Free Republic

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Dave Foreman, a self-proclaimed eco-warrior who was a prominent member of the radical environmentalism movement and a co-founder of Earth First!, has died. He was 74. The New Mexico-based Rewilding Institute, which Foreman founded as a think tank to develop long-term land conservation plans, said on its website that he died peacefully at his home in Albuquerque on Monday. A cause of death wasn’t immediately released, but friends of Foreman said he had battled a lung illness for several months. “There will never be another like him. One of the greatest conservationists ever,” the institute said....

The Department of Education revealed in a recent report that it will consider grant applications, in part, based on how "equity" is incorporated into grant proposals. The "2022 Agency Equity Plan related to Executive Order 13985," published Thursday, is part of one of President Joe Biden's first executive orders, the "Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government." The "executive summary" of Thursday's 19-page report reads, "As we enter a new era of possibility for our nation, education must be at the forefront of our recovery, rebuilding and resiliency efforts. To meet this...

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee received a damning letter on Wednesday about President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning, detailing her complicity in a 1989 ecoterrorist crime and her reluctant assistance to federal authorities only after being granted limited immunity from prosecution. Retired U.S. Forest Service criminal investigator Michael Merkley, who was the special agent tasked with investigating the plot at the time, wrote to the committee that Stone-Manning “was not an innocent bystander.” “Contrary to many of the stories in the news, Ms. Stone-Manning was not an innocent bystander, nor was...

“P.S. You bastards go in there anyway and a lot of people could get hurt.” Thus reads a note sent in 1989 to the U.S. Forest Service by Tracy Stone-Manning, now President Biden’s nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management. Presidents are generally entitled to personnel picks. An exception might be a nominee who ran with eco-terrorists—who collaborated with Earth First! saboteurs, known for spiking trees to halt timber sales, and who misled senators about the nature of her involvement. Mr. Biden put Ms. Stone-Manning forward in April, and she isn’t new to politics. The environmental radical has worked...

Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning, testified in federal court in 1993 that she sent a threatening letter to the Forest Service warning that a local forest had been sabotaged with tree spikes. Stone-Manning told a local news outlet in 1993 that she could have faced conspiracy charges had she not struck an immunity deal with a federal prosecutor in return for her testimony. Court documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show that Stone-Manning testified that her friend and former roommate John Blount, who was found guilty and sentenced to 17 months...

President Biden has nominated Montana environmental activist and Democrat operative Tracy Stone-Manning of Montana to head the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management. Stone-Manning got her start in environmental activism as the spokesperson for the mother of all radical organizations — Earth First. Only after entering politics did Stone-Manning claim she left the job because the monkey wrenchers were just too darn angry. Who knew that ecoterrorism and arson had a dark side? PeakNation™ will recall the monkey wrenching of Aspen’s natural gas pumping station over the Christmas holiday that left the resort in the cold for days. The culprit...

The FBI has joined a criminal investigation of what police said appears to be an "intentional attack" on gas service lines in Aspen, Colorado, that left thousands of residents and businesses without heat as temperatures in the skiing mecca plunged to near zero degrees. Work crews are scrambling to restore gas service, and local authorities handed out electric space heaters to residents still without heat Tuesday, as a storm is forecast to bring up to 8 inches of snow in the Rocky Mountains region this week. Temperatures are forecast to fall to 2 degrees in Aspen on Tuesday night, according...

My address to the Colorado Independent Cattlemen’s Association I’m not a cattleman and I’m not going to pretend I know everything you are facing. But I do know that the major weapon being used against your industry is the misnamed control devise called Sustainable Development. I know why and I know who the players are. I hope I can leave you today with some ideas on how to fight them. To begin, let’s set the terms and make one thing very clear. The use of the word sustainable may sound like a comfortable term, not threatening. After all, you, your...

Palestinians plan to engulf the Gaza border with smoke and flames from thousands of burning tires on Friday as Israel holds firm to its order to shoot any protesters who come close to the security barrier. In the past several days, groups of young Gazans have been collecting old tires around the Strip and bringing them to the border. Palestinians intend to light the tires on fire to blur the vision of the soldiers on the Israeli side of the security fence, according to a Gaza-based source familiar with preparations for what he called “the Friday of Old Tires.

