A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching
Second Edition
Edited by Dave Foreman
and Bill Haywood
Forward! by Edward Abbey
Tucson, Arizona
1987
First edition, first printing March 1985
First edition, second printing September- 1985
Second edition copyright (D 1987 by Dave Foreman
Second edition, first printing 1987
Second edition, second printing 1988
Second edition, third printing 1989
All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.
Published by Ned Ludd Books
POB 5871, Tucson, AZ 85703
Printed by Ed’s Printing, Chico, California
Typesetting by Typografx, Chico, California
Printed on recycled paper
ECODEFENSE: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching is for entertainment purposes only. No one involved with the production of this book - the editors, contributors, artists, printers, or anyone - encourages anyone to do any of the stupid, illegal things contained herein.
This book is dedicated to the Fox, the Tucson Ecoraiders, the Bolt Weevils, the Hardesty Mountain Avengers, the Bonnie Abbzug Feminist Garden Club, Barmaids for Howie, and all of their ilk.
Special dedication to “Mr. Goodwrench” John Zaelit 1954 -1986
Wilderness needs no defense, only more defenders.
Introduction to the First Edition 1
Introduction to the Second Edition 3
FORWARD! by Edward Abbey 7
CHAPTER I STRATEGIC MONKEYWRENCHING 10
CHAPTER 2 THE FUTURE OF MONKEYWRENCHING 18
CHAPTER 3 DEVELOPMENTS 24
Tree Spiking 26
Tree Pinning 40
Ceramic Spikes 44
Rock Spikes 51
Survey Stakes 55
Mining 68
Powerlines 74
Seismographic Lines 76
Overgrazing 82
CHAPTER 4 ROADS AND TIRES 89
Road Spiking 92
Flattening Tires 100
Bigfoot 104
Snowmobiles 107
Closing Roads 109
CHAPTER 5 VEHICLES AND HEAVY EQUIPMENT 115
Disabling Vehicles Outline 117
Heavy Equipment 118
Cutting Torch 141
Burning Machinery 143
Aircraft 145
Vehicle Modification 149
Water and Diesel Don’t Mix 154
CHAPTER 6 ANIMAL DEFENSE 157
Traplines 158
Snares178
Traplines #2 180
Fence Cutting 184
Coyote Getter 187
CHAPTER 7 MISCELLANEOUS DEVILTRY 188
Smoke Bombs 189
Business Reply Mail 191
Disrupting Illegal Activities 192
Trash Return 193
Stink Bombs 195
Stink Grenades 197
Jamming Locks 200
Political Fun & Games 201
Fun with Slingshots 202
Mountain Bikes 204
Urban Monkeywrenching 207
Computer Sabotage 213
Condo Trashing 219
Fun with Phones 220
CHAPTER 8 PROPAGANDA 221
Advanced Billboarding 222
Billboard Trashing 229
Billboard Revision 231
Billboard Burning 233
Smokey The Bear Chainsaw Letter 234
Correcting Forest Service Signs 236
Silent Agitators 238
Spray Paint 239
Stencils 242
Trail of Rising and Failing Birds 244
CHAPTER 9 SECURITY 248
Basic Security 250
Camouflage 262
Tools of the Trade (including Radios) 266
Eyes of Night 276
Counter Security 278
Pursuit and Evasion 290
Arrest 299
Media Relations 301
No Evidence 307
A Field Guide to
Monkeywrenching
Second Edition
TO THE
FIRST EDITION
Many people have helped with the production of ECODEFENSE: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. For obvious reasons, however, their contributions can not be individually acknowledged. Nevertheless, they deserve the thanks and appreciation of all lovers of the wild. To the authors, artists, reviewers and others who have helped in the production of this book, let me offer my thanks, admiration, and comradeship. I particularly appreciate the help and support in this project from Leon Czolgosz, Mike Roselle, and Nancy Morton. I also owe a deep debt to Edward Abbey who inspired this book.
ECODEFENSE is an ongoing project. We hope to publish an updated edition every twelve to eighteen months. Techniques will be refined and updated, new techniques will be included, additional Field Notes will be printed. Your help in this updating process is essential. It is through field experience that the techniques of monkeywrenching can be made safer and more effective. Because direct communication among monkeywrenchers is dangerous, this book and its future editions, as well as the Earth First! Journal , is probably the best medium for communication among ecodefenders. It is your book, your forum, to discuss the techniques and philosophy of wilderness self-defense.
Even communication through ECODEFENSE could be dangerous, though. In writing to us, do not use your real name or put a return address on your missive. We do not need to know who you are. After taking the information from your letter, we will burn both the letter and the envelope. Similarly, no record will be kept of orders for copies of ECODEFENSE in case a group of “plumbers” decides to take a midnight stroll through our file cabinet. By the way, two good friends - Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson - are our security agents.
There is some redundancy in the following pages - primarily concerning matters of security and safety. This redundancy is deliberate. It is for your benefit. Be careful. Do not take chances with your safety or that of others, or with your security. Read and re-read the tips on safety and security. Be rigorous about following such precautions even to the point of constipation.
Of course, this book is for entertainment purposes only. No one involved with this project in any form encourages anyone to do any of the things described herein. We are all fat and out-of-shape (and would rather drink beer and watch TV at home than go out in the nasty, old outdoors). We’re just hoping to make a buck with this book.
· Dave Foreman
January, 1985
Canada del Oro, Arizona
In the eighteen months since its publication, ECODEFENSE: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching has made a bit of a splash. It has been reviewed or discussed in dozens of publications including The Wall Street Journal and US News & World Report, and was the focus of a five minute report on the NBC Nightly News. The terms “monkeywrenching,” “ecodefense,” and “ecotage” have been introduced into the general language. 5000 copies of the book have been sold in less than a year and a half. Sales have been made in all fifty states and in several dozen countries.
The United States Forest Service, other agencies, and corporations have unleashed a terrified outcry against both the book and the practice. Forest Service offices in Oregon have offered rewards of $5000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of tree spikers. One member of Congress has lashed out against monkeywrenching and I have had the pleasure of debating him on NBC’s Today Show. The Willamette National Forest in Oregon produced a twelve page “white paper” which quoted heavily from ECODEFENSE and denounced the practice of monkeywrenching. Former Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus accused me of “destroying the environmental movement to sell a few books and make money” at a debate in Jackson, Wyoming, and Jay Hair, head of the National Wildlife Federation, has been quoted in newspapers as calling me a “terrorist.” I’ve even been denounced on the floor of Parliament in New South Wales.
Monkeywrenching has become a common, if not frequent, practice against the destruction of the wild and the spread of urban cancer. There have been tree spiking incidents in National Forests in all of the western states and in several eastern states. In some cases the Forest Service has gone to great expense to remove spikes from trees so timber sales could proceed; in other cases, timber sales have been quietly withdrawn. Tree spiking incidents have also occurred in Canada and Australia.
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What all of this indicates is that monkeywrenching can be an effective means of protecting wild country from the depredations of industrialism gone berserk. But monkeywrenching must also be rigorously and strategically executed or it may be counterproductive, or dangerous to the perpetrator. Several examples should suffice as a warning to the wise: Howie Wolke, a guide and outfitter from Jackson, Wyoming, received the maximum sentence, six months, for pulling up survey stakes along a proposed gas exploration road in an important roadless area and elk habitat on the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The sentencing Justice of the Peace admitted to having been under strong political pressure from the oil industry to throw the book at Wolke. Howie spent six months in a cramped cell in Pinedale, Wyoming, growing fat on prison hot dogs and white bread, cut off from fresh air and exercise because he was careless.
Two young men were talked into a poorly-considered billboarding caper in Corvallis, Oregon, by an attractive writer for a national magazine. They were caught. Both pulled several weeks apiece in the slammer and paid thousands of dollars in restitution. The reporter got her story, and her magazine’s lawyers got her out of trouble with the law.
The United States Forest Service has received authorization and funds from Congress to hire 500 law enforcement specialists ostensibly to combat marijuana growing on the National Forests, but we can be sure that they will be on the lookout for monkeywrenchers, too. These Freddie coppers will be concentrated in the Pacific Northwest where tree spiking ha,-, been especially rife. They will doubtlessly be outfitted with sophisticated surveillance equipment including night vision devices, and will likely be in better physical condition and perhaps more woods-wise than the standard lardass Freddie law enforcement specialist.
Just last week, FBI agents appeared at my home in Tucson to question one of my housemates, Roger Featherstone, about last spring’s sabotage of the high voltage lines leading from the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Arizona.
All of this, of course, means that the empire is striking back. Monkeywrenchers are effective. They are hitting the exploiters where it hurts - in the pocketbook. In an era when lobbyists for conservation groups can’t even prevent Congress from increasing the already bloated Forest Service road-building budget (which is specially targeted at roadless areas), monkeywrenching may be the most effective tool at the disposal of wilderness lovers. But security, now more than ever, must be of prime importance. Carefully study the Security chapter of this book.4
before you do anything - even something as seemingly innocuous as pulling up survey stakes. Remember Howie Wolke.
