Federal Warrants Issued Against Protect The Peaks Activists

Flagstaff, AZ community members “quarantine” Coconino National Forest Service lobby

National Forest Service Announces New Sacred Sites Policy at the Same Time That Flagstaff Peaks Activists Are Targeted with Federal Charges and Arrest Warrants

Peaks Activists Vow to Fight Charges and Plan to Turn themselves Over to U.S. Marshalls

FLAGSTAFF, AZ — On the same day that secretary Tom Vilsack of the US Department of Agriculture issued a final report on Sacred Sites and an inter-agency memorandum to work towards Sacred Sites protection, the Coconino Forest Service filed federal charges against four Sacred Sites advocates who were part of a protest at the Forest Service offices three months earlier.
 

Arizona Ski-Resort Will Pump Sewage Snow on Sacred Mountain

Klee Benally protesting an expansion by the Arizona Snowbowl.

by LESLIE MACMILLAN / New York Times

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Klee Benally, a member of the Navajo tribe, has gone to the mountains just north of here to pray, and he has gone to get arrested. He has chained himself to excavators; he has faced down bulldozers. For 10 years, the soft-spoken activist has fought a ski resort’s expansion plans in the San Francisco Peaks that include clear-cutting 74 acres of forest and piping treated sewage effluent onto a mountain to make snow.

But he appears to be losing the battle.

In February, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the ski resort’s upgrade plans, ending a legal saga fought by a coalition of environmental groups and 13 American Indian tribes, which consider the mountain sacred and view the wastewater snow as a desecration.

San Carlos Apache Make Annual Sacred Run Up Mount Graham

by Lee Allen / Indian Country Today

The annual weeklong San Carlos Apache Mount Graham Sacred Run—up from the Arizona desert reservation to the spirit people living on a mountain top more than 100 miles away—has entered its third decade. As he greeted dozens of tired trekkers of all ages at the end of the journey, event sponsor and former tribal chairman Wendsler Nosie Sr., told them: “You are indigenous. This is your home—where you belong—and here in the woods you need to exercise your rights as an Apache. We want this place back.”

Revenge of the Wolves

Illustration by Vin Paneccasio

Delisted and targeted in Wyoming, wolves attack hunters

from the Daily Maul

WYOMING, IN THE NOT-TOO-DISTANT FUTURE — Hundreds of hunters are dead this morning after wolves launched a preemptive strike on their would-be human attackers.

“We’re taking the fight to the terrorists who want to destroy our way of life,” a gray wolf named David told The Daily Maul.

There Are Less Than 100 Members of Each of These Species Left in Existence

by Brian Merchant / Motherload

When we talk about the sixth great extinction event—the humankind-induced mass die-off that we’re in the early stages of at the moment—we talk about climate change. We talk about vanishing habitats, we talk about biodiversity loss, and we talk about how mankind has managed to kill off the world’s plants and animals with unprecedented efficiency. We talk about how biologists estimate that 200 species go extinct every day, and we talk about how this is just the dawn of the anthropocene.

We talk and we talk…

EF! Action Camp in Maine coming up soon…

a well-trained (in some ways) Maine EF!er facing off with the Law

September 28th-30th at the East Sangerville Grange

Those Maine-iacs are planning to prep you on kicking some ass for the wild.

And they’re gonna kick if off with a “Night to Howl!” on Friday from 5pm – 10pm. It’ll be an evening of food, entertainment and celebration of the local culture of resistance, with music by: Sid Stutzman, Evergreen and other local musicians.

The following days are dedicated to Direct Action Trainings from 9am-5pm (12-1pm BYO lunch)

This two day long training will provide skillshares on planning and executing effective direct actions, with topics including: legal, media, strategy, facilitation and consensus, selecting a target, and  more!   

Biomass Incinerator Looms on Horizon for Gypsum, Colorado

– by Josh Schlossberg, The Biomass Monitor

An 11.5 megawatt biomass power incinerator proposal for the 6,400 person central-Colorado town of Gypsum is moving along swiftly, despite concerns of community members and at least one town councilor.

Utah-based Eagle Valley Clean Energy LLC’s facility would burn 70,000 bone-dry tons per year of wood chips from whole trees—living and beetle-killed—tree branches and limbs, and “urban wood waste from a local landfill,” requiring 1,200 acres of forest per year sourced within a fifty to seventy-five mile radius. Gypsum is surrounded by the White River National Forest [pictured below].

The biomass facility is scheduled to go online by the end of 2013 and would sell ten megawatts to Holy Cross Energy, which provides power for the ski resort towns of Vail, Aspen and Glenwood Springs.  

838,000 Acres Protected for Jaguar Could Mean an End to the Rosemont Mine Proposal in Arizona

by Tony Davis / Arizona Daily Star

The U.S. proposed Friday to designate about 1,309 square miles across Southern Arizona and a sliver of New Mexico as prime habitat that is essential for conservation of the endangered jaguar.

Among those areas is the site of the proposed Rosemont Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains southeast of Tucson. That sets up a potential conflict between the big spotted cat’s stomping grounds and a project that would employ 400 people and be the fourth-largest copper mine in the United States.

In its proposal, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that if the critical habitat designation is approved, the agency will need to evaluate the 4,400-acre mine project to determine if it will be likely to destroy or significantly damage the jaguar habitat.

Teribe Tribe of Costa Rica Fights for Indigenous Autonomy, End to Hydroelectric Projects

by Jaime Lopez

Pablo Sibar, a grassroots leader from the Teribe native tribe of Costa Rica celebrated the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9^th with a protest before the National Assembly. He has been doing so over the last ten years, sometimes at the steps of the Assembly, others just outside the Presidential Office in Zapote. Mr. Sibar wants the voice of his people heard on a legislative proposal that has been stuck at the Assembly for the last thirty years: autonomy for the indigenous people of Costa Rica.

Fracking Boom Looms in California’s Monterey Shale

from CBS 5

AROMAS  – A new gold rush is on in California, but this time it’s liquid gold. Instead of strawberries and artichokes, the Central Coast is getting a growing reputation for being the next motherlode for oil.

That news is causing fears that a controversial extraction method called hydraulic fracturing – or fracking- is coming to town.