Free Republic

Arrangement part of security since Vail arson Giant picture windows set among rough-hewn timbers. Sweeping views of the Gore Range and Mount of the Holy Cross. And ski-in, ski-out access - to China Bowl. Wooldridge lives year round at...Two Elk Lodge restaurant, where he is the general manager. The building is at the top of Vail Mountain, 11,220 feet above sea level... He moved into the new lodge in 1999 when it reopened following the arsons that destroyed it a year earlier. Having a full-time resident at Two Elk was part of increased security measures after the October 1998 arsons...

Next week, Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton are expected to sign an agreement that would place management of an estimated 500 grey wolves into state, rather than federal, hands. The agreement would give ranchers permission to eliminate wolves that harass livestock. It also would empower state wildlife managers to pick off wolf packs that make a dent in the state's deer and elk populations. The wolf's revival in Idaho started a decade ago when officials released 35 wolves into central Idaho. Their numbers have grown steadily since then. Federal rules have carefully prescribed when ranchers...

Father defends woman named in '98 Vail fires 'She's not even a vegetarian,' says dad in timber industry By Joe Garner, Rocky Mountain News December 16, 2005 SWEET HOME, Ore. - Federal authorities have the wrong woman in custody, says the father of an alleged eco-terrorist identified as a suspect in the 1998 fire bombings on Vail Mountain. The woman, Chelsea Gerlach, 28, of Portland, was named a suspect in the $12 million Vail arson case Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., during a hearing to set bail on two federal eco-terrorism charges against her in her home...

REAL OR FAKE? Choosing a Christmas tree can be an ethical quagmire for environmentalists The cultural minefield of December has another politically loaded question to tiptoe around: Will you purchase a real tree or an artificial one? And then, what will you call it? Your answer will speak to your commitment to protecting American jobs, reducing the trade deficit, preventing environmental destruction, helping us breathe and, of course, showing where you stand on the Rev. Jerry Falwell's efforts to counter what he calls the anti-Christian "war on Christmas."

An undercover informant helped investigators tape a conversation with one of the seven...radical environmentalists accused in a series of arson attacks and other crimes... Existence of the informant was disclosed last week by an investigator in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., during a bail hearing for Daniel McGowan, 31, who faces indictments that he and another man firebombed the office of a wood products mill in Glendale and the office and truck shop of a tree farm in Clatskanie in 2001. The Earth Liberation Front, an underground group that advocates economic sabotage to stop environmental destruction, took credit for...

An employee of Northern Arizona University was arrested and charged Thursday with being a member of an ecoterrorism group and setting fires... Her arrest, one of six across the country and two in Arizona, marks the culmination of a nine-year investigation by the FBI and dozens of other agencies into several arsons in the Pacific Northwest, many of which were claimed to be the work of the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. Kendall Tankersley, 28, also known as Sarah Kendall Harvey, stood shackled and bound in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Aspey in Flagstaff as a...

November 09, Wisconsin Ag Connection — Man sentenced to prison for freeing mink. An animal rights activists who plead guilty to domestic terrorism charges for freeing thousands of mink from Midwest fur farms will go to federal prison for two years. Peter Young of Mercer Island, WA, was sentenced on Tuesday, November 8, by U.S. District Judge Stephen Crocker. He was also ordered to pay nearly $255,000 in restitution to the farmers he violated. Young eluded authorities for more than seven years after he trespassed on the mink operations eight years ago. Young, and accomplice Justin Samuel set out to...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Three people pleaded guilty Friday in firebombing incidents linked to a shadowy group the FBI calls an eco-terrorist organization. Ryan Daniel Lewis, 22, pleaded guilty to attempted arson and arson. Sisters Eva Rose Holland, 26, and Lili Marie Holland, 21, each pleaded guilty to attempted arson. All are from Newcastle, a Sierra foothills community east of Sacramento. The three were charged with attempting to burn down two unoccupied homes last December in an upscale development in suburban Sacramento. Lewis also admitted to two attacks on buildings under construction in the Sierra foothills. He set fire to...

The trial of seven animal rights activists under domestic terrorism laws focuses attention on a threat which law enforcement officials say has become greater than that of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and right-wing militias. Defendants in the federal trial in New Jersey, which has just begun and is expected to last into August, are charged with conspiracy and interstate stalking involving the vandalism and harassment of employees of labs that use animals to test drugs and chemicals. Officials say this is part of a growing trend that in recent years has included more than 1,200 incidents of arson, bombings,...

