ABSTRACT
ELF traces its origins to a gathering of members of Earth First, an environmental group that was active in England in the early 1990s. „ose who believed that Earth First was not radical enough or lacked the will to undertake guerrilla activities split from the group. ELF has been active in the United States since at least 1996, when it set –re to a –re service truck in Willamette National Forest in Oregon. „e group has a tradition of leaving a signature message, such as “if you build it, we will burn it,” or just its initials. By 2001, ELF claimed responsibility for more than 100 attacks that had caused more than $37 million in damage in at least eight states, including Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. By 2003, re³ecting the increased activism and higher pro–le of the group, damage estimates attributed to it had risen to more than $100 million.1 Since then, the ELF “press o›ce” has been intermittently inactive for periods of several years and has rarely issued any more damage estimates.
