[Jeff Higgins]

This area is a haven for these lunatics. They have now quite rightly been labelled as "eco-terrorists". Their list of favorite pastimes (in addition to burning down new homes) is really quite extensive.

Spiking trees is one of the more popular. They used to drive railroad spikes into trees in timber sales areas. The idea is to have the saws at the mills hit these spikes, causing them to explode and hopefully injure or kill the operators. The logging companies caught on and started using metal detectors to find them. Now they use glass or ceramic spikes.

They also like to raid the local farms. They hit a mink farm about 30 miles from my place last year, turning loose several hunderd of them. Most of them died from exposure or starvation, and were being found for weeks afterwards. The ones that were recaptured killed each other in their cages; mink and other mustalids have very strong family/territorial instincts, and cannot be mixed up in the cages. No way to tell them apart once they are out. In the end, almost every mink died as a direct result of this effort to set them free.

Let's not forget the old standby; bombing university labs. How many millions have been lost to this activity? How much valuable, life saving research has been lost?

The ironic part is, the ones they catch tend to come from well to do backgrounds, with good educations. They have led comfortable, even pampered lives. What drives them to this? Guilt?