Scaling tree cutters and trees to halt Corrib pipeline works

Shell today, 9th Jan­u­ary 2012, began to cut down a Coillte plan­ta­tion in the vil­lage of Leen­amore, Co. Mayo. This sur­prise move marks the begin­ning of their attempts to pre­pare the 4km stretch of land between the Augh­oose tun­nelling com­pound and the Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery. Despite a large Gar­da and pri­vate secu­ri­ty pres­ence, cam­paign­ers entered the tree felling area and halt­ed work.

Shell start­ing this sec­tion of the pipeline was com­plete­ly unan­tic­i­pat­ed both by local cam­paign­ers and those of us liv­ing at Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. Rumour had it that the clear­ing of the plan­ta­tion might not hap­pen until lat­er in the year. As it hap­pened many of us had planned to take the day off actions today to tend the camp gar­dens, carve new wind tur­bine blades, bake bread and work on oth­er projects. The day turned out quite dif­fer­ent to how we planned…

When we arrived at Leen­amore at 11am we saw that they were cut­ting down trees at two dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the road and set­ting up a machin­ery stor­age com­pound. There was a heavy Gar­da pres­ence includ­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic order unit with no num­ber tags. There were twen­ty Gar­daí and at least fifty of Shell’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty IRMS attempt­ing to guard the tree line. There was sev­en of us, basi­cal­ly mean­ing we were out­num­bered by about 10 to 1.

A few of us tried to get over the fence or into the trees to pre­vent the tree cut­ting from hap­pen­ing. Five of us suc­ceed­ed in breach­ing lines of secu­ri­ty to impede work at dif­fer­ent times. Some of us were car­ried back over the barbed wire fence by secu­ri­ty guards. The secu­ri­ty guards had real dif­fi­cul­ty in remov­ing us from the area as the ground was extreme­ly uneven and bog­gy. They kept stum­bling as they car­ried us out and it was real­ly dan­ger­ous for the secu­ri­ty them­selves. The Gar­dai were stand­ing out on the road and wouldn’t let us stand on the road.

After try­ing to get in over the fence along the road a few times, sev­er­al cam­paign­ers broke away to try to enter from fur­ther away and dis­ap­peared in the woods.

To everyone’s delight, one cam­paign­er reap­peared about an hour lat­er, on top of a tree-cut­ting dig­ger. Anoth­er cam­paign­er, also reap­peared a hour lat­er, with­out his trousers! His expla­na­tion was that the ski-suit he had been wear­ing had been caus­ing rustling as he approached secu­ri­ty lines so even­tu­al­ly he had to resort to remov­ing them and run in his ther­mals to make it to climb a tree that was in the path of Shell’s destruc­tion. As a new­com­er to the camp, this is his expe­ri­ence of try­ing to stop Shell in his own words;

“I arrived at the camp a few days ago. It’s my first vis­it. I spent the first day help­ing to block lor­ries and got a good chance ot be active against Shell’s destruc­tion. This morn­ing every­one was sur­prised that Shell were start­ing work on the for­est. A few of us went away to come at the machin­ery from anoth­er angle. We crawled through the woods towards the area they were cut­ting slow­ly. As were crawl­ing towards the dig­ger I dart­ed off left. All the secu­ri­ty were shout­ing ‘hold the line’. I kept run­ning until a group of secu­ri­ty broke away from a group at the road and start­ed run­ning after me. I ran back into the woods with them run­ning behind me shout­ing, so I went to ground and hid for 20 min­utes. Then crawled down a bit and looked up to see where they were and they were all around me. I had to run accorss a big gap where they could all see me and into anoth­er patch of woods. With them all run­ning behind me I got into the trees again. I reached the first suit­able tree to climb just to the right of the tree-cut­ting-dig­ger. By the time I was up the secu­ri­ty guards had run past me but couldn’t see me. Fif­teen or twen­ty of them were below film­ing and wan­der­ing around. They shout­ing at me, things like ‘are you going to come down?’ and ‘Chop him down!’. I climbed right to the top to see where the dig­ger was. I swung to anoth­er tree and then to anoth­er to get a bit clos­er to the dig­ger as it moved. I stayed up for about 45 min­utes as the dig­ger broke up the trees beside me. The secu­ri­ty guards start­ed to get more and more angry with me. They start­ed shak­ing the tree and get­ting sticks. I said, ‘I’m real­ly going to want to come down with you doing that!’. I nego­ti­at­ed with them to let me come down safe­ly and agreed that one of them would escourt me out of the woods. I met up with the oth­er campers and camp back to get a cup of tea and some food. A few local peo­ple called in to catch up with us. I feel good to be here to so far. I’ve met some good peo­ple. I found it good to be doing actions with ener­getic peo­ple who have been fight­ing this cam­paign for a long time.”

