Defenders of Gaea

The Defenders of Gaea are an environmental pressure group set up by Dale McMullen and Harris Harper.

The Defenders of Gaea was originally set up as a front for a scam where McMullen and Harper are able to skim off money from the administrative expenses into their own pockets.^BAR022 One of their more idealistic workers is Heather Sanford.^BAR029 Heather is sent to Spearfish Lake ostensibly to help protect the Gibson's Water Snake,^BAR010 although really it is just a way for McMullen and Harper to get money from Jenny Easton.^BAR027 When Heather finds out, and with the assistance of John Pacobel, ^BAR38 she calls the FBI^BAR039 and also gets herself and John elected to the board, replacing McMullen & Harper. This allows the pair to turn the organisation into a real pressure group in 1988.^BAR41

Originally the Defenders of Gaea have their official office in Washington DC on E Street, but this "was mostly a mail drop and a place for their lobbyists to hang their hats."^BAR022 The real national office was in Los Angeles where McMullen and Harper could work raising money; John and Heather planned to maintain that as the headquarters at least for a while after they took over the board.

Their office secretary was Mollie.

Probably in the early 1990's, Phil Sharp brought them in when Bert Mansfield's dairy farm in Bradford dumped half a million gallons of liquid cow manure into a drainage ditch where it eventually ended up in Indiana, thereby becoming a federal case.