"Eco-Terrorism": An Incident-Driven History of Attack (1973–2010)

Beginning in the 1960s, a political movement emerged that advanced a radically new critique of environmental and animal use practices. These new ideological tendencies were characterized by a shift not only in philosophical outlook but also in language and collective practice. This time period is often associated with the founding of the deep ecology framework, authored by Arne Naess in 1973,¹ replacing the environmental protectionism of the past, as well as notions of animal liberation, inspired by a 1975 book of the same title by Peter Singer.² Just as Singer's notion of liberation replaced previously popular notions of animal welfare or rights, the groups that formed during this time replaced previously dominant strategies of aboveground popular protest with that of self-guided, clandestine, autonomous units. These new revolutionary frameworks—serving to challenge state authority and notions of property rights—were quickly adopted by emergent groups, which began to use sabotage, vandalism, and arson. In 1963, the Hunt Saboteurs Association was formed, dedicated to physically disrupting hunting expeditions, often taking the form of sabotage and provocation. In the early 1970s, several activists decided to shift their tactical focus after working with a hunt saboteur movement. In 1972, the Band of Mercy (BOM) formed in England as the outgrowth of a desire for a new praxis that prioritized taking animals out of harm's way as well as financially sabotaging companies and institutions contributing to their exploitation.³

Within three years of its founding, the BOM morphed into what has historically been the most active, clandestine, direct action movement, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Since its founding in England in 1976, the ALF has carried out thousands of attacks globally. Several years after the formation of the UK ALF, the movement witnessed the deterritorialization of franchises in more than 40 countries. In the United States, the origin story of the ALF is a bit murky, with activist-scholars dating it to either the 1977 release of dolphins in Hawaii,⁴ the 1979 raid targeting New York University Medical Center,⁵ or the 1982 theft of dozens of cats from the Howard University Medical Center.⁶ By 1994, the ALF inspired the formation of an organizationally and tactically similar movement targeting institutions of ecological exploitation through methods of sabotage and vandalism—the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Throughout the 38-year period under examination, the BOM, ALF, and ELF expanded globally, leading to the formation of at least 300 similarly styled groups.⁷ This global "movement of movements" that opposes violence toward animals and the environment and seeks to abate such perceived crimes through economic sabotage has garnered the label "eco-terrorism" from governments, media, and elements of the academic community.⁸ The following study will build upon a growing body of scholarly literature to examine these movements—referred to subsequently as the animal and earth liberation movement (AELM)—seeking to determine how the AELM interacts historically and ideologically within a realm of politicized violence and militant social protest.⁹

Establishing Terms and Questions

The central question under examination asks: What are the dominant historical trends located in the global AELM, and given this record, does such a movement qualify under the label of "terrorism"? This central question, one in which the critical reader is tasked with determining the descriptive accuracy of authoritative labeling, forces the reader to deconstruct definitions of what constitutes terrorism, a topic fraught with multidecade disagreement within its academic, governmental, and popular press discourses.¹⁰ While globally a wide variety of legal definitions are employed, even within a single nation-state there is great diversity and disagreement. In the United States, legal definitions of what constitutes terrorism vary from state to state and among federal agencies—with the Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of the Treasury, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and National Counterterrorism Center each maintaining distinct definitions. In addition, laws such as the USA PATRIOT Act contain additional definitions within their text.

This acknowledged ambiguity is commonplace, with even a federal agency focused on law enforcement, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), writing, "The search for...