 | |
| Abbreviation | EF! |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1980 |
| Founder | Dave Foreman Mike Roselle Howie Wolke Bart Koehler |
| Focus | Environmental protection |
| Location |
|
| Origins | Southwestern United States |
| Method | Direct action |
| Website | earthfirstjournal |
Earth First! is a radical environmental advocacy group that emerged in the Southwestern United States in 1979. It was founded on April 4, 1980, by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar.
Today there are Earth First! groups in Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, New Zealand, the Philippines, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States,
Inspired by several environmental writings, including Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Aldo Leopold's land ethic, and Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, a small group of environmental activists composed of Dave Foreman, ex-Yippie Mike Roselle, Wyoming Wilderness Society representatives Bart Koehler and Howie Wolke, and Bureau of Land Management employee Ron Kezar, united to form Earth First!. While traveling in Foreman's VW bus from the El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve in northern Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the group pledged, "No compromise in defense of Mother Earth!".
The co-founders of the group were called to action during the second "Roadless Area Review and Evaluation" (RARE II) by the U.S. Forest Service, which they considered a sell-out by mainstream environmental advocates. The activists envisioned a revolutionary movement, with the goal to set aside multi-million-acre ecological preserves all across the United States. Their ideas drew upon the concepts of conservation biology, which had been developing for over twenty years by notable scientists like E. O. Wilson; however, mainstream environmental groups were slow to embrace the new science. These events and ideologies coalesced after a grueling hike, as the men were headed toward Albuquerque. After "Foreman called out 'Earth First!', Roselle drew a clenched fist logo, passed it up to the front of the van, and there was Earth First!"
Early years
During the group's early years (1979–1986), Earth First! mixed publicity stunts (such as rolling a plastic "crack" down Glen Canyon Dam) with far-reaching wilderness proposals that reportedly surpassed the actions that mainstream environmental groups were willing to take (relying on 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 inspirational writings 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 a celebration with art and music, as well as an
activist conference with workshops and recounts of past actions. Another
project led by the organization at this time was the creation of Earth First! Foundation,
a tax-deductible fund which was established to provide financial
support for research, advocacy and education by Earth First! activists.
The fund was later renamed the Fund for Wild Nature in 1991.
In the spring of 1985, a nationwide call to action against the logging company Willamette Industries, published in the Earth First! Journal brought Earth First! members from around the United States to the Willamette National Forest of Western Oregon. After finding road blockades (carried out by Corvallis-based Cathedral Forest Action Group) were not an efficient form of protection against logging, Marylander Ron Huber and Washingtonian Mike Jakubal devised tree sitting as a more effective civil disobedience alternative.
On May 23, 1985, Mike Jakubal led 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 for sitting at the base of the tree
in support. The first "tree-sitting" 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, and was arrested by a hidden Forest Service
officer—but the tree-sitting concept was deemed sound by Earth First!
members. Huber, Jakubal, and Roselle demonstrated the concept at 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, on July 10 a
clash
took down all the trees with platforms except for Ron Huber's after the
other sitters had left for an overnight meeting elsewhere. Huber
remained at 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.
After 1987, Earth First! became primarily associated with direct action to prevent logging, building of dams, and other forms of development which may cause destruction of wildlife habitats
or the despoliation of wild places. The change in direction attracted
many new members to Earth First!, some of whom came from a leftist or anarchist political background or were involved in the counterculture. Dave Foreman has suggested that this led to the introduction of activities such as a "puke-in" at a shopping mall, a flag burning, the heckling of Edward Abbey at the 1987 Earth First! rendezvous, and back-and-forth debates in the Earth First! Journal
on topics such as anarchism, which Foreman and other Earth First!
members 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
tension reportedly led several of the founders to sever their ties to
Earth First! in 1990. Many of them went on to launch the magazine, Wild Earth, as well as the environmental group, the Wildlands Project. On the other hand, Roselle, along with activists such as Judi Bari, welcomed the new direct-action tactics and leftist direction of Earth First!.
Starting in the mid-1980s, Earth First! increasingly promoted and identified with "Deep Ecology", a philosophy put forth 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.
Since 1990
Since 1990, action within the Earth First! movement has become increasingly influenced by anarchist political philosophy. This change 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, Earth First!'s push toward the mainstream
movement led to the creation of an offshoot group called Earth Liberation Front.
The Earth Liberation Front was formally introduced during the 1992
Earth First! Round River Rendezvous, where young activists debated the
effectiveness of civil disobedience activism tactics in light of the
ever-increasing destruction of the planet by human activity. Elders of
the Earth First! movement gave their blessing to this newly formed
strike team known as ELF.
ELF became the extremists of the environmental movement, just as the
Earth First! movement itself had been when it was created a decade
earlier.