Say post's growth threatens San Pedro Environmentalists worried about the fate of the San Pedro River filed papers Thursday in anticipation of another lawsuit against Fort Huachuca. The fort's "incremental, piecemeal expansion" - and Sierra Vista's accompanying growth - are threatening one of the continent's hot spots for species diversity, according to activists' notice of intent to sue the military and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If the fort doesn't do something about the area's declining water table, the post must downsize so the river and its endangered species can survive, says the 83-page notice filed by the Tucson-based...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A federal grand jury indicted four Sierra foothills residents Thursday in a series of firebomb attacks claimed by an obscure underground organization opposed to development. The indictment adds allegations against Ryan Daniel Lewis, 21, and Eva Rose Holland, 25, who previously had each been charged in only one of the three incidents targeting an upscale Lincoln subdivision, an Auburn office building, and a Sutter Creek apartment complex, all under construction east of Sacramento. Lewis is now charged in all three attacks. He was previously indicted only in the Jan. 12 attempted Auburn arson, where incendiary devices failed...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Three more Sierra foothills residents, including two sisters, have been arrested in a Christmas attempted arson tied to a shadowy eco-terrorist organization, authorities said Monday. The incident was the first of three attempted or successful arson attacks on buildings under construction in towns east of Sacramento. Two of the three suspects admitted trying to burn down two homes in an upscale Lincoln housing development, the FBI said. Arrested Monday was Jeremiah Colcleasure, 24. Arrested Friday were sisters Eva Rose Holland, 25, and her sister Lili Marie Holland, 20, the FBI said. All three are charged with one...

SACRAMENTO - A man charged with attempting to burn down buildings in three Northern California towns had surveillance videotape of one of the structures, according to a search warrant. Investigators raided the home of Ryan Daniel Lewis, 21, of Newcastle, after two attempted firebombings and one arson since December. The search turned up surveillance footage of one of the targets, a commercial office complex under construction in Auburn where firebombs failed to ignite, according to affidavits unsealed Friday. Investigators also found accelerants and materials similar to those used in the incendiary devices found at all three locations. The others were...

A federal judge Friday refused to allow a 21-year-old accused arsonist to be released pending trial and said he had betrayed his family and was a danger to society. "He's 21 years old and he's never accomplished anything on his own in his life," U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinski said of Ryan Daniel Lewis. "He's 21 and he's still living at home." Nowinski ordered the Newcastle man remain in the Sacramento County jail pending his trial on attempted arson and arson charges connected to a radical environmental group that is believed to have targeted at least three construction sites...

A former employee with an extremist bent ignited the fire that destroyed part of Stock Building Supply in West Jordan in June, according to federal charges. Prosecutors labeled Justus A. Ireland, 23, a "domestic terrorist" Tuesday, saying he started the blaze in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a group of underground environmental extremists. Ireland has confessed, according to prosecutors, resulting in an arson charge filed against him in U.S. District Court late Monday afternoon. "A blight on our community has been extinguished," said Chip Burrus, FBI special agent in charge. Federal officials had expected Ireland to plead guilty...

MISDEMEANORS: Ship didn't have paperwork or show it could clean up spill. Alaska prosecutors Thursday filed criminal charges against Greenpeace, saying the activist group broke environmental laws by not submitting oil spill prevention documents before its ship entered state waters.

John Burton Wade, 19, will complete his freshman year at Mary Washington College on April 30. Then he'll spend what would have been his sophomore, junior and senior years in prison. "I regret what I did," said Wade, one of three young Henrico County men to have pleaded guilty to the federal crime of conspiring to destroy vehicles by fire. They admitted to a five-month campaign of vandalism meant to protest the damage that society is causing to the natural environment. They were driven by what the three high-schoolers viewed, with fierce teenage passion, as the adult public's frustrating refusal...

It's about the trees, foe of logging says Activist charged in firebombings denies FBI's 'terrorist' label By ANDREW KRAMER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS VICTORIA, B.C. -- For 19 months, Tre Arrow was one of the most wanted fugitives in North America -- he was accused of firebombing logging and cement trucks in Oregon and having links to a group of radical environmentalists viewed as terrorists by the FBI. Now he's in the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre, facing charges of trying to shoplift bolt cutters. He has begun a hunger strike to protest what he calls injustices in the U.S. legal...

Sport utility vehicles made Patrick Dillon see red, according to the police. In a more-than-two-month spree in Manhattan, Mr. Dillon, a 53-year-old building superintendent in Manhattan, squirted more than two dozen sport utility vehicles with red paint from a ketchup-like squeeze bottle, police officials said. Last night, the police charged him with criminal mischief. At 6:40 p.m., Capt. James W. Murtaugh, who was on patrol on his bicycle on West 77th Street, rode past a man also on a bicycle, dressed in a black shirt, black hat, and black camouflage pants, with a black scarf wrapped around his face, holding...

Hello everyone. I have good news to share. On 9/10 I was released from segregation. I have not had an opportunity to speak with my attorney so I'm not sure what I can share. However, I would like to extend my deepest thanks to Lauren Regan, AAL and her legal assistant, Misha Dunlap for their awesome help. They put in a lot of time into getting me out of the hole-taking time from their busy lives to come visit and talk strategy with me. Thank you. As of right now, I?ve been out for 5 days. I have been given...