The Second Edition of ECODEFENSE represents a major revision and expansion of the first edition. Nearly every chapter of the book has been updated and expanded. Particular attention has been given to the tree spiking, overgrazing, surveying, trapping, and security sections. New material has been added for mining, computer, and urban ecotage. The greatest expansion, however, has been made in the chapter on heavy equipment. Even mechanical idiots should be able to take on a bulldozer with this new material. Many additional illustrations have been used to improve the value of the text. Good as the first edition was, we believe this second edition is a significant improvement.
Looking back over the practice of monkeywrenching, I would offer the following advice to make our defense of the wild even more effective:
1) More attention should be given to destroying roads and using “road spikes” to flatten tires.
considerably more difficult for the Forest Service to remove - even more so if they are the “helix” type of spike. (Several timber sales have been dropped because spike heads were clipped off and the Freddies couldn’t remove them.)
3) Tree spiking is not the only tool to use against logging. Road spiking and destruction, and decommissioning of heavy equipment and trucks deserve to be more widely employed than heretofore.
4) Read, study, memorize and faithfully observe the section on Security in this book. It will keep you out of jail unless your luck is just plain bad.
5) Finally - go out and do something. Pay your rent for the privilege of living on this beautiful, blue-green, living Earth. Monkeywrenching will succeed as a strategic defense of the wild only if it is enthusiastically and joyously undertaken by many individuals in many places.
Again, many people have helped with the production of the second edition of ECODEFENSE. This book would not have been possible without the numerous Earth defenders who have experimented with the techniques described in the first edition and have sent in their suggestions for improvement. (We, of course, welcome suggestions for the third edition!) We are particularly indebted to T.O. Hellenbach who has done as much as anyone, including your editors, to contribute to this book.
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Please note that Bill Haywood is listed as the co-editor of this second edition of ECODEFENSE. This book would simply not have been possible without his careful work in evaluating new ideas, editing and rewriting much of the text sent in, and generally helping to carry the entire project along. I am proud to share credit with Bill for this edition. Thanks to John Davis whose editorial skills straightened out some convoluted sentences in the draft, and whose conscientious love of the wilderness is a continuing inspiration to all of us who work with him. Finally, I owe a special thank-you to my wife, Nancy Morton, for her support and constructive criticism of all that I do, as well as for many f days in the wilderness.
Of course, all the above highfalutin’ strategy is merely in the abstract. This book is for entertainment purposes only. Cecil Andrus is entirely correct. I’m only trying to make a buck with this book and I don’t care if I destroy the environmental movement in the process. I’m only in it for myself, and for the wine, women, and song that goes along with it. What’s on the teevee tonight?
· Dave Foreman
November, 1986
Sierra Tucson, Sonoran Desert
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If a stranger batters your door down with an axe, threatens your family and yourself with deadly weapons, and proceeds to loot your home of whatever he wants, he is committing what is universally recognized - by law and morality - as a crime. In such a situation the householder has both the right and the obligation to defend himself, his family, and his property by whatever means are necessary. This right and this obligation is universally recognized, justified and even praised by all civilized human communities. Self-defense against attack is one of the basic laws not only of human society but of life itself, not only of human life but of all life.
The American wilderness, what little remains, is now undergoing exactly such an assault. Dave Foreman has summarized the character and scale of the assault in the first chapter of this excellent and essential book. With bulldozer, earth mover, chainsaw and dynamite the international timber, mining and beef industries are invading our public lands - property of all Americans - bashing their way into our forests, mountains and rangelands and looting them for everything they can get away with. This for the sake of short-term profits in the corporate sector and multi-million dollar annual salaries for the three-piece-suited gangsters (M.B.A., Harvard, Yale, University of Tokyo, et alia ) who control and manage these bandit enterprises. Cheered on, naturally, by Time, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal, actively encouraged by those jellyfish Government agencies which are supposed to protect the public lands, and as always aided and abetted in every way possible by the quisling politicians of our Western states (such as Babbitt, DeConcini, Goldwater, Hatch, Garn, Symms, Hansen, Wallop, Domenici - to name but a few) who would sell the graves of their own mothers if there’s a quick buck in the deal, over or under the table, what do they care.
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Representative democracy in the United States has broken down. Our legislators do not represent those who elected them but rather the minority who finance their political campaigns and who control the organs of communication - the Tee Vee, the newspapers, the billboards, the radio - that have made politics a game for the rich only. Representative government in the USA represents money not people and therefore has forfeited our allegiance and moral support. We owe it nothing but the taxation it extorts from us under threats of seizure of property, or prison, or in some cases already, when resisted, a sudden and violent death by gunfire.
Such is the nature and structure of the industrial megamachine (in Lewis Mumford’s term) which is now attacking the American wilderness. That wilderness is our ancestral home, the primordial homeland of all living creatures including the human, and the present final dwelling place of such noble beings as the grizzly bear, the mountain lion, the eagle and the condor, the moose and the elk and the pronghorn antelope, the redwood tree, the yellowpine, the bristlecone pine, even the aspen, and yes, why not say it?, the streams, waterfalls, rivers, the very bedrock itself of our hills, canyons, deserts, mountains. . For many of us, perhaps for most of us, the wilderness is as much our home, or a lot more so, than the wretched little stucco boxes, plywood apartments, and wallboard condominiums in which we are mostly confined by the insatiable demands of an overcrowded and everexpanding industrial culture. And if the wilderness is our true home, and if it is threatened with invasion, pillage and destruction - as it certainly is - then we have the right to defend that home, as we would our private rooms, by whatever means are necessary. (An Englishman’s home is his castle; an American’s home is his favorite fishing stream, his favorite mountain range, his favorite desert canyon, his favorite swamp or patch of woods or God-created lake.)
The majority of the American people have demonstrated on every possible occasion that they support the ideal of wilderness preservation; -even our politicians are forced by popular opinion to pretend to support the idea; as they have learned, a vote against wilderness is a vote against their own re-election. We are justified in defending our homes - our private home and public home - not only by common law and common morality but also by common belief. We are the majority; they - the greedy and powerful - are the minority.
How best defend our wilderness home? Well, that is a matter of strategy, tactics and technique, which is what this little book is about. Dave Foreman explains the principles of ecological defense in the complete, compact, and conclusive pages of his chapter on strategy. I can think of nothing I could add nor of anything I would subtract; he says exactly what needs to be said, no more and no less.
I am happy to endorse the publication of Ecodefense. Never was such a book so needed, by so many, for such good reason, as here and now. Tomorrow might well be too late. This is a book that will fit handily in any saddlebag, in any creel, in any backpack, in any river runner’s ammo can - and in any picnicker’s picnic basket. No good American should ever go into the woods again without this book and, for example, a hammer and a few pounds of 60-penny nails. Spike a few trees now and then whenever you enter an area condemned to chainsaw massacre by Louisiana Pacific and its affiliated subsidiary the U.S. Forest Service. You won’t hurt the trees; they’ll be grateful for the protection; and you may save the forest. My Aunt Emma back in West Virginia has been enjoying this pleasant exercise for years. She swears by it. It’s good for the trees, it’s good for the woods, it’s good for the earth, and it’s good for the human soul. Spread the word and carry on!
July 1984
Oracle, Arizona
9
STRATEGIC
MONKEYWRENCHING
In early summer of 1977, the United States Forest Service began an 18 month-long inventory and evaluation of the remaining roadless and undeveloped areas on the National Forests and Grasslands of the United States. During this second Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE 11), the Forest Service identified 2,686 roadless areas of 5,000 acres or more totaling 66 million acres out of the 187 million acres of National Forest lands. Approximately 15 million acres of roadless areas were not included in RARE II because of sloppy inventory procedures or because they had already gone through land use planning after the first RARE program in the early ‘70s. All in all, there were some 80 million acres on the National Forests in 1977 retaining a significant
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degree of natural diversity and wildness (a total area equivalent in size to the state of New Mexico or a square 350 x 350 miles).
About the same time as the Forest Service began RARE 11, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) initiated a wilderness inventory as required by the Federal Land Planning and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) on the 189 million acres of federal land that they manage in the lower 48 states. In their initial inventory, BLM identified 60 million acres of roadless areas of 5,000 acres or more (a total area approximately the size of Oregon or a square 300 x 300 miles).
Along with the National Parks & Monuments, National Wildlife Refuges, existing Wilderness Areas and some state lands, these Forest Service and BLM roadless areas represent the remaining natural wealth of the United States. They are the remnant of natural diversity after the industrial conquest of the most beautiful, diverse and productive of all the continents of the Earth: North America. Turtle Island.
