Read this story from the Toronto Star on oil and gas industry foe Wiebo Ludwig’s declining health. (March 3, 2012)

HYTHE, ALTA.—Eco-warrior Wiebo Ludwig is fighting his final battle.

It’s a question of when, not if. Diagnosed last year with cancer of the esophagus, Ludwig, 70, is in palliative care and preparing for death.

Ludwig was rushed to hospital in nearby Grande Prairie last Monday after food became lodged in his throat. Doctors enlarged the stent they first inserted in his esophagus in late January.

The patriarch of a Christian clan returned to the compound of his roughly 60 followers and family near here at Trickle Creek Farm, the 324-hectare parcel of nearly self-sufficient land in northwest Alberta’s Peace River country. The Dutch-born enemy of the oil industry — eco-terrorist, his many foes would label him — has lost 30 pounds in the past month alone.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Ludwig said of his impending death, during a Trickle Creek interview last week. “I’m quite grateful about my life, in many ways a concentrated series of battles. I enjoyed the battles. They were difficult times, but meaningful. I was seldom bored, put it that way.”

Boring is definitely not a word to associate with Wiebo Ludwig.

Ever since he moved here in the mid-1980s, his name has been a lightning rod for deep, bitter controversy over the good and bad things about life in the oilpatch.

Read more: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1140250–wiebo-ludwig-dying-of-cancer-an-interview?bn=1