A new eco-terrorism manual has been published and is being sold online by Earth First! Journal, which calls itself “the voice of the radical environment movement." The new Direct Action Manual (3rd Edition) provides tips activism ranging from “soft pranks” to vandalism that will result in arrest:

Rod Coronado, a convicted eco-terrorist, is the leader of the controversial “Yellowstone Wolf Patrol,” a new environmental group that plans to shadow legal Montana wolf hunters during the state’s fall and winter wolf season and document the hunts with a video camera. Coronado, a resident of Michigan, is a radical environmentalist who “sank whaling ships nearly 30 years ago in Iceland and later went to prison after torching a Michigan State University lab in 1992 for conducting research for the fur industry” according to The Buffalo News of Buffalo, NY. He also serves as a spokesman for the radical, militant...

MADISON – Gov. Scott Walker delivered a sternly worded statement Friday, demanding that environmental “extremists” disrupting preliminary work at a proposed northern Wisconsin mine site and destroying private property be held responsible for their actions. “These extremists – who are disrupting work and causing harm to law-abiding employees – should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Walker said of incidents last month. No More: Gov. Scott Walker on Friday said he wants protesters who disrupted and threatened workers at a proposed mine site to be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” The governor, who is...

SPECIAL REPORT: Slam-Dunking Animal RightsPosted On July 28, 2003It's no secret that Leslie and Nanci Alexander, co-owners of the NBA's Houston Rockets franchise, are among the global animal-rights movement's biggest financial backers. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals even acknowledged the couple in 1998 for making "one of the most generous gifts we have ever received." Nanci Alexander personally donated over $225,000 toward the passage of a constitutional amendment that gave legal protection to pigs in Florida. But recently released tax records indicate that the Alexanders have also funded the operations of "Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty" (SHAC), one of...

Republican Heather Wilson, a candidate for U.S. Senate in New Mexico, has a new ad criticizing her opponent, Democratic congressman Martin Heinrich, for voting twice for a medical device tax that Heinrich had noted himself would be bad for job creation. ... Wilson, a former member of the House, is running to replace retiring Democrat Jeff Bingaman in the Senate.

Two wilderness groups have sued the U.S. Forest Service over its decision to allow an irrigation company to use a helicopter to fly in materials needed to repair a dam in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Wilderness Watch and Friends of the Clearwater filed suit in U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy’s court in Missoula last week. The groups say the agency’s decision to allow the irrigation company up to two helicopter flights to the Fred Burr Dam site violates the Wilderness Act and other environmental laws. The irrigation company wants to replace a deteriorating catwalk and log boom on the nearly century-old...

Forest Service official: Environmental groups delayed thinning. Damage from the Little Bear Fire could have been reduced if a proposed Forest Service thinning project had not been delayed by an appeal from two environmental groups, a Forest Service official said Tuesday. "Any type of treatment we could have done would have reduced the severity of the fire," said Chad Stewart, fire and timber officer for the Lincoln National Forest. While the fire as a whole could not have been stopped by thinning efforts, especially in the face of 40 mph wind gusts, damage to the Bonito watershed likely would have...

STRATTON, Maine (AP) — A national environmental group says eight of its members who blocked the entrance to a western Maine wind power construction site have been escorted offsite and issued warnings. Maine Earth First! spokeswoman Emily Posner says about 50 people blocked the road to TransCanada's Kibby Mountain construction site Tuesday morning. TransCanada spokeswoman LeAnne LeBlanc says the protest was peaceful and work continues. TransCanada is building 22 wind turbines on mountains near where it's already built 22 turbines that are producing power. Maine Earth First! says projects like TransCanada's destroy mountaintops and don't offset fossil fuel use. Tuesday's...

Van Jones, President Obama's former "green jobs" czar and newly appointed Princeton lecturer, has teamed up with a coalition of extremists to push an environmental activist agenda to "transform the American economy" and bring about "social change." The groups working with Jones have been described as using the tactics of guerrilla communication, agitation and disruption techniques. One organization working alongside Jones, the radical Earth First! environmentalist group, has a history of violence and sabotage. Jones spoke Monday at a Northern Arizona University event titled "Challenging America: Achieving Sustainability and Justice Through the Green Collar Economy." He spoke with Billy Parish,...

Just watch. You won't be disappointed.

Earth First! made headlines with its tree-spiking in the 1980s, but the guy who helped make the anti-logging tactic famous didn't invent it. Mike Roselle even titled one chapter of his new book "Why I Quit Spiking Trees." In it, the co-founder of Earth First!, the Rainforest Action Network and the Ruckus Society described how the practice brought old-growth timber cutting to national awareness, but became a public relations disaster for the protesters. "I think the Wobblies can take credit for it if they want, but it's been around as long as logging," Roselle said, referring to the Industrial Workers...