Sabotaging the Badger Cull

Activists flood the Somerset cull zone as guns start firing

from SchNEWS

The shooting of badgers in Somerset has started this week. The cull is aiming to kill over 70% of the badger population in the area in a misguided attempt to stop tuberculosis (TB) in cattle. The TB problem is mainly down to poor farming practices and inbreeding of the cows, (see Schnews 836) but some would rather scapegoat badgers. Gloucestershire has not started their cull yet, but may do next week.

There has always been huge public opposition to killing badgers and the start of the shooting has seen some of those people taking direct action. As soon as the marksmen started shooting, there were people sabotaging it. Stop the Cull reported the first incident on Tuesday night in the Stogumber area when people heard shots and then some people made enough noise to send the badgers safe underground. The shooting stopped. Since then, there seem to have been problems for the marksmen every time badger friendly people find them. Finding them is a bit tricky, which is why more people are needed to help.

Bear-Trap Saboteur in New Mexico Prevents Capture of Wild Bear

from North American Animal Liberation Press Office

A dangerous bear that broke into a house and bit the homeowner remains on the loose today in the Sandia Heights neighborhood east of Albuquerque, partly because someone sabotaged a Department of Game and Fish trap intended to catch the bear.

The Department has video of someone deliberately sabotaging a baited bear trap set at the home of the man who was bitten by the bear early Friday morning. The person who sabotaged the trap has put area residents in danger and could face charges if apprehended. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Department at (505) 222-4700.

The Department needs to catch the offending bear to prevent anyone else from being injured by it. The state Department of Health also requires that any wild animal that bites a human to be killed and tested for rabies.

Friday’s incident in Sandia Heights is another example of abnormal and dangerous bear behavior caused by habituation to humans as a food source. Many bears in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains have become accustomed to finding easy meals in residents’ trash, birdfeeders and pet food dishes. Some homeowners also have been known to intentionally feed bears, falsely believing that the bears have no natural food available. Supplemental feeding of bears leads to unnatural and dangerous behavior, and often leads to the bear’s death.

Manual for Sabotaging Wolf Hunts Released

“And in that case, we choose to be saboteurs for the wild.”

The following text is from a press release of the Earth First! Media office, which provides correspondence to news outlets around the world.

Download the Earth First! Wolf Hunt Sabotage Manual Here

by Earth First! News

Earth First! Media has released a manual which provides detailed information for disrupting wolf hunting in those states that allow it. Titled The Earth First! Wolf Hunting Sabotage Manual, the text, complete with step-by-step graphics, explains how to find and destroy wolf traps, handle live trapped wolves in order to release them, and various methods, including the use of air-compressed horns and smoke-bombs, for stopping wolf hunts.

The authors of the manual describe themselves as,  “hunters and proud of it,” adding, “But we aren’t proud of what passes for hunting these days and especially for what passes as ‘sportsman’ hunting. Somehow, the National Rifle Association, yuppie trophy hunters, cattle barons, and the Obama Administration are in cahoots in an effort that promises to wipe wolves clean off the planet. And in that case, we choose to be saboteurs for the wild.”   

Protests and Sabotage Push Shell Away from Drilling Projects

by Emily Gosden / The Telegraph

Outgoing Shell chief executive Peter Voser called the fall in second quarter profits ‘disappointing’. Photo: GETTY

Royal Dutch Shell profits dropped 60pc to $2.4bn (£1.6bn) in the second quarter after drilling of its shale oil assets in North America showed they were worth $2.1bn less than it had thought. Excluding the impact of the big one-off writedown, profits still fell 20pc to $4.6bn, a result chief executive Peter Voser admitted was “clearly disappointing” and blamed in part on the deteriorating security situation in Nigeria.

Shell also continued to play down the prospects for shale gas in the UK and said recent controversy over fracking showed it was right not to get involved.

The Anglo-Dutch giant, which saw shares fall more than 4pc, said it would begin a major divestment programme, exceeding the $21bn it has sold in the last three years.

It plans to sell small US shale oil fields that it is not interested in developing, and onshore Nigerian oil assets where it is struggling to stem sabotage and theft.

Earth First! Calls On Activists to “Disrupt the Chain of Supply” for Oil and Gas Industry

“An Insurgency Against Fracking… Has Begun”

EF! Blockade at Momentive facility, NC, July 8 2013. Credit: Croatan Earth First!.

