomber" Ted] Kaczynski applauded from prison -- as did Theresa Kintz, the editor of the widely read Earth First! Journal. "It's war," she wrote.
Kintz knows Kaczynski well. As of March she was still the editor of Earth First! but when I tried to contact her the magazine claimed to be unable to reach her. This is unsurprising: like al-Qaeda, America's hardcore environmentalists mistrust the mainstream press and operate in cells to evade detection.
The Journal regularly publishes articles by Earth Liberation Front criminals, and makes common cause with the Animal Liberation Front as well. In 1994 it ran a letter from ALF "spokesman" David Barbarash, who wrote from prison after being denied bail in connection with an "animal liberation" action. Addressed to "fellow Earth First!ers," it read: "Prison sucks, no doubt about it, but you can live through it. The thought of spending time in a pit like this should not deter anyone from taking the action that this planet needs for its survival."
A 1999 Journal article was headlined "Feds Escalate Hunt For ALF." It was written by Rodney Coronado, a convicted ALF/Earth First! criminal who knows a thing or two about being hunted by federal law enforcement. Coronado wrote:
Whether a member of a Headwaters nonviolent affinity group, Cascadia Forest Defenders or the Earth Liberation Front, all Earth First!ers should recognize the positive value of each other's contributions and exploit the leverage they create against our common opponent.
In other words: EF!, ALF and ELF are all part of the same clan of violent vandals.
Rodney Coronado
Committed Earth First!er and Earth First! Journal editor Rodney Coronado has replaced Dave Foreman as the radical environmental and animal-rights movement's most sought-after speaker. A convicted arsonist who has caused millions in damage to fishing ships, farms, and medical research labs, Coronado instructs his listeners on the fine points of firebombing.
Celebrating "the sixty-eighth raid on fur farms since 1995," in the 20th anniversary issue of the Earth First! Journal, Coronado wrote: "There have been nearly that many raids on genetically-engineered crops. All the federal agents in the United States will not stop more actions of this sort."
"No tactic that prevents environmental destruction -- without loss of life -- should be ruled out. Be it fire or an action at the homes of a corporate ecoterrorist," Coronado wrote in a September, 2003 article for the Earth First! Journal. "Monkeywrenching is more than a tactic or strategy," another Coronado article reads. "It's the way of warriors. A way of life." Coronado would know about that. He began spiking trees with Earth First! as early as 1987. And Earth First! has held him up as an example ever since.
In Confessions of an Eco Warrior, Dave Foreman praised Coronado's sabotage of the Icelandic whaling fleet as an example of effective property destruction. Paul Watson, who gave the young radical his blessing for the Iceland raid, described in lurid details Coronado's handiwork for the Journal. Coronado himself wrote:
Co-founder Dave Foreman hoisted Icelandic saboteur David Howitt and myself up on stage to salute our [Iceland] raid, welcoming the new generation of eco-warrior, the young anarchistic animal liberationists who also embraced Deep Ecology.
In the spring and early summer of 1999, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) made three payments to the Earth First! Journal ($2,616.64 on March 23; $2,970.24 on May 18; and $1,485.12 on June 22). PETA records show no previous or subsequent grants to the Journal. So what piqued PETA's sudden interest in radical environmental journalism?
The Journal itself gave a plausible answer in its May-June 2001 issue:
Those familiar with our movement’s history will know that convicted monkeywrencher Rod Coronado was a catalyst, once released from prison, in getting the Journal moved to Arizona. Within days of his release from federal prison, Coronado became a short-term editor in Oregon, where he spent the spring and summer of 1999 ... Following his return to Arizona, Coronado became active once again with Arizona Earth First!, while also traveling and lecturing about direct action in defense of the Earth and sharing stories of life in the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
As recently as the spring of 2003, Coronado was working with Earth First! organizers Darryl Cherney and Karen Pickett to prevent logging in Northern California. The press reported Coronado threatening that he "was no pacifist hippie, my actions speak louder than my words." Around the same time, Coronado was seen in Northern California with Michael Scarpitti, who is on the FBI's most wanted list.
Breakin' the Law
Law enforcement has always kept a careful watch on Earth First! and the violent groups surrounding it. A Department of Homeland Security panel, chaired by former Virginia governor James Gilmore, took special notice of this threat in early 2003. Agence France Presse reported that the "most dangerous" domestic groups mentioned in the report are "Earth First, the Animal Liberation Front, and the Earth Liberation Front."
The report notes (page 36):
The loose confederacy created is comprised of coalitions between socialists, environmentalists and anarchists. Earth First! -- the radical environmental group founded by David Broder [sic] -- has been particularly active collaborating with anti-globalists. Similar concerns emanate from other environmentalist special interest groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), who have committed over 600 criminal acts in the United States since 1996 ...
Speculating on who vandalized 65 sport-utility vehicles in April 2003, Santa Cruz Police Lieutenant Joe Haebe told the San Francisco Chronicle:
It may have been ELF, but then, I sometimes get them confused with ALF, the Animal Liberation Front. And then there's Earth First! and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). There's a lot of cross-pollination between them, and some people here are probably members of two of those groups, or more.
If the Gilmore commission observations seem extreme, and Lt. Haebe sounds uninformed, remember that the Earth First! Journal includes convicted cop-killer Leonard Peltier among its list of prisoners who deserve "support" (they insist he was framed). Until recently, the Journal also included Unabomber Ted Kazcynski on the same list. "They are in there for us," the Journal notes.
On September 6, 2003 the Chronicle quoted Earth First!er Tim Ream saying: "There is every indication that we will see more political violence."
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