Second Chinook Salmon Liberation Frees Another 20,000

by Benny Evangelista

For the second time in a week, someone snuck into the Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies and cut loose thousands of young Chinook salmon being raised by students and volunteers for an annual fish restoration project.

No one has claimed responsibility for releasing the 20,000 young Chinook smolts sometime between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. Saturday, nearly a month ahead of schedule. On Oct. 3, more than 40,000 Chinook raised by students from Petaluma’s Casa Grande High School, in partnership with the Tiburon Salmon Institute, were also released prematurely.

The salmon institute’s executive director, Brooke Halsey, said Sunday that he was devastated by what he called acts of vandalism.

“These people who did this are cowards and they’re not going to show their faces,” Halsey said. “I’d love for them to tell me who they are and meet them face to face. The big question is, what did they accomplish by this?”

Animal rights activists have criticized the pens used for the project as “filthy” and “overcrowded.”

“People involved in the program have been vocal about how well their fish (are) treated,” animal rights activist Peter Young wrote Sunday on a blog that reports on the activities of the Animal Liberation Front. “They don’t say this ‘humane treatment’ is 20,000 fish each in 16-by-25-by-8-foot pens. Television news footage of the pens show fish packed at a density that is clearly inhumane and unnatural for any salmon.”

The first 40,000 young salmon were bred and raised by members of Casa Grande High’s United Anglers Conservation Fish Hatchery, a licensed fish hatchery program. The second group of salmon was raised by volunteers at a Feather River hatchery.

In both cases, someone cut the nylon ties that held the nets together, Halsey said.

All of the young salmon were scheduled for release into the wild during an Oct. 30 event that was supposed to be the culmination of everything the students had learned, he said.

“We’re teaching that a balanced ecosystem leads to a balanced harvest,” he said.

Although all the fish are gone, the institute is seeking donations to keep the program going. Halsey, a former Sonoma County deputy district attorney, said the Marin County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI are investigating the incidents.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/09/MND51LFICR.DTL#ixzz1aO77bAWE

Mountain Justice, Coal River Mountain Watch, and RAMPS Campaign are teaming up to present the 2011 Mountain Justice Fall Summit!

Oct.28-30th

Rock Creek Hollow, WV

Join with us for a weekend of training and education as we expand our movement and say NO to destructive coal mining practices in our communities. Our workshops will include a variety of educational and skills based trainings, ranging from MTR 101, enforcement strategies, solidarity from afar, direct action techniques and tools, and a street medic training by Katuah Earth First. If you are interested in the medic training, be sure to let us know, as that track will involve an extra day of training on the 27th.

We have ample forested area for folks to camp, and will have covered outdoor spaces for workshops and an outdoor kitchen. Participants should come prepared for the possibility of cold weather and rain.Please pack camping gear and clothing accordingly.

You can register for the Fall Summit here:

http://www.mountainjustice.org/summit11/registration_form.php

For a schedule and full track information, please contact us at: mjfallsummit11@gmail.com

For updates and more information, check here: http://rampscampaign.org/fall-summit/

If you would like to attend but are unable to camp, please contact us and we can help to arrange alternate housing.

Thanks and we look forward to seeing you there!

Seeking Artists for the Earth First! Journal

California artist Michelle Waters has provided the Earth First! Journal with cover art for its most recent Mabon issue (due out in two weeks). Check out her gallery of art at http://www.michellewatersart.com/

We are currently seeking cover art for our upcoming Yule issue.  Please send sample images to Russ@earthfirstjournal.org and pass this post around to artist friends.

First ever aerial wolf hunt proposed on Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

Photo by Brad Josephs - Katmai wolves were photographed near the park. Due to moose population decline on the Kenai Peninsula, a controversial aerial hunt and kill proposal will be before the November Board of Game meeting in Barrow.

By Naomi Klouda

The first-ever proposal to hunt and kill Kenai Peninsula wolves from the air is one of the management options on the table for discussion when the Alaska Board of Game meets in November.

The Board of Game directed the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to devise management plans that includes aerial wolf control. Moose populations have fallen below both the state’s population size objectives and the harvest objectives for more than a decade, and this has prompted the Board of Game to call for intensive management plans, said Fish and Game Biologist Thomas McDonough of Homer.

“Part of the process is for us, the department, to write intensive management plans to present to the board and to the public for comment,” McDonough said.

Fish and Game will have the plan available for public review 30 days prior to the meeting, scheduled for Nov. 11-14 in Barrow. The Board of Game is scheduled to vote on what it considers the best management plan at its meeting.

The department conducted aerial surveys in March 2010 on a portion of Game Management Unit 15A. Some 41-47 wolves were counted at that time, McDonough said. There have not been any other surveys on the Kenai Peninsula in recent years.

“The reason we had conducted the survey was due to the chronic decline in moose numbers, which was predicted by the department based on changes in habitat. Fifteen A has a rich history in wildfires that changes the habitat. This greatly benefits moose browse and increases moose numbers,” McDonough said.

