Eco-terrorists - The Mean Greens
SUNDAY AGE
Saturday October 19, 1991
IT was the large masonry nail left like a calling card on top of the filing cabinet that convinced the foresters they were victims of monkeywrenching, or eco-terrorism.
The day after Show Day, Friday 27 September, members of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries walked into their Swanston Street terrace house office to discover they had been robbed.
Oddly, the thieves ignored money in the open office register, cash in a locked safe, videos, televisions, laptop computers, mainframes and photocopying gear. Instead they stole two ageing personal computers operated by senior officials of the association.
The software represented years of work on logging areas in Victoria, proposed National Park boundaries, Government submissions and, importantly, the foresters' two-year strategy on logging the Central Highlands.
``We believe we are the victims of a radical environmental group," said Mr Graeme Gooding, the deputy executive director of the association. ``We do not think this was a random act. Of what use would the information on logging be to a common thief?" The concrete nail was the same type used by radical conservationists to spike trees in East Gippsland, the Otways and in forests in the Central Highlands: ``It was not there the day before," Mr Gooding said.
Victoria Police's counter-terrorist squad has investigated the break-in as part of an operation targeting the activities of radical environmentalists.
Although the squad has an open mind on the investigation, its leaders and other senior police are concerned about the growing influence of such groups and their impatience with the mainstream conservation groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund.
The squad is also concerned about a possible connection between the break-in and the huge fire at Coode Island, which caused up to $30 million damage. Investigating officers say both criminal acts were ``very professional".
Mr Gooding says the break-in occurred the day after the association called for the banning of a radical conservation book called `Ecodefense _ a Field Guide to Monkeywrenching' and for mainstream green groups to stop selling it.
The police have also referred the book to the federal censor, the Office of Film and Literature Classification, because they believe the book contains explicit instructions on how to commit acts of sabotage.
The book, written by the American founder of the Earth First! movement, David Foreman, advocates tree spiking, arson, sabotage of logging equipment, the destruction of billboards, and removal of road or railway pegs in defence of the natural environment. It recommends the surreptitious slashing of fur coats in department stores and also discusses ``borrowing" embarrassing information from software files of the conservation movement's enemies.
Foreman, a former political lobbyist for the Wilderness Society who grew impatient for change, has just been placed on a five-year bond for conspiracy charges relating to cutting down power poles. Five other Earth First! members are awating sentence after an FBI investigation. One, Mark Davis, was sentenced last month to six years' jail for damaging a ski resort in Arizona. He was also fined almost $US20,000 ($A25,000).
Foreman has been arrested six times, convicted three times for civil disobediece and has responded by saying: ``Call it fascist if you like, but I'm more interested in bears, rainforests and whales than in people." Quietly over the past three years but more prominently over the past 12 months a new strain of radical conservation has emerged in Victoria.
It has been accompanied by allegations that radical environmentalists have spiked trees, damaged bulldozers, set fires at sawmills and removed survey pegs from proposed roads and Very Fast Train routes.
Police intelligence reports show that more than $5 million worth of damage has been caused in the Otways, East Gippsland and the Central Highlands over the past three years.
Inspector Rob Rolly, the head of Bush Alert, said the organisation was formed primarily because of fears of eco-sabotage. In the past three years, about 17 bulldozers and logging machines had been sabotaged in an area bounded by Bunyip, Drouin, Traralgon and East Gippsland. ``We believe it has been done by radical conservation groups," he said.
Inspector Rolly said a manufacturer of trailers in the Warragul area recently received a phone call warning that if he continued to make trailers for the logging industry, his premises would be damaged. There was also a veiled threat that the caller knew where his children went to school.
``We also caught a carload of young people with railway spikes in the boot in East Gippsland. They told us they were collecting them," Inspector Rolly said.
EARTH First! was formed in Melbourne by a core group of 12 people prominent in the conservation, Aboriginal land rights and feminist movements about two years ago, although many mainstream conservationists have been surprised to learn that a group operates in Melbourne.
Its followers estimate that there are a further 40 supporters who attend, irregularly, the fortnightly meetings or periodic ``direct actions". They say Earth Firsters number more than 300 Australia-wide. But there are no management structures or membership lists. Earth First! is regarded as a movement, a philosophy and a group that promotes direct action against the logging and development industries rather than a political lobby group.
It philosophical basis relies of the theory of ``deep ecology" or ``biocentrism", which basically asserts that all life on earth has a right to exist. Humans have no right to dominate or destroy other forms of life.
Allegations that Earth Firsters may have been involved in environmental terrorism are vehemently denied by group members who say they do not personally embrace the policy of monkeywrenching.
Mr Cam Walker, of Earth First!, said allegations that green groups were involved in Coode Island were ``thoroughly outrageous. It's rather obvious to us that this is just another scam to further the eco-terrorism agenda and divert attention away from the Government actually doing something about Coode".
