A new book, Fires in the Night, delves into the history of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a loosely organized band of US Pacific Northwest activists who used economic sabotage and arson to protest environmental destruction in the 1990s.
Members called themselves 'the Family' and were known as Elves. They practiced non-violence toward life but not property, labeled domestic terrorists by authorities. Between 1995 and 2001, they targeted fur breeders, timber warehouses, meatpacking plants, a horse corral, SUV dealerships, and power transmission towers. Most famously, in 1998, they attacked a ski resort in Vail, Colorado, causing over $12 million in damage, saying it was on behalf of endangered lynx.
Legacy and Modern Parallels
The book asks whether ELF was a warning sentinel for accelerating ecological damage. Author Matthew Wolfe notes that while mainstream advice was to take shorter showers, ELF tried to sabotage profits from ecological destruction. After a 2001 attack on an Oregon tree farm, they left a message: 'YOU CANNOT CONTROL WHAT IS WILD!'
Wolfe says the group 'seemed to be taking the threat seriously and responding in a way that was commensurate with the danger we were facing.' Decades later, with massive wildfires, their point seems prescient.
ELF was a radical outgrowth of Earth First!, based in Eugene, Oregon. 'It was an old logging town where counter-cultural resistance and radical politics came crashing into capitalism,' says Wolfe. Activists felt traditional protest wasn't enough, so they adopted arson. Wolfe calls it an irony that they used fire to protest environmental destruction now naturally produced by a warming planet.
Members and Aftermath
Some members were prosecuted for $45 million in damages. Stanislas Meyerhoff, sentenced to 13 years, said he 'was ignorant of history and economy and acted from a faulty and narrow vision as an ordinary bigot.' Others felt the message was worthwhile. Joseph Dibee, arrested in Cuba, claimed ELF didn't really exist as an organization.
Jake Ferguson, described as 'a kind of post-apocalyptic pirate,' testified against others. Josephine Overaker remains at large, believed to be outside the US.
In 2004, FBI Deputy Director John Lewis testified that 34 field offices had 190 investigations into ELF and Animal Liberation Front, noting 'little, if any, known hierarchal structure.'
Fading or Resurging?
The book notes that ELF's failure may have been their disconnection from mainstream groups. Yet frustration with political processes persists. 'They'd protested and tried to make a change through traditional politics and were not getting the results they wanted. It came out of a place of real frustration and desperation,' Wolfe said.
Fires in the Night, published by Viking, is out now.
