WILD EARTH GUARDIANS NOT THE CREDIBLE STEWARDS OF TRUTH

The Forest Guardians, the wolf protection group, Sinapu and the Sage Brush Sea Campaign have combined to become Wild Earth Guardians. This merging of organizations is probably in response to the growing numbers of Americans fighting back against environmental injustice and fraud.

The Forest Guardians came into existence in 1989. Their mission statement, taken from their webpage, states:
"Founded in 1989, Forest Guardians has emerged as a results-driven group with a proven record of defending and preserving threatened southwestern wildlife and ecosystems. Our approach to conservation features a potent combination of scientific analysis, strategic litigation to enforce existing environmental laws, and efforts to reform misguided public polices."
Other environmental groups have been critical of the Forest Guardians radical environmentalism and have accused the group of deliberate misinformation campaigns.
The following text is taken from Wikipedia’s page on the Forest Guardians:
“Syndicated columnist, Sherry Robinson, called the Forest Guardians "an extremist group with a disinformation campaign" [9]. Another syndicated columnist, Kristen Davenport, said that the organization is "far-reaching" [10]. The Rio Grande Foundation called the group "radical environmentalists." [11] And supporters of biomass energy development have accused the Forest Guardians of “bad faith,” “flip-flopping” and “radicalism.” [12].

On Dec. 15, 2007, I wrote the article “DETRIMENTAL RELIANCE AS TACTIC TARGETING RANCHERS”, on the Otero Residents Forum blog site. I wrote about an article I stumbled upon in my research on wolves. A fellow named Gene Ladd had authored a book titled: AMBER WAVES OF GAIN. I found Mr. Ladd and his book at http://www.familyfarmer.org.
In this book, Mr. Ladd describes an incident he alleges occurred in 1999, in Santa Fe.

According to Mr. Ladd, the Minutemen placed a pipe bomb in the mailbox of the Forest Guardians and blew out the window of another environmental group with a shotgun.
I contacted the Santa Fe Police Department with Mr. Ladd’s story. A high ranking official of the Santa Fe PD, with 20 years service on the department said he didn’t recall such an incident. He surely would have remembered a pipe bomb placed in the controversial green organization’s mailbox.

Mr. Ladd went on to portray the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau as a militant organization intent on fueling anti-environmental hatred among ranchers. Mr. Ladd describes a training manual from the New Mexico Department of Public Safety that describes the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau as dangerous and capable of potential terrorist activities. Mr. Ladd goes on to claim the Farm Bureau pressured the New Mexico Department of Public Safety to withdraw the manual; which according to Mr. Ladd, the DPS did.

I sent Mr. Ladd’s allegations to the DPS headquarters in Santa Fe. Today I received a letter from the assistant director refuting Mr. Ladd’s claims and saying the incident never happened. The assistant director also said no such manual depicting the Farm Bureau as a terrorist organization was ever printed.
I searched the FBI eco-terrorism records and found no such pipe bomb incident in Santa Fe in 1999.

Around the time all this was happening an individual who started a forest fire was arrested in Santa Fe county.

Mr. Ladd assigns the pipe bomb incident to this individual and places him as a member of the Minutemen. I asked Janet White, co-administrator of this blog and Minutemen member if she knew of this incident or the name I gave her. She did not. She gave the information to Bob Wright, Minutemen head honcho for New Mexico. He has the original roles of who signed up in the early days of the organization. Bob said the Minutemen did not exist in 1999 and the name of the man Mr. Ladd says was a member is not on any of the roles. The individual arrested for the forest fire and Mr. Ladd’s terrorist was never a Minutemen member.

The Forest Guardians are also the environmental group that sued to have Lincoln National Forest ban grazing on public lands and a prohibition on harvesting of timber.
These actions severely impacted Otero county residents. On February 24, 2008, the Alamogordo Daily News published a letter from Bryan Bird from the Santa Fe chapter of the Wild Earth Guardians. In his letter Mr. Bird employs scare tactics warning of environmental disaster in Lincoln National Forests if thinning of the forest is allowed.
I spoke with Dr. John Fowler, professor of Ag Economics and Ag Business at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Dr. Fowler warns of a record fire season in 2008 due to the unmanaged condition of the forests. In areas of the forest that can sustain twenty healthy stems, or trees per acre, the forest now have 2000 stems per acre. The result of the environmental litigation to close the forest to realistic management, public grazing and harvesting of timber for several years has created a dry, root dry, top heavy forest of pines and undergrowth. 2008 could become the year the world sees a monumental ‘fire storm’ in our forests of monumental and historical proportions.

Mr. Bird and other Wild Life Guardians extremists insert themselves into state and county land use issues with the intent of closing down rural communities who depend on the land for their economic survival. I immediately challenge the legal standing of these environmental groups who have chapters in Santa Fe, Denver and Boulder, Colorado.
Black’s Law Dictionary defines standing as: “A party’s right to make a legal claim or seek judicial enforcement of a duty or right. To have standing in federal court, a plaintiff must show (1) that the challenged conduct has caused the plaintiff actual injury, and (2) that the interest sought to be protected is within the zone of interests meant to be regulated by the statutory or constitutional guarantee in question”.