The problem is that there hasn’t been a fire of any significant size in 15A for over 40 years, he added. “Without the regeneration, moose numbers are at a relatively low density. We know it’s definitely because of the habitat.”

Read the rest of the article at Homer Tribune

Groups petition FDA to require labeling of GMO food

By Carey Gillam for Reuters The Center for Food Safety said Tuesday it has filed a legal petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seeking mandatory labeling for foods made from genetically engineered crops, a move long opposed by big biotech companies.

“They should label the foods and let consumers know. This carte blanche they’ve been giving the industry is not acceptable,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety (CFS), in an interview. “There are novel ingredients in the food that have never been there before,” he said.

The legal action by CFS requires a formal response from the FDA and is the first step toward ultimately filing a lawsuit against the government agency to try to force labeling, Kimbrell said. CFS, a consumer advocacy organization, has filed several lawsuits against the government in recent years and successfully stymied approvals of some biotech crops.

There are thousands of unlabeled items on grocery store shelves that contain at least traces of genetically altered corn, soybeans and other crops. The government is also considering approval of a genetically altered salmon.

In the summer, Biotech crop developer Monsanto Co. introduced a new sweet corn for consumers that is genetically altered to make it toxic to insects and able to withstand treatments of chemical herbicides.

The CFS and the Center for Environmental Health have been calling on food companies that make frozen and/or canned corn to boycott the new corn, which is not labeled as genetically altered. Monsanto and other biotech seed companies oppose labeling and say the crops and foods made from genetically modified seeds are indistinguishable from non-GMO foods in composition, nutrition and safety.

“The safety and benefits of genetically modified crops are well established,” Monsanto spokesman Thomas Helscher told Reuters.

The action against FDA by CFS is backed by a coalition of about 350 organizations that include representatives of the healthcare industry, consumer advocates, environmentalists, food and farming organizations and businesses.

Anonymous Saboteurs use wire cutters to release thousands of fish from nets

In what may be the largest liberation of animals in U.S. history, nets were cut at a holding pen in the San Francisco bay this week, releasing 40,000 fish into the wild.

There has not yet been a claim of responsibility by the Animal Liberation Front or other group.

A police spokesperson describes how the fish were released:

“(one or more people) came along with essentially what are wire cutters to do this. It was purposeful. Someone knew what they were doing.”

An employee at the institute where the salmon were held says he speculates this may be the act of an animal rights group.

The pens were part of a program run by the Tiburon Salmon Institute, in partnership with a pro-fishing student group at nearby Casa Grande High School. According to Tiburon, the fish were being tended to by the students, who intended to release them into the wild themselves later in the month.

The website for the Tiburon Salmon Institute would seem to corroborate this story, where they take credit for “releasing over a million salmon into our San Francisco Bay” over the last 30 years.

Were the fish going to be released into the wild anyway? There could be a couple of things at work here. The claims that the fish were to be released anyway could be a public relations-oriented lie. Those who cut the nets may not have known the fish were slated to be released in the coming weeks. Or, they could have chosen to risk themselves anyway to give the fish a few extra weeks of freedom, sparing them the psychological suffering of being kept in intense confinement with approximately 40,000 others in a small net.

If this was the act of animal liberators, it would be the largest recorded animal liberation ever in the U.S. The largest previous liberation was the Animal Liberation Front raid of the Drewelow and Sons fur farm in New Hampton, Iowa in 2000; where 14,000 mink were released.

The Tiburon Salmon Institute is now soliciting funds to purchase security cameras.

– Peter Young

From Voice of the Voiceles

Greek revolutionaries stand trial for attacks on state and corporate targets

Hearing slated to begin amidst general strike in Athens

[Update: Trial postponed to October 24 due to strike]

Today, October 5th, has been set as the day that the trial of Epanastatikos Agonas (Revolutionary Struggle) will take place in the court room of Koridallos prison, Athens. According to a recent order of the Council of Appeals, eight individuals will be tried for participation in the organization.

Accused in the case of the Revolutionary Struggle are: N. Maziotis, P. Roupa, K. Gournas, Ch. Kortesis, V. Stathopoulos,S. Nikitopoulos, K. K. (currently on the run) and M. Beraha (K.Gournas wife).

The first three accused, Maziotis, Roupa and Gournas have taken responsibility for the organization and remain imprisoned, but in mid October the 18-month detention period expires. The rest of the accused are currently free.

The charges of each individual concern the felonies of constitution and participation in a terrorist organization, supply manufacture and possession of explosive materials, explosions and attempted homicides.

The three members of the underground resistance group that have taken responsibility for their actions claim participation in dozens of attacks on government and corporate targets, including Shell, Athens Stock Exchange and Citibank; they are suspected in many more.

While many of the group’s actions have been focused on challenging social and economic situations in Greece, the group has also expressed its solidarity with ecological and land-based struggles internationally.

In the most specific example, October 2008, the Greek police announced that they defused a powerful homemade bomb placed outside the headquarters of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell in Athens. Police officials had discovered the bomb, which was made up of several kilograms of dynamite and a timing device placed in a plastic container, on a tip-off.

