Speakers include ecological forester Roy Keene; Tim Hermach, executive director of Native Forest Council; Bill Barton, private forestland owner; Lauren Regan, executive director of Civil Liberties Defense Center; and testimonials from forest-dwellers whose families have been poisoned by backward timber industry clearcutting and herbicide practices.

Musical performers include reggae superstars Jah Levi and Evan Belize; Freebo, former bass-player for Bonnie Raitt; political folk musician David Rovics; the Daveys and Alternative Reality; Native American and African drumming and other musical acts.

Pitchfork Rebellion will also share the findings of its report which reveals how high-level positions in State and Federal Agencies that have legal stewardship over our soil, water, air, and natural wealth are staffed by current and former employees of multinational corporations (i.e. EPA’s Elin Miller, former Dow chemical executive).

Government “conservation” experts, the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have given permission to kill large numbers of the sea lions in an attempt to stop them from eating. The NOAA contact for this project is Brian Gormon, whose contact can be found here.

Fortunately for the sea lions, the Humane Society and The Wild Fish Conservatory have filed suit against the slaughter, and have won a stay of execution until the case can be heard further, currently scheduled for May 8th in Pasadena, CA.

“04-21-08

We, the masked avengers of the Animal Liberation Front released around 40 Blue Iris mink from the breeding stock at Jefferson Fur Farm, 1477 SE Talbot Road, Jefferson, OR. Breeding records containing genetic history were also permanently destroyed. It will be a hard road ahead for these mink and their offspring, but with our help they now have a chance at survival. These animals are not capitalist commodities to be bought and sold for fashion or vanity, but unique individuals deserving of liberation from human exploitation. Even if some of the mink do not make it we feel it is better to die free, then at the hands of their speciesist captors.

To the Posches, owners of Jefferson Fur Farm: Consider this your first warning. Tear down this death camp and let the mink live free. If you don’t we will be back to finish the job.

To others concerned with the well-being of fellow living beings. First and foremost, go vegan. If you’ve been vegan for a while, it’s time to start looking up animal abusers in your area and doing the research for how to effectively cripple them. Work in small affinity groups, be cautious always– macho never, and never give information if captured. It’s time for animal rights to move beyond consumer sub-culture, towards an active liberation movement, which threatens the capitalist commoditization of life and the speciesist ideology itself.

We want to make it very clear that we will not be intimidated by the states continued witch hunt against the earth and animal liberation movements. Draconian prison sentences and repressive legislation will not deter us from our goal of total earth, animal, and human liberation. For every liberator you throw in prison, there will two more to take her place. For every activist’s house you raid, there will ten times that many cages emptied. You can take our freedom, but you will never extinguish the flame that burns in our heart. Let your passion mirror the animals oppression and our persecution.

ALF-Cascadia”

But excessive cougar hunting appears to actually increase the number of cougar attacks on humans; predator behavior is learned, and dead mature males cannot teach restraint to younger males.

But all of that science nonsense aside, there is property to protect. In Oregon, a bill was passed allowing Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to deputize hunters (yes, that’s right, make them cops) so that they can hunt cougars with dogs. The Oregon cougar hunting open-season is now year-round, expecting to result in the death of thousands of cats, or about 1/3 of the current cougar population. They lowered the cost of a cougar-hunting license to a paltry $11.50 in 2006, sending the number of cougar deaths skyrocketing.

Parties responsible for this bill include Governor Kulongoski, who signed House Bill 2971 last year, Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee Chairman, Brad Avakian (D-NE Washington and NW Multnomah Counties), who pushed the bill through his committee, and the majority of the House for passing the bill. Don’t forget Ron Anglin, Wildlife Division Administrator for the ODFW, whose contact can be found over here.

The hound hunters (one pictured here from Utah) use the hounds to chase the cougar into a tree, where it is easily picked off. These days, the hounds are followed by GPS and radio-frequency collars. Note that these systems are not necessarily secure from hacking or interference [more].

To date, there have been no reported counts of hunt sabotaging of cougar hunts in Oregon, although it would not surprise anyone if this changed.

Tre is from Ohio, and there is an all American wholesomeness about his upbringing which belies the transformation he went through later in life. If you look at old photos of him you see an ordinary American mall shopper. But what caused Tre to stop being Michael Scarpitti, the high school wrestler and Pepsi drinker, and become Tre Arrow, the man who refuses to use municipal water and won’t even put bandages on his wounds for fear of damaging the environment with additional packaging.

Around the time Tre changed his name, he became a rawfoods vegan. He was introduced to the idea by some Essenes from Oregon whom he met at a vegan foods fair. The Essenes were a Judean sect who accepted Jesus Christ as one of their mentors. They believed in a lifestyle which didn’t hurt plants and other living creatures.