The following text is from a press release of the newly-formed Earth First! Media office, which provides correspondence to news outlets around the world.

Raleigh, NC—Earlier this month, activists with Earth First! blockaded the North Carolina facility of a company involved in hydrofracking for oil and gas. According to Earth First!, this action is the start of a coordinated effort to target businesses involved with the controversial fracking industry.

Following this action by Croatan Earth First!—a group based in central North Carolina—a new online resource, FrackIndustry.org, was also launched. The website provides detailed information, including addresses of offices and facilities operated by companies such as Carbo Ceramics, US Silica, Rainbow Ceramics, Northern Frac Proppants, and Momentive, the target of this month’s blockade in Morganton, N.C.

Croatan Earth First! says Momentive is a prime example, being one of the largest worldwide distributors of “resin coated proppants,”a necessary component for fracking. Each stage of the industrial process requires approximately 136 tons of the proppants. 

49 Acts of Powerline Sabotage, 19 Acts of Oil Pipeline Sabotage in Last Six Months

by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News

Smoke rises over a recent pipeline attack in Marib governorate, a tribal region in Yemen.

According to compiled reports from the Yemen Times  over 60 acts of industrial sabotage have taken place since January within the tribal area of the Marib governorate in Yemen, cutting power to Sana’a, the nation’s capital 170 miles to the east, and crippling the government’s oil and gas infrastructure. Oil and gas revenue provides 70 percent of the state’s budget.    

FBI Chases Anti-GMO Activists While Ignoring Monsanto’s Transgressions

Hot on the trail of the bad guys — depending on your definition of “bad.”

by John Upton / Grist.org

Some experimental GMO crops were torn out of a field in Oregon this month. That means it’s time for the federal government to freak the fuck out and do its best to clamp down again on eco-activism.

The sugar beet plants, which were genetically engineered by Syngenta to survive applications of the herbicide Roundup, were uprooted in the middle of the night from a couple of fields, presumably by anti-GMO activists. The destruction of the experimental crops occurred in the same state where a strain of Monsanto’s illegal herbicide-resistant wheat recently showed up in a farmer’s field, threatening America’s multibillion-dollar wheat export market.

Building and Machinary Destroyed to Protest Proposed Mink Farm

(photo: P4 Skaraborg Sveriges Radio)

from Bite Back Magazine

According to media reports, a garage and the machines and vehicles inside, were destroyed in a fire late on June 18 outside the city of Lidköping. One day earlier, the owner of the property, Thom Olsson, spoke on local radio about his plans to open a mink farm. Police suspect animal rights activists are responsible for the fire. 

Crops of Genetically Engineered Sugar Beets Sabotaged in Oregon

by Kimberly A.C. Wilson / Oregon Live

Federal investigators are asking the public to help solve middle-of-the-night crimes that left ruined fields of genetically engineered sugar beets in rural Jackson County.

The crop destruction took place over the course of two separate nights in early June, when an unknown individual or group destroyed about 6,500 sugar beet plants genetically engineered to stand up to the herbicide Roundup on a pair of privately-owned plots of land leased and managed by Syngenta.

Test Drilling Disrupted at Penokee Hills Proposed Mining Site

The following is an anonymous communique from the June 11 action. Read below the communique to find out how you can get involved.

by some wild coyotes / Wisconsin Anarchy

Hurley Police and Iron County Sheriff’s Officers responded to the site after receiving a call from Iron County Sheriff Tony Furyk. Credit Danielle Kaeding, WRNC

On Tuesday, June 11th, some wild ones awoke to the sound of a drill rig and flatbed trucks driving up the ridge of the Penokee Hills in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Idea Drilling LLC were attempting to drill the first of eight core samples that would be used to determine the quality and quantity of iron ore in a 22-mile long stretch of the Penokee Hills, slated for open-pit mining destruction by Gogebic Taconite. Forty percent of Lake Superior’s wetlands lie downstream from the Penokee Hills, as does the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation, whose members depend on healthy waterways for their wild rice and fish. Surely, the amount of waste rock present in this type of mining would result in sulfides and heavy metal pollutants being exposed to these precious waterways downstream and would change the land that human and non-human lives depend on for survival forever. Making the preliminary stages of this mine as expensive as possible to send a clear message to financiers that this is an extremely risky investment is one strategy that was being pursued in the following action.