Earth First! is a
radical environmental advocacy group that originated in the
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural list of regions of the United States, region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacen ...
. It was founded in 1980 by
Dave Foreman,
Mike Roselle
Mike Roselle (born 1954) is an American Environmental movement, environmental activist and author who is a prominent member of the radical environmentalism movement. Roselle is one of the co-founders of the radical environmental organization Earth ...
, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar.
Inspired by several environmental writings, including
Rachel Carson
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservation movement, conservationist whose sea trilogy (1941–1955) and book ''Silent Spring'' (1962) are credited with advancing mari ...
's ''
Silent Spring
''Silent Spring'' is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. Published on September 27, 1962, the book documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of DDT, a pesticide used by soldiers during World War II. Carson acc ...
'',
Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 – April 21, 1948) was an American writer, Philosophy, philosopher, Natural history, naturalist, scientist, Ecology, ecologist, forester, Conservation biology, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a profes ...
's
land ethic
A land ethic is a philosophy or theoretical framework about how, ethically, humans should regard the land. The term was coined by Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) in his '' A Sand County Almanac'' (1949), a classic text of the environmental movement. ...
, and
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) 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 nov ...
's ''
The Monkey Wrench Gang'', a small group of environmental activists composed of
Dave Foreman, ex-
Yippie Mike Roselle
Mike Roselle (born 1954) is an American Environmental movement, environmental activist and author who is a prominent member of the radical environmentalism movement. Roselle is one of the co-founders of the radical environmental organization Earth ...
, Wyoming
Wilderness Society representatives Bart Koehler and Howie Wolke, and
Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...
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
El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve () is a biosphere reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site managed by the federal government of Mexico, specifically by Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources, in collaborat ...
in northern Mexico to
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque ( ; ), also known as ABQ, Burque, the Duke City, and in the past 'the Q', is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Bernalillo County, New Mexico, Bernal ...
, 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
The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering of land. The major divisions of the agency are the Chief's ...
, 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
Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist known for developing the field of sociobiology.
Born in Alabama, Wilson found an early interest in nature and frequ ...
; 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!".
[Wolke, Howie,]
Earth First! A Founder’s Story
Lowbagger.org
Early years, from 1980–1989
Earth First was founded on April 4, 1980,
by
Dave Foreman,
Mike Roselle
Mike Roselle (born 1954) is an American Environmental movement, environmental activist and author who is a prominent member of the radical environmentalism movement. Roselle is one of the co-founders of the radical environmental organization Earth ...
, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar.
During the group's early years (1980–1986), Earth First mixed publicity stunts (such as rolling a plastic "crack" down
Glen Canyon Dam) with far-reaching
wilderness
Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plurale tantum, plural) are Earth, Earth's natural environments that have not been significantly modified by human impact on the environment, human activity, or any urbanization, nonurbanized land not u ...
proposals that reportedly surpassed the actions that mainstream environmental groups were willing to take (relying on
conservation biology
Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an i ...
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
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) 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 nov ...
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
The Ojibwe (; syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the northern plains, extending into the subarctic and thro ...
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. Musicians such as Dana Lyons, Judi Bari, Daryl Cherney, Joanne Rand, Bart Koehler, Casey Neill and others performed regularly on Earth First! promotional roadshows as well as at gatherings, protests and blockades. 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
The Willamette National Forest is a United States National Forest, National Forest located in the central portion of the Cascade Range of the U.S. state of Oregon.
It comprises . Over 380,000 acres (694 mi2, 1,540 km2) are National Wil ...
of Western
Oregon
Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...
.
[
] After finding road blockades (carried out by
Corvallis-based Cathedral Forest Action Group) were not an efficient form of protection against logging,
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
er Ron Huber and
Washingtonian Mike Jakubal devised
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 (speculating that loggers will not endanger human lives by c ...
as a more effective
civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizenship, citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be cal ...
alternative.
On May 23, 1985, Mike Jakubal led the first Earth First tree sit. When
U.S. Forest Service
The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering of land. The major divisions of the agency are the Chief's ...
law enforcement official Steve Slagowski arrived,
Mike Roselle
Mike Roselle (born 1954) is an American Environmental movement, environmental activist and author who is a prominent member of the radical environmentalism movement. Roselle is one of the co-founders of the radical environmental organization Earth ...
, 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
Yggdrasil () is an immense and central sacred tree in Norse cosmology. Around it exists all else, including the Nine Worlds.
Yggdrasil is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'' compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and in t ...
, until July 20 when two Linn County
sheriff
A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland, the , which is common ...