From the Essene diet and way of life, Tre realized, somewhere along the line, that our individual actions are responsible for much suffering and the degradation of the world eco system. So he began to extend the philosophy of the Essenes to the rest of his life.

From this point onward Tre strove to live a life as free of wastage as possible. He shunned use of shoes, soaps that weren’t vegan, any form of packaging, or even forms of energy that came from nonenvironmental sources. So meetings with him were held in cold dark rooms, and he’d wash with only spring water hitchhiked from the Oregon coast. All his clothes were secondhand and made of natural fibers. He even avoided band-aids.

His zealous battle against wastage extended to trash as well. Tre would collect trash and recyclables, then find ways to use them. There are stories of him entering and remaining in dumpsters until each and every item in the dumpster, edible or non-, trash or recyclable, had found a happy home, either in a compost heap or as a sculpture if it could possibly be reused as art.

This behavior was perceived as madness for some, and godliness to others. A virtual religion followed the man wherever he went. When he was living on a seven-inch ledge in downtown Portland in 2001, someone was distributing T-shirts that read “GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR INNER TRE”. When he made crucifix-like yoga poses on the ledge, one could hear people visibly breathing in and out along with him.

A year later he was on the FBIs “Most Wanted” list. Two years later, he was in jail.

As soon as Tre found himself in jail he began to fast. Punished for hoarding recovery-period food, he nearly starved to death. The starving / fasting incident proved his resolve, and the Canadian courts gave him the right to receive foods delivered by his supporters, an important victory.

He then focused on the other aspects of prison life. He wore the prison uniform inside out, rolling up the pant legs and pushing down the backs of the shoes so he didn’t need to wear socks, reducing use of chemical detergents. He wouldn’t use the prison water to wash his body or for hydration: his supporters used bike carts to haul well water to the jail, and he’d use small amounts to wash his body.

He stockpiled styrofoam bowls and cups, cereal boxes, plastic material, etc. then sent it out with his support people to be reused or turned into art projects. The inedible remains of his meals were termed “offerings” and sent out with specific instructions as per where they were to be donated to the earth or to animals.

Tre would only wash his cell with non-toxic biodegradables that had been purchased in bulk then transported in reused containers. Which in his case, meant vinegar and castille soap. (Attempts to bring him baking soda were firmly denied, but not without some hilarious guard’s reactions).

Tre’s fellow inmates reacted as might be expected; they thought Tre was insane. They had trouble understanding why the shelf reserved for his TV was covered with ripening fruit, they didn’t like the way he or his cell smelled, and they didn’t understand his zeal for reusing all the trash. But with time he got some begrudging respect, so that the prisoners came to Tre with their moral and ethical questions. They wanted to be in touch with their inner Tre.

Now in the County prison system, he continues to manipulate his life, focused on impulsively avoiding wastage, or creating any form of wastage or pollution of the environment. Feeling that the municipal water is polluted, he cleans his body with orange peels, and drinks only as much as he needs. He will, no doubt, attempt to stockpile trash and recyclables, but his new prison is surely less lenient than the one in Canada.

**

When all is said and done, two observations emerge from this story: Tre is accused of firebombing logging trucks, acts so utterly lacking in any consideration for the environment it is unthinkable that he’d commit them. The second point is that his story, focusing only in his eccentricities and how they’ve played out in a prison setting, illustrates the struggle of idealism against totalitarianism, how it is both futile and successful at the same time.

Tre may be let out of jail someday soon; he might also end up fighting his incarceration for years on end. Either way, he represents an untenable ideal, in which the individual is slated to lose the fight for a life entirely unsullied by pollution, coming from one’s own actions, or the actions of others. But Tre serves as an inspiration, and he holds down the fort of idealism manifested in action and in personal life choices. This is, ultimately, how he is effective, whether in jail or out, and no matter how you might gauge the outcome of his actions.

The slide, known as the Frazier Slide, was originally thought to be an easy cleanup but kept the tracks closed until April 5th. Local lumber mills such as Weyerhouser in Springfield and Roseburg Forest Products (known for being one of the few companies to mill old-growth lumber) complained of delays in empty lumber cars. Forestry Service research geologist Fred Swanson said that a 1992 clear-cut at the origin of the slide was not to blame: “From a geology perspective, stuff falls,” he said. “We’ve got gravity. We’ve got tectonic forces and volcanic forces pushing rocks up, and they’ve got to come down. … We talk of these processes as disturbance agents, but geologists don’t refer to them that way. They’re just part of the land-sculpting phenomenon. This is just one little tick in a multimillion-year history of that river valley.” But whether these suspect words are true or false, the Forestry Service still claims that the 700,000 board feet of trees already pulled from the slide, as well as the trees not yet removed, are federal property and shall be sold to the highest bidder once all the trees have been recovered. Nevermind, of course, the importance of biomass in helping damaged ecosystems recover.