I found out. He is Ed Kilduff, trained wetlands "expert." He won't reveal his real name or affiliations. Instead, said person hangs posters on community bulletin boards in Eastsound, and maybe on other islands in the San Juans. What are the connecting affiliations, once you start reading the blog, watching the youtube videos, and reading the posters accusing Friends of the San Juans and environmentalists in general, of attacking the very fiber of our community? Is Trojan Heron another deep- pocket or one of their (often unwitting) tools, seeing to it that the people are duped, misled and confused, and incited into an angry irrational froth? Or is Trojan Heron a concerned citizen just trying to do the right thing? Who knows? The blog, from what I've read, is divisive. In using spin and truth-bending, it is doing the very thing it accuses the accused of doing.
In connecting the dots for Trojan Heron's possible affiliations, they lead indirectly and directly to CAPR (with several chapters in Ca. and 12 in Wa), and , Resources Coalition, Olympic Stewardship Foundation, Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners, Freedom Foundation, Eagle Forum, Heritage Foundation, Freedom Works, Heartland Institute, American Crossroads, Koch Brothers, Bradley Foundation, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and many more private foundations and corporations and CEOs. Most of the big guns that could be affiliates, or influences on Trojan Heron, probably have some ties to, or have bought votes and membership in ALEC. (American Legislative Exchange Council).
Don't know what ALEC is? Learning about ALEC might be one of the most important things you can learn. The corporations and 1%ers belonging to ALEC are the true puppetmasters, and are buying votes (and legislators) and writing the laws the legislators pass; laws that attack the environment, deny climate change, dissolve public education funding and privatize schools, eliminate social programs, medicare, health care, unions, womens' rights, reproductive rights, civil rights, whistle-blowing rights,ability to assemble in peaceful protest, ad nauseum.
The goal of ALEC's puppetmasters? More land grab and exploitation of resources and Critical Areas for "free enterprise." For them. Meanwhile, tactics of front groups divert our attention while the chain saws rip and more gang-bangers develop and destroy our forests, oceans, and Critical Areas. Maximum development in throwaway UGAs prevails over stewardship and sustainable long-term planning to protect our Critical Areas.
If Trojan Heron cares about community as he states, wouldn't he be asking some profound questions about Critical Areas, and making some observations based on that caring, leading to heartfelt dialogue and sincere attempts to join with environmentalists in educating people to want to protect critical areas because it's good for their grandchildren to do so? Because intact critical areas are a wealth you can't buy? Because if we knew and understood what they are and what they do, and wanted to, we wouldn't need laws that no one obeys or enforces anyway? And yes, something does need to be done about repeat violators who know exactly what they're doing, and get a hand slap from the corrupt CD&P's Rene Beliveau, while poorer landowners are put through the wringer.
When the accusers twist and turn facts into arguments "proving" that environmentalists and CD&P (Shireene Hale specifically), County Council, Dept. of Ecology and any other group trying to protect Critical Areas, are the villains driving the wedge and inciting us against each other, how is that helping to bring our community together?
I have watched 30 years of many of the same old players (and some new ones) stalling, and stopping outright, any lasting or effective protections of our Critical Areas while certain land-grabbers trade their revolving-door chameleon-like LLCs and continue degrading wetlands and shoreline habitat with large scale for-profit developments.
Our hearts are sore at this destruction, whether we know it or not. We know deep down that we are destroying ourselves by destroying the earth, and the closer to home it is, the more it affects us - consciously or unconsciously. Not just our physical selves, but the very best in ourselves. The Earth's body is as ours. When we poison her waters, we poison our bodies and brains. We try to numb our heartbreak and outrage with misdirected anger or palliatives. But we have to face the truth of this heartbreak and mind-fuck if we are going to get on with creating a better, more just world for all.
No matter what Trojan Heron or his people say, using spin-doctoring front group tactics to incite the populace against environmentalists - a tactic used by "free enterprise" rapists, pillagers, and land-grabbers ever since humanity began - is a grave and unjust error. It's time to start de-constructing and exposing the myths and erroneous thinking on all sides, and come together, ready to listen to each other and work for the common good of generations to come who will inherit the earth, and who might like to have clean drinking water and forests and beneficial creatures and who might want a different world than the one we've created so far.