Earth First! protests commonly involved occupations of forested
timber sale areas and other threatened natural areas. In these protests,
dozens of people physically locked their bodies to trees, bulldozers,
and desks using specially created lock boxes (metal tubes reinforced
with rebar) through which protesters threaded their arms,
or using bicycle U-locks in order to lock their necks to other
objects.In 1997, as part of the ongoing HeadWaters Redwoods protests,
activists locked themselves to a redwood stump which was carried into
California Congressman Frank Riggs' office.
The HeadWaters campaign in Northern California aims to protect
the last old-growth redwood forests from logging by the Pacific Lumber
Company. The Pacific Lumber Co. was bought out by Maxxim, a hedge fund
company that planned to liquidate its assets including these old-growth
forests. HeadWaters has been an ongoing protest lasting over 15 years.
In 1990, environmental activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney
were injured when a pipe-bomb exploded in the car Bari was driving. The
FBI arrested Bari and her friends and accused them of planting the
bombs.
other theories suggest FBI involvement but it remains an open case. A
civil case was later brought against the FBI and local police which
found Bari's and Cherney's civil rights had been violated.
The largest timber sale in U.S. Forest Service history, the
Cove/Mallard Timber Sale, occurred in Idaho from 1992 to 1998. With the
aid of a nearby landowner, a former land developer turned activist,
Earth First! occupied the forest. As a result, Earth First! succeeded in
saving most of the threatened wilderness area. Over 350 people from 12
countries were arrested and the project was reduced from its initial
plan of 200 clear-cuts and the construction of seven new roads, to 37
clear-cuts and two new roads.
In June 1993, Earth First! halted the construction of the Noble Road by
erecting elaborate multi-layered barricades, which included U.S. Forest
Service vehicles. These barricades were constructed in one night, during
which activists traveled 17 miles through the mountains dodging law
enforcement patrols who had been informed of the planned demonstration.
The first tripod lockdowns occurred at this incident, which involved
three 30 foot logs, tied together and placed upright, with an activist
tied to a platform between them 20 feet in the air.
The tripod was placed over trenches in which four activists were buried
in quick-drying cement. Two additional activists used U-locks to lock
their necks to the front axles of responding vehicles. U.S. Forest
Service shot at activists and raided the land with a SWAT team armed
with M-16s. 27 activists were arrested.
During Free Cascadia, a mass occupation organized by Earth First!
at the Warner Creek timber sale in Oregon, 50-plus activists
continuously occupied the burnt forested mountains of Oregon for a year
in 1994-1995. They endured bad weather and law enforcement raids. Their
barricades which were dug in reinforced trenches, forts with
watchtowers, and tree-sits enabled a constant occupation of the land
while lawsuits and political actions locally and in Washington D.C.,
ultimately saved the land.
Warner Creek is often seen an example of how the Earth First movement
was successful, though most Earth First occupations of timber sales,
failed.
In the summer of 1995, environmental activists attempted to
occupy the old-growth timber sale area of Sugarloaf Mountain in Southern
Oregon. The Sugarloaf Mountain had been in legal battles for over a
decade when the "Rider from Hell" was added in committee to the
congressional Crime Bill of 1994, which mandated the logging of
thousands of acres of old-growth forest. The United States Forest Service declared an exclusionary zone
of 30 square miles in southern Oregon and arrested anyone in the area
including a local woman walking her dog. Over 100 federal agents,
supported by helicopters and the elite US Army Ranger-trained law
enforcement squad known as "Camo-Feddies," arrested hundreds of
activists. The environmental activists engaged at all levels of protest
with numerous public and illegal demonstrations by Earth First, protests
at government offices locally and in Washington D.C., tree-sits in
active logging zones, and even an attempted helicopter pad lock-down to
immobilise logging helicopters. One tree from Sugarloaf timber sale,
which was a four day long tree-sit by a local father and son Earth First
team, required 9 log trucks to carry it out in sections. This tree was estimated to be over 400 years old and took twenty-seven minutes to cut down using a 7-foot chainsaw.
Earth First! responded by immediately occupying the nearby timber
sale known as China Left in early October 1995 to defend the old-growth
forest and the last wild salmon spawning grounds in Oregon. EF
activists used dragon lock-boxes on both ends of the valley's only road
to protect the area
A female Earth First! activist known as "Ocean" held the road for a day
as police attempted to remove this human-and-cement blockade, allowing
Earth First! to dig in farther down the valley. This was the start of
two-year-long occupation protest, during which a pickup truck was turned
into a lock box to block the only bridge to the valley.
Earth First! protesters were often tortured by police, who used
pepper spray, pain compliance holds, police dogs, and the threat with
guns in attempts to coerce the protesters to abandon their lock downs.
The Earth First! movement has been labelled as a terrorist
organization by its opponents. Supporters of the movement disagree,
explaining that their cause is one of civil disobedience and honor for
the Earth.
The Earth First! movement engages targets of environmental
destruction with civil disobedience actions designed to draw attention
and to slow down destruction of threatened wilderness areas, using
lock-down techniques to create living blockades.