's deputies were lifted in a crane box and wrestled him from the tree.
Direct action
After 1987, Earth First became primarily associated with
direct action
Direct action is a term for economic and political behavior in which participants use agency—for example economic or physical power—to achieve their goals. The aim of direct action is to either obstruct a certain practice (such as a governm ...
to prevent
logging
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucks[dam
A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, aqua ...]
s, and other forms of
development
Development or developing may refer to:
Arts
*Development (music), the process by which thematic material is reshaped
* Photographic development
*Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting
* Development hell, when a proje ...
which may cause severe destruction of
wildlife
Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animals and uncultivated plant species which can exist in their natural habitat, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introdu ...
habitats
In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...
or the despoliation of wild places. The change in direction attracted many new members to Earth First, some of whom came from a
leftist
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politi ...
or
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...
political background or were involved in the
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...
. Dave Foreman has suggested that this led to the introduction of activities such as a "
puke-in" at a shopping mall, a
flag burning
A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular) with distinctive colours and design. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design employed, and flags have ...
, 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, with 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
Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, and argues that modern human societies should be restructured in accordance with such idea ...
", a philosophy put forth by
Arne Næss
Arne Dekke Eide Næss ( ; ; 27 January 1912 – 12 January 2009) was a Norwegian philosopher who coined the term "deep ecology", an important intellectual and inspirational figure within the environmental movement of the late twentieth cent ...
, 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 being
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...
s.
From 1990–present
Since 1990, action within the Earth First movement has become increasingly influenced by
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...
political philosophy
Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and Political legitimacy, legitimacy of political institutions, such as State (polity), states. This field investigates different ...
. 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 (ELF), also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for Wiktionary:autonomy, autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to ...
. 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.
HeadWaters
The HeadWaters campaign in Northern California aimed to protect the last
old-growth redwood forests, Headwaters Grove (now known as
Headwaters Forest Reserve
The Headwaters Forest Reserve is a group of old growth Sequoia sempervirens, coast redwood (''Sequoia sempervirens'') groves in the Northern California coastal forests ecoregion near Humboldt Bay (United States), Humboldt Bay of the U.S. state o ...
) of forest from logging by the
Pacific Lumber Company.
Charles Hurwitz and his company Maxxam, Inc. purchased Pacific Lumber Company in 1985, and planned to liquidate its assets including these
old-growth forest
An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Natio ...
s.
In May 1987, sawmill worker George Alexander lost several teeth and fractured his jaw when the saw he was operating struck an 11-inch spike and fragmented, sending shrapnel into his face. This incident, which occurred at the Cloverdale Louisiana-Pacific mill in northern California, is alleged to have been caused by tree-spiking by Earth First! members, but no conclusive evidence has been found to prove this.
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 in
Eureka. HeadWaters was an ongoing protest lasting over a decade, and ending in 2009.
The 1990s lawsuit, Headwaters Forest Defense vs. Humboldt County, charged that police officers were using excessive force, including chemical weapons.
The first acknowledged death of an Earth First activist occurred on September 18, 1998, in Northern California's Redwood forests. Earth First activist
David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain attempted to protect the forest by trespassing inside an active logging site. During the logging operations, a large redwood was cut down by a Pacific Lumber logger and fell upon Chain, who died instantly.
Cove-Mallard Timber
Between 1992 and 1998 took place the largest timber sale in
United States Forest Service
The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 United States National Forest, national forests and 20 United States Natio ...
history, the Cove-Mallard timber sale of 6,000 acres in
Idaho
Idaho ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington (state), ...
near the
Nez Perce National Forest.
The group of EarthFirst activists focused on this area were called the "Cove-Mallard Coalition".
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.
William "Avalon" Rodgers, a member of the Earth Liberation Front, who alongside the rest of his ELF group was also arrested and were serving life sentences in federal prison for crimes that involved property damage. Rodgers was a long term Earth First activist, and one of the occupation activists of Free Cascadia/Warner Creek Oregon and the Cove/Mallard Idaho protests for years and one of four 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.
Free Cascadia
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 immobilize 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.
Judi Bari car bombing
In 1990, a
bomb
A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechan ...
exploded in the car of Earth First activist
Judi Bari, injuring Bari and fellow activist
Darryl Cherney. Bari and Cherney were arrested due to suspicions by the police and
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
that they had been transporting a bomb that had 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 of cancer in 1997, but her federal lawsuit against the FBI and
Oakland, California
Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...
police resulted in a 2002 jury verdict awarding her estate and Darryl Cherney a total of $4.4 million.
