Earth First!

Earth First! is a radical environmental group focused on the protection of wilderness and wildlife. It was formed in 1980 as a critique of and alternative to mainstream environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society. Those groups were seen as too moderate and too willing to sacrifice the protection of some wild areas in order to make deals with politicians. In contrast, Earth First!ers united under the slogan, “No compromise in defense of Mother Earth.”

Missoula, Montana, firefighters and police pull an Earth First! protester to safety after he and a female protester, who refused to give their names, lowered themselves over the side of a bridge from ropes attached to a logging truck stopped by other protesters on the bridge on Wednesday, June 19, 2002, in Missoula. The other protester lowered herself into a rescue boat on the Clark Fork River below. The pair were protesting logging sales in the Bitterroot National Forest.

Source: AP Photo/Missoulian, Tom Bauer.

Three characteristics that distinguish Earth First! from mainstream environmental groups are its organizational form, philosophy, and tactics. Earth First! is not a formal organization. Rather it is a loose network of autonomous regional groups. There is no staff and [Page 498]no formal leadership, although cofounder Dave Foreman became the most visible spokesperson for the group in the 1980s. The only way to be an Earth First!er is through direct participation in the group's activities. The creation of a nationwide publication called the Earth First! Journal served to connect Earth First!ers around the country while offering a free space for the uncensored exchange of ideas, no matter how controversial.

Earth First!ers found a unifying philosophy in deep ecology, which contends that all species of animals and plants have an inherent right to exist and that wilderness should be protected irrespective of its usefulness to human beings. Critics of Earth First! have argued that deep ecology is misanthropic, favoring other species over human beings. While some early Earth First!ers made controversial statements on over-population that fed into this stereotype, later Earth First!ers highlighted common ground between social justice and the protection of nature.

Earth First! is best known for its tactics. Earth First!ers generally do not participate in the lobbying and political deal-making associated with mainstream environmental organizations. Instead, Earth First! activists engage in nonviolent direct action, such as civil disobedience to block environmentally harmful activities and “monkeywrenching,” the sabotage of machinery involved in environmental destruction. Initially, Earth First!'s monkeywrenching garnered the most public attention. Opponents have labeled these actions as ecoterrorism, but that term is misleading since Earth First!ers operate under a clear policy not to harm people.

Earth First!ers' bold and dramatic direct actions—standing in front of bulldozers and putting spikes in trees to prevent them from being cut—brought national news coverage. With this media attention, Earth First! grew quickly. But by the late 1980s, the group faced serious challenges both internally and externally.

Internally, the growth of Earth First! brought in new activists with new ideas for the direction of the group that sometimes conflicted with those of its founders. The Earth First! activist most associated with these changes was Judi Bari, a carpenter and union organizer. Bari sought to build alliances with timber workers against logging companies and to generally broaden participation in Earth First! To this end, Bari and other Earth First!ers disavowed monkeywrenching as part of their Redwood Summer campaign in 1990. Modeled on the Mississippi Freedom Summer of the civil rights movement, Redwood Summer brought students and other activists to rural California to call attention to the logging of the giant redwood trees.

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