Earth First!
Encyclopedia
Earth First! is a radical environmental advocacy group
that emerged in the Southwestern United States
in 1979. It was co-founded on April 4th, 1980 by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle
, Howie Wolke, and less directly, Bart Koehler and Ron Kezar.
There are Earth First! groups in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, Philippines
, Czech Republic, India, Mexico, France, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, Nigeria
, Slovakia
, Ireland, Italy, and Spain.
Inspired by Rachel Carson
's Silent Spring
, Aldo Leopold
's land ethic, and Edward Abbey
's The Monkey Wrench Gang
, a group of activists composed of environmental activist Dave Foreman, ex-Yippie (Youth International Party
) Mike Roselle
, Wyoming
Wilderness Society representatives Bart Koehler and Howie Wolke and Bureau of Land Management
employee Ron Kezar pledged, "No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth
!" while traveling in Foreman's VW bus from the Pinacate Desert in northern Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico
.
Provoked by what they considered a sell-out by mainstream environmental advocates during the "RARE II" (the Forest Service's Roadless Area Review and Evaluation) planning process, the activists envisioned a revolutionary movement to set aside multi-million acre ecological preserves all across the United States. Their ideas drew on the main concepts of the new science of conservation biology, which scientists like E.O. Wilson had developed over the past twenty years, but which mainstream environmental groups had been slow to embrace. They borrowed equally from the radical notions of the author Edward Abbey. All of this came together after a grueling hike up Pinacate Peak, as the men headed toward Albuquerque. "Suddenly Foreman called out 'Earth First!' The next thing you know," Wolke says, "Roselle drew a clenched fist logo, passed it up to the front of the van, and there was Earth First!"
) with far-reaching wilderness
proposals that reportedly went beyond what mainstream environmental groups were willing to advocate (with conservation biology
research from a biocentric
perspective). The group's proposals were published in a periodical, Earth First! The Radical Environmental Journal, informally known as the Earth First! Journal. Edward Abbey
often spoke at early gatherings, and his writings were an inspiration that led him to be revered by the early movement. An annual gathering of the group was known as the Round River Rendezvous, with the name taken from an Ojibwa
myth about a continuous river of life flowing into and out of itself and sustaining all relations. The rendezvous is part celebration with art and music, part activist conference with workshops and accounts of past actions. Another project led by the organization at this time was the creation of a tax-deductible fund, then called Earth First! Foundation, which was established with the aim of providing financial support for research, advocacy and education by Earth First! activists. The fund was later renamed to Fund for Wild Nature
in 1991.
In the spring of 1985, a nationwide call to action in the Earth First! Journal brought Earth First! members from around the United States to the Willamette National Forest
of western Oregon
, to take action against Willamette Industries, a logging company. Finding logging road blockades (carried out by Corvallis
-based Cathedral Forest Action Group) were offering too short-term a protection, Maryland
er Ron Huber and Washingtonian Mike Jakubal devised tree sitting
as a more effective civil disobedience
alternative.
On May 23, 1985, Mike Jakubal made the first Earth First! tree sit. When U.S. Forest Service law enforcement official Steve Slagowski arrived, Mike Roselle, Ron Huber and others were arrested sitting at the base of the tree in support. This first tree sit lasted less than a day—Jakubal came down in the evening to look over the remains of the forest that had been cut down around him that day, and was arrested by a hidden Forest Service officer—but the tree-sitting concept was deemed sound by Earth First! members. Huber and Jakubal, in the company of Mike Roselle, brought the concept to the June 14 Washington EF Rendezvous; on June 23, a convoy of activists arrived at Willamette National Forest, and set up tree platforms in "Squaw/Three timbersale", a location the group thought was threatened with imminent destruction. While at one point, up to a dozen trees were occupied, a July 10 clash took down all the trees with platforms except for Ron Huber's as the other sitters had gone for an overnight meeting elsewhere. Huber remained in his tree, dubbed Yggdrasil
, until July 20 when two Linn County sheriff
's deputies were lifted in a crane box and wrestled him from the tree.
