Ska Brewing president Dave Thibodeau was stunned to learn his company was being boycotted by Colorado coal miners over its support of WildEarth Guardians – because he wasn’t aware that Ska had ever been involved with the environmentalist group.

After some digging, however, he found that Ska isn’t exactly a platinum sponsor: Rather, the Durango brewery had donated a $25 gift certificate for a WildEarth Guardians event last year on behalf of banning coyote and pigeon hunts, also known as “killing contests.””We weren’t even aware of the work they were doing concerning coal mines. Had no idea,” Thibodeau said. “I didn’t know we were on their website until I saw it in the Craig paper. And they haven’t returned my calls, so I never even got a response from WildEarth.”

He added, “I hate to be lumped in with everything they do, and I don’t know everything they do. I know what I was supporting.”

Thibodeau is one of several Colorado beer-makers moving to distance themselves from WildEarth Guardians after a dozen liquor-store owners in northwest Colorado began pulling labels from their shelves last week in a show of support for the Colowyo mine.

Breweries aren’t the only ones. A total of 454 companies have been removed from the WildEarth Guardians’ list of business supporters since the beer boycott began, shrinking from 605 to 151, according to the Craig Daily Press.

A federal judge’s order in response to a WildEarth Guardians’ lawsuit threatens to shut down the mine, taking 220 jobs with it, unless the Interior Department can redo a 2007 expansion permit in 120 days, described state Department of Natural Resources chief Mike King as “an unrealistically short timeframe.”

Like Ska’s Thibodeau, officials with several of the half-dozen breweries said it would be a stretch to describe them as WildEarth supporters, given that their involvement with the group has been minimal and unrelated to coal.

Terry Usry, spokesman for Breckenridge Brewery, said the company wound up on the group’s “Businesses for Guardians” list after an employee with an affiliated restaurant donated a $30 gift card for a fundraising event in 2011 that “to our knowledge, was not associated with the Colowyo and Trapper mines.”

For the record, he said, Breckenridge is no longer listed as a supporter on the group’s website.

“As soon as this story came to our attention, we contacted WildEarth Guardians and asked that they remove Breckenridge Brewery from their list of supporters, and they immediately complied,” Usry said.

Same with Twisted Pine Brewing in Boulder. Sales and marketing director Justin Tilotta said WildEarth Guardians recently removed the brewery’s name from the website at the CEO’s request.

“We looked back through our records and all we could find was a note asking for a silent auction donation,” Tilotta said. “I think we gave them a gift basket, which would have had the usual contents, a T-shirt and a growler. Odds are it was pretty minimal.”

He said it was “unfortunate and a little uncomfortable being stuck in the middle” of the battle between the coal-mine community and WildEarth Guardians.

“We certainly have no problem with people working in the mines in Craig. We’re very pro-job,” said Tilotta. “Some groups we’ve worked with extensively, but if it’s a group we barely have a record of – I don’t know if we want to get caught in the middle of these giant forces.”

In the case of Prost Brewing in Denver, owner Kevin Sheelsey said his brewery’s inclusion on the list on the WildEarth Guardians’ website was a case of mistaken identity.

“They misrepresented us. We called them and they’ve taken us off their list,” Sheesley said.

He said the environmentalist group may have confused the Denver brewery with another company with the same name, noting that “there are other Prost entities out there.”

As for the WildEarth Guardians’ effort to close the mine, Sheesley said, “We don’t support that.”

Lori Gillam, owner of Stockmen’s Liquor in Craig, said she was glad to hear the breweries were pushing back.

“I think it’s admirable of them. If it’s not something they support, they shouldn’t be listed as supporters,” Gillam said.

The brewery with the closest ties to WildEarth Guardians is New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, which has donated more than $9,000 to the group since 2008 in support of restoring rivers, streams and watersheds, said New Belgium spokesman Bryan Simpson.

But even New Belgium is backing off, stressing, in a statement, “[W]e have never granted operational funds to Wild Earth Guardians and we have no future funding plans at this time.”

“Specific to any work Wild Earth Guardians has done regarding the ColoWyo and Trapper mines, we were unaware of it at the time and that is outside the scope of our grant allocations,” said the New Belgium statement. “In this case, our funding dollars were allocated for healthy watershed projects only, and no money was given to overturn mining operations.”

Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ climate and energy program director, said the group identified the breweries on its website because “we feel that this generosity is worth acknowledging.”

“Unfortunately, some have accused these businesses as somehow being against coal miners because of their generosity and support for environmental protection,” Nichols said in an email. “We live in a democracy, so it’s fair for folks to have this perspective, but at the end of the day, none of these businesses are against coal miners.”

Nichols said that the group had honored requests by breweries to have their names removed from the website.

“If people want to pressure these breweries to distance themselves from effective environmental advocacy groups like WildEarth Guardians, that’s a fair tactic, but it’s not something we’re going to sweat or let distract us from our efforts to safeguard the environment and help move our nation toward cleaner energy,” Nichols said.

At Ska Brewing, Thibodeau said he had received a couple of emails “from people saying, ‘Yeah, we’re never going to buy your beer again because you’re anti-American.'”

“And I just responded and told them, ‘Because I don’t like shooting pigeons needlessly doesn’t really make me anti-American,'” Thibodeau said. “I’m not chiming in on the coal-mining thing and that’s not what I was supporting. I was supporting one specific thing, one specific event.”

He said he would like to see WildEarth Guardians provide more context on its website by identifying the purpose of the donors’ contributions.

“If they could quantify it on their website by saying, ‘This is specifically what we were supporting,’ I would be fine with that, but I haven’t gotten a call back,” Thibodeau said.

– valrichardson17@gmail.com