Mr Walker also said his group would not be involved in activities such as the recent break-in. ``My theory on that is this," he said. ``Resource security legislation is getting a lot closer all the time. That's going to make non-violent direct action against inappropriate logging practices very difficult because there will be so many fronts that people will be fighting on. That will, by necessity, up the ante in regard to tactics. I don't endorse it one tiny bit but I know there will be an increase in the incidence of monkeywrenching and tree spiking and that sort of thing.
``We don't embrace monkeywrenching as a group. But part of the problem is if you use a name and someone in the next valley goes and does something there's guilt by association.
``We're very interested in direct action. We see ourselves fighting a rearguard action to try and save as much as possible to when community attitudes swing around. We are trying to save as big a biological gene pool as possible." Mr Walker said he had heard of many examples of people damaging bulldozers in NSW, East Gippsland, the Otways and in Western Australia: ``It's very hard to know who. If someone does it they're not likely to talk about it. We only hear rumors." Mr Walker said monkeywrenching could also be the work of Nomadic Action Groups, or NAGs. These small groups of friends or associates formed in the early 1980s during the campaigns to save rainforests at Nightcap, near Terania Creek in northern NSW. These groups then went on to Roxby Downs and the Franklin.
The Earth First! movement has been visited this year by a follower of the movement in the United States, Jake Kreilick.
Kreilick has recently returned from two months' jail in Sarawak, in northern Borneo, for illegal trespassing on logging land and timber barges. Another Australian Earth First! member, Anja Light, who received an 80-day sentence, will be returning to Australia this week.
Kreilick, who supports monkeywrenching, says he is here to ``stir things up a bit". ``One of the things we spell out is that we do not advise violence against humans or any living thing," he says. ``When we act against bulldozers the idea is to create an economic deterrent to logging. Monkeywrenching is not a terrorist tactic. It's not a tactic designed to undermine or overthrow Government. It's designed to protect as much remaining wild forest and remaining animal species as possible. There are other tactics _ blockading, civil disobedience, legislative campaigns. The smart monkeywrencher understands that." Kreilick believes Earth First! fulfils a more radical role in the green movement. Groups like the ACF, the WWF, the Wilderness Society and Greenpeace were too bureacratic and had lost touch with grass roots issues.
``I would consider groups like the ACF and World Wildlife Fund for Nature and even Greenpeace now are taking on issues at a bureaucratic level and are trying to work within the system," he said. ``But many Earth Firsters would argue that this is a reductionist approach. These groups simply want to reduce the impacts of the human species on the planet and they don't actually want to change our relationship with the natural world.
``Some Earth Firsters are going out and doing things on their own _ monkeywrenching. Tree spiking is nothing new. But one of the things we are very serious about when it comes to tree spiking is letting the people who are logging the area know that it has been spiked. Once that acknowledgement has been made, then if they want to go in there and cut, then that's their fault." A spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, Mr Michael Ray, said care needed to be taken when assessing whether sabotage had been carried out ``by people who are supposedly motivated by the conservation imperative or agents provocatuers _ people motivated by the industry side acting to blame the conservationists".
``From our point of view WWF does not support or advocate monkeywrenching, destruction of property, call it what you will. That's not to say, though, that people can't have their views. I'd be very loath to get involved in a debate about what is the truth and the light for conservation activities.
``There are some stupidly ludicrous things outlined in the book, like monkeywrenching high-tension wires. That sort of thing is just frightening as to the damage that could cause to innocent people nearby _ completely over the top and not useful to conservation in any shape or form. WWF has supported demonstrations and blockades in the past but not when it poses a risk to property and people." Mr Ray said monkeywrenching represented a lack of sophistication in the way the conservation movement sought changes in society's views: ``Working out ways to bugger machinery is very different to developing a strategy that will bring the changes that are necessary. What's happening in many monkeywrenching activities is inflaming the situation. It creates a mood less likely to bring about changes in the way people operate. It polarises and entrenches views. It may well stop an activity for a day or a week, depending on what the damage is, but really it's not a long-term soluition." The executive director of Greenpeace, Mr Paul Gilding, said he was unaware of the Earth First! branch in Melbourne and rejected the philosophy of monkeywrenching.
``We don't believe violence to people or property is a constructive way to change the world," he said. ``We understand the frustrations some people feel at the slowness of change. That's not to say we don't believe in confrontation and there are times when our people are at risk." Mr Gilding rejected allegations that the green movement was in any way connected to the Coode Island fire and suggested the development lobby had a vested interest in discrediting conservation.
The environmental manager at the ACF, Ms Karen Alexander, also did not know Earth First! was active in Melbourne and also rejected links between the conservation movement, sabotage at Coode Island and monkeywrenching in general.
``It's totally contradictory to the way our groups have operated. It nothing that the accepted environment movement condones," she said.
© 1991 SUNDAY AGE