Only one hundred and fifty years ago, the Great Plains were a vast, waving sea of grass stretching from the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico to the boreal forest of Canada, from the oak-hickory forests of the Ozarks to the Rocky Mountains. Bison blanketed the plains - it has been estimated that 60 million of the huge, shaggy beasts moved across the grass. Great herds of pronghorn and elk also filled this Pleistocene landscape. Packs of wolves and numerous grizzly bears followed the immense herds.
One hundred and fifty years ago, John James Audubon estimated that there were several billion birds in a flock of passenger pigeons that flew past him for several days on the Ohio River. It has been said that a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River without touching the ground, so dense was the deciduous forest of the East.
At the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, an estimated 100,000 grizzlies roamed the western half of what is now the United States. The howl of the wolf was ubiquitous. The condor dominated the sky from the Pacific Coast to the Great Plains. Salmon and sturgeon filled the rivers. Ocelots, jaguars, margay cats and jaguarundis roamed the Texas brush and Southwestern deserts and mesas. Bighorn sheep in great numbers ranged the mountains of the Rockies, Great Basin, Southwest and Pacific Coast. Ivory-billed woodpeckers and Carolina parakeets filled the steamy forests of the Deep South. The land was alive.
East of the Mississippi, giant tulip poplars, chestnuts, oaks, hickories and other trees formed the most diverse temperate deciduous forest in the world. On the Pacific Coast, redwood, hemlock, Douglas fir, spruce,
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cedar, fir and pine formed the grandest forest on Earth.
In the space of a few generations we have laid waste to paradise. The tall grass prairie has been transformed into a corn factory where wildlife means the exotic pheasant. The short grass prairie is a grid of carefully fenced cow pastures and wheat fields. The passenger pigeon is no more. The last died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. The endless forests of the East are tame woodlots. The only virgin deciduous forest there is in tiny museum pieces of hundreds of acres. Six hundred grizzlies remain and they are going fast. There are only three condors left in the wild and they are scheduled for capture and imprisonment in the Los Angeles Zoo. Except in northern Minnesota and Isle Royale, wolves are known merely as scattered individuals drifting across the Canadian and Mexican borders (a pack has recently formed in Glacier National Park). Four percent of the peerless Redwood Forest remains and the monumental old growth forest cathedrals of Oregon are all but gone. The tropical cats have.been shot and poisoned from our southwestern borderlands. The subtropical Eden of Florida has been transformed into hotels and citrus orchards. Domestic cattle have grazed bare and radically altered the composition of the grassland communities of the West, displacing elk, moose, bighorn sheep and pronghorn and leading to the virtual extermination of grizzly, wolf, cougar, bobcat and other “varmints.” Dams choke the rivers and streams of the land.
Nonetheless, wildness and natural diversity remain. There are a few scattered grasslands ungrazed, stretches of free-flowing river undammed and undiverted, thousand-year-old forests, Eastern woodlands growing back to forest and reclaiming past roads, grizzlies and wolves and lions and wolverines and bighorn and moose roaming. the backcountry; hundreds of square miles that have never known the, imprint of a tire, the bite of a drill, the rip of a ‘dozer, the cut of a saw, the smell of gasoline.
These are the places that hold North America together, that contain the genetic information of life, that represent sanity in a whirlwind of madness.
In January of 1979, the Forest Service announced the results of RARE II: of the 80 million acres of undeveloped lands on the National Forests, only 15 million acres were recommended for protection against logging, road building and other “developments.” In the big tree state of Oregon, for example, only 370,000 acres were proposed for Wilderness protection out of 4.5 million acres of roadless, uncut forest lands. Of the areas nationally slated for protection, most were too high, too dry, too cold, too steep to offer much in the way of “resources” to the loggers, miners and graziers. Those roadless areas with critical old growth forest values
were allocated for the sawmill. Important grizzly habitat in the Northern Rockies was tossed to the oil industry and the loggers. Off-road-vehicle fanatics and the landed gentry of the livestock industry won out in the Southwest and Great Basin.
During the early 1980s, the Forest Service developed its DARN (Development Activities in Roadless Non-selected) list outlining specific projects in specific roadless areas. The implication of DARN is staggering. It is evidence that the leadership of the United States Forest Service consciously and deliberately sat down and asked themselves, “How can we keep from being plagued by conservationists and their damned wilderness proposals? How can we insure that we’ll never have to do another RARE?” Their solution was simple and brilliant: get rid of the roadless areas. DARN outlines nine thousand miles of road, one and a half million acres of timber cuts, seven million acres of oil and gas leases in National Forest RARE 11 areas by 1987. In most cases, the damaged acreage will be far greater than the acreage stated because roads are designed to split areas in half and timber sales are engineered to take place in the center of roadless areas, thereby devastating the biological integrity of the entire area. The great roadless arras so critical to the maintenance of natural diversity will soon be gone. Species dependent upon old growth and large wild areas will be shoved to the brink of extinction.
But the situation on the National Forests is even worse than DARN indicated. After a careful review of Forest Service documents, Howie Wolke reported in the June 21, 1985, issue of Earth First! that more than 75,000 miles of road are proposed for construction in currently roadless areas on the National Forests over the next fifteen years. This immense road network (enough to encircle the planet three times) will cost the American taxpayer over 3 billion dollars to provide large timber corporations access to a mere 500 million dollars worth of timber.
The BLM wilderness review has been a similar process of attrition. It is unlikely that more than 9 million acres will be recommended for Wilderness out of the 60 million with which the review began. Again, it is the more spectacular but biologically less rich areas that will be proposed for protection.
During 1984, Congress passed legislation designating minimal National Forest Wilderness acreages for most states (generally only slightly larger than the pitiful RARE II recommendations and concentrating on “rocks and ice” instead of crucial forested lands). In the next few years, similar picayune legislation for National Forest Wilderness in the remaining states and for BLM Wilderness will probably be enacted. The other
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roadless areas will be eliminated from consideration. National Forest Management Plans emphasizing industrial logging, grazing, mineral and energy development, road building, and motorized recreation will be implemented. Conventional means of protecting these millions of acres of wild country will largely dissipate. Judicial and administrative appeals for their protection will be closed off. Congress will turn a deaf ear to requests for additional Wildernesses so soon after disposing of the thorny issue. The effectiveness of conventional political lobbying by conservation groups to protect endangered wild lands will evaporate. And in half a decade, the saw, ‘dozer and drill will devastate most of what is unprotected. The battle for wilderness will be over. Perhaps 3% of the United States will be more or less protected and it will be open season on the rest. Unless . . . .
Many of the projects that will destroy roadless areas are economically marginal. It is costly for the Forest Service, BLM, timber companies, oil companies, mining companies and others to scratch out the “resources” in these last wild areas. It is expensive to maintain the necessary infrastructure of roads for the exploitation of wild lands. The cost of repairs, the hassle, the delay, the down-time may just be too much for the bureaucrats and exploiters to accept if there is a widely-dispersed, unorganized, strategic movement of resistance across the land.
It is time for women and men, individually and in small groups, to act heroically and admittedly illegally in defense of the wild, to put a ‘monkeywrench into the gears of the machine destroying natural diversity. This strategic monkeywrenching can be safe, it can be easy, it can be fun, and - most importantly - it can be effective in stopping timber cutting, road building, overgrazing, oil & gas exploration, mining, dam building, powerline construction, off-road-vehicle use, trapping, ski area development and other forms of destruction of the wilderness, as well as cancerous suburban sprawl.
But it must be strategic, it must be thoughtful, it must be deliberate in order to succeed. Such a campaign of resistance would follow these principles:
Monkeywrenching is non-violent resistance to the destruction of natural diversity and wilderness. It is not directed toward harming human beings or other forms of life. It is aimed at inanimate machines and tools. Care is always taken to minimize any possible threat to other people (and to the monkeywrenchers themselves).
Strategic Monkeywrenching
There can be no central direction or organization to monkeywrenching. Any type of network would invite infiltration, agents provocateurs and repression. It is truly individual action. Because of this, communication among monkeywrenchers is difficult and dangerous. Anonymous discussion through this book and its future editions, and through the Dear Ned Ludd section of the Earth First! Journal, seems to be the safest avenue of communication to refine techniques, security procedures and strategy.
· MONKEYWRENCHING IS INDIVIDUAL
Monkeywrenching is done by individuals or very small groups of people who have known each other for years. There is trust and a good working relationship in such groups. The more people involved, the greater are the dangers of infiltration or a loose mouth. Earth defenders avoid working with people they haven’t known for a long time, those who can’t keep their mouths closed, and those with grandiose or violent ideas (they may be police agents or dangerous crackpots).
Ecodefenders pick their targets. Mindless, erratic vandalism is counterproductive. Monkeywrenchers know that they do not stop a specific logging sale by destroying any piece of logging equipment which they come across. They make sure it belongs to the proper culprit. They ask themselves what is the most vulnerable point of a wilderness-destroying project and strike there. Senseless vandalism leads to loss of popular sympathy.