Later, from about 1987 on, Earth First! became primarily associated with direct action
to prevent logging
, building of dam
s, and other forms of development
which Earth First! finds may cause destruction of wildlife
habitats
or the despoliation of wild places. This change in direction attracted many new members to Earth First!, some of whom came from a leftist or anarchist political background or involvement in the counterculture
. Dave Foreman has related that this led to the introduction of such activities as a "puke
-in" at a shopping mall, a flag burning, heckling of Edward Abbey at a 1987 Earth First! rendezvous, and back-and-forth debates in the Earth First! Journal on such topics as anarchism, with which Foreman and others did not wish to be associated. Most of the group's older members, including Dave Foreman, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, Christopher Manes, George Wuerthner, and Earth First! Journal editor John Davis, became increasingly uncomfortable with this new direction. This change reportedly led several of the founders to sever their ties to Earth First! in 1990. Many of them went on to launch a new magazine, Wild Earth
, and a new environmental group, the Wildlands Project
. Roselle, on the other hand, along with activists such as Judi Bari
, welcomed the new direct-action and leftist direction of Earth First!.
Starting in the mid-1980s, Earth First! began an increasing promotion of and identification with "Deep Ecology
", a philosophy put forward by Arne Næss
, Bill Devall, and George Sessions, which holds that all forms of life on Earth
have equal value in and of themselves, without regard for their utility to human beings.
. The change also brought a rotation of the primary media organ in differing regions, an aversion to organized leadership or administrative structure, and a new trend of identifying Earth First! as a mainstream movement rather than an organization. In 1992, the push of Earth First! toward being a mainstream movement caused members who refused to abandon criminal acts to start a militant offshoot called Earth Liberation Front
. Most members of Earth First! liken themselves to a decentralized
, locally informed activism based on communitarian ethics
while Earth First adversaries characterize the group as conducting a form of terrorism.
In various parts of the country, individual citizens and small groups form the nuclei for grassroots political actions, which may take the form of legal actions—i.e. protest
s, timber sale appeals, and educational campaigns—or civil disobedience
—tree sitting
, road
blockade
s, and sabotage
—called "ecotage
" by some Earth First! members, claiming it is done as a form of ecodefense
. Often, disruptive direct action is used primarily as a stalling tactic in an attempt to prevent possible environmental destruction while Earth First! lawsuit
s try to secure long-term victories. Reported tactics include road blockades, activists locking themselves to heavy equipment, tree-sitting, and sabotage of machinery.
Earth First! was known for providing information in the Earth First! Journal on the practice of tree-spiking and monkeywrenching (or ecotage) which have led to reports of injuries from such tactics, although no evidence that Earth First! was involved in related activity. In 1990, however, Judi Bari
led Earth First! in the Northern California
and Southern Oregon
region to renounce these practices, calling them counterproductive to an effort to form a coalition with workers and small logging businesses to defeat large-scale corporate logging in Northern California
. During one of these non-violent tree sits, activist David Chain
was killed.
Judi Bari
In 1990, a bomb
exploded in Judi Bari
's car, shattering her pelvis and also injuring fellow activist Darryl Cherney
. Bari and Cherney were later arrested after police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
suspected that they had been transporting the bomb when it accidentally exploded. The case against them was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. Bari died in 1997 of cancer, but her federal lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland, California
police resulted in a 2002 jury verdict awarding her estate and Darryl Cherney a total of $4.4 million. Eighty percent of the damages were for violation of their First Amendment
rights by the FBI and police trying to discredit them in the media as violent extremists despite ample evidence to the contrary. The bombing remains unsolved.
On March 21, 2011, a U.S. federal judge in California ordered the FBI to preserve evidence in the car bombing. The FBI was planning to destroy all evidence in the case, even though agents had never determined who carried out the attempted assassination.
The Earth First! movement in the United Kingdom started in 1990, when a group in Hastings
, Sussex
organised an action at Dungeness nuclear power station in Kent
. It grew rapidly, and many groups formed, with or without the EF! name, over the next years.
The first big Earth First! actions happened in 1992 and focused around the importation of tropical hardwood. The first major action had happened in December 1991 at Port of Tilbury
. The second major action, the Merseyside Dock Action, attracted between 200-600 people who occupied Liverpool docks
for two days. This action coincided with the Earth First! roadshow, in which a group of UK & US Earth First!ers toured the country. Other early campaigns also focused on timber-yards, most notably the Timbmet yard in Oxford.
