Ecoterrorism is one of the biggest domestic terrorism threats and has significantly damaged property.
One kind of these threats is what happened in Germany in January of this year. The protesters and police in Germany clashed over proposals to build a new open-pit coal mine in the now-deserted community of Lützerath. Although there have been reports of injuries to both protesters and police, the protests have been mostly nonviolent.
Germany's protests are the most recent episode in what appears to be an increase in tensions between climate protesters and governments. For instance:
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Throughout the year 2022, climate activists supported by billionaires organized protests by pretending to damage works of art in prestigious museums (and sometimes succeeding);
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The French government sent armed police to protect the installation last October after climate protesters wrecked a farming irrigation project there;
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Between 25,000 and 40,000 minks were released from an Ohio farm in November, and many of them died;
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Extinction Rebellion, a UK advocacy group, claimed at the beginning of the year that it would stop holding disruptive protests, but just recently resumed;
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The UK government has suggested tougher sanctions for disruptive, non-violent rallies like this.
These are all merely incidents; they tell nothing about a trend in the frequency or intensity of these protests.
The current trends do not indicate an increase in conventional terrorist attacks driven by environmental concerns related to the difficulty of climate change. However, as the climate situation deepens, this may alter. It may also be impacted if plans to criminalize peaceful climate protest activity pass more severely.
But will this trend continue? What exactly is "eco-terrorism"? And are there any reasons to believe that ecoterrorism may become more prevalent in 2023?
What is Eco-Terrorism?
Eco-terrorism refers to the violent actions of certain environmental activists to stop those they believe are harming nature and its constituent parts. Eco-terrorism is often referred to as bioterrorism or ecological terrorism.
These violent actions include setting buildings on fire, contaminating water and other products, releasing animals, making specific threats, bombing, and many other forms of civil unrest. The intention is to condemn and destroy the targeted companies so they cannot harm the environment further.
Ecoterrorism causes businesses all over the world a lot of trouble. Due to its environmental and economic harm, the FBI identified it as a top domestic threat.
History of Eco-Terrorism
When people recognized how damaging our actions were to the environment, we realized that environmental regulations and organizations were necessary.
The US government passed laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, the Clean Air Act of 1972, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA).
These laws aid in regulating society and defending the environment. However, these legislation and environmental groups could have been more satisfactory to some people.
Radical environmentalism replaced the discontent. Some environmental activists think it is impossible to bring about constructive change since businesses profit from environmental degradation. Radical environmentalists thought that nature has a fundamental worth, which is right, and that, as a result, we should appreciate all life forms and functions. However, some radicals use unlawful methods as part of their eco-protection strategies.
An anti-environmental activist named Ron Arnold coined the phrase "eco-terrorism" as these activists' acts of violence increased. He described eco-terrorism as acts of crime committed to preserve the environment. He is one of several who defined eco-terrorism as any act of violence committed against a group, piece of property, or individual to defend the rights of animals and the environment.
Five years after Arnold first coined the term, eco-terrorism began to take off.
Jame F. Jarboe, the head of the FBI Counterterrorism Division's Domestic Terrorism Section, defined eco-terrorism as the use or threat of criminally motivated violence against innocent people or property by a subnational environmental group for geopolitical ends in 2002.
In addition to the target, environmental terrorism often focuses on a symbolic audience. Some argue that radical environmentalists are not terrorists because they do not kill people and other living things.
However, the legislation declares environmentalists eco-terrorists when physically disturbing animal industries.
Different Eco-Terrorism Groups
Since eco-terrorism began, people have founded numerous groups of environmental terrorists. However, the following three terrorist organizations are at the forefront of environmental terrorism:
1. The Animal Liberation Front
A decentralized group with operations in over 40 nations is the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). They are a group that advocates nonviolently defending the rights of animals and the environment.
Their beginnings can be seen in the founding of the Hunters Saboteurs Association in December 1963. When a British journalist, John Prestige, witnessed hunters hunting a pregnant deer at a Devon and Somerset Staghounds tournament, he was inspired to develop HSA.
You can tell John started the group to undermine hunters from the name. The organization later expanded into other groups with distinct names. Cliff Goodman and Ronnie Lee brought back the band Mercy2. A 19th-century royal society dedicated to eradicating animal abuse went under the name of Band of Mercy.
