Origins Southwestern United States Method Direct action Website earthfirstjournal.news -- 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 -- 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! Journal. Edward Abbey often spoke at early gatherings, and his inspirational writings led him to be revered by the early movement.^[citation needed] 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.^[citation needed] 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 -- The fund was later renamed the Fund for Wild Nature in 1991.^[5] In the spring of 1985, a nationwide call to action against the logging company Willamette Industries, published in the Earth First! Journal^[citation needed] 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.^[6] -- lifted in a crane box^[12] 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 -- 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!. -- (Learn how and when to remove this template message) 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,^[clarification needed],^[13]^[14] 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.^[15] The Earth Liberation Front was formally introduced during the 1992 Earth -- 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.^[16] ELF became the extremists of the environmental movement, just as the Earth First! movement itself had been when it was created a decade earlier. -- 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.^[25]^[26] Warner Creek is often seen an example of how the Earth First movement was successful, though most Earth First occupations of timber sales, failed. -- attempts to coerce the protesters to abandon their lock downs.^[34] 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.^[citation needed] 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.^[17]^[35]^[non sequitur] -- 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 -- 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.^[46] Bari died in 1997 of cancer, but her federal lawsuit -- In the United Kingdom[edit] Main article: Environmental direct action 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.^[51] There are now various regional Earth First! groups, the EF! Action Update has been joined by the EF! Action Reports website^[52] and a yearly Earth First! national gathering.^[53] 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,^[54] and Do or Die^[55] 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 -- 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.^[51] 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[edit] -- 17. ^ ^a ^b "Locking Down with Lockboxes - Crimethinc". historyisaweapon.com. 18. ^ ^a ^b "Earth First! Direct Action Manual". Issuu (3rd ed.). 19. ^ "Acts of Ecoterrorism by Radical Environmental Organizations". house.gov. -- country". 21. ^ "Earth First activists win case / FBI, cops must pay $4.4 million for actions after car bombing". SFGate. 22. ^ "'Who Bombed Judi Bari?' documentary seeks an answer". The Los Angeles Times. March 25, 2012. -- 51. ^ ^a ^b Bowers, Jake; Torrance, Jason (May 2, 2001). "Grey green". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 1, 2010. 52. ^ "Earth First! Action Reports - Direct action - no leaders - confront, stop & reverse the destruction of the earth". earthfirst.org.uk. 53. ^ "Earth First! Gathering". Archived from the original on 2006-04-02. 54. ^ "Earth First! Action Update". earthfirst.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2009-02-12. Retrieved 2008-12-23. 55. ^ "Do or Die". 56. ^ "ライトデビル". geneticsaction.org.uk. 57. ^ "peat alert in south yorkshire". peatalert.org.uk. 58. ^ "Plane Stupid - bringing the aviation industry back down to -- 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: Radical Environmentalism and Comparative Social Movements (1999) (ISBN 978-0415190640) Zakin, Susan. Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement (1993) (ISBN 978-0-8165-2185-2) Lee, Martha. Earth First!: Environmental Apocalypse (1995) -- 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) -- * UK Earth First! * Social sciences.svg Society portal * Flag of the United States.svg United States portal * Aegopodium podagraria1 ies.jpg Environment portal -- * Anti-road protest * Green anarchism * Direct action * Environmental organizations established in 1980 * 1980 establishments in the United States