There are now various regional Earth First! groups, the EF! Action Update has been joined by the EF! Action Reports website and a yearly Earth First! national gathering. At the first gathering in Sussex the debate focused on the use of criminal damage as a protest technique. Earth First! decided to neither 'condemn nor condone' criminal damage, instead it focused more on non-violent direct action techniques. Some people at the gathering coined the term Earth Liberation Front
(ELF), which became a separate movement which spread back to the US. Actions involving criminal damage did happen often under cover of night and were typically done under an ELF banner and attributed to elves and pixie
s, or the Earth Liberation Faeries, giving a distinctly British feel to the movement.
Major growth in the direct action movement started with a concurrent focus on roads, and a protest camp at Twyford Down
was started, against the M3 in Hampshire. Whilst Earth First! groups still played an essential part, other groups such as the Dongas tribe
soon formed. Alongside SchNEWS
, such publications as the Earth First! Action Update, and Do or Die were means of communication between the groups. The movement grew to other road protest camps including the Newbury bypass
, the A30
and the M11 link road protest
in London, where whole streets were squatted
in order to slow down the construction work. Later the focus widened to other campaigns including Reclaim the Streets
, anti-genetics campaigns, and Rising Tide
. More recently, there have been groups such as Peat Alert! and Plane Stupid
.
The UK Earth First! groups differed considerably from the U.S. groups as reported in a ten year retrospective of the Earth First! by two of the founders Jake Bowers and Jason Torrance:
Seeing ecological and social justice as part of the same thing, plus organising along anarchist lines and bringing in other radical & militant struggles, mixed with audacious actions and real radicalism spread the EF! ideal to other countries and helped morph the US movement.
Environmental movement
The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues....
that emerged in the Southwestern United States
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...
in 1979. It was co-founded on April 4th, 1980 by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle
Mike Roselle
Mike Roselle is an American environmental activist and author. Roselle is one of the co-founders of the radical environmental organization Earth First!, as well as of Rainforest Action Network, the Ruckus Society, and Climate Ground Zero....
, Howie Wolke, and less directly, Bart Koehler and Ron Kezar.
There are Earth First! groups in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Czech Republic, India, Mexico, France, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
, Ireland, Italy, and Spain.
Inspired by Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson
Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement....
's Silent Spring
Silent Spring
Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin on 27 September 1962. The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement....
, Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold was an American author, scientist, ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac , which has sold over two million copies...
's land ethic, and Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental...
's The Monkey Wrench Gang
The Monkey Wrench Gang
The Monkey Wrench Gang is a novel written by American author Edward Abbey , published in 1975.Easily Abbey's most famous fiction work, the novel concerns the use of sabotage to protest environmentally damaging activities in the American Southwest, and was so influential that the term "monkeywrench"...
, a group of activists composed of environmental activist Dave Foreman, ex-Yippie (Youth International Party
Youth International Party
The Youth International Party, whose members were commonly called Yippies, was a radically youth-oriented and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the 1960s. It was founded on Dec. 31, 1967...
) Mike Roselle
Mike Roselle
Mike Roselle is an American environmental activist and author. Roselle is one of the co-founders of the radical environmental organization Earth First!, as well as of Rainforest Action Network, the Ruckus Society, and Climate Ground Zero....
, Wyoming
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...
Wilderness Society representatives Bart Koehler and Howie Wolke and Bureau of Land Management
Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior which administers America's public lands, totaling approximately , or one-eighth of the landmass of the country. The BLM also manages of subsurface mineral estate underlying federal, state and private...
employee Ron Kezar pledged, "No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
!" while traveling in Foreman's VW bus from the Pinacate Desert in northern Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 545,852 as of the 2010 Census and ranks as the 32nd-largest city in the U.S. As...
.