· MONKEYWRENCHING IS TIMELY
There is a proper time and place for monkeywrenching. There are also times when monkeywrenching may be counterproductive. Monkeywrenchers generally should not act when there is a non-violent civil disobedience action (a blockade, etc.) taking place against the opposed project. Monkeywrenching may cloud the issue of direct action and the blockaders could be blamed for the ecotage and be put in danger from the work crew or police. Blockades and monkeywrenching usually do not mix. Monkeywrenching may also not be appropriate when delicate political negotiations are taking place for the protection of a certain area. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. The Earth warrior always thinks: Will monkeywrenching help or hinder the protection of this place?
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Monkeywrenching is a wide-spread movement across the United States. Government agencies and wilderness despoilers from Maine to Hawaii know that their destruction of natural diversity may be met with resistance. Nation-wide monkeywrenching is what will hasten overall industrial retreat from wild areas.
All kinds of people in all kinds of situations can be monkeywrenchers. Some pick a large area of wild country, declare it wilderness in their own minds, and resist any intrusion against it. Others specialize against logging or ORV’s in a variety of areas. Certain monkeywrenchers may target a specific project, such as a giant powerlines construction of a road, or an oil operation. Some operate in their backyards, others lie low at home and plan their ecotage a thousand miles away. Some are loners, others operate in small groups.
Although it is serious and potentially dangerous activity, monkeywrenching is also fun. There is a rush of excitement, a sense of accomplishment, and unparalleled camaraderie from creeping about in the night resisting those “alien forces from Houston, Tokyo, Washington, DC, and the Pentagon.” As Ed Abbey says, “Enjoy, shipmates, enjoy.”
It does not aim to overthrow any social, political or economic system. It is merely non-violent self-defense of the wild. It is aimed at keeping industrial “civilization” out of natural areas and causing its retreat from areas that should be wild. It is not major industrial sabotage. Explosives, firearms and other dangerous tools are usually avoided. They invite greater scrutiny from law enforcement agencies, repression and loss of public support. (The Direct Action group in Canada is a good example of what monkeywrenching is not.) Even Republicans monkeywrench.
The simplest possible tool is used. The safest tactic is employed. Except when necessary, elaborate commando operations are avoided. The most effective means for stopping the destruction of the wild are generally the simplest: spiking trees and spiking roads. There are obviously times when more detailed and complicated operations are called for. But the monkeywrencher thinks: What is the simplest way to do this?
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· MONKEYWRENCHING IS DELIBERATE AND ETHICAL Monkeywrenching is not something to do cavalierly. Monkeywrenchers are very conscious of the gravity of what they do. They are deliberate about taking such a serious step. They are thoughtful. Monkeywrenchers - although non-violent - are warriors. They are exposing themselves to possible arrest or injury. It is not a casual or flippant affair. They keep a pure heart and mind about it. They remember that they are engaged in the most moral of all actions: protecting life, defending the Earth.
A movement based on these principles could protect millions of acres of wilderness more stringently than any Congressional act, could insure the propagation of the grizzly and other threatened life forms better than an army of game wardens, and could lead to the retreat of industrial civilization from large areas of forest, mountain, desert, plain, seashore, swamp, tundra and woodland that are better suited to the maintenance of natural diversity than to the production of raw materials for overconsumptive technological human society.
If loggers know that a timber sale is spiked, they won’t bid on the timber. If a Forest Supervisor knows that a road will be continually destroyed, he won’t try to build it. If seismographers know that they will be constantly harassed in an area, they’ll go elsewhere. If ORVers know that they’ll get flat tires miles from nowhere, they won’t drive in such areas.
John Muir said that if it ever came to a war between the races, he would side with the bears. That day has arrived.
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THE FUTURE OF
MONKEYWRENCHING
In an era of international tensions over bombings, shootings and acts of mass destruction, the word “terrorism” is a guaranteed headline-grabber and a simplistic brand for anyone’s political opposition. Recently, Democratic Representative Pat Williams of Montana used this number one media buzzword to condemn Earth First!, announcing his refusal to consider any EF! wilderness proposals while tree spiking continues.
His sense of moral outrage was shared by another public official, Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts colony. The indignant
governor refused to negotiate with radical colonists whom he associated with numerous attacks on public and private property. Rebels had attacked his home and trashed the offices of the vice-admiralty courts and the Comptroller of Customs, smashing windows and burning records. For turning a deaf ear, Hutchinson received a harbor full of tea in what came to be known as the “Boston Tea Party.” No isolated incident, the destruction of what, in today’s economy, would be over a hundred thousand dollars worth of private property was followed three months later by another successful nighttime raid on a tea ship at dock. Elsewhere in the area, citizens put the monkeywrench to the construction of British fortifications by sinking barges loaded with bricks, tipping over supply wagons and burning hay intended for use as soldier’s bedding.
The Tories of yesteryear lacked only the word “terrorism” with which to brand the women and men who created the United States of America. One of those founding radicals, Thomas Jefferson, warned that “strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest.” He further wrote, “To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself.”
Last century, the institution of slavery was only brought down by prolonged and determined protest that, at its core, was lawless and destructive of property. Slaves used work slowdowns and feigned illness to hurt cotton production. Costly supervision was necessary to prevent deliberate trampling of crops and breaking of tools. At night, cotton fields, barns and gins were burned. Runaway slaves formed guerrilla bands with poor whites and dispossessed Indians, staging swift raids against plantations.
Even the work of white abolitionists, encouraging runaways and funneling them to safety through the “underground railroad,” was destructive of the private economic concerns of those who saw the slave as just another exploitable resource. As with the former British colonial government, the sluggish minds of men in government failed to acknowledge the changing times, and another war was needed to resolve the issues.
To the west, the invasion of sacred lands was rarely welcomed by the native tribes of America. Survey markers and telegraph poles were favorite, and vulnerable, targets of sabotage. The railroad was attacked by Indians who unbolted the rails, or constructed barriers of stacked ties secured to the rails with freshly cut telegraph wire.
Even the peaceful Hopi were not spared the meddling of industrial society. In 1891 came a plan to move them out of their clustered mesa-top villages and onto single-family plots of private land. After survey markers19
were destroyed, government troops were dispatched to arrest the leaders responsible. Faced with a roadblock of warriors armed with bows and arrows, the cavalry officer in charge lured out a Hopi delegation to talk terms. The Indians were seized and marched forward as a human shield. Soldiers occupied the village, and native religious leaders made the first of many trips into imprisonment.
Elsewhere in the West, the introduction of barbed wire in the 1880s saw cattlemen attempt to dominate the formerly public grasslands. Fence cutting wars resulted, with small ranchers and farmers forming secret societies with names like the “Owls,” the “Javelinas,” and the “Blue Devils.” Their spies passed information about new fencing at nighttime meetings protected by the use of secret passwords. Sometimes a damaged fence was posted with signs warning against rebuilding. Estimates of fence cutting damage in Texas alone ranged from 20 to 30 million dollars. Typical of government response, it became a more serious crime to cut an illegal fence, than to build one.
Similarly, in New Mexico, small groups of raiders from Hispanic communities calling themselves “Gorras Blancas” (“whitecaps”) used fence cutting to resist the takeover of their communal land grants by large Anglo cattle corporations.
Even wild animals resisted the destruction of their homelands under the hooves of invading livestock. Many of the so-called “renegade” Wolves, who undertook seemingly wanton attacks on cattle and sheep, were the last surviving members of their packs and had watched their fellow pack members trapped and killed. Arizona’s “Aguila Wolf’ (‘aguila’ is Spanish for ‘eagle’) killed up to 65 sheep in one night. Near Meeker, Colorado, “Rags the Digger” would ruin traplines by digging up traps without tripping them. Many of these avenging Wolves were trap victims themselves, bearing names like “Crip,” “Two Toes,” “Three Toes,” “Peg Leg” and “Old Lefty.”
Whole communities would marshal their resources to kill the last of the Wolves. “Three Toes of Harding County” eluded over 150 men in 13 years of attacking livestock in South Dakota. As recently as 1920, a trapper worked for eight months to kill the famous “Custer Wolf.” East of Trinidad, Colorado, ran a renegade Wolf called “Old Three Toes,” the last of 32 Wolves killed in Butler Pasture. This lonely Wolf befriended a rancher’s collie, who was penned into a chicken run to keep him away from the Wolf. One night they found freedom together by digging from opposite sides of the fence. The collie never returned home, and was killed weeks later by poison bait. Old Three Toes and her litter of Wolf-collie whelps were discovered shortly thereafter
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and all were killed.
