Page 137 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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central authority. The chapters were connected only
EARTH FIRST! through the Earth First! Journal, published in Eugene,
Oregon.
Earth First! is one of the best-known radical envi- Throughout the early 1980s, Earth First! engaged
ronmentalist groups in the United States, and is also in protests, propaganda, and traditional civil disobedi-
well known for tree-spiking and tree-sitting tactics ence, using the logo of a clenched first and the slogan
used in its campaign to save old-growth forests in the “no compromise in defense of Mother Earth!” Adept
Pacific Northwest. and media-savvy, Earth First!ers crafted pithy news-
In 1980, David Foreman, an environmental lobbyist bites, such as “Save an owl, slice a logger,” and per-
for the Wilderness Society, became frustrated with formed various stunts to keep its name in the news.
the ineffectiveness of “reform environmentalism” after By 1984, members began pounding spikes into
a failed attempt to save 80 million acres of undeveloped trees slated for logging; this dangerous tactic, known
land in U.S. national parks. That April, he and several as “tree-spiking,” was intended to damage saws and
colleagues, including activist Mike Roselle, set out sawmill equipment. In 1987, when George Anderson,
for the Mexican desert and formed Earth First!, using a 23-year-old mill worker, was seriously injured by an
Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench 11-inch spike, some members chose to give up this
Gang, as an organizational and action blueprint. The technique in favor of other “monkey wrenching” tac-
novel tells of radical Southwestern environmentalists tics described in Foreman’s 1985 book, Ecodefense:
who burned billboards, sabotaged bulldozers, and A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching.
planned to blow up dams. Foreman’s how-to manual included instructions
Earth First! announced its presence on the environ- for “decommissioning” bulldozers, grounding heli-
mental scene in 1981, when members stood atop the copters, bringing down billboards; it also advocated
Glen Canyon Dam and unfurled a 300-foot black plas- pulling up survey stakes, blocking bulldozers, and
tic banner down its face, giving the appearance of a tree-sitting as effective ways of protecting forests and
deep crack, in an action dubbed the “Cracking of Glen wilderness from human invasion. The ultimate goal of
Canyon Dam.” Two years later, working to save an these tactics was to target weak links in the logging
old-growth forest in the Siskiyou National Forest in industry and make logging difficult and unprofitable.
Oregon, Earth First! members set up a log roadblock to Early on, Earth First! had adopted “deep ecology”
stop construction trucks. When that failed, Foreman as its governing philosophy, meaning that members
acted as a human blockade and was dragged more than conceived of environmentalism in terms of entire
100 yards by a trucker. Meanwhile, Roselle began to ecosystems. As Earth First! grew, it became infused
organize. Soon, small, regional Earth First! chapters with countercultural politics and various spiritual
sprang up all over the western United States. Like ideas, such as paganism. Soon, the organization
other, earlier environmental groups, Earth First! had no was rent by factionalism. In 1987, Foreman moved

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