One of the people facing trial, Nikos Maziotis, is also a former political prisoner from an attempted bombing of a government agency which had approved a contentious gold mining operation by the Canadian company TVX, in the village of Strymonikos in 1997.

Its is speculated that today’s trial may result in heavy sentences intended to make examples of these individuals in effort to intimidate the growing sentiment in Greece against the global economic order and its servants in the government—a sentiment that is spreading broadly across the world [even in South Florida, where the EF! Newswire is based] as financial institutions lose stability.

Meanwhile, police and security forces also appear to be cracking down on the movement-at-large in Athens, with a constant presence of riot cops surrounding Syntagma Square, in attempt to repress one of the global strongholds of resistance.

Spanish farmers sab GM maize

The following is a communique cross posted from Afilado Nuestras Vidas:

Translation by Lilac

During the second week of August 2011 an unknown number of people have destroyed part of an experimental field of GM maize seeds owned by Pioneer. The area located between the towns of Valdivia and Zurbaran had been requested by the company to be opened to the following GMO maize varieties: 1057, 59122 maize, NK603. This field is one of the three requested this year by Monsanto and Pioneer companies to experiment with transgenic corn.

This action is a small response to the imposition of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by biotechnology companies and the state. Since GM began to be experimented, approved and marketed heavily, its creators and promoters have stated that GM would be able to end hunger or to safeguard human health and the possibility of a cleaner and more efficient agriculture. Nothing is further from the truth.

These GMOs are imposed in a context of: large corporations fighting for monopoly control of seeds and chemicals, monocultures, genetic pollution, the disappearance of small and medium farmers, liquidation of local economies, the disappearance of indigenous varieties, large distribution networks, waste and water pollution, the expulsion of rural communities.

These GMOs are not compatible with other forms of production and social organization based on the recovery of traditional agriculture that meet the needs of the people, not markets, and do not overflow the boundaries of ecosystems, coupled with the will to escape the illusory link between happiness and consumption.

Models are clearly needed in a hungry and warming world due to the submission to the market and totalitarian states. Therefore these GMOs do not come to fulfill the benefits, but represent another twist to the agro-industrial model, which will, among other things, completely expropriate the people’s their ability to feed themselves. For the final decision of the approval and marketing of GMOs, the state created the National Biosafety Committee (NBC). 

    Inside there are seven representative NBC scientists, many of them linked to the biotech industry and pro-GM lobby. This body is for the industry, not biosecurity, as evidenced by the growing number of genetic contamination in wheat and corn crops. In whole regions of the state, genetic contamination in crops such as the above named is inevitable.

    Outside our borders, these GMOs have been responsible for all types of disasters such as famine, deforestation, poisoning, allergies and other illnesses due to consumption as well as a myriad of constraints to rural communities and farmers by biotech companies, not to mention real massacres caused by the manufacture and use of chemicals needed for this agro-industrial model, of which GM is its ultimate expression. To say GM is not saying “no!” to the evils and injustices that we have cited;  “no!” to imposing: “no!” to the artificiality of life; “no!” to the madness of progress.

   The take action against GMOs is a legitimate struggle of all people, symptoms of common sense and the need for profound social change, the result of being aware of the danger to the Earth (and everything that gets penalized) in the hands of capitalism. Those who sow and reap transgenic promotes resistance.

Farmers (campesin@s*) in Extremadura in the struggle.
Extremadura, September 2011
Individual farmers (campesin@s) in Extremadurs

*Translator’s note: Campesin@ is an untranslatable word in Spanish, which usually connotes small, community based, sustainable and subsistence farmers, although it can also be used in reference to field workers under a giant corporation like Chiquita or Dole.

Spare some change for an end to industrial civilization?

The LAST DAY of our Earth First! Journal online fund raising drive approaches… Please kick in if you can manage. The Journal office also helps keep the local Night Heron infoshop open as well. So you get a double whammy here. Wow, what a deal!

Come on. Don’t make us beg… And after you donate, please pass this link on to a few other people who support our work.

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That link, one more time…

You’re donations can also be made via Paypal, here, or by check mailed directly to our office at Earth First! Journal, PO Box 964, Lake Worth, FL 33460

Buffalo Field Campaign Logo Contest

Buffalo Field Campaign is entering their 15th year working in defense of America’s last wild buffalo population, and aiming to create a new logo to represent their organization and the sacred and profound animals they work to protect.

So they are initiating a BFC Logo Contest and welcome your artistic input: 

“If your artwork is chosen, it will be widely viewed, appearing on our web site, letterhead, stickers, newsletters, DVDs and everywhere Buffalo Field Campaign puts our mark!

Submissions must be received by Halloween, October 31, 2011.  For more information or to submit a jpeg of your artwork for the contest, please email Stephany at bfc-media [AT] wildrockies.org.  Please share this contest information with other artists you know!  Everyone’s submissions are welcome and we look forward to seeing your artwork.  We will be in touch with individual artists as we review the designs and will use submissions only with direct permission from the artist.  Thanks and good luck!”

To visit the website click here