Throughout most of the land, the Wolf has vanished, barbed wire rules, the natives have lost their sacred soil, and we are largely slaves to the industrial culture born in the coal-fired furnaces of Europe. Resistance, both lawful and lawless, has come and gone, won and lost, and remains more ‘American” than apple pie. And somewhere, beyond the edge of the ever-spreading pavement, are tales of solitary Wolves and Grizzlies, “traditionals” who shun the missionaries, wild lands that know only freedom, and small bands of monkeywrenchers, wild-eyed and unbending. Is there a future for any of them? Or more to the point, can acts of sabotage really influence events? History has proven that resistance can be effective, so let’s briefly examine how this is possible.
Most businesses, both large and small, operate to produce a relatively small margin of profit, frequently a single digit percentage of overall gross sales. This small net profit is vulnerable to outside tampering, such as a successful consumer boycott which reduces sales. A determined campaign of monkeywrenching affects the other end, by increasing operating costs to the point that they cut into profits. The random act of sabotage accomplishes little, but when cautiously repeated, striking weak points again and again, an exploitative corporation is forced to expand their security efforts and related expenses. Repairs of damages, such as abrasives in lubricating oil, result in several costs, including down-time. Since many businesses run on tight budgets or borrowed money, loss of production, even on a temporary basis, becomes costly. Interest payments on borrowed funds increase, payrolls for idled workers must be met, and buyers of finished products become impatient with missed deadlines. Since reputation, as much as other factors, influences credit, imagine the chilling effect on banks, finance companies, equipment manufacturers (who often extend credit to buyers), and insurance companies (who finance anything these days) when they realize that a few operators, working in critical wild lands, are more susceptible to delays in repayment.
Production scheduling is so critical to financial planning that most businesses have various contingencies to minimize the impact of mechanical failure, inclement weather and other factors. They may anticipate losing an average of two weeks to weather when logging in a certain season. Or there may be plans to rent extra equipment in the event of serious breakdowns. Repeated hits by ecoteurs exhaust the contingencies and cut into the eventual profit.
Some ecotage damage is repaired by funds from insurance companies. If the damage is recurrent, the insurer will increase the deductible,
thereby forcing higher out-of-pocket expenses upon the operator. The insurer will also often increase premiums, insist on higher security expenditures and may even cancel coverage. Also, of course, the operator’s standing with his insurance company is of critical importance to his lenders.
Increases in security costs include pay for guards, guard dog services, security fencing and lighting, and mundane security measures, like driving all heavy equipment to a single secure location (resulting in higher operating costs and lost work time). Heavy equipment is especially vulnerable to sabotage, with down-time often exceeding $50 an hour. Security expenditures can be increased by including urban targets like warehouses, mills and offices as ecotage targets.
In addition, if smaller supporting businesses fear the impact of monkeywrenching against a business to which they sub-contract, they may hesitate to do business, or increase their charges to compensate themselves for also becoming targets.
Ultimately, the entire industry and its financial backers must be made aware that operations in de facto wilderness areas face higher risks and higher costs. Press coverage of monkeywrenching can drive this point home and alert the public in a manner that hurts the corporate image. The charge that monkeywrenching alienates public opinion stems from an incomplete understanding of propaganda and history. Scientific studies of propaganda and the press show that the vast majority of the public remembers the news only in vaguest outline. Details rapidly fade from memory. Basic concepts like “opposition to logging” are all that are retained. History informs us that direct action engenders as much support as opposition. The American Revolution saw as many colonists enter the Tory ranks as enlisted in the Continental Army. During World War U, as many Frenchmen joined Nazi forces as participated in the famous French Underground. The majority of the public floats noncommittally between the conflicting forces.
Finally, the actions of monkeywrenchers invariably enhance the status and bargaining position of more “reasonable” opponents. Industry considers mainline environmentalists to be radical until they get a taste of real radical activism. Suddenly the soft-sell of the Sierra Club and other white-shirt-and-tie eco-bureaucrats becomes much more attractive and worthy of serious negotiation. These moderate environmentalists must condemn monkeywrenching so as to preserve their own image, but they should take full advantage of the credence it lends to their approach.
As for other types of activism, picketing and sit-ins quickly lose their newsworthiness. Boycotts can’t touch primary industries because they lack a consumer market. Even letter-writing campaigns and lobbyists22
are losing ground as the high cost of television advertising places election financing in the hands of well-heeled industrial and labor union PACs (Political Action Committees set up to undermine campaign “reform laws”).
In these desperate times, it is difficult to be both close to Earth and optimistic about her future. The hope that remains is found in the minds of those who care, and the hearts of those few who dare to act.
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Clearcuts springing up in every nook and cranny of the National Forests; high-voltage powerlines marching arrogantly across desert valleys and Midwest farms; seismograph crews scarring roadless areas with their bulldozers, thumper trucks and explosives; survey stakes and their day-glo orange flagging warning of who-knows-what awful scheme; and the ubiquitous signs of overgrazing on the public lands are the hallmarks of the industrial siege on the wild and open space areas of America. As Ed Abbey has said, it looks like an invasion, an invasion
from Mars.
As good patriots, lovers of our native land, it is our duty to resist invasion and to defend our planet. The following chapter describes some of the tools for that defense. A hammer and nails to save the forests, a pair of gloves to pull up survey stakes, a socket wrench for power towers . . . and so on.
The assault on wild nature is on marginal financial ground. By making it cost even more, a few monkeywrenchers can stop the destruction in many places and slow it in others. As evidence of how effective even a few actions can be, look at the hue and cry being raised by the timber industry, their flunkies in the Forest Service, and their hired politicians over a small number of tree-spiking operations. If these efforts multiply, significant blocks of wild country can, be preserved by wilderness patriots.
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Tree spiking is an extremely effective method of deterring timber sales, which seems to becoming more and more popular. Mill operators are quite wary of accepting timber which has a likelihood of contamination with hidden metal objects - saws are expensive, and a “spiked” log can literally bring operations to a screeching halt, at least until a new blade can be put into service. The Forest Service and timber industry are very nervous about spiking - when the subject of monkeywrenching is brought up, this is the form most commonly discussed. On the one hand, the Forest Service often fails to publicize incidents of spiking, on the theory that the less the practice is publicized, the less it is likely to spread. But when the Freddies do publicly acknowledge that a spiking has occurred, they often make a considerable effort to find the perpetrators, even to the point of offering substantial cash rewards.
There are two basic philosophies of tree-spiking. Some people like to spike the base of each tree, so that the sawyer, in felling the tree, will almost certainly encounter one of the spikes with the chainsaw. This would at the very least require the sawyer to stop and sharpen the saw, and might require the replacement of the chain. If this happens with enough trees, the amount of “down time” caused to the sawyers would pose a serious hindrance to operations. In this type of spiking, the spiker drives several nails (or non-metallic spikes, about which more later) at a downward angle into the first two or three feet of each tree above the ground. The nails are spaced so that a sawyer, in felling the tree, is likely to hit at least one of them.
There is an objection to this type of spiking -the possibility, however remote, that the sawyer might be injured, either by the kickback of the saw striking the nail, or by the chain, should it break when striking the spike. A friend of ours who worked for many years as a logger in Colorado says that in numerous incidents of striking metal objects with his saw - including one time when the impact was great enough to cause him to swallow his chaw of tobacco - he never once had a broken chain or was otherwise hurt. Yet the possibility is there. Because of this possibility, we do not recommend this type of spiking.
The second philosophy of tree spiking favors placing the spikes in the trees well above the area where the tellers will cut - as many feet up the trunk as one can conveniently work. The object of the spiking in this case is to destroy the blades in the sawmill. Since in
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large mills the blades are either operated from a control booth some distance from the actual cutting, or are protected by a plexiglas shield, this method is unlikely to cause anyone physical injury even should a blade shatter upon striking a spike, which is an unlikely event. It is true that in small, “backyard” sawmills the operator might be standing close to the blade, but we would assume that anyone contemplating spiking would never consider doing it on other than the largest timber sales, where the trees are destined for a corporate, rather than a small, family-operated mill. Locally owned and operated sawmills are seldom a major threat to wilderness. It is usually the big, multi-national corporations whose “cut-and-run” philosophy devastates the land and leaves the local economy in shambles when all the big trees are cut and the main office decides to pull out and move to greener pastures.
I anticipate an objection at this point. “Wait a minute,” someone says, “if the purpose of spiking trees is to save them from being cut, then what good does it do if the tree wrecks a blade in the mill? It’s too late to save the tree, isn’t it?” The answer is that the value of spiking is in its long-term deterrent effect. If enough trees are spiked in roadless areas, eventually the corporate thugs in the timber company boardrooms, along with their corrupt lackeys who wear the uniform of the Forest Service, will realize that timber sales in our few remaining wild areas are going to be prohibitively expensive. And since profits are the name of the game, they will begin to think twice before violating the wilderness.