The oth­er camper up on the tree-cut­ter stayed up to stop work until 6.30pm before com­ing down. This camper report­ed that one of the IRMS secu­ri­ty super­vi­sors that had been run­ning after him in the woods, as he got to the tree-cut­ter, had injured his ankle and had even­tu­al­ly been stretchered off the site. The cam­paign­ers were not arrest­ed as the cut­ting was hap­pen­ing on pri­vate land.

New camp mem­bers are always wel­come and even if you don’t feel like crawl­ing around in the woods in your first few days there is plen­ty of oth­er things to do…

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is call­ing for sup­port in advance of this com­ing Fri­day the 13th of Jan­u­ary. Fri­day is the first Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty of the new year, when peo­ple from around Ire­land are invit­ed to join the protests for a day to show their sup­port for the ongo­ing resis­tance to the Cor­rib Gas Project.

http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org
 
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Shell’s tree cutting disrupted for second day running

Dis­rup­tion to the felling of the Coillte wood­land for Shel­l’s planned onshore pipeline (along with the stop­ping of haulage trucks to the Augh­oose com­pound), con­tin­ued today as pro­tes­tors inter­cept­ed a spe­cial­ist 8‑track tree felling machine between the Augh­oose tun­nelling com­pound and Leen­amore for­est.

A Bar­ret­t’s truck trans­port­ing the machine was halt­ed as it made the 1km jour­ney at 7am this morn­ing by a small band of mer­ry pro­tes­tors, one of whom quick­ly ascend­ed the arm and set­tled into posi­tion as a lone Gar­da looked on. Sev­er­al more Gar­daí soon came to join her sup­port­ed by a large num­ber of IRMS staff who have been posi­tioned along the road by the for­est since yes­ter­day.

As a win­tery dawn broke over the beseiged bog the Gar­daí “removal” team arrived along with their “trans­porter”, dri­ven by Sgt Aidan Gill, who then pro­ceed­ed to ini­ti­ate Gar­da attacks on the gath­er­ing sup­port­ers, in the name of health and safe­ty.

Fol­low­ing some hasty posi­tion­ing of ‘crash-mat­tress­es’ and blan­kets (!!) on and around the machine an attempt was made to remove the pro­tes­tors, only for the Gar­daí to dis­cov­er that the pro­tes­tor had D‑locked her neck to the machine.

In an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly reck­less move, the Gar­daí then decid­ed to use an angle grinder just mil­lime­ters away from the pro­tes­tors’ head, all to enable the con­tin­u­a­tion of Shel­l’s work for the day.

How­ev­er the delay of 3 & 1/2 hours to the tree felling had also thwart­ed all deliv­er­ies of stone and removals of peat at the Augh­oose com­pound as the dri­ver of the truck car­ry­ing the machine had been swerv­ing so much, as to end up pre­vent­ing the pas­sage of any oth­er trucks on the road.
After being tak­en down the pro­tes­tor was arrest­ed and charged and is due to appear in Bel­mul­let court along with 4 oth­er cam­paign­ers.

Lat­er on in the evening anoth­er protest was called for out­side Bel­lan­aboy, how­ev­er it seems the lat­est activ­i­ty has result­ed in a fur­ther increase in the amount of Gar­daí loi­ter­ing in the area. About 15 Gar­daí were imme­di­ate­ly on hand and so not too many trucks were stopped in the evening.

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is call­ing for sup­port in advance of this com­ing Fri­day the 13th of Jan­u­ary. Fri­day is the first Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty of the new year, when peo­ple from around Ire­land are invit­ed to join the protests for a day to show their sup­port for the ongo­ing resis­tance to the Cor­rib Gas Project.