Provoked by what they considered a sell-out by mainstream environmental advocates during the "RARE II" (the Forest Service's Roadless Area Review and Evaluation) planning process, the activists envisioned a revolutionary movement to set aside multi-million acre ecological preserves all across the United States. Their ideas drew on the main concepts of the new science of conservation biology, which scientists like E.O. Wilson had developed over the past twenty years, but which mainstream environmental groups had been slow to embrace. They borrowed equally from the radical notions of the author Edward Abbey. All of this came together after a grueling hike up Pinacate Peak, as the men headed toward Albuquerque. "Suddenly Foreman called out 'Earth First!' The next thing you know," Wolke says, "Roselle drew a clenched fist logo, passed it up to the front of the van, and there was Earth First!"
The early years
During the group's early years (1979–1986), Earth First! mixed publicity stunts (such as rolling a plastic "crack" down Glen Canyon DamGlen Canyon Dam
Glen Canyon Dam is a concrete arch dam on the Colorado River in northern Arizona in the United States, just north of Page. The dam was built to provide hydroelectricity and flow regulation from the upper Colorado River Basin to the lower. Its reservoir is called Lake Powell, and is the second...
) with far-reaching wilderness
Wilderness
Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with...
proposals that reportedly went beyond what mainstream environmental groups were willing to advocate (with conservation biology
Conservation biology
Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...
research from a biocentric
Biocentrism (ethics)
Biocentrism , in a political and ecological sense, is an ethical point of view which extends inherent value to non-human species, ecosystems, and processes in nature - regardless of their sentience...
perspective). The group's proposals were published in a periodical, Earth First! The Radical Environmental Journal, informally known as the Earth First! Journal. Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental...
often spoke at early gatherings, and his writings were an inspiration that led him to be revered by the early movement. An annual gathering of the group was known as the Round River Rendezvous, with the name taken from an Ojibwa
Ojibwa
The Ojibwe or Chippewa are among the largest groups of Native Americans–First Nations north of Mexico. They are divided between Canada and the United States. In Canada, they are the third-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by Cree and Inuit...
myth about a continuous river of life flowing into and out of itself and sustaining all relations. The rendezvous is part celebration with art and music, part activist conference with workshops and accounts of past actions. Another project led by the organization at this time was the creation of a tax-deductible fund, then called Earth First! Foundation, which was established with the aim of providing financial support for research, advocacy and education by Earth First! activists. The fund was later renamed to Fund for Wild Nature
Fund for Wild Nature
The Fund For Wild Nature is an environmental organization that gives financial support to grassroot projects and organizations that work for the protection of biodiversity and wilderness. The Fund works exclusively for projects in countries of North America. It has no endowment and is supported...
in 1991.
In the spring of 1985, a nationwide call to action in the Earth First! Journal brought Earth First! members from around the United States to the Willamette National Forest
Willamette National Forest
The Willamette National Forest is a National Forest located in the central portion of the Cascade Range of US state of Oregon.It comprises 1,675,407 acres making it one of the largest national forests. Over 380,000 acres are designated wilderness which include seven major mountain peaks...
of western Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
, to take action against Willamette Industries, a logging company. Finding logging road blockades (carried out by Corvallis
Corvallis, Oregon
Corvallis is a city located in central western Oregon, United States. It is the county seat of Benton County and the principal city of the Corvallis, Oregon Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Benton County. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 54,462....
-based Cathedral Forest Action Group) were offering too short-term a protection, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
er Ron Huber and Washingtonian Mike Jakubal devised tree sitting
Tree sitting
Tree sitting is a form of environmentalist civil disobedience in which a protester sits in a tree, usually on a small platform built for the purpose, to protect it from being cut down...
as a more effective civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
alternative.
On May 23, 1985, Mike Jakubal made the first Earth First! tree sit. When U.S. Forest Service law enforcement official Steve Slagowski arrived, Mike Roselle, Ron Huber and others were arrested sitting at the base of the tree in support. This first tree sit lasted less than a day—Jakubal came down in the evening to look over the remains of the forest that had been cut down around him that day, and was arrested by a hidden Forest Service officer—but the tree-sitting concept was deemed sound by Earth First! members. Huber and Jakubal, in the company of Mike Roselle, brought the concept to the June 14 Washington EF Rendezvous; on June 23, a convoy of activists arrived at Willamette National Forest, and set up tree platforms in "Squaw/Three timbersale", a location the group thought was threatened with imminent destruction. While at one point, up to a dozen trees were occupied, a July 10 clash took down all the trees with platforms except for Ron Huber's as the other sitters had gone for an overnight meeting elsewhere. Huber remained in his tree, dubbed Yggdrasil
Yggdrasil
In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is an immense tree that is central in Norse cosmology. It was said to be the world tree around which the nine worlds existed...
