EUGENE WEEKLY PRESENTS
SPRING
THE
WELLNESS
ECO-SABOTEUR GETS FIVE-YEAR SENTENCE
Rebecca Rubin participated in removing dogs from a California testing facility and in
releasing wild horses from an Oregon BLM facility where the mustangs were held before
some were auctioned for slaughter. Rubin also aided in burning down that BLM facility
and another wild horse facility in Litchfield, Calif., according to a government sentenc-
ing memo. From her 2006 indictment for what the U.S. government has labeled “eco-
terrorism” until 2012 when she turned herself in, Rubin was a fugitive. On Jan. 27, Eugene
federal judge Ann Aiken sentenced Rubin to five years in prison. The government had
recommended seven and a half years.
Eugene’s Civil Liberties Defense Center calls “the federal government’s ongoing pros-
ecution of environmental and animal rights activists” the Green Scare. The CLDC says that
includes “the government, corporations and politicians labeling activists as ‘eco-terrorists’
and national security threats and giving them long prison sentences.”
Rubin apologized for her participation in the eco-sabotage in court and in a letter to the judge,
but the government cited her years as a fugitive in Canada and her not giving the names of other
participants as reasons for asking for a longer sentence. Joseph Dibee and Josephine Overaker are
the last remaining defendants in what the FBI calls “Operation Backfire,” and they remain at large.
According to her letter to Aiken, Rubin was a fugitive because “I was terrified to be
compared to Osama bin Laden in the media, and to have my picture on ‘Most Wanted Ter-
rorist’ posters” and feared 30 years to life in prison. Rubin writes that as a child, books such
as Charlotte’s Web had an effect on her, and when she committed her acts of eco-sabotage,
“I believed my only motivation was my deep love for the Earth; I now understand that
impatience, anger, egotism and self-righteousness were also involved.”
Aiken also sentenced Rubin to read Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath and UO
professor Mary Wood’s Nature’s Trust. Aiken previously required another Operation Back-
fire defendant to read Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea.
While Rubin did not receive the government’s “terrorism enhancement” for her animal
rights and ecologically motivated crimes, several others who served time in prison under
Operation Backfire were given the terrorism label. The BLM never rebuilt the Eastern
Oregon wild horse facility. — Camilla Mortensen
FISHY BUSINESS GOING ON IN CONGRESS
Pacific lingcod isn’t really a cod, but its white, flakey cod-like meat is popular with
chefs. In 1999, lingcod and seven other groundfish species were declared overfished, and
the Pacific Fishery Management Council and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis-
tration (NOAA) Fisheries implemented catch restrictions. By 2005, stocks of lingcod were
declared rebuilt seven years ahead of schedule, according to Ted Morton of Pew Charitable
Trusts. Morton says lingcod is an example of one of the successes under the Magnuson-
Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, but the environmental protections in
that act are under fire from a proposed bill by Washington Republican Rep. Doc Hastings.
The bipartisan Magnuson-Stevens Act was first established in 1976 and has been pe-
riodically reauthorized. It is currently expired and up for reauthorization, a process that
could take several years. In the meantime Congressman Peter DeFazio says it operates un-
der a continuing resolution. DeFazio, who hosted a listening session on Magnuson-Stevens
in Coos Bay Jan. 23, says the act, which regulates fisheries 3 to 200 miles offshore, is
“tremendously important to Oregonians” as it affects those who eat seafood, commercial
fishing economies, recreational fishers and those who care about ocean habitat. Before the
Magnuson-Stevens Act, “it was like the Wild West out there.”
DeFazio says he had hoped to work on a bill on a bipartisan basis, but Hastings, who is
chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, introduced his own Republican bill. That
bill would really make decisions on stock rebuilding and meaningful limits on overfishing
political, not scientific, DeFazio says. He says the act has room for improvement, and he
hopes to develop a “meaningful Democratic alternative.”
Pew says the Hastings bill, which is up for a hearing in the House Feb. 4, would also
reduce the public’s access to fisheries data, including data collected with taxpayer dollars,
exempt fishery management from broader environmental review and result in overfishing.
— Camilla Mortensen
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eugeneweekly.com • January 30, 2014
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