The Supreme Court addressed the issue of standing in the 1992 case of Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife. The court ruled the plaintiffs, Defenders of Wildlife, had not shown injury to themselves on the grounds they were not the injured party. The Defenders of Wildlife had sued for protection of an endangered species, as defined in the Endangered Species Act. The court ruled the plaintiffs did not have standing necessary to bring suit because they would not be injured in the likelihood they might not see the endangered species in the wild. The endangered species could be the injured party, not the Defenders of Wildlife.

I conducted an exercise in unwarranted intrusion of wolf reintroduction of my own.
I contacted an Albuquerque radio station and informed them I was advocating for Mexican Gray Wolf reintroduction in Santa Fe and Bernalillo counties in New Mexico.
The radio personality who interviewed me immediately rejected the idea. He very eloquently informed me of the threat to ranching concerns, tourism, recreation and wildlife wolf reintroduction would have in those counties. I then informed him of my real intent of eliciting a response to wolf reintroduction from the very counties where the majority of wolf release advocates live. If wolf release programs are good for Catron county, New Mexico, the same programs should be even better in the counties where the wolf lovers live. My idea was not well received.

I took the opportunity to suggest wolf release programs in Boulder and Jefferson counties in Colorado in a comment section in the Denver Post. The Post had published a story of a proposed Department of Interior program to reintroduce wolves to Rocky Mountain National Park in an effort to control the elk population. Readers of the Denver Post were outraged by the proposal and responded vehemently to my support of wolf reintroduction in Colorado. Sinapu, the wolf advocate group, is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado.
The residents of Boulder, Colorado think wolf release programs are great in southern New Mexico. They did not respond favorably to wolf reintroduction in their backyards.

Apparently environmental justice, re-wilding of the planet and sovereign concerns only apply when the reality of their ideology threatens the communities the extremists live and operate in. Environmentalists operate openly within many of the federal agencies that regulate and enforce land usage. The USDA website has a link to the Nature Conservancy. Would the same federal agency willingly link to the Paragon Foundation website? Federal agencies and environmental groups anticipate ignorance on the part of the American public. Their winning tactic has been to intimidate individuals and communities into federal courts; courts that probably aren’t the proper venue or jurisdiction to hear these cases.

Time and time again the courts have violated state sovereignty and the very United States Codes which define the relationship between the powers of the United States and the 50 states. The MULTILPLE-USE SUSTAAINED-YIELD ACT OF 1960 clearly says in it’s ‘Finding/Policy’ the following, “The Act does not affect the jurisdiction or responsibilities of the states, the use or administration of the mineral resources of national forest lands, or the use or administration of federal lands not within the national forests. § 528”. Title 16 U.S.C.
I cite other definitions of the relationship, as outlined in the United Stated Codes, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the New Mexico Constitution, Bill of Rights.
Sec. 104 [42 USC § 4334].
Nothing in section 102 [42 USC § 4332] or 103 [42 USC § 4333] shall in any way affect the specific statutory obligations of any Federal agency (1) to comply with criteria or standards of environmental quality, (2) to coordinate or consult with any other Federal or State agency, or (3) to act, or refrain from acting contingent upon the recommendations or certification of any other Federal or State agency.

The Environmental Protection Agency policy on the protection of human subjects involved in the implementation of any Federal agency’s program or policy applies to Endangered Species Act 1973, ( U.S.C. 16 1531-1544 87 Stat. 884), as amended -- Public Law 93-205, approved December 28, 1973, repealed the Endangered Species Conservation Act of December 5, 1969 (P.L. 91-135, 83 Stat. 275). The 1969 Act had amended the Endangered Species Preservation Act of October 15, 1966 (P.L. 89-669, 80 Stat. 926).
The state of New Mexico Constitution, Bill of Rights, Article II, Section 3 “Right of self-government” reads: “The people of the state have the sole and exclusive right to govern themselves as a free, sovereign and independent state”.
The continued environmental agenda of fraud and misinformation must be challenged on all fronts. From litigation backed by junk science, wolf reintroduction to danger-creation scenarios like impending forest fire storms; state Citizens must mobilize to confront environmental fraud and take back state sovereignty in the interest of protecting private property rights and the rural economies of America.
Challenge the credibility and stand of extremist groups like the Wild Earth Guardians and others. Question the standing and jurisdiction in any manner involving a federal agency citation or claims of environmental litigation from a non-profit group. The summer 2005 issue of RANGE MAGAZINE has an excellent article about a ranching family that did challenge the junk science and authority of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Center for Biological Diversity, and won!
Arizona rancher Jim Chilton and his family had combined conservation programs with ranching to create habitat for several wildlife species and abundant grass for their cattle.
The Chilton’s family’s efforts won them the praise of state biologists and scientists who closely monitored success of ranching and wildlife conservation. Despite the proven track record of this ranching families dedication to preserving wildlife, the environment and their family tradition; the Center for Biological Diversity falsified endangered species data, submitted photos of barren land or of mines not on the family’s ranch, and just plain lied in an attempt to close down the ranch in court. The Chilton’s persevered and won in court in a liable case against the Center for Biological Diversity.