The first acknowledged death of an Earth First! activist occurred
on September 18, 1998, in northern California's Redwood forests. Earth
First! activist David Chain attempted to protect the forest by moving
around inside the active logging site, thereby creating unsafe
conditions for timber harvest. Normally, this would have resulted in the
interruption of logging, but a large Redwood, thought to be over 300
years old, was cut down by a Pacific Lumber logger and fell upon Chain,
who died instantly.
'Avalon, a member of the Earth Liberation Front, died on the
night of Winter Solace 2005 in a prison cell, while in FBI custody, when
he was being held for terrorism charges from multiple arson incidents
over the last decade, including the Vail Ski resort fire. The rest of
his ELF group was also arrested and are currently serving life sentences
in federal prison for crimes that involved property damage. 'Avalon
was a long term Earth First activist, one of the occupation activists of
Warner Creek Oregon and the Cove/Mallard Idaho protests for years and
one of 4 who constantly camped out in snow-caves monitoring the only
logging of Noble Road in the winter of January to March 1995 in 12-foot
deep snow and sub-zero temps.
After witnessing the destruction of "America's Amazon Jungle" where
for hundreds of miles around was wild untouched mountainous forests,
'Avalon became disenchanted with mere civil disobedience and developed a
more radical point of view.
Most activists of Earth First! have previously participated in
more moderate forms of environmental and political activism, including
protest marches and writing letters to politicians. The Earth First!
activist called 'Llama, of the Great Lakes Earth First! chapter in
Chicago, had been involved in college activism for years. He traveled to
D.C. and other capitols to lobby government officials, and even
received a letter from President Clinton thanking him for his "efforts
to save the wild lands of America." 'Fawn, another Earth First!er, grew
up as a Republican in a middle-class family.
Most members of Earth First! identify as decentralized, locally informed activists whose ideas stem from communitarian ethics. Earth First! adversaries characterize the group akin to terrorists. One of the early critics of Earth First!'s change in tactics later accused the FBI of deliberately introducing the concept of Non-Violence to the group.
In various parts of the country, individual citizens and small
groups form the base for grassroots political actions. These may take
the form of legal actions, including protests, timber sale appeals, and educational campaigns or civil disobedience, including tree sitting, road blockades, and sabotage (also called "ecotage" by some Earth First! members, who claim it is 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! lawsuits
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 there is no evidence that Earth First! was involved in related
activity. In 1990, Judi Bari convinced 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.
Judi Bari car bombing
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. Bari contended that extremists opposed to her
pro-environmental actions had placed the bomb in her car in order to
kill her. 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, who tried to discredit them in the media
as violent extremists despite ample evidence to the contrary. The
bombing remains unsolved.
A documentary movie about the court case, entitled The Forest for the Trees, was released in 2006. It was directed by Bernadine Mellis, whose father is one of the lawyers featured in the documentary.
The documentary Who Bombed Judi Bari?,
directed by Mary Liz Thomson, was released in 2012. The filmmakers are
offering a $50,000 reward for information leading the arrest of the
bomber.
On March 21, 2011, a U.S. federal judge in California ordered the
FBI to preserve evidence related to the car bombing. The FBI was
planning to destroy all evidence in the case.
In the United Kingdom
An arrest at the Liverpool docks, with protestors occupying cranes in the background
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 major 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 pixies, 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:
We knew EF! US's original hardline "rednecks for wilderness" attitude wouldn't appeal here, so we set out to build a group that combined radical action and social justice to protect Britain's few remaining natural places.
Seeing ecological and social justice as one and the same, in addition
to organizing along anarchist lines and bringing in other radical and
militant struggles, mixed with audacious actions and real radicalism
spread the EF! ideal to other countries and helped morph the US
movement.
Sabotage
Telluride Ski Resort
On August 10, 1991, vandals identifying themselves as members of Earth First! forced the closing of the Telluride Ski Resort in Mountain Village, Colorado using a chemical to write messages on 11 greens, such as "Earth First!", "Hayduke lives" and "Ron you pig". In relation to the incident, the Telluride Times Journal
received a letter signed "Earth First" stating that the ski lift had
been sabotaged with a welding gas applied to the lift cable that weakens
the metal.
Fairfield Snowbowl Ski Resort
Earth First! member Mark Davis pleaded guilty in Federal court to malicious destruction of property at the Fairfield Snowbowl Ski Resort near Flagstaff, Arizona.
Davis had been charged with "using a torch to cut around the base of
the top pylon of the main chair lift at Snowbowl on Oct. 25, 1988."
Nuclear power and weapons plants
Earth First! member Mark Davis was sentenced to six years in prison for conspiring to damage the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Generating Facility, and the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station.
Documentaries
- Pickaxe, based on the 1990s Earth First!-led "Cascadia Free State"
- In 2009 EF!, along with the ELF, were the subject of a documentary called Green With A Vengeance.
- A 2011 documentary on the ELF and EF!, entitled, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.
- Testify! - Eco-Defense and the Politics of Violence