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. The bombing remains unsolved.
Protest and ecodefense
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. 'Fawn", an Earth Firster in the United States, grew up as a Republican, in a middle-class family. Most members of Earth First identify as
decentralized
Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and gi ...
, locally informed activists whose ideas stem from
communitarian ethics. One of the early critics of Earth First's change in tactics later accused the FBI of deliberately introducing the concept of
Non-Violence
Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...
to the group.
In various parts of the United States, individual citizens and small groups form the base for grassroots political actions. These may take the form of legal actions, including
protest
A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration, or remonstrance) is a public act of objection, disapproval or dissent against political advantage. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooperation in which numerous people cooperate ...
s, timber sale appeals, and educational campaigns or
civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizenship, citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be cal ...
, including
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 (speculating that loggers will not endanger human lives by c ...
,
road
A road is a thoroughfare used primarily for movement of traffic. Roads differ from streets, whose primary use is local access. They also differ from stroads, which combine the features of streets and roads. Most modern roads are paved.
Th ...
blockade
A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force.
A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are ...
s, and
sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...
(also called "
ecotage
Ecotage ( ) is sabotage carried out for environmental reasons.
Cases
All damage figures below are in United States dollars. Some well-known acts of ecotage have included:
*Circa 1969 to 1985 – ecological activist James F. Phillips, opera ...
" 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
lawsuit
A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today ...
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
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization, destabilization, division, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''sab ...
(or ecotage), although there is no evidence that Earth First was involved in related activity. In 1990,
Judi Bari convinced Earth First in the
Northern California
Northern California (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...
and Southern
Oregon
Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...
region to renounce the practice of tree-spiking, 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 () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
.
Police used non-lethal weapons and tactics against Earth First protesters including pepper spray, pain compliance holds, police dogs, and the
threat of guns in attempts to coerce the protesters to abandon their lock downs.
United Kingdom

The movement in the United Kingdom started in 1990, when a group in
Hastings
Hastings ( ) is a seaside town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England,
east of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to th ...
,
Sussex
Sussex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈsʌsɪks/; from the Old English ''Sūþseaxe''; lit. 'South Saxons'; 'Sussex') is an area within South East England that was historically a kingdom of Sussex, kingdom and, later, a Historic counties of England, ...
organised an action at
Dungeness nuclear power station in
Kent
Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...
. It grew rapidly, and many groups formed, with or without the EF name, over the next years.
The first major Earth First action happened in December 1991 at
Port of Tilbury
The Port of Tilbury is a port located on the River Thames at Tilbury in Essex, England. It serves as the principal port for London, as well as being the main United Kingdom port for handling the importation of paper. There are extensive facili ...
and focused around the importation of tropical hardwood. The second major action, the ''Merseyside Dock Action'', attracted between 200–600 people who occupied
Liverpool docks
The Port of Liverpool is the enclosed Dock (maritime), dock system that runs from Brunswick Dock in Liverpool to Seaforth Dock, Seaforth, Merseyside, Seaforth, on the east side of the River Mersey and the Great Float, Birkenhead Docks betwee ...
for two days. This action coincided with the Earth First roadshow, in which a group of UK & US Earth Firsters 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
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for Wiktionary:autonomy, autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to ...
(ELF), which became a separate movement and spread back to the US. Actions involving criminal damage often happened under cover of night, typically done under an ELF banner and attributed to
elves
An elf (: elves) is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology, being mentioned in the Icelandic ''Poetic Edda'' and the ''Prose Edda''.
In medieval Germanic-speakin ...
and
pixie
A pixie (also called pisky, pixy, pixi, pizkie, piskie, or pigsie in parts of Cornwall and Devon) is a mythical creature of British folklore. Pixies are speculated to be particularly concentrated in the high moorland areas around Devon and Cor ...
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 is an area of chalk downland lying directly to the southeast of Winchester, Hampshire, England next to St. Catherine's Hill, Hampshire, St. Catherine's Hill and close to the South Downs National Park. It has been settled since pre ...
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 Newbury bypass, officially known as The Winchester-Preston Trunk Road (A34) (Newbury Bypass), is a stretch of dual carriageway road which bypasses the town of Newbury in Berkshire, England. It is located to the west of the town and forms ...
, the
A30 and the
M11 link road protest in London, where whole streets were
squatted
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building (usually residential) that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there wer ...
