Minnehaha Free State
Big Woods EF! started a direct action against the re-routing and widening of Highway 55 through a park and an oak savannah by protecting several houses along the route from demolition. This may be the first action against urban road building in the USA. The Twin Cities metropolitain area is one of the most sprawled cities in the USA. The action has had good news coverage in the Twin Cities metropolitan area (2 million people) but so far seems not to get any coverage outside. Call Big Woods EF! at 612-362-3387 or email earthfirst@juno.com to get involved.
Against Genetic engineering and industrial agriculture. During October 1998. See Action page for details or email alliance@mr.net
The Native Forest Network, Earth First! groups from the northeastern U.S.A and various other groups are launching a seven-point Northeast Forest Practices Campaign. This ambitious campaign calls for an end to: dioxin discharges, aerial herbicide and pesticide spraying, chip mills and raw log exports, commercial resource extraction on public land, bioengineered food and forests, clearcutting, and the earth-raping practices of HydroQuebec. Factsheets on these issues are available on this web site.
The state of Motana continues their slaughter of the last wild buffalo (bison) herd which migrate out of Yellowstone National Park every winter. Buffalo Nations volunteers document and attempt to stop this senseless slaughter.
Stone Forest Industries (Stone Container), the international earth destroyer, is attacking pristine old growth Doug fir and Ponderosa in the privately-owned wild lands known as the Culebra Mountain Tract, or La Sierra (aka "Taylor Ranch"). Stone cut 5 to 8 thousand acres in the first 9 months of the five year timber sale contract. The largely roadless 77,000 acre mountain tract is proven habitat for the Mexican spotted owl, Rio Grande cutthroat trout, Southwestern willow flycatcher, and other endangered, threatened, or rare species. The five year, five million dollar Culebra timber sale involves a devestating cut of 32 million board feet (that's about 4,000 logging truck loads). Total sales are now about 70 million board feet. La Sierra is also the headwaters of the 200 oldest farming families in Colorado who rely on an intact forest canopy for their spring snowmelt irrigation waters. The local community is well organized and actively opposing the logging, but help is urgently needed.
The state of California plans to bury long-lived and highly radioactive wastes, mostly from commercial nuclear power plants, in shallow, unlined trenches, above an aquifer, eighteen miles from the Colorado River, on sacred Indian lands and in the midst of critical habitat for the threatened desert tortoise. Government scientists have warned that waste buried at Ward Valley could contaminate the Colorado River, source of water of 22 million people.