How Eco-terrorism Works

Individuals have defended the environment for decades. The Sierra Club and Greenpeace, which formed in 1892 and 1971 respectively, are two activist organizations that have pressured legislators, corporations and individuals to protect the environment throughout their existence -- without resorting to violence.

According to the FBI, eco-terror was born in 1977. In 1980, the group Earth First! came along and raised the stakes by engaging in acts of civil disobedience like tree spiking (the practice of hammering a nail into a tree to prevent it from being cut down, which can severely injure loggers).

The most well-known group linked to eco-terror in the U.S., the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, was formed when some members of the group Earth First! became frustrated with what they saw as an insufficient pace of change and began a group that would engage in more violent, direct action. Like the members of ELF, eco-terrorists are radical environmentalists who believe traditional ways of bringing about change are not adequate. They view politicians as ineffective and believe that if something is to be done, they must do it themselves.

Members of the eco-terror movement liken their predicament to fighting in a war. They suggest that animals and the environment are being attacked by humans and need to be defended. In an interview with National Geographic magazine, Leslie James Pickering, an ELF spokesman, claimed that members are simply defending the Earth and the elements that humans need to survive: "I'm representing a group that is fighting in self-defense, for preservation of our species [and] all species of life on Earth" [source: Foreman].

Other extreme environmental and animal rights groups compare their fight to the struggle to free slaves or to win women the right to vote. Those advocates didn't sit back and wait for their rights to be handed to them, activists say. They fought hard and often broke the law. Pickering seconds this argument, saying that "every successful social justice movement throughout history has had an element of radical activism or radical engagement. We're not gonna stop at what the system tells us to stop at" [source: Foreman]. Eco-terrorists argue that they are not the enemy; the enemy is all the people they are fighting.

But some environmental groups disagree. They fear that the violent extremism displayed by groups like ELF could create a backlash against the entire environmental movement and make it harder for more mainstream groups to effect change.

Some people even look favorably, or at least neutrally, upon groups like ELF [source: Schabner]. After all, they don't seek to intentionally harm anyone, even those they see as "the system." And how bad can they be if they're defending pristine waters, open prairies and cute little bunnies?

Pretty bad, according to the FBI, who considers them a top priority. Bad enough to be charged with federal crimes in some cases and sentenced to decades in prison -- if they can be caught. On the next page, you'll learn more about the organization and tactics of eco-terror groups and why they're so difficult to track down.

Although eco-terrorists engage in a range of destructive actions, their belief that all life is sacred has thus far kept them from seriously injuring anyone. So while they may have caused some serious financial damage when they torched the Seattle homes, no one was hurt in the fires because the houses were unoccupied.

The preferred method of destruction seems to be arson, probably because it is relatively simple, causes significant destruction and gets a lot of attention. For example, the 1998 firebombing of Vail ski resort to protest further development received a great deal of publicity and caused $12 million in damage [source: Archibold].

Arson is not the only trick up eco-terrorists' sleeves. They also employ other tactics designed to disrupt normal operations at target businesses and to discourage people from engaging in environmental destruction. Eco-terror activists spike roads, disable vehicles, vandalize homes and deliver sewage or dead animals to corporate offices. Since 1976, they have committed more than 1,100 terrorist acts, causing more than $110 million in damage [source: Philipkoski].

Despite all the instances of eco-terrorism, few people have been connected with any crimes. The last big arrest came in 2006 when the FBI shut down a group of people responsible for starting about 20 fires in five states that caused $40 million-plus in damage. This arrest only came about after an intense nine-year investigation called "Operation Backfire" [source: Fox News].

People familiar with the eco-terror movement claim that the structure of the groups is what makes them so hard to penetrate. There is no central leadership to guide actions and no real cohesion among members. In fact, there aren't really even any "members" -- you don't pay a $15 membership fee, get a cute tote bag and receive monthly updates in the mail. All you have to do to be part of the movement is to commit an act in the name of Mother Earth. ELF's Web site claims that members are anonymous even to each other. So even when people are found and arrested, attacks don't decline because the groups are dependent only on each individual's fervent commitment to protecting nature, not on the leadership of any one person.

Although people outside of the movement aren't certain of how eco-terror groups organize and carry out attacks, experts think the groups comprise a series of cells located across the country that recruit participants for specific activities and then disband. This method contributes to making perpetrators hard to catch. They don't stay in one place long enough to be investigated, their targets are scattered and the evidence left behind at the crime scene is limited.

Despite the "eco" prefix, eco-terrorists often take on animal rights causes, as well as environmental ones. ELF sometimes partners with its sister group, ALF, or the Animal Liberation Front, and attacks animal testing sites, fur farms and the like. Learn more about animal rights extremists next.

Organizations like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society often defend animal rights by staging protests or placing themselves between hunter and hunted. But groups like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) don't stop there. Their members vandalize things like animal testing facilities, meat packing plants, slaughterhouses and mink farms, causing millions of dollars in damage and disrupting operations.

The U.S.-based ALF originated in England, the offshoot of a 1960s group known as the Hunt Saboteurs Association formed to protest fox hunts. In 1972, some members started the Band of Mercy to undertake more violent actions such as firebombing. ALF migrated across the Atlantic in 1979, and in the last several years, has torched a McDonald's in Arizona, burned down a primate facility in New Mexico and raided a fur farm in Oregon, among other activities.

SHAC also started in the U.K., dedicated to protesting one of the largest contract animal testing facilities in Europe, Huntingdon Life Sciences. SHAC's comprehensive Web site outlines its mission and paints a disturbing picture of the testing lab that houses approximately 70,000 animals.

The organization now has activists working across Europe and in the United States. U.S. activists became involved when HLS moved its headquarters to New Jersey. These activists have gone to great lengths to stop what they label as atrocities at HLS. Not only do they target the facility itself, they also target the business partners of HLS. By closing off the facility's sources of money, the Web site states, SHAC hopes to eventually shut it down. The group maintains a list of the more than 100 companies it says it has forced to stop doing business with Huntingdon.

How do they do it? Unlike extreme animal and environmental activists in the United States, their counterparts in Europe do not shy away from physical violence. Members of animal rights groups in Europe injured several people with letter bombs in the 1990s and beat the president of HLS with clubs in 2001 [source: Anti-Defamation League].

Based on the recent fires in Seattle, it doesn't look as though eco-terror is losing any steam. As long as oil companies continue to drill, construction companies continue to build and loggers continue to log, these activists likely will stick around and continue to fight their war. You can find more information on eco-terror and animal rights groups on the next page.