Animal Activists Blamed in Wide Ranch Sabotage

Militant vegetarians and animal-rights activists are being blamed by the FBI for a growing problem with sabotage and vandalism on Western ranches, apparently aimed at undermining the region’s beef and wool-growing industries.

Richard Whitaker of the FBI office in Las Vegas warned the annual Nevada Cattlemen’s Assn. convention last week that recent attacks on remote ranches are believed to be the work of the same people already suspected of torching meat plants and bombing offices in California and Nevada. Animal rights advocates conceded that point in interviews.

Whitaker said any livestock operator is a potential target for militant “vegans”--people who shun meat, dairy products, eggs or cheese and don’t wear leather or wool. Such people, he asserted, are determined to slow or stop human use and consumption of livestock.

The FBI agent said such attacks are increasing so fast that he is beginning to reassess earlier attacks dismissed as random acts by cranks or pranksters. He declined to discuss specific numbers or situations, saying they are part of an FBI investigation.

Two groups, the Animal Liberation Front and Earth First!, acknowledge increased “action” against remote farms and ranches, partly as an extension of their activity to end the use of animals in medical laboratory experiments.

ALF spokeswoman Margo Tannenbaum of San Bernardino, Calif., said the group’s goal is “the elimination of the livestock industry,” but Dale Turner of Tucson, Ariz., said Earth First! merely wants to end livestock grazing on public lands.

“The reason why the Animal Liberation Front is conducting economic sabotage to the poultry and livestock industries is to encourage those involved to quit and follow other pursuits,” said Tannenbaum, 42. “We do not believe in eating animals. How can anyone eat and ingest such suffering and misery and expect all to be right with themselves and the world?”

“We believe the grazing of livestock has a devastating effect on the flora and fauna,” said Turner, 32. “Our position concerns the health of the wild.”

Richard Simmonds, director of lab animal research for the University of Nevada system, said sabotage is more likely to affect the health of the cattle industry first. “It’s an extremely serious problem,” he said. “These people want to wipe out the meat industry, want to end the manufacture of leather and wool products.”

Among the ranchers targeted by saboteurs in recent months was Jim Connelley, 48, president of Nevada Cattlemen’s Assn. He said someone drained oil from his four-wheel tractor, resulting in $1,800 in damage.

Connelley said the mechanic who fixed his tractor reported doing similar repairs for six other ranchers in sparsely populated Elko County this year.

“Other Elko County ranchers report herd bulls castrated, rendering them useless; fence and water pipelines cut, troughs and water tanks overturned, windmills decommissioned, steel dropped into well casings and other types of harassment,” said Connelley, who lives 85 miles from the nearest town but only 2 miles from Nevada State Highway 225.

A man affiliated with Earth First!, who talked to The Times over the telephone without identifying himself, described a recent assault on a Nevada ranch.

“I was in southeastern Nevada recently with a friend and we were in an area overgrazed, vastly abused land,” he said. “We decided to cut a couple of miles of fence. . . .

“I shot holes in oil reservoirs on the gear boxes of windmills. When the wind blows after a day or two it burns up the gears and destroys the gear box. I’ve thrown rocks and steel into wells to plug them up. There are hundreds of galvanized steel water tanks all over the place. I’ve shot holes in them and pulled out float valves.”

“I want to run ranchers out of business,” he said flatly.

Tannenbaum said the ALF usually prefers freeing animals from captivity, such as when its members raid turkey farms each year around Thanksgiving and rabbit farms before Easter. She said ALF also takes credit for releasing 300 wild horses from a Bureau of Land Management holding area in Northern California and several head of beef cattle from a Coalinga feedlot last year.

With each release, she added, the group festooned walls and equipment with such messages as “Animal Auschwitz,” “ALF Is Always Watching” and “Murderers, Butchers.”

In some cases, guerrillas have bungled, as when they “liberated” thousands of farm-raised chukars, or game birds, near Elko last summer. Some of the freed birds were swiftly set upon by hungry dogs, while others were mowed down by cars after wandering onto Interstate 80.

Whitaker of the FBI said he believes the growing number of ranch attacks is a natural extension of the urban “terrorism” attributed in recent years to militant vegetarians and radical environmentalists.

Last Jan. 29, for example, someone set fire to the livestock auction building in Dixon, Calif., causing $250,000 damage. “Animals Are Not Slaves” and “Earth First” were painted on the walls.

Similar slogans were etched and painted on the windows of the Sacramento headquarters of the California Cattlemen’s Assn. On May 25, a Molotov cocktail was hurled through the window of the cattlemen’s office, where Executive Vice President John Ross was working late. The bomb failed to go off.

An anonymous caller claiming allegiance to the ALF took responsibility for a 1988 arson fire that destroyed a San Jose meatpacking plant; the ALF denied responsibility. Three other San Jose-area meatpacking plants were torched late in 1987. The initials “ALF” were found at one site, while the “Animal Rights Militia” claimed responsibility for the other two fires.

Until recently, however, such activity was confined to urban areas and immediately adjacent farmlands. Now, Whitaker said, activists appear to be directly attacking remote ranches that are difficult to defend.

“This is something new for our industry,” said Vickie Turner, 29, who runs a livestock operation with her husband and is the executive director of the Nevada Cattlemen’s Assn. “Seminars . . . are being formed . . . to alert ranchers about the threat to their livelihood.”

If the rhetoric of animal-rights activists is any sign, the situation is unlikely to die down soon.

Ingrid Newkirk, national director and co-founder of the 250,000-member People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said in a telephone interview from Washington that the livestock industry is “the single most destructive problem in the United States.”

“The meat producing industry by its very nature, considering the slaughter of animals, is a violent profession,” she said, adding quickly that “our group, however, does not engage in violent activities.”

“We promote vegetarianism and veganism,” she said. “We don’t believe animals are to be eaten or experimented with by humans. . . . Eventually if our dream comes true there will no longer be a livestock industry.”

Writer Lynn Jacobs, 39, an Earth First member, also of Tucson, said in a telephone interview: “I advocate each person should do what he or she is best at even if it is illegal to accomplish this end, if it means cutting fences, decommissioning windmills, removing salt blocks, damaging ranching equipment. There are higher laws than the laws of the United States.”

John Marynik, a specialist on terrorism for the California attorney general told The Times that his office is keeping close watch on activities by extremist animal rightist organizations.

He cited the ALF, which came to his attention after it took credit for the 1987 arson that destroyed a $2.5-million animal research center under construction at UC Davis. In the ashes, a note read: “Retaliation in the name of thousands of animals tortured each year.”