Deforestation

You are invited to join us for the seventh annual Sacred Water, Sacred Forests Action Camp, May 25th - 28th, 2018 - A Gathering for Celebration, Community, Movement Building, Ecology, and Land Defense! Based in Spring Valley, Nevada (between the towns of Ely and Baker), the Action Camp is a gathering of organizers, ecologists, indigenous people, water grab opponents, forest defenders, concerned individuals, and Great Basin residents. Over Memorial Day Weekend, we will convene at Cleve Creek Campground, 12 miles north of Highway 6-50 on road 893, at the base of the Schell Creek Mountains. ...

E ditors note: Wind energy is destroying the planet just like fossil fuels. So-called “renewable energy” development threatens a massive amount of land globally in the coming years. We will fight all activities that destroy the land, even when greenwashing propaganda tells us these projects are “sustainable.” We know bullshit when we see it. Capitalists own and operate the wind and solar industry, which operates globally as a profitmaking enterprise with little or no concern for the natural world and wild beings. Wind power, in this culture, is about maintaining high-energy lifestyles as oil declines, rather than about saving the planet. We are loyal to the natural world, and we are vehemently opposed to this project. We mean to fight it tooth and nail. Please contact us if you would like to be part of organizing against it. This action alert comes via Basin and Range Watch: ...

The Pinyon-Juniper Alliance presents a panel discussion featuring experts on Pinyon-Juniper forests and the so-called “restoration” efforts that are destroying them. The panel, which is titled Protecting Native Forests in the West: The Pinyon-Juniper Alliance, will take place on Friday, March 2nd from 8:30 am to 9:45 am in room 232 of the Erb Memorial Union at the University of Oregon. We hope to see you there! About PIELC The Public Interest Environmental Law Conference is the premier annual gathering for environmentalists worldwide, and is distinguished as the oldest and largest of its kind. The Conference historically unites more than 3,000 activists, attorneys, students, scientists, and concerned citizens from over 50 countries around the globe to share their experience and expertise. The Conference is organized solely by the volunteers of Land Air Water (LAW), a student environmental law society at the University of Oregon School of Law, and is co-sponsored by Friends of Land Air Water (FLAW), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. ...

“For thousands of years, pinion trees have provided a sustainable source of food for our ancestors, the Great Basin Shoshone. In fact, without pine nuts, our ancestors would not have survived our harsh Winters. These trees were so important they are considered “sacred.” But apparently now; they are in the way of unsustainable exploitation in the name of “development.” But the developers aren’t paying for this. We taxpayers are. Our money is being used to kill naturally growing forests in the Orwellian name of Pinion/Juniper “Restoration.” ...

**Location: near Great Basin National Park in Nevada (Shoshone/Goshute territory).**Date: May 25-28th, 2018 Save the date! More details coming soon.

This story from the phenomenal journalist Brenda Norrell of Censored News. RENO (Monday, October 9th) – Five people were injured when a white pickup truck plowed into Native American rights activists, protesting Columbus Day and speaking out for the defense of the water at Standing Rock. During the Abolish KKKolumbus Day March on Monday, at about 6:40 p.m. the driver of the pickup stalked the marchers and yelled insults at them, before slamming into Native Americans and supporters, including a grandmother who is hospitalized. ...

Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance Great Basin Pinyon cones Photo by Katie Fite After two months of struggling to write anything coherent about pinyon-juniper forests, I was on the verge of giving up. Members of the group I am campaigning with to stop pinyon-juniper deforestation began brainstorming about applying for grants to support the campaign. Many of the grants they discovered required us to demonstrate that pinyon-juniper deforestation harmed wildlife populations, poisoned water supplies, or had a tangible effect on human populations. ...

In the Great Basin, refugees beget refugees. European settlers who physically performed the most destructive jobs were in many cases refugees from war and economic crisis in their homelands. My ancestors, the Irish, endured centuries of British domination and a wave of Irish fled starvation when the Great Famine struck Ireland a few years before the Great Basin was settled. Many Irish were involved in building railroads and in mining in Nevada. Richer European settlers – the mining bosses and ranch owners – possessed too much capital to be thought of as refugees in the traditional sense, but they demonstrated a certain spiritual disease produced by the belief that humans can safely take more from the land than the land freely gives. ...

This article, from Will Falk of DGR Great Basin (and photographed by Max Wilbert), looks further at the issue Piñon Pine and Juniper forest destruction that is rapidly becoming a campaign focus of DGR members and allies in the region. “Standing in a pinyon-juniper forest on a high slope above Cave Valley not far from Ely, Nevada, I am lost in an ancient vision. It is a vision born under sublime skies stretching above wide, flat valleys bounded by the dramatic mountains of the Great Basin. The vision grows with the rising flames of morning in the east. The night was cold, but clear, and the sun brings a welcome warmth. When the sun crests the mountains, red and orange clouds stream across the sky while shadows pull back from the valley floor to reveal pronghorn antelope dancing through the sage brush. A few ridge lines away, the clatter of talus accompanies the movement of bighorn sheep. The slap and crack of bighorn rams clashing their heads together echoes through the valley.” ...

The Castle Rock Prairie Dogs are Gone: Open Letter from an Exile By Jennifer Murnan, DGR Colorado I wore this shirt, long-sleeved, multi-patterned, funky, well tailored hand-me-down for almost every day I worked on the prairie dog relocation at the “Promenade” site in Castle Rock Colorado. The “Promenade” site was only that in the avaricious life-sucking minds of the capitalist pig developers. The “site” was really a scrap of prairie community, a last survivor already lacerated by monstrous earth movers, surrounded by apartments, highway, box stores, a mall, parking lots—anti-life. ...