Earth Liberation Front

In 1998, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an extremist environmentalist group, perpetrated one of the costliest and most sophisticated acts of “ecotage” (economic sabotage in the name of the environment) in U.S. history, thereby becoming a primary focus of the FBI.

ELF was formed in Brighton, England, in 1992, when a few members of EarthFirst! became frustrated with that group's unwillingness to break the law to achieve its goals. Modeled after Britain's Animal Liberation Front (ALF), ELF is composed of autonomous, anonymous cells that engage in direct actions to cause economic hardship to businesses and institutions that they believe are destroying the environment. Like members of ALF, the members of ELF (who call themselves “elves”) take precautions against harming animals and humans during their actions. To date, they have not physically harmed anyone. Nonetheless, they have caused over $100 million in property damage, and the group's increasing reliance on explosive or incendiary devices has made ELF a significant concern.

In November 1997, a communiqué announced the presence of ELF in North America, after an attack on the Bureau of Land Management wild horse corrals in Burns, Oregon, which ELF conducted in conjunction with ALF. Most of the group's early actions, however, were against logging activities, using “monkey-wrenching” techniques borrowed from Earth First!, such as disabling heavy machinery used by loggers. The aim was to make cutting down trees unprofitable for lumber companies and, in later actions targeting suburban sprawl, to make building luxury homes less lucrative for construction companies.

On October 18, 1998, in Vail, Colorado, ELF carried out its largest-ever action, setting fire to five buildings and four ski lifts at a resort, causing more than $12 million in damage. The act of arson was committed against Vail Resorts, a large development company planning to expand operations into 2,000 acres of Rocky Mountain wilderness. This area is the habitat of the North American lynx, a threatened species. Mainstream environmentalists had protested the expansion since 1993, but by 1998 clear-cutting had begun.

Craig Rosenbraugh, then the ELF spokesperson, later delivered an ELF statement that read, “This action is just a warning. We will be back if this greedy corporation continues to trespass into wild and unroaded areas.” He later stated that the [Page 167]Vail arson was not an act of terrorism but “an act of love.”

A federal crackdown on all forms of ecoterrorism, beginning in the late 1990s, has affected ELF. In January 2001, Frank Ambrose, an ELF member, was arrested in Indiana for timber-spiking over 100 trees. In February, three New York teenagers associated with ELF pled guilty to setting a series of fires at home construction sites that encroached on farmland in Long Island.

Another crackdown in the mid-2000s resulted in the conviction of the members of an ELF cell responsible for both the Burns, Oregon, and Vail, Colorado, attacks, as well as several more in Western states from 1996 to 2001. The cell, which called itself The Family, was allegedly led by William C. Rodgers, who killed himself in prison in December 2005. The following year, the other members of The Family pled guilty and were given prison sentences of up to 13 years. In another case, an ELF member was sentenced to 22 years in 2009 for participating in an arson attack at Michigan State University 10 years before.

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