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Published Sunday, November 1, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News Evolution of a movement Environmental terrorism contrasts with maturing radicals BY JULIA PRODIS SULEK Mercury News Staff Writer Climbing to the top of a redwood in the far reaches of Northern California last year, Julia ``Butterfly'' Hill defied the lumber company intent upon sawing the tree down. Today, nearly 11 months later, she still hasn't touched ground. The tranquil 24-year-old woman and the 200-foot tree she named ``Luna'' have become symbols of a new generation of Earth First!, the radical environmental group once best known for pounding railroad spikes into trees to break logging saws and pouring sand into bulldozer gas tanks, also known as ``monkeywrenching.'' And while Earth First! has claimed in recent years to be shifting its tactics away from sabotage to civil disobedience such as tree-sitting -- perhaps as a move toward the mainstream -- there are obviously people on the fringes of environmental activism who have been unwilling to change their methods. Two weeks ago arsonists billing themselves as the Earth Liberation Front ignited seven fires at the renowned Vail ski resort in Colorado. The daring, middle-of-the-night fires, set along the 11,220-foot mountaintop, caused $12 million in damage, including the destruction of the landmark Two Elk Lodge. As tactics go, it stands to reason that the move from sabotage to arson is not that distant. But the evolution of the radical environmental movement -- and whether or not the fringes are linked to a moving center -- is shrouded, as if by North Coast fog. With the Vail culprits still on the loose, Colorado Gov. Roy Romer quickly branded the fires environmental terrorism. Maybe so, said Earth First!, but it wasn't them. However, Ron Arnold, director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a property rights activist group in Bellevue, Wash., claims Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front are one and the same. ``The `innocent' mainstreamers very likely are the same people going out and doing the crime,'' Arnold said in an interview. Earth First! dismissed Arnold's view as ``delusional.'' Over the past two decades, Earth First! has transformed itself, said Lacey Phillabaum, a 23-year-old editor of the Earth First! Journal in Eugene, Ore. ``In the '80s, a lot of Earth Firsters were engaged in sabotage as a sort of last resort,'' she said. ``In the 1990s, the trend has been much more to engage in non-violent civil disobedience. Monkeywrenching was the tactic that people thought worked then, and this is the tactic that people see as working now.'' Past incidents Even so, the current decade has witnessed plenty of destruction in the name of the environment, including some spectacular examples in this region. On Earth Day, 1990, an organization calling itself the Earth Night Action Group toppled high-voltage transmission lines coming from the Pacific Gas & Electric plant at Moss Landing and knocked out power to most of Santa Cruz County for two days. Two years ago, a hotel under construction that blocked ocean views near Half Moon Bay was torched. Neighbors cheered, sipped champagne and watched it burn. Neither attack was blamed on Earth First!. But since the earliest days of Earth First!, the group has been divided over the value of sabotage, Phillabaum said. And while monkeywrenching got the most publicity, Earth First! has always been engaged in theatrical acts of civil disobedience. Peg Millett, who at age 44 is one of the oldest Earth Firsters still involved in the movement, has done both. It was her act of sabotage on a summer night in 1989 that caused the first major rift in Earth First! and brought a forced re-examination by the group. Her activism started rather mildly in 1987 when she dressed up in a raccoon suit and blocked a roadway into the north rim of the Grand Canyon. At age 35, she was a disciple of Earth First! founder Dave Foreman, who wrote ``Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching.'' Once she got out of the raccoon suit, Millett said in an interview last week, ``We wanted to do something that went bump in the night.'' New recruit By 1989, she was cutting bolts on ski-lift pylons in northern Arizona and power lines that led to a uranium mine. A new recruit joined her ranks -- a tall, handsome cowboy named Mike Davis who wore boots and an endearing Arizona feed cap. Millett had a thing for cowboys. He took her two-stepping. She took him monkeywrenching. And on June 1, 1989, Millett, Davis and two cohorts put on their black knit caps and drove west of Phoenix to Alamo Lake to cut a power line to a pump station. As Millett played lookout, an FBI flare illuminated the night sky. ``Oh my God, there's someone else here,'' she said. She ran 16 miles through the night and turned herself in the next day. Mike Davis was no cowboy. He was an undercover FBI agent. The sting also netted Foreman, who had given Millett's group $200 for gas and supplies for the Alamo operation. Millett served two years in prison. Foreman pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy and received a delayed sentence. But it was a turning point for Earth First! ``It became foolhardy to be identified as an Earth Firster,'' said Susan Zakin, who wrote ``Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement.'' Under pressure from the FBI, ``Earth First! has splintered into different grandchildren, different pieces,'' Zakin said. ``Some of them have become much more radical, some have become much more practical.'' Still protesting On the practical side, Foreman founded a wilderness conservation group. And another early member, Peter Galvin, co-founded a public policy group in Tucson that uses lawsuits to try to stop environmental degradation. And in the tradition of civil disobedience, Earth Firsters are still linking arms to block roadways. But these days, they bind themselves together with metal sleeves or bike locks to make it more difficult for authorities to pull them apart and haul them away. However, protesters who were chained together at a protest at Pacific Lumber Co. headquarters in Scotia last fall were swabbed in the eyes with pepper spray, and one 24-year-old forest activist was killed in September when a logger felled a tree that struck him in the head, also in Humboldt County. At the extreme is Earth Liberation Front, which took responsibility for five earlier arsons against federal buildings in Washington State and Oregon, as well as the Vail fires. Its members have not identified themselves, but the group has apparently aligned itself with the Animal Liberation Front, best known for throwing paint on fur coats and freeing animals from research laboratories. According to an Animal Liberation Front newsletter, Earth Liberation Front (ELF) got its start after a 1992 Earth First! meeting in England. Frustrated that Earth First! was going too mainstream, more radical activists proposed an underground wing to keep up the sabotage. ``Sadly, this never really happened, as some sections of the movement were trying to link up with the mainstream and saw the elves (ELF) as an embarrassment,'' the undated newsletter said. Undeterred, the more radical group broke off to form Earth Liberation Front as a separate entity, the newsletter version goes. Anonymous members Craig Rosebraugh, who is a member of a group called Liberation Collective in Portland, Ore., said that he doesn't knows a single member of the Earth Liberation Front. But he is their spokesmen, nonetheless. He only hears from them through ``anonymous communiques,'' he said. ``They trust us to put the message out and we do.'' The saboteurs set fire to the lodge, the ski patrol headquarters and four ski lifts at Vail -- one of the country's premier ski resorts -- after a federal judge threw out a lawsuit seeking to block Vail's expansion into 885-acres of national forest land that was also seen as potential habitat for the reintroduction of the lynx. ``What else was there to do?'' Rosebraugh asked. ``People who engage in these actions feel they're taking up where the law left off. If the law is not protecting something you believe is important, very near and dear, there is disillusionment that happens and you find these kinds of things going on.'' Millett no longer holds that view. ``My monkeywrenching days are over,'' she said. Now living in a yurt, Millett said her voice is her latest weapon. ``I sing environmental songs.'' And from a platform in the top of a redwood, Julia ``Butterfly'' Hill continues her vigil. She said she'll come down when the lumber company agrees to spare the tree. In the meantime, she spends her days talking by cellular phone to reporters, writing poetry and -- when the weather permits -- climbing around on Luna.
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