In many cases,, people have spiked timber in a given area, and then have sent (anonymous!) warning to the authorities. If this is done before the timber has actually been sold (the Forest Service plans timber sales years in advance, but actual sale of the timber to a logging company is one of the last steps in the process) the effect on competitive bidding can be considerable. In fact the sale may be quietly dropped. In cases where the timber has already been sold prior to spiking, the Freddies (upon receiving a warning) have sent crews into the woods to locate and remove the spikes - at substantial expense in overtime to the agency. If this happened often enough, it could not fail to reduce the total number of timber sales substantially, particularly in this era of concern over the federal budget.
We will describe several methods of spiking trees, will go into the when” and the “where” of spiking, and will deal with the sensitive matter of when and how to announce a spiking. First, we stress some basic security considerations.
Spiking trees is a potentially dangerous activity. The Forest Service
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has increased its law-enforcement budget considerably in the last couple of years, and one reason has been the increased incidence of monkeywrenching. Another reason for increased law-enforcement has been the stepped-up campaign by the Feds to eliminate marijuana growing from the public lands, but it should be obvious that a cop who’s in the woods looking for dope is going to try to arrest any monkeywrenchers he might encounter by chance as well.
The Freddies (and other Federal land-use agencies as well) are becoming increasingly sophisticated in law-enforcement, and it would be unfortunate to underestimate them. According to a recent column by Jack Anderson, these agencies employ such methods as surveillance (of suspicious persons), and mail interception (presumably again involving those who have for some reason attracted their suspicions). They may have agents in the woods in plain clothes, posing as hikers, campers or fishermen, and it is even possible that agents might be in the woods at night on stakeouts, equipped with night-vision devices.
Obviously, if a monkeywrencher is contemplating spiking trees in a remote roadless area, long in advance of a timber sale, the chances of encountering cops are relatively slim. Conversely, if a highly controversial timber sale is involved, especially one in which there already has been monkeywrenching committed or at least threatened, the danger to the monkeywrencher is very real. For this reason alone, it is preferable to spike trees preventively, rather than as a last-ditch effort to save a seemingly doomed grove.
Tree spiking should never be done alone. In addition to the person or persons who are doing the actual spiking, at least one person should have the sole duty of acting as lookout. At the, first sign of any other people in the vicinity, spiking should cease and the team should quietly withdraw. The team should use the drop-off and pick-up method of access, and should follow all recommended precautions as to clothing, footwear and tools (see chapter on Security).
Spiking is much easier done in broad daylight than in the dark. Not only can a team work much faster in full light, but in darkness it is all too easy to be sloppy and fail to cover up the signs of one’s activities. If a team is spiking in a remote roadless area and takes full security precautions, there is no reason why they cannot operate securely in daytime. While it, is true that in daylight one is more likely to encounter other humans in the woods, it is conversely true that almost any activity in the woods at night, if detected, will be automatically deemed suspicious and investigated.
Assuming that spikers are working in a remote roadless area, and
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are not working during the hunting season (a dangerous time to be out in the woods, since on much of the public lands the highest period of use occurs at this time), the greatest danger will be from casual encounter,s with Forest Service field personnel - timber markers, survey crews and the like - who might be working in or near your area. It is best if you know where these crews are working at all times. If you have a source within the agency, fine, but you can more safely get this information from continued observation and from knowing your area well. These crews tend to work in the same area for weeks at a time, and often will live in temporary field quarters (trailers or even tents) rather than commute every day from the District Ranger Station or Supervisor’s Office. Another type of people you might encounter in the woods. especially if you are working in the area of a timber sale which has already been announced for public bidding, is representatives of logging companies who might be checking out the timber before deciding their bids. Needless to say, the last thing you want to happen to you is to fall into the hands of these people.
A general rule on when to spike might be, “the earlier the better.” If one waits until just before the timber is sold, not only are security problems greater, but it will be easier for the authorities to locate the spikes. On the other hand, if one is able to spike several years in advance of a sale, nature has had time to disguise the work of the monkeywrencher by covering the spikes with bark. Of course, if the Freddies have already marked the boundaries of the sale area or perhaps even the individual trees which are to be cut, the spiker knows exactly where to work without any guessing. Nevertheless, with proper intelligence monkeywrenchers can have a good idea of where future timber sales will be long before the marking stage.
Not only does the Forest Service earmark specific timber sales five years in advance, but in their 50-year Forest Plans, the Freddies conveniently identify all of the concentrations of “commercial” timber in each National Forest - and all too often, they openly acknowledge that they intend to cut almost all of it, sooner or later. See the section on Security (the part on intelligence gathering) for secure means of keeping posted on what an agency is up to. Study the data and identify areas of critical interest to you which appear to be threatened. With plenty of advance warning, you can act deliberately and precisely.
Since a lot of monkeywrenching is nevertheless going to occur at the last possible minute, it is helpful to have a basic knowledge of
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timber marking practices. Unfortunately, there is really no uniform system, and practices may change from time to time. Timber markers generally use spray paint, although sometimes flagging (or flagging and paint) is used to mark the boundaries of the area (the “unit” within which cutting will take place). One color will be used to mark the perimeter, while another color will be used to mark individual trees to be cut within the unit. In a clearcut, only the perimeter is marked, since everything within is to be removed. A given timber sale will usually have several units within it, and they may be widely scattered or close together. You may see numbers painted on some of the trees - these are the unit numbers. At the present time in the Northern Rockies, the Freddies are using red or orange paint to mark unit boundaries, and yellow or blue paint to mark the trees within the units which are to be cut. Trees to be cut are sometimes marked with an “X,” although sometimes only a horizontal slash of paint is used. But beware - in timber sales in which most but not all of the trees are to be cut, the trees which are to be left may be painted. Because of the many differences in marking practices, it is advisable to know the system being used in your area.
Basic spiking involves the use of a large hammer and a number of large nails. The hammer should be fairly large - it is difficult to drive large nails into a tree with an ordinary carpenter’s hammer. The best type of hammer to use is one of the “single-jack” variety (a one-handed sledgehammer) with a head weighing 2-1/2 or 3 pounds. As for the nails, they should be reasonably large, but one should bear in mind that the larger the nails, the more time and energy are required to drive them. Perhaps the ideal size would be a 60 penny (60d) nail. This nail is about 6-1/4 inches long and is the largest “common” nail readily available in most building supply stores. Larger nails (called spikes) are sold by their size in inches. Spikes should not be needed in most cases, although they would be useful in special cases, such as where extremely large trees are involved.
Another tool should probably be added to the basic spiking kit. This is a small pair of bolt-cutters. It need only be powerful enough to cut the heads off the nails. The reason to add this tool is that in several cases, the Freddies have sent crews into the woods to locate (with metal detectors) and remove (with crowbars) as many spikes as possible. Cutting the heads off the nails (after driving them nearly all the way into the tree) should make the Freddies’ task all the more fun. Note:
Drive the nail almost all the way into the tree. Cut the head off with the bolt-cutters. Then, drive the now-headless nail the remainder of the way into the tree. Remember, the more time and money the Freddies expend on this sort of thing, the fewer trees are going to be cut and the more wilderness saved. We cannot overestimate the value of removing the heads from the nails. We have heard of at least one case in which the Forest Service has located trees with spikes so treated - and has been unable to remove the nails. Although the Freddies publicly announced that they had removed all the spikes, the sale was quietly scuttled.
Since the more trees that are spiked, the greater the deterrent factor, one nail per tree ought to be sufficient. To deter a major timber sale, the spiking of several hundred trees might be a worthy goal, but even a few dozen spiked trees will be of some deterrent value. It might be noted that on Meares Island in British Columbia, opponents of logging,
working systematically and in teams, have spiked literally thousands of trees to great effect. But spiking does not have to be on this scale to be effective. It need only be repeated in enough roadless areas to slow down the logging of old growth trees.
Trees should be spiked at various intervals above the ground. While it would be acceptable to drive some of the nails in at the height of a standing person, since this is the most convenient location, an effort ought to be made to place them higher. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, nails placed above head height will be more difficult to spot by investigators, and second, if all the nails are driven in at the same height it will render the searchers’ task all the more easy. There are a number of ways in which nails can be placed high. If it is possible to obtain climbing spikes (metal spurs which attach to boots, used in conjunction with a waist belt) these can be employed. Climbing spikes are fairly expensive when purchased from forestry supply houses, but it might be possible to locate an old pair (they are used by smokejumpers and others in forestry work) or to improvise a pair. Or, a spiker can fabricate a light, portable ladder which can be carried from tree to tree. Another method would be for the spiker to stand on a partner, s shoulders while driving the nails. In regions which get considerable snowfall, a good solution would be to spike in the winter, using skis or snowshoes when there is several feet of snow on the ground.