The Band of Mercy committed violent crimes repeatedly to prevent the hunters from killing animals. They violently attacked the hunters, cutting off their tires and breaking windows.
Additionally, they destroyed property and set buildings on fire. 1973, the group committed its first arson at a research facility close to Milton Keynes. The band also set boats on fire during the yearly sea cull off the coast of Norfolk in June 1974.
Following these violent incidents, they carried out roughly eight raids on gun stores, poultry breeders, and animal testing labs. They primarily committed crimes involving arson that resulted in property damage. Additionally, the group members forced the closure of a pig farm in Wiltshire by liberating six guinea pigs from there. The Hunters Saboteurs Association, however, opposed the Band of Mercy's aggressive tactics.
During a raid at the Oxford Laboratory Animal Colonies in Bicester, he and his collaborator, Goodman, were taken into custody. The court gave them a three-year prison term and a 12-month release period. Lee was more committed to his cause during this time. He then got 30 people to join his new group. Some of these members recruited About twenty new members, some of whom had previously been Band of Mercy members.
The goals of the group included:
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To cause financial harm to those who gain from the suffering and exploitation of animals.
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To rescue animals from cruel settings and place them in a place free from abuse and exploitation.
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To use non-violent means to bring to light the secret tragedies and crimes committed against animals.
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Take all necessary precautions to avoid hurting animals, whether human or not.
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Finally, any group or individual that adheres to the ALF's goals may refer to themselves as a member of the ALF.
Most group members will go to any lengths necessary to accomplish their objective despite their promise to refrain from using violence to promote their cause. Because they did not result in the deaths of people or animals, they did not regard their actions of vandalism, burning, and bombing as violent. Because of this, detractors label them as an eco-terrorist organization.
Due to the frequency of burnings and bombings they coordinated, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law enforcement organizations identified ALF as a significant group of active extremist elements that promote domestic terrorism.
Their actions have cost businesses, organizations, and the government money. ALF informed the media on November 17, 1984, that it had poisoned Mars Bars with rat poison to end the company's use of monkeys in testing.
2. The Earth Liberation Front
The ALF is similar to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). It is a separate eco-terrorist organization that engages in terrorist activities while claiming to be concerned for the environment. The group originated in 1992 in England as an eco-terrorist group called the British Earth First Movement.
The British Earth First Movement wanted to focus on civil disobedience and mass protest approaches, so they allegedly founded ELF to allow violence and direct action techniques to support their eco-terrorism cause.
They shared many of ALF's objectives and methods. The organization's influence grew beyond Brighton, Europe, to more than 17 nations. Europe, North America, and South America are all home to ELF members. The United States, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Poland, Spain, France, Finland, and many more nations are home to ELF eco-terrorists.
Organizations engaged in logging, deforestation, genetic engineering, GMO agriculture, urban sprawl, rural clusters, and other activities that ELF considers to be abusing the planet, humans, and other inhabitants are the target of ELF.
The primary terrorist strategy of ELF is to use firebombs to destroy property. They set fire to people's homes, businesses, and laboratories they believe are harming the environment. Along with the bombing, they also commit vandalism.
In February 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) designated ELF as a primary domestic terrorist group. Authorities launched a campaign to deter them from committing additional eco-terrorism crimes. In February 2001, they posed the most significant domestic terrorism danger to the US.
The $100 million in damages caused by the eco-terrorist group are estimated. In July 1981, they demolished three 345,000-volt electricity poles close to Moab, Utah. According to reports, nine crimes were reported in Northern California between November 1989 and December 1990.
They caused $1.9 million in damages at the logging operations in Boonville and burnt six fur apparel establishments. They also wrecked electricity cables in Watsonville. The ecological terrorist organization destroyed a ski resort in Vail, Colorado, in 1998. Damages from the raid totaled $12 million.
3. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Paul Watson co-founded Greenpeace in 1972, but he was kicked off the organization's board after they refused to acknowledge his direct action strategies, which ran counter to their pacifist stance. He then quit and founded Sea Shepherd in 1977–1978 to carry out his aggressive eco-activism ideals. The group gave itself the mandate to save the environment.
The group specifically aimed to defend the marine environment and stop drifting nets and whaling fishing. Paul believed direct action strategies were more effective, so the group used violence. Therefore, they cause harm to their adversary's property to stop them from engaging in allegedly environmentally harmful conduct. They would drive into whaling ships, smear whale meat with rancid butter, and destroy ship propellers to stop them from moving.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been branded an eco-terrorist group by certain countries despite media appreciation for the group's civil disobedience.