, until July 20 when two Linn County sheriff
Sheriff
A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....
's deputies were lifted in a crane box and wrestled him from the tree.
Later, from about 1987 on, Earth First! became primarily associated with direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
to prevent logging
Logging
Logging is the cutting, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks.In forestry, the term logging is sometimes used in a narrow sense concerning the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest, usually a sawmill or a lumber yard...
, building of dam
Dam
A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are...
s, and other forms of development
Subdivision (land)
Subdivision is the act of dividing land into pieces that are easier to sell or otherwise develop, usually via a plat. The former single piece as a whole is then known in the United States as a subdivision...
which Earth First! finds may cause destruction of wildlife
Wildlife
Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative....
habitats
Habitat (ecology)
A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism...
or the despoliation of wild places. This change in direction attracted many new members to Earth First!, some of whom came from a leftist or anarchist political background or involvement in the counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
. Dave Foreman has related that this led to the introduction of such activities as a "puke
Pukë
Pukë is the capital of the Pukë District in northern Albania. The town has a population of 6,495 . The local football club is called KS Tërbuni Pukë....
-in" at a shopping mall, a flag burning, heckling of Edward Abbey at a 1987 Earth First! rendezvous, and back-and-forth debates in the Earth First! Journal on such topics as anarchism, with which Foreman and others did not wish to be associated. Most of the group's older members, including Dave Foreman, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, Christopher Manes, George Wuerthner, and Earth First! Journal editor John Davis, became increasingly uncomfortable with this new direction. This change reportedly led several of the founders to sever their ties to Earth First! in 1990. Many of them went on to launch a new magazine, Wild Earth
Wild Earth
Wild Earth was an environmentalist magazine published in the United States by the Wildlands Project between 1991 and 2004.Wild Earth came about when the original Earth First!: The Radical Environmental Journal ceased publication in late 1990. That publication was associated with the environmental...
, and a new environmental group, the Wildlands Project
Wildlands Project
The Wildlands Network was created in 1991 to stem the tide of species extinctions that was being recorded across North America...
. Roselle, on the other hand, along with activists such as Judi Bari
Judi Bari
Judi Bari was an American environmentalist and labor leader, a feminist, and the principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging in the ancient redwood forests of Northern California in the 1980s and '90...
, welcomed the new direct-action and leftist direction of Earth First!.
Starting in the mid-1980s, Earth First! began an increasing promotion of and identification with "Deep Ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
", a philosophy put forward by Arne Næss
Arne Næss
Arne Dekke Eide Næss was a Norwegian philosopher, the founder of deep ecology. He was the youngest person to be appointed full professor at the University of Oslo....
, Bill Devall, and George Sessions, which holds that all forms of life on Earth
Life on Earth
Life on Earth: A Natural History by David Attenborough is a television natural history series made by the BBC in association with Warner Bros. and Reiner Moritz Productions...
have equal value in and of themselves, without regard for their utility to human beings.
Earth First! since 1990
Since 1990, action within the Earth First! movement has become increasingly influenced by anarchist political philosophyPolitical philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
. The change also brought a rotation of the primary media organ in differing regions, an aversion to organized leadership or administrative structure, and a new trend of identifying Earth First! as a mainstream movement rather than an organization. In 1992, the push of Earth First! toward being a mainstream movement caused members who refused to abandon criminal acts to start a militant offshoot called Earth Liberation Front
Earth Liberation Front
The Earth Liberation Front , also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment".The ELF was founded...
. Most members of Earth First! liken themselves to a decentralized
Décentralisation
Décentralisation is a french word for both a policy concept in French politics from 1968-1990, and a term employed to describe the results of observations of the evolution of spatial economic and institutional organization of France....