Some effort should be made to cover the signs of one’s work in a spiking operation. The ideal spiking would take place several years before a timber sale, indeed even a couple of years or so before marking crews or survey crews are likely to be in the area. This gives nature a chance to cover the signs of the spiking by growing bark over the nails. When a sale is imminent, it may be necessary to issue a warning to the effect that the trees have been spiked, but if this was done several years in the past the task of the authorities in locating (and especially in removing) all the spikes will be difficult, if not impossible. Perhaps the greatest deterrent effect to a timber sale would be in a situation in which the authorities actually find a few spikes in an area but realize that there are probably many more unlocated ones out there.
However, in many cases a spiker will not have the luxury of knowing that there will be time for nature to cover the signs of the work. After driving the nail in flush, the head of the nail should be covered so as to camouflage all signs of the work. Ideally, a piece of bark should be fixed (perhaps with glue or cement) over the nail. But pitch might be used, or in a pinch, paint which blends in with the natural bark. A brown felt marker can also be used to disguise the shiny head of the nail after it is driven into the tree.
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*Be cautious when buying large quantities of nails. Although nails are common items and their possession (in the absence of other evidence) would constitute only the barest of circumstantial evidence, it would be wise never to buy them where you are known or might be remembered.
*Be careful about leaving fingerprints on spikes. After purchasing them, carefully wipe them clean and place them in a cloth bag or wrap them up to be carried in your pack for field use. Wear gloves while spiking trees (see below) and do not touch the spikes unless your hands are gloved.
*In addition to the security reasons for wearing gloves, they will protect your hands. A hard day of pounding spikes can blister the hands of the toughest. Besides being painful, blisters might well be considered evidence against someone suspected of spiking.
*It has been suggested that a non-ferrous hammer be used for spiking, as such a hammer would be less noisy than one with a steel head. (Such hammers, made of brass or other soft alloys, are used for specialized purposes, such as in working around flammable gases or liquids where a spark struck from a steel hammer might be disastrous.) However, drawbacks associated with this type of hammer might be its cost and uncommon nature (though such hammers might be available from an electrical parts store). The softer metal would also probably tend to mar easily.
*For large old-growth trees, “bridge timber spikes” (about one foot long) can be particularly effective. These spikes cost about 70 cents each and require a stout arm to drive. A heavy hammer (small sledge) that can be gripped with both hands may be the most effective tool. Suburban building supply stores sometimes have these large spikes in bins with the rest of the nails.
*Helix (spiral) nails are the ultimate in metallic spikes - these are the type of nails which were used in large quantities on Meares Island. The spiral makes the nail extremely difficult to remove, and removal is virtually impossible when the head of the nail is clipped off. These nails come in three sizes suitable for tree spiking: 8”, 10” and 12”. While the 8” size is adequate for most jobs, the 10” and 12” sizes can be driven even when the head has been removed in advance - a great advantage. Note: Driving these spikes is not easy. You will need to be in shape. You may want to use a heavier hammer, with a longer (18”) handle.
A disadvantage of helix nails is that they may not be available in
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just any building supply store - you may have to look around to find them. They are also expensive, although they are much cheaper if bought in quantity (by the box). Call around (use a pay phone) to check on availability and price (prices may vary widely). If you need an excuse for buying them, say you are building a bridge to a piece of remote property owned by your uncle. Use the same precautions to protect your identity in buying helix nails that you would use with any unusual item - never buy such nails in your own community (unless it is a large city), never go back to the same store twice, and never leave such things lying around your house or car.
*A good quality, US-made 20”-24” bolt-cutter (cost about $80) is adequate for 60d spikes or helix spikes 8” and smaller. This size bolt-cutter can easily be carried in the woods with you to de-head your spikes after you drive them most of the way into the tree. You can then drive them in the rest of the way without their heads. Be sure to use eye protection when using bolt-cutters to de-head spikes (goggles or something comparable). The heads of nails can really fly.
For 10” and larger helix spikes, 30”-36” bolt cutters are necessary. De-head these spikes at home (large bolt-cutters are cumbersome and heavy to carry in the woods). These larger spikes can be easily driven in without their heads. You may prefer to rent one of these larger bolt-cutters for a day or two and de-head an entire box of spikes at home. If you do rent one (to save the cost of purchase), do not leave your ID as security. Instead, leave a cash deposit ($150 generally required) which will be refunded when you return the bolt-cutter.
*Most large (8” to 12”) spikes are either 5/16 or 3/8-inch in diameter. Choose a bolt cutter with a slightly larger capacity than your spikes, i.e., ½-inch or larger. (Spike metal falls into the “soft” or “medium” category on the “capacity chart,” which is a small metal tag usually affixed to each set of bolt-cutters.) Getting cutters with greater capacity allows for easier, faster clipping and prolongs the bolt-cutter’s life.
*The distinctive marks left by your particular bolt cutter will be destroyed by pounding in the spikes. The marks on the jaws of the bolt cutter can be removed by simply filing the jaws.
*A flat-faced, 3 pound sledge with a long handle (18”) is ideal for driving large helix spikes.
*It has been suggested that “power-actuated fastening systems” might be used for spiking trees. These are simply “nail guns” which are used in construction. They fire a special cartridge (generally .22 caliber) to drive masonry nails into concrete. The longest nails which these guns
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fire are usually only 3”, but since the gun is designed to put them into concrete it is likely that they would bury themselves completely in wood. An obvious advantage to using one of these would be that a spiker could drive many nails without tiring. Disadvantages include noise, the necessity to retrieve all expended cartridge cases (which would certainly constitute traceable, “ballistics” evidence), cost, and possible difficulties in purchasing the guns, nails and cartridges. Under OSHA regulations, these tools can only be used by trained workers. The distributors will provide training, but it is obvious that prospective purchasers should keep their real identity secret. Manufacturers of these “fastening systems” include UNISET, San Diego Powder Tool, Red Head, and Gunnebo. Editor’s note: this method has not yet been field tested, to our knowledge.
*Spikes have actually been shot into trees using a bow and arrow. A 55 lb. bow was used to shoot aluminum-shafted arrows with a special adapter on the head into which 20d or 30d nails had been inserted. Penetration of up to 31/2 inches was reported. The shaft was removed after shooting.
*It has been suggested that spikes (perhaps short sections of rebar or nails encased in sabots) might be shot high into trees from a muzzleloading rifle of large caliber. This idea has yet to be field tested, to our knowledge. It is not recommended that anyone try this unless they have great knowledge of firearms, and then it should be done very carefully.
*Since the Freddies have been known to search for spikes by sending crews into the woods with metal detectors, some means of confusing and complicating their operations would be useful. One method would be for a team to drive numerous small nails into trees as part of a large spiking operation. The small nails can be driven much more quickly and quietly than large ones, but if they are well concealed only an experienced operator with a good metal detector would be able to differentiate them from the large nails.
*It has also been suggested that steel shot might be sufficient to trigger a positive response in a metal detector. This needs to be field tested. If it works, an ecoteur need only to walk through the woods, firing into trees with a shotgun, to cause the timber beasts endless confusion.
*In places where spiking is rampant, the authorities may go so far as to “dust” trees with dyes in powder form. These powders are almost invisible to the naked eye, but will show up under an ultraviolet or
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“black” light. To avoid compromising oneself in such a situation, minimize contact with the tree (resist the temptation to hug it!), put your gloves in a plastic bag when you are done (if you’re not disposing of them immediately), and launder your clothes after you get home. You might also purchase an ultraviolet light (available from scientific supply houses, novelty and “head” shops). Editor’s note: in this age of budgetary restraints, the Freddies are not likely to go to this extreme except in special cases, such as ones in which timber already sold has been spiked en route to the mill.
*In spiking a large timber sale, concentrate on the closest part of the sale to the main road as this will tend to disinterest the contractor in continuing with the rest of the sale.
*For extra effect, combine large and small nails. Use only one large spike per tree, but pound in several smaller nails as well. This gives people who cannot drive in large spikes something to do and it further protects the tree. The metal detector can’t tell the difference between large and small spikes.
*A hand-operated bit and brace can be used to drill holes into trees for the insertion of “super spikes.” After drilling the hole, a section of sharpened rebar can be driven into the tree. Be sure to cover the hole with bark (liquid wood or some other adhesive can be used to secure the bark). While this method of spiking is very labor-intensive, it shouldn’t take many such spikes to have a deterrent effect.
*For a major spiking operation, you may wish to stash a box of spikes in the woods in the summer (when access is easier), and then ski in during the winter and do the spiking. Be sure to hide the spikes where you can find them even if they are buried under several feet of snow.
*A military surplus green canvas amino bag is perfect for transporting spikes in the woods.
*Avoid imported (Korean, Taiwanese, etc.) spikes and stick to U.S. or Canadian brands. Cheap imports may be softer and bend easier when driving.