According to SSCS, refraining from violence encourages continued abuse of people, animals, and the environment. Regardless of the criticism, they insist on employing violence to safeguard the maritime ecosystem.
In March 1979, the first assault by eco-terrorist organizations targeted seal hunting in Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence. They interfered with the hunting party by drowning seal pups in red dye to render them unfit for commercial sale. The eco-terrorists in Sierra assaulted an unlicensed whaling ship by drilling a 6-foot hole. In the Spanish port of Viga, the SSCS sank the Isba I and Isba II, two whaling ships.
Even though the SSCS champions a just cause, its eco-terrorist tactics are horrible. If they didn't engage in eco-terrorism, they would get the backing of other government organizations. The group cannot be acquitted of its acts of ecological terrorism simply because no one was killed while fighting for a safer environment.
Actions Taken to Prevent Eco-terrorism
Using legal measures, the government has attempted to stop eco-terrorism. These regulations protected private institutions' financial gains and interests from eco-terrorists. Let's now look at the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA) and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), also occasionally and wrongly referred to as the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act).
The United States' initial law, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA), was amended by the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). The parliament first passed the ambiguous AEPA in 1992 to stop the demolition of commercial properties. Animal enterprise terrorism, as defined by the Act, is the deliberate physical disruption of businesses and enterprises that deal with animals. The disruption frequently results in property damage, severe injury, or even death.
The reasons that AETA covers eco-terrorism have been significantly enlarged. In 2006, AETA updated its definition of interfering with animal companies' and third-party partners' operations. The law increases the penalties under the preceding legislation, AEPA while expanding the concept of eco-terrorism to include businesses that sell animals and animal products.
People, however, objected to the behavior. They argue that it is unclear and unfairly severe on protests for animal rights and other environmental causes. Concerns about animal welfare are unaffected by any Act. Owners of animal businesses and laboratories for scientific study are protected by it.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the law enforcement organizations that assist it have taken additional steps to lessen the number of terrorist actions committed by eco-terrorists. To combat both internal and foreign terrorism, the FBI established Joint Task Terrorism Forces (JTTF) in around 44 different nations.
The task teams reduced eco-terrorism by combining the FBI's investigative skills with local law enforcement knowledge.
Some eco-terrorist organization members were detained by task forces and charged with crimes. Many of their arrests included:
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Eco-terrorists who identified themselves as members of the Evan Mecham Eco-Terrorist International Conspiracy (EMETIC) claimed responsibility for harming Arizona's Fairfield Snow Bowl Ski Resort. Additionally, they took part in several accidents at various ski resorts. So, in September 1989, the Court of Law imposed a prison term on them. Marc Davies, Margaret Millet, Marc Baker, and Ilse Asplund are the terrorist group's members.
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Rodney Coronado was given a 57-month prison term, three years of probation, and a $2 million fine on July 3, 1995, by a court of law.
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On April 20, 1997, Douglas Joshua Ellerman acknowledged building and delivering five pipe bombs to the Fur Breeders Agricultural Co-op in Utah. He also admitted to igniting the fire that engulfed and destroyed the building. He was therefore given a 7-year prison term and ordered to pay $750,000 in damages.
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In Belgium, police detained Justin Samuel. He then pleaded guilty to 10 charges of extortion and arson, both federal felonies.
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The arrests of Jared McIntyre, Mattew Rammelkamp, and George Mashkow were made possible by the New York Joint Task Terrorism Forces. They admitted to attempting to and committing arson at new home construction sites in Long Island, New York.
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Frank Ambrose was detained on January 23, 2001, by the Indianapolis JTTF and the Department of Natural Resources for his offense of wood spiking. They believed he was responsible for injecting 150 trees with poison in Indiana state woods.
The cooperation of local, state, and federal law enforcement authorities made it possible for most arrests.
Final Thoughts
There are many different perspectives on eco-terrorism. Some believe it to be a term that accurately depicts the actions taken by environmental activists who risk their lives and the lives of others to spread their message. Others view it as an insult, and laws enacted to combat eco-terrorism impact nonviolent environmental demonstrators.
Instead of destroying property and endangering people, alternative approaches exist to promote its life force. Violence diverts attention from the change you're trying to bring about in the world.