, locally informed activism based on communitarian ethics
Communitarianism
Communitarianism is an ideology that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. That community may be the family unit, but it can also be understood in a far wider sense of personal interaction, of geographical location, or of shared history.-Terminology:Though the term...
while Earth First adversaries characterize the group as conducting a form of terrorism.
In various parts of the country, individual citizens and small groups form the nuclei for grassroots political actions, which may take the form of legal actions—i.e. protest
Protest
A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations...
s, timber sale appeals, and educational campaigns—or civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
—tree sitting
Tree sitting
Tree sitting is a form of environmentalist civil disobedience in which a protester sits in a tree, usually on a small platform built for the purpose, to protect it from being cut down...
, road
Road
A road is a thoroughfare, route, or way on land between two places, which typically has been paved or otherwise improved to allow travel by some conveyance, including a horse, cart, or motor vehicle. Roads consist of one, or sometimes two, roadways each with one or more lanes and also any...
blockade
Blockade
A blockade is an effort to cut off food, supplies, war material or communications from a particular area by force, either in part or totally. A blockade should not be confused with an embargo or sanctions, which are legal barriers to trade, and is distinct from a siege in that a blockade is usually...
s, and sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
—called "ecotage
Ecotage
Ecotage is a portmanteau of the "eco-" prefix and "sabotage". Ecotage is often used as a descriptive term for the direct actions of environmental groups such as Earth First! and similar groups throughout the Western world. The term is only applied for actions of sabotage committed within the...
" by some Earth First! members, claiming it is done as a form of ecodefense
Ecodefense
Ecodefense: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching is a book edited by Dave Foreman, with a foreword by Edward Abbey.- Background :Ned Ludd Books published the first two editions, with Abbzug Press publishing a third edition...
. Often, disruptive direct action is used primarily as a stalling tactic in an attempt to prevent possible environmental destruction while Earth First! lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
s try to secure long-term victories. Reported tactics include road blockades, activists locking themselves to heavy equipment, tree-sitting, and sabotage of machinery.
Earth First! was known for providing information in the Earth First! Journal on the practice of tree-spiking and monkeywrenching (or ecotage) which have led to reports of injuries from such tactics, although no evidence that Earth First! was involved in related activity. In 1990, however, Judi Bari
Judi Bari
Judi Bari was an American environmentalist and labor leader, a feminist, and the principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging in the ancient redwood forests of Northern California in the 1980s and '90...
led Earth First! in the Northern California
Northern California
Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...
and Southern Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
region to renounce these practices, calling them counterproductive to an effort to form a coalition with workers and small logging businesses to defeat large-scale corporate logging in Northern California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. During one of these non-violent tree sits, activist David Chain
David Chain
David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain was an environmental activist. He was killed by a falling tree in suspicious circumstances during a protest in California Redwood Forests against the Pacific Lumber Company.-Background:...
was killed.
Judi BariJudi BariJudi Bari was an American environmentalist and labor leader, a feminist, and the principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging in the ancient redwood forests of Northern California in the 1980s and '90...
Car Bombing
In 1990, a bombBomb
A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...
exploded in Judi Bari
Judi Bari
Judi Bari was an American environmentalist and labor leader, a feminist, and the principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging in the ancient redwood forests of Northern California in the 1980s and '90...
's car, shattering her pelvis and also injuring fellow activist Darryl Cherney
Darryl Cherney
Darryl Cherney is a musician and environmental activist. He is member of the Earth First! environmental movement. He lives in Humboldt County, California....
. Bari and Cherney were later arrested after police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
suspected that they had been transporting the bomb when it accidentally exploded. The case against them was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. Bari died in 1997 of cancer, but her federal lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
police resulted in a 2002 jury verdict awarding her estate and Darryl Cherney a total of $4.4 million. Eighty percent of the damages were for violation of their First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
rights by the FBI and police trying to discredit them in the media as violent extremists despite ample evidence to the contrary. The bombing remains unsolved.
On March 21, 2011, a U.S. federal judge in California ordered the FBI to preserve evidence in the car bombing. The FBI was planning to destroy all evidence in the case, even though agents had never determined who carried out the attempted assassination.
