Colombia's indigenous u'wa people, an ancient tribal group with about 5,000 members, have threatened to commit mass suicide if an exploratory oil well is drilled on land they consider sacred. Remarkably, the suicide would be an act with precedent. When Spanish conquistadores tried to enslave the tribe in the 17th century, scores of U'wa walked off the top of a 1,400-foot precipice now known as the Cliff of Glory.

 If the Occidental Petroleum well produces oil, the project will expand across 260,000 acres of cloudforest and wetlands with a network of pipelines and access roads. Occidental, backed by Colombia's minister of the environment, does not recognize the targeted area as U'wa territory. "Legally, the land does not belong to them," says a company spokesperson. The U'wa are currently working with lawyers, human rights organizations, and environmental groups in both Colombia and the United States in an effort to have Occidental's permit, granted by the environment minister last September, revoked. According to one tribal elder, "Exploiting the heart of the world would provoke the collapse of our culture and the death of the U'wa."

 Furthermore, oil production provides targets of sabotage for the powerful guerrilla groups that prowl the Colombian landscape. Consider Occidental's Cano Limon pipeline, on the northern edge of U'wa territory. Since 1986 the guerillas have bombed it more than 600 times. The attacks have resulted in 1.7 million barrels of crude oil being spilled liberally along the pipeline's 480-mile length. The Colombian Institute of Natural Resources summed up the situation: "Because of the polluting effluents from Cano Limon, the receiving rivers and lakes are no longer fit for consumption."

 The U'wa rotate crops, let their fields lie fallow to allow the replenishment of native plant and animal species, and avoid cutting down larger trees. The unspoiled parts of the region have some of the greatest biodiversity anywhere; resident species include toucans, anacondas, jaguars, and spectacled bears.

 The Uwa's land-use techniques are so discreet they can't even be detected by satellite photography taken by the U.S. government, which is currently considering $1.5 billion in military aid to Colombia. Much of that will probably go to quelling guerilla activity. But that, as Loren Sullivan of the Rainforest Action Network notes, "would be overpowering violence with violence." And it might also pave the way for the unfathomable: an U'wa act of cultural genocide. 

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In November, the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility issued a report noting that "beatings, bombings, death threats, and other incidents against federal resource employees, largely in the West, have been steadily rising since 1995." In 1998 there were almost 100 incidents in which the personnel or buildings of the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and other agencies were targets of physical attack, destruction, or a direct threat of violence.

 One prominent Forest Service employee finally had enough of being harassed and quit in November. "I could go on and on with examples of those of you who have been castigated in public, shunned in your communities, refused service in restaurants, and kicked out of motels just because of who you work for," Gloria Flora wrote in an open letter to her employees in announcing her resignation. 

Two summers ago, the Forest Service sent Flora to Nevada. As supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe, the largest national forest in the lower 48, she was to broker a peace between the federal government (which controls more than 80 percent of land in the state) and local citizens who championed grazing, logging, and mining. She had been considered one of the agency's rising stars, and even a potential candidate to be the agency's first female chief. As supervisor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana until 1998, Flora boldly made the decision to block gas drilling on a large swath of the Rocky Mountain front. (See "All Quiet on the Rocky Mountain Front," January-February 1998.)

 During an attempt to rescue the last healthy population of imperiled bull trout in Elko County, Nevada, from extinction, Flora wanted to permanently close a dirt road that had washed out in a flood. Angry ranchers vowed to bulldoze in a new trail that biologists said would harm the trout. Only after a federal judge intervened with a last-minute restraining order did local zealots retreat. "Gloria Flora deserves to be held up as an American hero, not reviled for doing her job," says Chris Wood, a senior policy adviser to Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck. It remains unclear if Dombeck has convinced Flora to remain with the agency.