Abatis

[El Rojo]

i am involved with a group working to defend woodland from destruction by a nasty corporation. We have to defend a certain area. To that end we are digging ditches and putting up tree defences. I recently came across a wiki article about Abatis's. Basically, they are felled trees with thier brances pointed in the direction of the enemy to deter passage, 18th century barbed wire if you will.

My question is: does anyone have any experience of using this device? Or any idea of it's effectiveness?

[Sasha]

sounds like you are setting yourself up for trumped up "boobytrap" charges (happend here in squat scene) so doing stuff like this can be counterproductive, i advise you to look first at the already proven tactics of earthfirst: http://www.earthfirst.org/

[Bitter Ashes]

Don't go spiking trees either. The only thing it does is harms workers.

Which forest is it by the way? You could always ask for support here on Revleft, or through other channels such as Indymedia. The additional numbers would mean that you wouldnt need to do anything norty. Oh and don't remember to get the local paper involved. You win enough hearts and minds in your local area you may just win this one and get kudos to boot. You go about harming people with traps and end up court, then it'll do you no favours and the campaign'll be doomed too.

[Mendax]

My question is: does anyone have any experience of using this device? Or any idea of it's effectiveness?

I think it would certainly be effective but the only people you'd be injuring would be people that are trying to do there jobs. Although I'm not too sure as to how you could slow them down significantly without injuring other than just doing night time vandalism.

[ellipsis]

Seems like delaying the inevitable. Not anything I advocate but check out Ecodefence: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching (http://sites.google.com/site/therevolutionscript/AFieldGuidetoMonkeywrenching%2C3rdedition.pdf?attr edirects=0)

[El Rojo]

@ ranma:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/huntington-lane-mining-t132199/index.html?t=132199


all required info is there. there is also an indymedia shout out. the problem with revleft viz upcomming events is that if its a long project and one gets no replies, then one gets pushed down the list. 79 views tho so who knows. local paper is involved, and the local population have been fighting a legal battle there for 20 yrs, and aint too enthusiastic about the occupation. i may try flyering the local towns a bit, but there are not enough people to really get the word out.

this isnt a trap as such, more an obstacle. if we built it, i reckon we'd let the authorities know beforehand, maybe paint it red a little. it'd be tens of feet of tree branches, how could it be considered a trap? Is there a real risk of it being considered one? Im not too experienced with eco work.

@ theredson, that all it is, delaying the inevitable. buuuut, hopefully this delay will come with a large price tag for UK Coal, what with them having to evict us and all. This mining operation is in MY county, and im doing everything i can to stop it, coz where i live is a beautiful part of the country. However, from an operation standpoint, my efforts are all about costing UK Coal a crippling ammount of money and making them think twice before deciding to put a huge open cast coal mine next to a rural village. as for ecodefence, already amazon'd it :)

[Bitter Ashes]

Nice one. Well, one trick with campaigns like this is to keep it bookmarked and update it with news from the action as it comes in. Like providing weekly updates and such in the Events section. That way people know it's not a dead campaign and it's ongoing :)

[ellipsis]

Good luck comrade, your cause is a righteous one!