*The type of tree may determine the size of your spikes and whether or not you de-head them before driving. Pines and cedars are relatively soft, allowing even de-headed 60d nails to be driven in without bending (a de-headed 60d nail would likely bend in harder wood). Douglas Fir is a bit harder; spikes smaller than 5/16-inch diameter should not be de-headed prior to driving. Old growth Hemlock is extremely hard. Experiment with the various types of trees in your area.
*Resist the temptation to use your spiking nails around the house.
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Examination of spikes can determine their manufacturer, and it’s best not to have similar nails where you live.
*”Traditional” spiking, as described above, is relatively simple and quite effective. However, the serious eco-raider might do well to consider some of the alternative methods of spiking, as described by T. 0. Hellenbach. These methods do require more specialized equipment, and are therefore more costly in monetary terms to the spiker, but they offer distinct advantages, both in added security and in effectiveness.
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Just as spiking is named for the spike-like quality of the fifty and sixty-penny nails used, so “pinning” is named for a lowly steel pin which, buried in the tissue of a living tree, is designed to wreak havoc with the butchering blade of the sawmill. As levels of protective security increase to stem the swelling tide of tree spiking, silent new methods will become necessary for those courageous enough to infiltrate the guarded stands of doomed trees. The loud ring of hammer on spike is replaced by the gentle hum of the cordless electric drill as it creates a small cavity for the secreting of a steel pin.
Because the basic equipment for tree pinning is more expensive than that required for spiking, it is essential to “shop by phone” and get the best price possible. Drill prices, for example, can vary as much as $50 from one store to the next.
DRILLS - Many models and types of cordless electric drills are currently available, but the best, in terms of torque and price, are probably those manufactured by Black & Decker. Their basic model 9020 sells for $25 to $40. Its slow speed and limited battery storage capacity allow for drilling only 15 to 25 holes, depending on the toughness of the wood. Still, you can buy three or four of this model for the price you’ll pay for the vastly superior model 1940 ($80 to $100). The model 1940 will drill twice as many holes as the 9020, and will do it more quickly due to its higher RPM rate. It also has a detachable power pack that allows you to plug in a fresh set of batteries as needed. The battery packs range in price from $25 to $50, but you may have to check with a considerable number of retailers to find someone who stocks them on the shelf. Do not order them from the manufacturer unless you can have them shipped to a trusted friend who lives a thousand miles away. Also, never return the warranty registration cards to the manufacturers since this creates a paper trail that is of great assistance to Officer Dogooder and his trusty bloodhounds.
Finally, read the instructions that come with your drill and follow them to the letter. This is your best insurance against equipment failure.
DRILL BITS - Use only high speed “twist” drill bits of a type normally used to drill through metal. The flutes and grooves in this
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type of bit force the sawdust debris out of the hole unlike the wood bit. On the first try, a twist bit can drill a 4 to 4-1/2 inch deep hole. A second effort in the same hole (after clearing out the sawdust) can extend the depth to double this. Usually, however, it is not necessary to drill in more than 4 inches to accommodate a pin of up to three inches.
APRON - A simple cloth apron makes a handy holder for pins of at least two sizes. It also allows you to wipe your gloves clean (of silicon - more on this later).
PINS - At a welder’s supply, buy one-quarter inch steel welding rod. It comes in thirty-six inch lengths, two rods per pound, at $1 to $1.50 a pound. For the sake of variety on different jobs, substitute either the threaded or zinc-coated steel rod found in the hardware section of most lumber yards.
Use a hacksaw to cut the steel rods into three and four inch lengths. This allows you to fit the pin to different hole depths.
SAFETY GLASSES - Buy and wear the simple plastic safety glasses that do not block your side vision.
RAGS - Always have plenty of clean rags available to keep your equipment wiped free of fingerprints.
CAULK - Buy a standard caulk gun and tubes of clear silicon caulk (like GE’s Silicon 11). This keeps it quick, clean and cheap.
Pinning is best accomplished by a two-person team using the following five steps:
1) Drill a hole at a slight downward angle in the tree. Your drill bit should be slightly larger in diameter than that of your steel pins.
2) Use the caulk gun to squeeze some clear silicon into the hole.
3) Insert the steel pin. If the hole is more than four inches deep,
use a four inch pin. If the wood in a particular spot is too tough, don’t force it. Use a three or even two inch pin in a shallower hole. Another piece of steel rod, from 6 to 12 inches long, is used to push the pin to the bottom of the hole. The silicon glues it in place (otherwise a powerful magnet could pull it out).
4) Place another dab of clear silicon at the mouth of the hole. This seals the hole against invasion by bugs or disease.
5) Use a chip of bark stuck onto the silicon to camouflage the opening.
Because of the relative silence of this technique, it can be used in patrolling sections of timber slated for felling. You should not limit41
yourself to standing trees alone, however. Effective monkeywrenching involves examining every step in the processing of old-growth timber, from Mountainside to mill door. Since metal detectors are often used to locate nails, old fence wire and other scrap metal in logs before milling, observe this process from a safe distance to see if you can infiltrate the work area at night and insert your pins after the metal detection phase. If additional silence is necessary, switch to a brace and bit (a crank like hand drill available at all hardware stores ). This entails more manual labor, but you’re not going to need to pin fifty logs. Six to a dozen will do quite well. Make sure you remove any telltale shavings or sawdust that can reveal your activities.
· TO. Hellenbach
*Jam a branch in a drilled hole after it is pinned. When the tree is de-barked in the mill, it will not appear as suspicious as a plastic-filled hole would, and will merely appear to be a knot.
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Tree spiking has forced the development of a number of countermeasures, the most significant of which include the use of metal detectors to locate metallic spikes embedded in tree trunks. Many sawmills routinely screen all fallen logs at the mill to remove commonplace metallic objects like nails and old barbed wire. There is an increasing likelihood that conventional metal spikes will be detected before reaching their intended target - the costly sawmill blade. Editor’s note: this does not mean that metallic spikes are not still useful - the reaction to their use thus far indicates that they are having an impact. But non-metallic spikes have obvious advantages.
Ongoing research has developed several non-metallic spikes, or pins, that promise to defeat the metal detector and wreak havoc inside the sawmill. The first of these is a high-fired ceramic pin made of the same type of stoneware used by potters who hand-throw (on a potter’s wheel) the usual line of cups, bowls, plates, etc. The primary ingredient is stoneware clay, produced in a wide range of formulations by clay companies and ceramic supply outfits scattered across the nation. Most such manufacturers and suppliers are located in large metropolitan areas where monkeywrenchers can purchase their clay over the counter for cash - leaving no paper trail like name and address for the curious police investigator. The clay usually comes in twenty-five pound bags, two such bags making up a fifty-pound box. Be sure that the clay type (known as the “clay body”) that you purchase contains no iron oxide, an ingredient that is commonly added to stoneware clays. If sufficiently concentrated, this iron oxide may be picked up by metal detectors. To find a clay that is suitable, make your first inquiry by phone, obtaining the name or number of the stoneware clay that contains no iron oxide. At a later date, send the most inconspicuous-looking member of your spiking team in to purchase a bag or box. If necessary, they can be “picking it up for a friend,” or can be college art students purchasing materials for a project.
As an additional measure, these clay bodies can be stiffened and made even more durable by the addition of “grog,” a gritty, sand-like material usually made of a high-fired refractory material (ground stoneware) or simply a pure quartz sand. This can also be purchased from clay suppliers, and you should specify an 80 or coarser screening. Do
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not buy fine powder grog, or “soft” grog made of weaker lower-fired materials. The grog is blended into the clay body through a process called “wedging” which consists of simply kneading the material in by hand until it is thoroughly and evenly distributed throughout the clay. Since clay formulas vary from one type to another and from one company to the next, we cannot specify the amount of grog to add to your clay. Just add a little at a time until the clay feels a little coarser and stiffer. If you add too much, the clay will be hard to roll out and will not stick together well. Keep in mind that the clay must remain “plastic” to allow you to readily shape it.
When handling the clay directly, always wear plastic gloves. The best types are the disposable examination gloves used by doctors and available at medical supply houses. More expensive, but more readily available, are the plastic gloves sold at all grocery stores in the kitchenware section. These types are more durable and will survive repeated use. Whichever type you use, try to obtain gloves with a skin-tight fit.
The pins are made simply by rolling the clay out to the desired thickness, and cutting them to the appropriate length. As with the metallic pins described above, you will have to use a drill to make a hole in the tree for inserting the pin. Decide what type of drill (cordless battery type or old fashioned brace and bit) you will use and find the largest bit you can readily use, up to one inch in diameter. Experiment on a recently fallen tree to insure that your drill and bit combination allows you to drill a hole up to four or five inches deep. The thicker your ceramic pin is, the more likely it is to either dull or break a sawmill blade. Therefore, if you can drill one-inch diameter holes, roll out the clay to a one-inch thickness. It will shrink some in drying and firing and will fit easily in a one-inch hole. As to pin length, four inches is about the maximum