Earth First! in the UK
Hastings
Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....
, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
organised an action at Dungeness nuclear power station in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
. It grew rapidly, and many groups formed, with or without the EF! name, over the next years.
The first big Earth First! actions happened in 1992 and focused around the importation of tropical hardwood. The first major action had happened in December 1991 at Port of Tilbury
Port of Tilbury
The Port of Tilbury is located on the River Thames at Tilbury in Essex, England. It is the principal port for London; as well as being the main United Kingdom port for handling the importation of paper. There are extensive facilities for containers, grain, and other bulk cargoes. There are also...
. The second major action, the Merseyside Dock Action, attracted between 200-600 people who occupied Liverpool docks
Port of Liverpool
The Port of Liverpool is the name for the enclosed 7.5 mile dock system that runs from Brunswick Dock in Liverpool to Seaforth Dock, Seaforth, on the east side of the River Mersey and the Birkenhead Docks between Birkenhead and Wallasey on the west side of the river...
for two days. This action coincided with the Earth First! roadshow, in which a group of UK & US Earth First!ers toured the country. Other early campaigns also focused on timber-yards, most notably the Timbmet yard in Oxford.
There are now various regional Earth First! groups, the EF! Action Update has been joined by the EF! Action Reports website and a yearly Earth First! national gathering. At the first gathering in Sussex the debate focused on the use of criminal damage as a protest technique. Earth First! decided to neither 'condemn nor condone' criminal damage, instead it focused more on non-violent direct action techniques. Some people at the gathering coined the term Earth Liberation Front
Earth Liberation Front
The Earth Liberation Front , also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment".The ELF was founded...
(ELF), which became a separate movement which spread back to the US. Actions involving criminal damage did happen often under cover of night and were typically done under an ELF banner and attributed to elves and pixie
Pixie
Pixies are mythical creatures of folklore, considered to be particularly concentrated in the areas around Devon and Cornwall, suggesting some Celtic origin for the belief and name.They are usually depicted with pointed ears, and often wearing a green outfit and pointed...
s, or the Earth Liberation Faeries, giving a distinctly British feel to the movement.
Major growth in the direct action movement started with a concurrent focus on roads, and a protest camp at Twyford Down
Twyford Down
Twyford Down is a small area of ancient chalk downland lying directly to the southeast of Winchester, Hampshire, England. The down's summit, known as Deacon Hill, is towards the north-eastern edge of the area which is renowned for its dramatic rolling scenery, ecologically rich grassland and as a...
was started, against the M3 in Hampshire. Whilst Earth First! groups still played an essential part, other groups such as the Dongas tribe
Dongas road protest group
The Dongas Tribe was a collection of UK road protesters and travellers in England originally noted for their occupation of Twyford Down outside Winchester, Hampshire...
soon formed. Alongside SchNEWS
SchNEWS
SchNEWS is a free weekly publication from Brighton, England, which has been running since November 1994. The main focus is environmental and social issues/struggles in the UK – but also internationally – with an emphasis on direct action protest, and autonomous political struggles...
, such publications as the Earth First! Action Update, and Do or Die were means of communication between the groups. The movement grew to other road protest camps including the Newbury bypass
Newbury bypass
The Newbury bypass, officially known as The Winchester-Preston Trunk Road , is a stretch of dual carriageway road which bypasses the town of Newbury in Berkshire, England...
, the A30
A30 road
The 284 miles A30 road from London to Land's End, historically known as the Great South West Road used to provide the most direct route from London to the south west; more recently the M3 motorway and A303 road performs this function for much of the route and only parts of A30 now retain trunk...
and the M11 link road protest
M11 link road protest
The M11 link road protest was a major anti-road protest in east London, United Kingdom, in the early 1990s opposing the construction of the "A12 Hackney to M11 link road", also known as the M11 Link Road...
in London, where whole streets were squatted
Squatting
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use....
in order to slow down the construction work. Later the focus widened to other campaigns including Reclaim the Streets
Reclaim the Streets
Reclaim The Streets is a collective with a shared ideal of community ownership of public spaces. Participants characterize the collective as a resistance movement opposed to the dominance of corporate forces in globalization, and to the car as the dominant mode of transport.-Protests:Reclaim The...