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 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
Fairfield Snowbowl Ski Resort
Earth First member Mark Davis was sentenced in Federal court to six years in prison for malicious destruction of property at the
Fairfield Snowbowl Ski Resort near
Flagstaff, Arizona
Flagstaff ( ), known locally as Flag, is the county seat of Coconino County, Arizona, in the southwestern United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 76,831.
Flagstaff is the principal city of the Coconino Cou ...
, in concert with David Foreman, Ilse Asplund, Margaret Millett, and Mark Baker.
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 October 25, 1988."
The resort attack, sabotage at Energy Fuels' Canyon uranium mine (6 miles southeast of
Tusayan, Arizona
Tusayan is a town located in Coconino County, Arizona, Coconino County, Arizona, United States. It was Municipal corporation, incorporated in 2010. It is a resort town near the south entrance to Grand Canyon National Park, acting as a gateway c ...
), and attempting to cut down power-line towers leading to the
Central Arizona Project
The Central Arizona Project (CAP) is a 336 mi (541 km) diversion canal in Arizona in the southern United States.
The aqueduct diverts water from the Colorado River at the Bill Williams Wildlife Refuge south portion of Lake Havasu n ...
aqueduct, were characterized as dress rehearsals for attacks on nuclear plants.
[
]
Telluride Ski Resort
On August 10, 1991, vandals identifying themselves as members of Earth First forced the closing of the Telluride Ski Resort
Telluride Ski Resort is a ski resort located in Mountain Village, southwest Colorado, United States.
The resort is located in the northwestern San Juan Mountains, part of the Rocky Mountains, and is home to the highest concentration of 13,00 ...
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.
Aspen Pipeline Sabotage
A gas pipeline in Aspen Colorado was sabotaged turning off heat to 3,500 people on December 29, 2020. The perpetrators wrote "Earth First!" on the pipeline.
Filmography
Documentary films
See also
* Conservation ethic
Nature conservation is the ethic/moral philosophy and conservation movement focused on protecting species from extinction, maintaining and restoring habitats, enhancing ecosystem services, and protecting biological diversity. A range of valu ...
* Environmental history of the United States#Ecocentrics
* Extinction Rebellion
Extinction Rebellion (abbreviated as XR) is a UK-founded global environmental movement, with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and ...
* Green anarchism
Green anarchism, also known as ecological anarchism or eco-anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that focuses on ecology and environmental issues. It is an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian form of radical environmentalism, which e ...
* Green syndicalism
Green anarchism, also known as ecological anarchism or eco-anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that focuses on ecology and environmental issues. It is an anti-capitalism, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarianism, anti-authoritarian form ...
* Hayduke
* List of environmental organizations
An environmental organization is an organization coming out of the conservation or environmental movements
that seeks to protect, analyse or monitor the environment against misuse or degradation from human forces.
In this sense the environme ...
References
Further reading
Books about the early years
* Davis, John, ed. ''The Earth First! Reader: Ten Years of Radical Environmentalism'' (1991) ()
* Foreman, David. ''Confessions of an Eco-Warrior'' (1991) ()
* Foreman, David. ''Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching'' (1985) ()
* Manes, Christopher. ''Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization'' (1990) ()
* Scarce, Rik. ''Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement'' (2006) ()
* Wall, Derek. ''Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical Environmentalism and Comparative Social Movements '' (1999) ()
* Zakin, Susan. ''Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement'' (1993) ()
* Lee, Martha. ''Earth First!: Environmental Apocalypse'' (1995) ()
Books about Earth First, post–1990
* Bari, Judi. ''Timber Wars'' (1994) ()
* EF! Publications. ''Do or Die - Voices from the Ecological Resistance'' () (ISSN 1462-5989)
* 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)
* Scarce, Rik. ''Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement'' (2006) ()
* Wall, Derek ''Earth First and the Anti-Roads Movement'' (1999) ()
* Woodhouse, Keith Makoto. ''The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism'' (2018)
Books critical of Earth First
* Arnold, Ron. ''Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature'' (1997) ()
* Bradford, George. ''How Deep is Deep Ecology?'' (1989) ()
* Clausen, Barry. ''Walking on the Edge: How I Infiltrated Earth First!'' (1994) ()
* Coleman, Kate. ''The Secret Wars of Judi Bari'' (2005) ()
External links
The History and Impact of Earth First
*
Earth First! Journal
Earth First! Newswire
Introducing Earth First!
documentary films
on ''IMDb
IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...
''
Earth First! UK
{{Authority control
Environmental organizations based in the United States
Radical environmentalism
Anti-road protests
Green anarchism
Direct action
Environmental organizations established in 1980
1980 establishments in the United States
Anti-consumerist groups