, anti-genetics campaigns, and Rising Tide
Rising Tide UK
Rising Tide UK is the United Kingdom part of the International Rising Tide Network, both of which were created in 2000 to carry out direct action against the root causes of climate change, and to work towards a fossil fuel free future...
. More recently, there have been groups such as Peat Alert! and Plane Stupid
Plane Stupid
Plane Stupid is a UK-focused group of environmental protesters who state their aim as wanting to see an end to airport expansion for what it sees as "unnecessary and unsustainable" flights. The organisation has no formal hierarchy, leader, or media figurehead. It is a loose association of...
.
The UK Earth First! groups differed considerably from the U.S. groups as reported in a ten year retrospective of the Earth First! by two of the founders Jake Bowers and Jason Torrance:
Seeing ecological and social justice as part of the same thing, plus organising along anarchist lines and bringing in other radical & militant struggles, mixed with audacious actions and real radicalism spread the EF! ideal to other countries and helped morph the US movement.
See also
- List of environmental organizations
- Conservation ethicConservation ethicConservation is an ethic of resource use, allocation, and protection. Its primary focus is upon maintaining the health of the natural world: its, fisheries, habitats, and biological diversity. Secondary focus is on materials conservation and energy conservation, which are seen as important to...
- Green anarchismGreen anarchismGreen anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden...
- Green syndicalismGreen syndicalismGreen syndicalism or eco-syndicalism has been used as a name for the philosophy of the green guild or sustainable trades movement.- Background :...
- HaydukeHaydukeHayduke is a term and verb used among environmental activists and people who cite cult "revenge" books. It is the name of George Washington Hayduke, a fictional character based on Edward Abbey's friend Doug Peacock in Abbey's cult classics The Monkey Wrench Gang and Hayduke Lives!...
Books about the early Earth First!
- Davis, John, ed. The Earth First! Reader: Ten Years of Radical Environmentalism (1991) (ISBN 978-0-87905-387-1)
- Foreman, Dave. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior (1991) (ISBN 978-0-517-88058-6)
- Foreman, Dave. Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching (1985) (ISBN 978-0-9637751-0-8)
- Manes, Christopher. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization (1990) (ISBN 978-0-316-54532-7)
- Scarce, Rik. Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement (2006) (ISBN 978-1-59874-028-8)
- Zakin, Susan. Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement (1993) (ISBN 978-0-8165-2185-2)
Books about the post-1990 Earth First
- EF! Publications. Do or Die - Voices from the Ecological Resistance (ISBN 0-9545662-0-3) (ISSN 1462-5989)
- Bari, Judi. Timber Wars (1994) (ISBN 978-1-56751-026-3)
- Lee, Martha. Earth First!: Environmental Apocalypse (1995) (ISBN 978-0-8156-0365-8)
- Scarce, Rik. Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement (2006) (ISBN 978-1-59874-028-8)
- Wall, Derek Earth First and the Anti-Roads Movement (1999) (ISBN 978-0-415-19064-0)
- Chadwick, Paul "Concrete: Think Like A Mountain"
- King, Elli (Editor) LISTEN: The Story of the People at Taku Wakan Tipi and the Reroute of Highway 55 or The Minnehaha Free State(2006)
Books critical of Earth First
- Arnold, Ron. Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature (1997) (ISBN 978-0-939571-18-5)
- Bradford, George. How Deep is Deep Ecology? (1989) (ISBN 978-0-87810-035-4)
- Clausen, Barry. Walking on the Edge: How I Infiltrated Earth First! (1994) (ISBN 978-0-936783-12-3)
- Coleman, Kate. The Secret Wars of Judi BariJudi BariJudi Bari was an American environmentalist and labor leader, a feminist, and the principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging in the ancient redwood forests of Northern California in the 1980s and '90...
(2005) (ISBN 978-1-893554-74-0)
Documentaries about Earth First!
- In 2009 EF!, along with the ELF, were the subject of a documentary called Green With A Vengeance
- In 2010 a documentary on the ELF and EF! will be released, entitled, If a Tree Falls.